Something's Come Up (2 page)

I
don’t care what people think.

This is my credo, my mantra. Now I realize that people flippantly make this statement all the time. We all know the type: big shit-talkers who slink off to cry into their pillows or post on Facebook about how the world is full of “bullies.” But for me, it happens to be true. With the exception of a small group of Homo sapiens that I can count on one hand, I don’t give a single fuck about the opinions and feelings of others. I’m completely unconcerned and contented in my apathy. Maybe oxygen deprivation killed off that part of my brain during my birth or something. I’ll have to ask Dad. Whatever the root cause, it’s the cold hard truth and this character trait somehow actually seems to win me friends, though I rarely keep them for very long.

And do I care? Hell no! Why should I? People are insufferable, petty little animals that will stab you in the back the moment you turn to order a Salted Caramel Macchiato. Giving a rat’s ass caused me issue after irritating issue for a lot of my childhood. So after my mom died, I quit caring. Gave it up for Lent and never looked back. Mom was the one who’d always encouraged my softer side, and with her gone, what was the point? Let me tell you, I felt liberated.

How do I manage to function in society, you ask? Fortunately, my doting father is also my boss and he is morally obligated to love me and therefore can’t fire me for insubordination even when some of our overly sensitive clients storm away all pissed off. Working in show business actually allows me to blend seamlessly in with the flock. Our particular population is chock full of sociopaths, so people are rarely shocked by my behavior. In fact, I’m ridiculously successful at what I do. Partially because my mother was a photography legend and I’ve been composing shots since I was big enough to hold a camera. It doesn’t hurt that my father owns the third largest music magazine in North America,
The Sound Wave.
Yeah. I happen to have a connection or two. Last but certainly not least is my knack to see people as objects, and I can manipulate them as such to get the elusive perfect shot.

There is one caveat to all of this; I don’t like to be talked about—especially when I’m unable to defend myself. That, my friends, is another story entirely. So in retrospect, getting involved with Kevin Wiley was definitely a world-class fuck up. Sure, he was pleasant to look at—all thick hair, dazzling smile and cleft chin. Charming—not in a clever way (I promise you no one would ever accuse him of that)—but in a “say just the right thing at the right time” kind of way. He’s an
actor,
so you would think it might have dawned on me that this was a job requirement, not a character attribute. When we first met, Kevin was the “it boy” of the year, one of
People
magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, a man whose glittering star was on the rise. I probably don’t have to explain how every aspect of his life was dissected, including any time we spent together. I was used to being on the functional side of the camera, so it disturbed me to have paparazzi yelling my name and camera flashes blinding me at every turn. And they were seriously everywhere, from the red carpet to the gas station bathroom.

Kevin was remarkably easygoing about everything, and his smooth words usually had a calming effect on my agitated nerves. He forbade me to look at the tabloids, claiming it was for my own good. A few months later, when filming on his blockbuster ended, he moved in with me. My dad was furious! Just before we met, Kevin had been front page news for a stint he did in rehab due to his passion for prescription painkillers. You’d think my dad would be a little more open-minded, considering my uncles Mick and Keith had a tradition of shooting whisky with him at the holiday dinner table. Dad always gets a bit crazy when it comes to me and my questionable life choices. Since my mom was killed and my brother ran off and joined the priesthood, he’s focused on two things: the magazine and me. That shit gets old. And even though he thundered at me in his office for a solid hour, I didn’t relent. Not because I was madly in love with Kevin—God no! Can you imagine? But I was almost 24 years old at the time. Plus, I just don’t like being told no.

For a couple of months we lived a semi-normal life in my hometown, the near paparazzi free city of Chicago. It was all rather serene, honestly. We ate the best pizza and hot dogs in the country, swam naked in the rooftop pool, watched hockey games at the bar down the street, and meandered along the shore of Lake Michigan. It sort of felt too good to be true. And you know the old adage about that.

Perhaps it was all the time apart that led to our inevitable breakup. That was completely unavoidable, with him in LA 90% of the time and my constant globetrotting. Our penthouse in Chicago was usually occupied by me alone, and even then only about two nights a week. More likely, it was because as self-absorbed as he was, even Kevin could sense that deep down in my tiny black heart, I didn’t even care what
he
thought.

