Page 83 of The Holiday Fakers
BRODY
“King of the Fuck Up!”
That’s been one of the nicer headlines about me.
With “King” as my last name, and every mistake I’ve made in public, the press and internet trolls have torn me apart over the past few years.
Marv and Cara try to keep it from me, but they can’t stop the social algorithms from thinking that’s what I want to see when I’m scrolling—or when I’m paying for gas and catch sight of my drunken face plastered on the cover of tabloid magazines.
But you could take all the pain and regret I feel from every single one of my mistakes, amplify it by a million, and it still wouldn’t come close to how I feel right now, lying next to Piper.
I’ve worked with enough inexperienced actors to spot when someone’s faking emotion, and Piper’s smiling face just before bed last night rang hollow in my chest.
I know I’ve hurt her, but I don’t know exactly how, and I don’t know how to fix it.
Did she want to kissme, or the versions of me she sees on screen?
And if shehasheld a torch for me, how can anything between us work when I’ve fucked up so much of the last twelve years, and I’m heading for a job on the other side of the world?
Maybe nothing happening is a good thing. Piper’s sweetness and sunshine and I’m the rain cloud that would ruin her life. Marisa may have cheated on me, but she’s not wrong about a lot of things. She accused me of not being present, emotionally as well as physically. I can’t be like that with Piper. She deserves more.
It’s still dark outside, but the time on my watch shows it’s already morning. I’ve spent most of the night awake, listening to her unhappy mumbles, trying to find meaning in the occasional lucid word, while also trying to wrap my head around what happened yesterday.
We kissed.
I kissed Piper Locke and nearly came in my pants in the middle of a carols-by-candlelight attempt to break a world record based on the number of people wearing Santa hats. I don’t know which was more surreal, the kiss or the setting.
It was hands down the hottest moment of my life. So hot that I forgot where I was.
Yes, it was supposed to be practice. It was supposed to be fake.
But there’s a world of difference between kissing another actor on set and what happened last night.
The former always leaves me cold. At best, it’s slightly weird; at worst, downright unpleasant.
Kissing Piper? It blew my mind.
But before I could talk to her about it, everything unraveled.
I’ve never been the sharpest tool in the shed, and I didn’t understand the significance of Piper having a Google Alert for me until it was too late.
I was too wrapped up in my own story of public failure and embarrassment to realize it meant she had a thing for me, or at least for who I’ve played on screen. All I could think about was how she’d perfectly captured me in the role I was going for.
A role in a show filming on the other side of the planet for nearly a year.
“A King-Sized Ego and a Right Royal Mess.” That’s what the headline should be for this catastrophic fail.
I scroll through the pictures from yesterday in the half-light, gazing at a smiling Piper, reliving how it felt to have her on my arm. The way we worked as a team in The Perfect Package. It was the first time I’d ever been in public and felt truly safe and secure in letting my guard down.Thatwas happiness for me. And I don’t know how the hell to get it back.
How can I persuade Piper to talk to me? How can I fix this? And should I even try when I can’t let anything happen between us?
Ethan’s words from yesterday are also playing on a loop in my head. I hurt him. I hurt Olivia by not going to their wedding, not visiting after Martha was born, and now it’s too late to say sorry.
Carefully getting out of bed, I go to the window, pushing back the drapes a little so I can look outside. It’s getting light, and the sky is clear this morning, although snow is forecast later.
Piper stirs behind me, and I glance over my shoulder. One arm slowly creeps over to my side of the bed, like she’s checking if I’m there or not. She pats the empty pillow, then lets out a sigh so heavy it’s like a ball of lead in my gut.
I clear my throat, not wanting to scare her by saying anything.
