Break_An Enemies-to-Lovers Stand-Alone Rock Star Romance Page 20

  Who knows. Maybe when Ben and I plan our real wedding, we’ll also decide to torture our guests with the Immersive experience.

  I smile as I approach the security guard working at the reception desk in the lobby of the event center. “Excuse me. Can you tell me where to find the arena hosting the Garber-Yates party?”

  The man consults a list on a piece of paper taped to the desktop. “You’re in Ballroom 6 and arena B-3. Just take the stairs or the elevator up to the concourse level and follow the signs to the right, to the Benchmark Meeting Rooms. B-3 is at the end of the corridor. Ballroom six is right next to that.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I say, quickly setting off toward the elevator with my two wheelie hard cases full of photography equipment and my laptop — in case the couple needs me to make any last minute changes to the video.

  I’m almost at arena B-3 when I hear the sound of rapid footsteps smacking the floor behind me. Turning around, I see a blonde woman in a pantsuit racing toward me with a worried expression on her face. My first panicked thought is that she’s coming to tell me that Frank has died or is about to die.

  “Do you have a green Volkswagen Beetle?” she asks, panting as she glances at a Post-It note in her hand. “License plate 7WVA141?”

  “Yeah, why?” I ask, noticing the name tag she’s wearing indicates she works for the venue.

  Her shoulders slump. “Someone just came in to tell us they saw a guy breaking into your car in the parking garage. The guy got away, but we called the police for you. They’re on their way.”

  I let out a heavy sigh. “Great. Just what I need today,” I say, turning around to head back, then a thought strikes me. “Um… Are you with Immersive?”

  “Yeah, do you need something?”

  “Do you think you can take this equipment to arena B-3? I was told there’d be an assistant with the venue who could help me get a video set up. Maybe they can get everything set up while I’m outside?”

  The woman smiles. “Of course!” she replies enthusiastically, taking the suitcases off my hands. “Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll get it all set up for you.”

  “Thank you so much. I just hope the thief didn’t make off with any of my expensive equipment. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  By the time I reach my car in the parking garage, the policeman is already there, walking around my car and shining a flashlight inside. “Good evening, officer,” I say, approaching with my keys in my hand. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

  “This your car?” he asks in a harsh tone.

  “Uh, yeah. These are my keys,” I say, holding up my key fob and car key.

  When I see the driver’s side window is completely smashed out, I try not to let myself get too upset. I haven’t been paid for today’s event yet, but I know Ben will help me if I can’t afford to get the window fixed. I don’t want to have to report this to my insurance and have my premium skyrocket when they discover I’ve been living in San Francisco less than three weeks and my car has already been broken into.

  Officer Ramsey warms up to me as he begins taking my report. By the time he’s finished taking all the necessary information, and a security guard for the venue has helped me tape a sheet of plastic over the broken window, an hour and twenty-five minutes have passed. The video is supposed to start playing in five minutes.

  I make sure to activate my car alarm — though I don’t know why — then I race back inside. When I reach arena B-3, the video is already playing. Three-hundred-seventy-five people sit rapt in the darkened theater, seemingly enjoying the video I created for Gina and Michael. I consider heading toward the control room, but I find myself standing at the back of the theater, completely immersed in their love story.

  As the video nears the end, the music suddenly cuts out and the screen goes black. I begin cutting across the back row toward the control room in the back corner of the arena to see what happened, when an image of Ben flashes on the screen. I stop immediately and watch as one photo after another flashes before me: Ben and a blonde I recognize as Katie Lindberg, sitting in a photography studio, Ben’s face twisted with anguish, Katie holding her head in her hands, Ben embracing her, kissing the top of her head.

  My heart is already racing when the images vanish and a video begins to play. I recognize Ben’s bedroom in Bodega Bay right away, but it’s the way his bedroom looked when I was in high school. Suddenly, I hear myself laughing, then Ben and I enter the room holding hands.

  “Are you sure?” Ben asks, and I instantly know what this is.

  Half the people in the theater gasp as seventeen-year-old me pulls off her T-shirt and says, “Do I look like I’m sure?”

  I’m frozen in place. I can barely breathe as the video continues playing and chaos explodes around me as people attempt to get into the control room, which has apparently been locked and no one is inside. My attention falls on the spectators as the glow of dozens of cell phone screens light up throughout the theater, all of them pointed at the screen, recording the most intimate, vulnerable moment of my life.

  The blood drains from my limbs. I feel numb. But I can’t muster a single tear.

  “Charley.”

  The sound of Ben’s voice jolts me out of the initial shock. Turning my head to the left, I see him approaching me cautiously with his hands up in front of his chest, as if to protect himself from the inevitable blows. As our sex tape plays on the screen, and somewhere behind me the security guard shouts, “Yes!” when he gains entry to the control room, I feel the numbness turning to ash as I’m suddenly engulfed in a fiery rage.

  “Charley, just give me a minute to explain,” Ben pleads, slowly lowering his hands.

  I take the opportunity to smack him hard across his perfect cheekbones. “You’re one sick fucking bastard, you know that?”