That doesn’t mean that I appreciated the surprise of the magazine cover featuring him kissing his latest co-star. I happened upon it as I strolled by a newsstand one sunny morning and nearly stumbled ass over elbows into oncoming traffic. Those TMZ bastards are all sorts of savvy with their telescopic lenses! I mean, what the hell ever happened to quietly screwing your secretary? Seriously! Sometimes I really do think the world is going to the dogs like my grandma used to say. I probably overreacted when I immediately changed my phone number and email address so he couldn’t reach me and then forgot to give my agent a heads up. Fortunately, I’d had enough foresight to give it to my coworker, Cheyenne, and my assistant, Gerald. They’re the closest thing I have to friends, and therefore they’re the strings that tether me to the world.

Gerald can be flighty as hell, but Cheyenne has the patience of Job. She must’ve been an evil dictator or mass murderer in a past life to have amassed the karma to be stuck with me. She patiently nodded at all of my angry blubbering the night I confronted Kevin with the lovely picture of him and his little señorita. Since he was on location, I had to do it over Skype. I expected him to at least deny it. Instead, he got that sad puppy dog look that makes me want to stab him repeatedly with a ballpoint pen and said, “I think I need my space for a while, Steph.”

I’m not gonna lie, I have a temper befitting my red hair. I immediately slammed the laptop shut and spent a solid hour desecrating his beloved Star Wars collection. I intentionally ignored the buzzing of my cell phone while his rare action figure of Han Solo did swan dive off the roof of our high-rise. The rest of the mint condition collection ended up in the swimming pool, still in the precious, pristine boxes. I overnighted his prized autographed poster to him with “Herpes Infested Douche Canoe” scrawled on it in my favorite lipstick, Burnt Raisin. I’m pretty sure I must have blacked out after that, because when I finally came to my senses, I was stabbing at two melting Yoda heads with my fireplace poker.

Over a week since my homicidal rampage on Darth Vader, Cheyenne finally agreed to share my apartment. This was great because I was never there and her previous apartment was in the ghetto. I had movers come in and take everything of Kevin’s (that I hadn’t destroyed) to a storage garage. Relax, kids—I overnighted the address and the key to his publicist. I went so far as to order the movers to take my mattress to the dump. I’d been sleeping on the couch since that ill-fated Skype session, anyway. I figured I’d have much less chance of catching crabs that way.

Then, like a cockroach with hair product, Kevin resurfaced. Nearly four months had passed since he’d gone off to “find himself” in between the legs of his Latina lover, and the media was still talking about it. A letter from him arrived first, which I promptly shredded without even opening the envelope. I knew Kevin well enough to know that wouldn’t be the end of it. He had an overdeveloped sense of drama. He’d track me down and soon.

My first instinct was to run. I thought about catching a flight over to Italy to visit my brother Cedric, but he’d just be all sage and priest-like and I knew I wasn’t ready to be pacified. I was still
pissed
at myself for being lulled into trusting Kevin. I needed a good old-fashioned lynch mob, not rosary beads. Driving always helps me decompress, so I decided I’d take a little road trip.

I threw some clothes in a suitcase and tossed it into the trunk of my Chrysler 300. It was one sticky-ass July afternoon, but the breeze from the lake managed to invigorate me long enough to get into the car rather than retreat into the air conditioned comfort of the penthouse. As the sun began to set in my rearview mirror, I crossed the border between Indiana and Ohio. I’d been listening to a local radio station when the DJs began to discuss the new Kevin Wiley movie releasing on Independence Day and the scandal surrounding it. They laughed as they dished about him cheating on his girlfriend with his co-star while on location in Mexico. I turned on my iPod before they could say my name.

I hadn’t planned to divert my road trip to Boston, at least not consciously. I was simply driving east until I ran out of land, and I figured I’d just piss around in New York City for a few days, maybe wander through some galleries, eat barbecue, do a little clubbing, then stare at Central Park while downing a keg of beer. But as I drove down the left lane of the interstate, I started thinking about my college years on the east coast and the last time I had any real fun.

