Page 16 of Shameful Addictions

A reporter came scampering up to her as soon as she left the lobby. “Hi, Charlotte Aria, I’m Bethany Hamilton with…”

“No comment,” Charlotte said, turning her head away from the woman. She walked faster, trying to get away.

The reporter followed, her heels clicking on the concrete. She thrust her arm forward, pushing her brown wrist past Charlotte so that the microphone she held was in front of her face. “News of your YouTube video is everywhere by now. Some people are calling you a traitor to your sex. Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

She did, but she saved it all through her escape, and all through the long drive to Parskey’s office. He was there to meet her, a mid-50s and balding gentleman in a suit that stretched a bit tight over his paunch. Parskey offered her his hand.

Charlotte burst out, “A traitor to my sex? I did this to defend my sex! I did this for the greater good of a younger generation!”

Link Parskey let his hand drop. “We aren’t here to discuss whether what you did was right or wrong, Charlotte. We’re here to make a plan. You won’t win this case. We need to minimize the damage.”

She tossed her arms into the air and turned away from him, glaring out at the packed street. “That’s exactly what that Lila woman said to me.”

“I’m not surprised, considering that she’s my sister,” Parskey said dryly. “We tend to think alike. Unfortunately for you, so does everyone in the city right now. Come back here with me so we can talk privately. Would you like something to drink?”

“Water.”

Parskey chuckled, leading her through the lobby to a wide and somewhat romantic office, filled with dark oak furniture and lined with bookcases. “Normally when I ask that question, people want alcohol.”

Charlotte accepted the bottle of water handed to her and sat down in a chair in front of the impressive oak desk. “I barely ever drink. I think all vices should be eliminated or taken with extreme conservation.”

Parskey sat down behind his desk and looked at her in a way she didn’t quite like. “You’re a woman of strong beliefs. Conservative beliefs, if I can borrow the word you just used.”

She nodded, sitting up straighter and lifting her chin. “It’s how I was raised.”

“Sometimes, it’s wise to reevaluate what we think we know. But of course, it’s too late for that now. Let’s do some damage control, Charlotte.” Parskey opened up a laptop and looked at her hard. Do you want to plead guilty or not guilty to the accusations?”

“Not guilty.”

“Of course. So we need an explanation for the way you acted. Tell me what happened and we’ll see what plausible defense we can find in the truth.”

“Why not just tell the truth?” she asked.

Parskey gave her another dark look. “You already told the truth and look where that got you. Start explaining, Charlotte.”

So she told him everything from the very beginning and over the next several days, Parskey crafted a line of defense for her. He would make her out to be a sheltered bachelorette from a conservative background, a vulnerable and relatively innocent woman very much in line with her online persona. She had been misguided by her strong beliefs and made a mistake. That would be Parskey’s selling point, that a mistake had been made. She wasn’t the only person to ever mess up while in the spotlight. She hadn’t done anything intentionally wrong, though in the heat of the moment she had definitely violated her contract and said some heated things in the process.

She was almost impressed by it. He had really taken the truth and spun it to her advantage. Had she been hearing this about another woman, she would have supported her. For a public defender, Link Parskey had talent. Her last line of defense was as good as it could be.

Her first court date arrived and it was a media circus. News vans clustered the street outside the courthouse, and reporters and journalists flooded the sidewalks. They shouted their questions at Charlotte. She didn’t answer any of them. Parskey and a number of police officers held the ravenous newshounds at bay, but there was an even bigger enemy to contend with.

Everyone in the city knew what she had said and done. Mamba, with his terrible influence, had twisted the story in his favor, and now droves of young adults had gathered at the courthouse to act upon what they had been led to believe. They shouted at Charlotte, repeating the phrase that had become so common by now, that she was a traitor to her sex. They called her old-fashioned, a grandmother, a boomer, a misogynist, and waved signs in her direction. And sex workers had emerged, prostitutes from the streets and strippers from their clubs, telling her she was outdated and doing more harm than good by slut-shaming and denying the dignity of their jobs.

By the time she got inside the air-conditioned cool of the courthouse, she was shaking. The world had turned upside-down. She had gone from being so loved to so hated. Her entire identity had been torn to shreds.

“Let’s go sit down,” Link Parskey instructed, leading her up to a table at the front of the courtroom.

Charlotte sat, and stayed there while others began to filter into the room, filling the rows of pews at her back. She refused to look at them. She recognized some voices as belonging to important television people and even a few coworkers, and didn’t recognize others; she refused to look all the same, not wanting for any of this to be real. It all seemed like a terrible dream. She needed to maintain that numbness, a sense of detachment from herself.

The judge walked in and took up his seat, and so too did the jury file in shortly after. Everyone who needed to be there was in attendance, except for the plaintiff and his lawyers.

The judge cast his cool gaze across the room, the touch of his eyes like a winter wind. “Where is he?”

Charlotte noted that even the judge, a powerful man himself, refused to use Mamba’s name, as if speaking of him was some sort of curse or hex.

Link Parskey leaned over and murmured in Charlotte’s ear. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

She looked back at him, eyes wide, silently pleading. If Mamba didn’t show up, he forfeited the trial.

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