  He clenches his jaw as he rubs the sting from his cheek. “I didn’t do this. Jordan recorded that video.”

  I throw my head back with laughter. “Yeah, and next thing you’ll tell me Jordan is the one who wrote that breakup post three years ago. You’re a lying, sadistic, narcissist, and I hope you die alone. Don’t you ever, ever call me again. Ever!” I slap his hand away as he reaches for my face. “Don’t you fucking touch me. I have never hated someone more.”

  “Please, Char. Just give me two minutes to explain. Just two minutes.”

  The moaning and whimpering noises in the background cease as the video of me losing my virginity finally stops playing.

  “I didn’t just love you, Ben,” I say, as the tears finally start to fall. “I adored and admired you. You didn’t just break us today. You broke me. You broke my faith in me. I hate you for that, but I hate me even more for being so fucking stupid. Get out of my way.”

  “Charley, this isn’t at all what you think,” he says, following me toward the emergency exit at the right of the screen.

  I turn around and point at him. “Don’t you dare follow me. I don’t want to ever see your face again. Leave me alone, Ben. Forget you ever knew me.”

  As I race down the slanted walkway toward the glowing white and red exit sign, my phone begins vibrating incessantly in my pocket. The video has probably made its way onto YouTube by now. People will be tagging me on that stupid Instagram account I made for Winters’ Weddings. Michelle and Allie might even know. If not, they’ll find out and start texting and calling me soon.

  As I push open the exit door and try to hide my face as I race toward the parking garage, all I can think is, Michelle was right.

  28

  Tears in Heaven

  Now

  As I walk into my father’s room at Zen Hospice feeling utterly defeated and sick to my stomach, I’m surprised to see Dr. Miller — or BJ, as he prefers I call him — standing at my father’s bedside. He normally does his rounds in the morning and around five p.m. before he leaves for the day. It’s almost 9:30 p.m.

  BJ locks eyes with me and I recognize that look on his face. It’s the same look my father
gave me when he picked me up from school when I was eight years old and took me home to an empty house.

  BJ nods as I round the foot of the bed to go take my place in the chair I’ve spent most of the last three weeks in. “It should happen sometime tonight. Please call me or feel free to ask the nurses for anything you need. Anything to make you or your dad more comfortable, that’s what we’re here for.”

  “Thanks,” I say, swallowing hard. “I appreciate that and everything you’ve done for my dad. Truly. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

  BJ glances at my hand, which is wrapped in bloody gauze I bought at a local drugstore while I was out walking. With a tempered smile and a nod, he leaves me alone with my dying father.

  I lean forward, grabbing my father’s hand, which is warm and dry as he sleeps peacefully. “I tried my best, Dad. I tried to make everything right, but I ended up fucking it up again.”

  I let go of my dad’s hand and get up to close the bedroom door, then I grab the guitar I stashed in the coat closet. I don’t want to wake anyone up, so I’ll play softly. I don’t know what else to do. Hopefully, the music will make the passage to the other side that much easier.

  I sit back down in the chair with the guitar in my lap and test out the strings first, adjusting them until I’m satisfied they’re in tune. Then, I begin playing my mother and father’s favorite songs, one by one. I start with “Hey, Jude” and “Paint It Black.” I’m in a groove by the time I play “Brain Damage.” But with tears streaming down my face, I struggle a little to eek out the song my dad played repeatedly after my mom died, “Tears in Heaven.”

  I wear my voice out and quit playing sometime around midnight. And at 1:23 a.m., my dad passes on to that “Great Gig in the Sky.”

  29

  Ordinary World

  Now

  I pull open the door to the walk-in closet in the loft and the sight of the rose-pink silk jumpsuit hanging separately from all the rest of my clothes is like a punch in the gut. I planned to wear the jumpsuit today when Ben and I were supposed to go to City Hall at three p.m. and get married. Instead, I’m here, after waiting for Ben to leave the apartment, so I can sneak in and get all my stuff before the month-to-month lease is up next week.

  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

  Trying to go on with life these past three days has been surreal. With Ben, it was like I was living life with the saturation turned all the way up. Then, someone came along and put a cloudy, black and white filter over everything. My vibrant, sexy world became a dull, gray ordinary world.

  As I watch Michelle and Allie carrying my photography equipment out of the apartment, I thank God I still have my friends. And I try not to think of how stupid I was to think that Ben was my best friend.

  I stuff my clothes into trash bags, because all my suitcases and hard cases are being used to transport my equipment. I don’t even care about the clothes. Michelle is the one who insisted, a couple days ago, that I needed to get my stuff so Ben didn’t take everything from me. The weird thing is that this morning she did a total one-eighty and insisted I didn’t need to get the stuff. When I reminded her that I had at least ten grand in clothing and equipment in this loft, she finally relented and agreed to come with me and Allie to help me move my stuff out.

  “Is this yours?” Allie says, holding up a framed picture of Ben and me, the one we took on the sand dune at sunset.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not taking that even if it is mine. Please just throw away all the pictures you find. I don’t want to see them.”

