We Are Made of Stardust - Peaches Monroe #1 (34 page)

I would be paid for a few days of modeling—decent money, but not buy-a-house cash—but the real perk was getting equity in the company itself. If things went well, I could stand to get a bunch of money, plus a lifetime supply of underwear, of course. No more wearing the ratty old ginch and saving the pretty lacy ones for special occasions. No, ma’am. Starting in a few months, I’d have Date Panties on every damn day of the week.

Was I nervous about the upcoming photo shoot?

In a word, eep!

My flight to LA, where the company was based, was booked for Saturday morning. On Friday, they called to tell me the “good news.” They’d increased the marketing budget, and were whipping together a national TV commercial, to be shot the next week while I was in LA.

That put a damper on my plans to spend time relaxing in LA with Dalton. He was wrapping the film shoot Sunday, and would meet me down in California a few days after I got there.

I’d be staying in his gorgeous house in the Hollywood Hills, “warming” his bed by sleeping nude in his fancy Egyptian Cotton sheets until he arrived.

We hadn’t discussed what would happen after my vacation days ended, but I imagined it would be more of this, with both of us flying between the two cities as our schedules permitted.

A few days earlier, I’d been sure he was about to dump me, and now I was thinking about The Future. What had changed? The modeling contract.

Becoming a model changed everything.

See, my theory is that people don’t just get confident by acting confident and believing in themselves. You have to accomplish things, reach goals. Once I became the manager of the bookstore and had staff (even if it was just Amy and the occasional part-timer or student getting work experience), I gained the confidence of someone who was a boss. I acted like a boss because I was a boss.

Now I’d had my photo taken for
Vanity fucking Fair
, and was about to be rocking my curves and wobbles for an underwear line.

And that wasn’t nothing!

I was in a celebratory mood, and Shayla was taking all my good news with more grace every day.

“Good things are happening for us,” she’d say, as if the rising tide that was lifting my boat would also lift hers. And maybe it would.

She was so enthusiastic, in fact, that instead of staying quiet Friday night and getting a good night’s sleep before I took a long bus ride to the nearest city and then flight to LA, I agreed to some drinking Friday night. Not
partying
, mind you, but specifically
drinking
. Starting with cucumber gin and tonics at our house.

The house started filling up around eight o’clock, when I was still playing Tetris with my suitcase contents. Did I need to bring a blow dryer, or would Dalton have one at his house? I didn’t want to text and bother him with such a dumb girlie question, since he was working late, and I’d already asked so many questions already.

The music started up downstairs, and Shayla came up to put a cool mason jar full of ice, gin, tonic water, and sliced cucumbers in my hand. The sweating glass felt cool against my skin, and the drink went down like a refreshing waterfall that carries away all your worries—your worries about blow dryers, keys, and setting off the alarm system of a fancy house in the Hollywood Hills.

Mmm. Gin. Time to party.

“Golden is here,” Shayla said. “And she’s got huge, epic news.”

I rolled my eyes. “The last time I saw her, she gave me the
epic
news that she’d joined a book club. Where ladies discuss a book and drink wine. Honestly, you’d think she’d just invented the printing press the way she went on about it.”

Shayla snickered. “But she’s sweet.”

“Yes. She is sweet. And maybe this time her epic news is actually epic.”

Shayla patted me on the shoulder and winked. “Hey, not everybody gets to be a role model for girls, modeling underpants and dating a hot actor.”

I swirled my ice and cucumbers, wondering where all the gin went. Somebody drank it! I would have to find another one.

“I’m no role model,” I snorted. “Just because I’m fat and somebody hot wants to fuck me doesn’t make me any better than anyone else. I didn’t cure a disease.”

“Please don’t say the f-word, and I don’t mean fuck.”

“Okay. Not fat. We’ll call my ass… too wide for narrow minds.”

“People on the internet are calling you
juicy
, and
real
.”

I put down my empty glass so I could cover both ears with my hands and sing, “La la la! I’m not listening! I already have enough voices in my head, la la la, and I don’t need more!”

She got bored of my crap and walked out, going downstairs to join the party. I thought about finishing my packing, but then realized I was also bored of my crap, so I went down to the party.