I really do have a good time with Gerald and Cheyenne. We definitely have our laughs. But they
are
my coworkers and there’s always that lingering suspicion they might just be putting up with me because my dad owns the magazine. So as I rolled the word fun around in my mind (trying to recall the last time I’d actually had some), I couldn’t help but think about Pace Turner.

Good old Pace. Six feet and four inches of ripped, ebony sex god. Tasty, tattooed, and oozing testosterone. Pace had always been a hell of a good time back in the day. Now that was one man who wasn’t afraid of an adventure
and
he knew how to make me come. The vivid memory of his amber eyes on me made me squirm a little in my seat. Though we’d exchanged a few emails and dirty greeting cards over the years, I hadn’t seen him since before I’d graduated college, and for all I knew he was happily married with children.

He’d never been my boyfriend. Except for one minor misguided vacation together, we’d been friends with benefits at best. After our jaunt to Italy, things got a bit messy and we hadn’t even been
that
anymore. But as I checked into a roadside hotel for a few hours of sleep, I realized that Pace’s “benefits” were exactly what the doctor ordered. I quickly called Gerald to kill two birds with one stone.

“Where in gay hell are you?” he demanded. For an assistant, Gerald was pretty sassy. “Cheyenne’s been trying to call you. She said Kevin just came by the apartment. He just texted me asking how he could reach you. I told him I didn’t have your new number.”

“Good. Just tell Cheyenne I went away for the holiday weekend. I need you to find a phone number for me. Keep it on the down low.” The last thing I wanted was for those catty office bitches to be talking about what I did in my free time.

I was back on the interstate about five hours later when he texted me the word Boston and Pace’s number. I nearly sideswiped a semi as I saved the text. I felt the old familiar tingle I always had just before I heard his voice. Then I hesitated. Would he answer? If he did, would he even want to see me? Things had been…complicated between us at the end. The turn off was less than a mile away and I needed to grow a pair and make a choice.

I debated with myself a bit too long. I veered wildly and cut off a Hummer to catch the ramp toward Boston.

Not only did I
not
like Pace when I first met him, I wanted to claw his eyes out. It was fall semester of my junior year at SVA in Manhattan. I was coasting along, earning my piece of paper in case I ever needed to back up my street cred with academic accomplishment. My photos had been in Vogue and Rolling Stone before I’d even left high school, but my dad wanted to be sure I had a formal education. Back then, he really believed I’d take over
The Sound Wave
one day, God bless him. Unless I took a blow to the head or had a personality transplant, me running the magazine was highly unlikely.

I had been assigned the dubious task of shooting some pictures for Columbia’s new law school website. It was an assignment the entire school wanted. I thought it was a fucking joke and would have been more than willing to hand it off, but The School of Visual Arts wanted to send their best photography student to impress Columbia. I supposed someone there must golf with someone here. So I had no choice if I wanted to maintain my A and keep my dad paying my credit card bill and letting me stay in his kick ass Central Park West apartment.

For three days I wandered around the pretentious campus, snapping pics of the foliage, the architecture, and the pampered coeds. Interspersed with my impromptu location shots, I had scheduled shoots for different departments. My last afternoon, I was scheduled to meet the students from the law school. The autumn wind picked up as the day went on, and I used my scarf to secure my hair back in a ponytail. I glanced at the names of the six students they’d selected to be their toothy Ivy Leaguers. I saw the name Carrington Pace Turner III and laughed out loud. Classic. I pictured an Aryan young Republican in a red tie with teeth like Austin Powers. Imagine my shock at the sight of
him.

Fuck me!

I heard his deep, velvety voice before I saw him. I was bent over, snapping a shot of a plaque on the building. A rumbling voice from behind me nearly made me jump out of my skin.

“Damn, girl.”

I spun around and a mountain of a gorgeous black man in a ridiculous vest and overly shiny shoes. He was staring blatantly at my chest, and I watched as his eyes ran down the length of my body and seemed to focus on the low rise of my jeans with a little too much enthusiasm.