  “Okay, sorry,” she says, heading straight to the kitchen. But when she gets to the wastebasket, she hesitates for a moment before she sets the frame facedown on the marble counter.

  I shake my head as I continue stuffing my clothes and shoes into my giant black trash bag. I’m almost done when my phone starts incessantly vibrating in my pocket. I take a few deep breaths, waiting for it to stop, but it never does. Finally, I pull the phone out of my pocket and throw it at the concrete wall, where it shatters and falls onto the maple floor in a dozen pieces.

  Michelle and Allie stop what they’re doing and stare at the wreckage.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I just… I’m so sick of that thing.”

  They both set down the items in their hands and come over to hug me. “It’s okay,” Allie assures me. “You’re entitled to feel the way you do. But it will get better. I promise.”

  I laugh as I push them away. “It will get better?” I repeat her words. “When will it get better? When will I feel like my world isn’t going to collapse every time that fucking phone vibrates? Huh? When?”

  Michelle and Allie look to each other, like children being scolded, but they don’t respond.

  I shake my head. “I don’t want a phone anymore,” I say, grabbing the last two sweaters out of the closet and stuffing them in my trash bag. “Maybe I should just move to the mountains and become a recluse. No more phones or computers or social media. Just me and my camera until I die an old, senile woman with a dozen cats who eat my dead body.”

  Allie smiles as she pulls her vibrating phone out of her shorts pocket. “You could be the next Unabomber. But you would only have one person you need to bomb,” she suggests enthusiastically.

  I laugh as I sit on the edge of the bed, where Ben and I did so many filthy things to each other. “I feel lost,” I say with a sigh.

  Allie’s eyes widen as she checks the notifications on her phone. “Charley, you have to see this.”

  I shake my head adamantly. “No! Don’t show me. I don’t want to see anything on the internet.”

  “No, really,” she says, taking a seat next to me. “I swear it’s not bad.”

  She and Michelle exchange a look, like they know something I don’t know.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask pointedly. “You two had better not be keeping secrets from me, too.”

  Michelle purses her lips. “Girl, just read the damn tweets.”

  “Tweets?”

  Allie hands me her phone. “Go on.”

  I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly as I raise Allie’s phone up so I can see the screen. My stomach flips at the sight of Ben’s Twitter profile picture.

  I hand it back to her. “No, I don’t want to see this.”

  Michelle snatches the phone of out Allie’s hand and begins reading the thread of nineteen tweets aloud.

  [THREAD - 1/19] Ten years ago, I was 16 when I got a call from Jordan Kroll. He offered to represent me as my agent to get me modeling, acting, and music gigs.

  [2/19] Jordan invited me to L.A. to get my headshots taken by Wesley Gammett. Wes asked me to take pictures with and without my shirt on.

  [3/19] Three months later, Jordan and Wes invited me to spend a week at their WMA Mansion in West Hollywood when my dad couldn’t fly with me to an audition.

  [4/19] There was going to be lots of other child actors and models there, so my dad allowed me to go. He died three days ago, and this was the biggest regret of his life.

  [5/19] At the WMA Mansion, I was introduced to drugs, alcohol, and sex. On my third night, a friend and I were severely drugged and sexually assaulted by Jordan & Wes.

  [6/19] When I awoke from my drug-induced stupor, I wanted to report the incident to authorities. However, I was told that if I did bring the incident to the attention of...

  [7/19] ...law enforcement, they would not believe me. Jordan claimed the police knew what they were doing. He said I would be charged because I’d had consensual sex...

  [8/19] ...with one of their victims earlier that day. I, being a frightened, traumatized 16-year-old, believed them. Years later, I found out that not only had they...

  [9/19] ...violated me, they had set up recording devices in my bedroom at home, and had footage of me and my girlfriend having sex. Jordan used this footage...

  [10/19] ...to blackmail and extort me for 3 years. Three days ago, I met Jordan at my lawyer’s office to sign an ND
A agreement prohibiting Jordan from releasing...

  [11/19] ...the footage from my bedroom. In return, I would not tell anyone what he and Wes did to me and my friend when I was 16. Jordan secretly released the footage...

  [12/19] ...three days ago at the exact moment he was walking into my lawyer’s office. My mother and father are now dead. The person I love most in this world has had...

  [13/19] ...her reputation dragged through the mud. Her privacy and trust have been violated beyond belief, and I’m partly responsible. I should never have trusted...

  [14/19] ...Jordan with something so sensitive. I should have exposed him at the very first opportunity. For this mistake, my loved ones and I will likely pay for the rest...

  [15/19] ...of my life. I can live with that. What I cannot live with is knowing that I have hurt someone I deeply care about. If any good can come of this, I hope it is this:

  [16/19] If you or someone you know has been the victim of a sexual predator, don’t stay quiet. That is how they control you. And they get off on that just as much.

  [17/19] I hope the others who stayed at the WMA Mansion will come forward, but I understand if they don’t. In the end, these predators will get their comeuppance.