The first person to accost me was Golden. She’s a tiny little teacup poodle of a girl, with big eyes and a round head on a skinny neck. She was born with a full head of golden hair—hence the name—and her locks were still wavy and radiant, augmented by chunky streaks ranging from pumpkin spice to platinum. You would think people would have teased her and called her Goldilocks, but they rarely did.

“I have something to confess,” Golden said, clutching my arm just above the elbow, her fingertips digging in.

“Do I need to sit down to hear it?” I joked, for no benefit but my own, since my sarcasm was usually lost on her.

“I have a crush.” She blinked at me, her lashes emphatically cute across her doll-like blue eyes.

We stood near the door of my house, and my employee Amy came in with some friends her age. They all had on heavy makeup and ripped fishnet stockings, like they were fifteen going on fifty-year-old-hooker. Amy, with her blue hair and pale blond eyebrows, scurried past me like she was crashing the party and didn’t know whose house it was.

Actually, I didn’t remember inviting her, so maybe she was doing just that. Kids!

Ah, I felt so grown up, about to fly off to LA for my second photo shoot ever.

My living room was full of people talking over the music, and leaving their wet beverages on surfaces without using coasters. The urge I always got when we had a party—the urge to kick everyone out, or hide in my room—returned. The only cure was another cucumber gin and tonic.

Golden was still talking to me about her crush, and about how talking about the crush
would jinx it.
Because jinxes were real things.

I started making my way through the crowd, stopping only once to ask someone to smoke their joint on the porch and use the Ninja Turtles ashtray.

Golden stuck with me, so I started making both of us drinks in the kitchen.

A tall, blond man walked in, followed by the intoxicating scent of his cologne. Adrian Storm.

“Two Fridays in a row, Peaches.” He winked at me as he stole some cucumber slices from the cutting board.

“Don’t flirt with me. I’m dating Dalton Deangelo. I assume you’re aware of that, since you also knew about this party, and you’re a pretty sharp guy.”

“Ouch.” He took the knife from my hand and worked on slicing the rest of the cucumber. “Wait. Does that mean if you weren’t dating that guy, you’d welcome me flirting with you?”

Golden gyrated her hips as she leaned forward, her elbows on the part of the counter that jutted out from the wall in a peninsula. “You could flirt with me,” she said.

“Maybe just for practice,” he said, a twisted smile on his sexy lips.

She shrieked, “You’re so bad!” As he laughed, she flailed away at him, her tiny hands whacking his broad, muscular chest.

Suddenly I felt like the awkward third wheel, even though it was my fucking house.

How dare Adrian stare down at tiny Golden with that dumb I’m-getting-a-boner look on his face? His IQ was totally dropping by the minute, along with reduced blood flow to his brain.

Meanwhile, Golden had an equally dumb look on her face as she gazed up at Adrian’s chiseled cheekbones, then down at what he was wearing, which seemed to be one of his formerly-oversized band shirts.

I swirled my mason jar full of Easygoing Fun Girl Juice and asked him, “What’s with the band shirts? Why haven't you updated your look since high school?”

He looked down at the emblem on his chest, pretending to be surprised by it. “Oh. This. My parents had a bunch of my old clothes in the attic, and let’s just say the two-seater car I drove back to Beaverdale didn’t exactly have a ton of cargo space.”

“That’s a bit sad. So, you’re that broke, huh?”

Golden gyrated a little more. “I think it’s cool you’re starting from scratch,” she cooed.

Adrian gave me a frosty look, his blue eyes stormy with irritation. “There are plenty of opportunities right here in The Beav, if you know where to look,” he said.

“I’m sure,” I said.

He popped another cucumber slice in his mouth and crunched away. “Oh, but why am I telling you? You’re the one who found herself a movie star.”

“What about you?” I asked Adrian. “Weren’t you hot in the underpants for some actress? What happened with that?”

“It was all an act,” he said with a weird smile.

“Actors aren’t like regular people,” I said. “At least you had some fun.”

He gave me the most heartbreaking look. “Not really.”

