Page 69 of Hot Mess

“Fuck.”

I spread out photos. There were pictures of May and I from the shoot, but they didn’t include all the cameras and work crew, so it looked like… Fuck! It looked like I had been having sex with some other woman. If Kayla had seen these out of context. There were more photos.

“How the hell did they get this?”

I picked up a shot that was clearly from Halloween. Kayla’s costume around her waist and my hands on her breasts.

No wonder she left.

29

KAYLA

Three days later…

Iwoke with a start. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Sleep was better, dreams were better. In my dreams I was still in the comfortable bed in the little house in LA that I had shared for a brief moment with Nick.

Awake, I was on the same old mattress that I had since I was kid. It was lumpy and hard, and cold. So cold to sleep alone. I flipped my pillow, ignoring the dampness on my pillowcase from crying, and willed myself back into the dream.

And it had been a dream. I wore ball gowns and attended extravagant events. I ate haute cuisine and rode around in the backs of large cars with personal drivers. I hung out on the film set for a TV series and I had an entire kitchen stocked with top-of-the-line French cooking ware. It had all been too good to be true. Nick certainly had been.

The dream really was that he had been as much in love with me as I was with him. The reality was he needed me to keep the studio off his back about being seen with different women, and I needed him to pay off a blackmailer who somehow got damaging pictures of the two of us.

I clamped my eyes shut and focused on the late afternoon sunlight as it filtered into my little living room. I grasped at each glowing dust mote wishing it would magically transport me back to Los Angeles.

I refused to give up, not that I was falling asleep. If I opened my eyes I would be in my mother’s house, in my old bedroom. I didn’t know if this place was home anymore or not. Home was where the heart is, and I didn’t have a heart anymore. Mine had shattered into a million shards of diamond dust, and they cut every time my mind wandered back to those few months.

I flopped on my back and stared at the ceiling, resigned that this was my reality. I hated it. I was miserable. If I got up, I would have to dodge Mom’s incessant questions. She didn’t like the answers I was giving her. But if I didn’t get up, she would barge into my room and demand to know if I was sick.

I glanced over at the clock. There was a very good chance I could get up, get dressed, and leave the house before Mom got up.

I’d be exiled to hanging out wherever I could walk to and forced home when I got too hungry. I got out of bed; the floor was freezing. I pulled my feet back under the covers and chided myself for having returned to deep snow and the depressing end of winter when I could have been living in California’s mild winter climate.

My bladder wouldn’t let me be a wimp any longer. I needed to get up, cold floors or not. I found my slippers and shoved my feet into them. I made my way down the hall to the bathroom and back to my room without encountering Mom.

I was dressed, and down the stairs without incident. Just as I thought I would make my escape unscathed; Mom called my name.

I turned to see her, wrapped up in the bathrobe, leaning on the kitchen door.

“Where are you off to this early?”

Crap. I couldn’t tell her I just needed to get away from all the questions. It didn’t matter where I went, it wasn’t here.

“I’m meeting Amber for breakfast. She has some job leads for me.”

“So, you’re getting a job now?”

“Yeah, that was the plan.”

“You’ve said a lot of things, Kayla. You tell me one thing, your cousin tells me something else, and the next thing I know, you’re back home.”

“I don’t know why you don’t believe me, but you believe Jessie.”

“Your cousin has no reason to lie.”

“She has no reason to tell the truth. I don’t think you realize Jessie and Gabe were not raised the way you raised me.”

“They still live at home with their father. I think that speaks highly to—”

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