With that look, my heart plummeted. I felt bad for Adrian, and worse for me. What was I getting myself into?

“Movie stars,” I said with a shrug, as if that explained everything.

Golden said, “Hey Peaches, that Deangelo guy is really more of a TV star than a movie star, wouldn’t you say?”

I shrugged. “We’ll see about that after this new movie comes out.”

Adrian chewed on the cucumber slices, his gaze still locked on me. “Do you even know what this movie is about?”

“No. Do you?”

“Of course I do. I know everything.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, but why don’t you tell me what you know?”

He didn’t answer me, but turned to Golden, a sunnier look on his face. “Is it cool to dance at a house party? This song is the best.”

She threw her arms in the air and whooped. “Dance party!”

She led the way out of the kitchen and back to the front room, where we’d set up my little stereo and cranked the speakers to maximum. Adrian followed, his round buttocks particularly eye-catching in the tight jeans that he used to wear five years ago, when he was a scrawny semi-goth with a lip ring.

Wait. Why were his buttocks still so appealing to me? I thought my ancient crush had long since expired, but apparently it had been taken out of the mothballs in Adrian’s parents’ attic, along with his band shirts.

I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching through the crowd for glimpses of Adrian dancing. He was loosening up by the second, dancing like he was just a regular guy at a house party in his hometown, which he was.

All the people there were just regular guys and gals, which was why they were at a house party on Lurch Street on Friday night, and not out at the Double D Ranch filming an indie movie.

It’s not unusual for me to feel isolated when I’m at a party. After all, you’re never as alone as when you’re surrounded by people having fun you can’t relate to. This night, however, it was different. I felt like I was on the verge of gaining something truly amazing, but in order to grab it, I had to let go of everything else.

~

According to the flight attendants, the trip to LA was smooth.

According to my stomach, it was not.

I did not throw up, but I did locate and clutch my airsickness bag for a few minutes, just in case.

The man sitting next to me on the flight reminded me of my father, which both comforted me and made me miss him.

The man said, “Hey, do you know why airplane travel is the safest form of transportation?”

We’d just gone through a rough patch in the little airplane, and I was breathing slowly, willing my guts to either be calm and hang on to the donuts I ate before boarding, or just get it all over with and purge those calories already.

He continued, “In all the years of airlines traversing the skies, they’ve never left anyone up here.”

I stared at him, waiting for actual safety statistics that never came. A full five minutes later, I realized it had been a joke, but by then he was engrossed in his paperback, ignoring the mean girl who didn’t laugh at his joke.

At least the flight was mercifully short, and soon we were landing. I smiled at the merry metallic chorus of seat belts unfastening around me.*

*This was my third time on an airplane, which explains why I sound like a total pro, right?

I’d brought just my small carry-on suitcase, so I was saved the adventure of awaiting luggage, and headed through the airport toward the exit and taxis.

I tried not to gawk at everyone around me and out myself as a tourist, but my eyes still bulged, because everywhere I looked, I saw big, round tits. And hair extensions, huge sunglasses, skinny tanned girls packing bottles of water bigger than them. And just… tits, everywhere.

I hadn’t felt so fat and frumpy since, well, never. I’ve got some skinny friends, but in the town of Beaverdale, I’m average size. There are just as many girls wider than me as narrower. LA? From what I’d seen so far, not-so-much.

My mother had offered to come down with me, paying her own way, but I said I didn’t want to take her away from Kyle. (We both knew the real reason was so she didn’t chaperone my time with Dalton, but she was discreet enough not to call me on my fibs.)

As I made my way through the airport, I was attracting attention. Blame my paranoia, but it seemed like every set of eyes hidden behind sunglasses were trained on me. I’d worn a comfortable outfit for traveling: a red shirtdress with a black belt, over black leggings and a newer pair of Keds. On top, I wore a lightweight denim jacket to protect my pale arms from sun and exuberant air conditioning. What I should have worn was black, from head to toe.

I kept my head down and walked as quickly as I could without breaking a sweat.

As I stepped out of the glass doors, the heat coming off the asphalt walloped me. I dove for a taxi like an action hero dodging into a cave to avoid fireballs.