of the SUV drummed with the pelts, a soothing beat except that soon Dante would stop and I would have to step out into its fury. I watched hail bounce off the hood of a taxi and hoped it would stop before we got to set.
We were a few hours behind Nicole, a grooming appointment for Chanel taking up the morning. Dante laid on the horn, cursing out a passing car, and I glanced at him. He was being quiet. Extra quiet. I’d tried to chat with him, even poked a few jabs at him, but had gotten nothing. Not a sharp response, not a laugh, not even a smile.
“Everything okay?” A minor in psychology and that was the best I could manage. Pathetic.
“It’s fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
He glanced back at me. “You seem fine.”
“What’s your point?”
“With Paulo.” He sneered the name.
Oh. I swallowed the remaining bit of peppermint in my mouth. “When did you find out?”
“Nicole got out late last night. Mr. B told me to go pick her up. I guess she didn’t get the message. I pulled up and saw them together.”
I didn’t know what to say. My first emotion was relief at finally having someone to talk about it with, to confide in. Except, Dante seemed pissed. At me? At Nicole? At both of us? I couldn’t tell. I studied him, picking up on the tight grip of his hands on the wheel, the hunch of his back.
“So you’re just gonna cover for her? That’s your job now?” His voice was cold, almost mean—a tone I’d never heard him use.
I looked out the window, his words more accurate than he realized. My job was to cover up the affair—and that job was the only thing keeping me fed, keeping my cell phone on, keeping my health insurance active. He was loyal to Clarke … but necessity, right now, was keeping me loyal to my bank account.
I raised my voice to talk over the hail. “It’s not my business. I stay out of it. She wants to have an affair, whatever.” My words came out airy, showing nothing of the way it bothered me. And it did bother me. I had a pit in my stomach half the time I was on set. I worried whenever she disappeared. I felt guilty whenever I thought of Clarke. I wasn’t heartless. I just had to act it, for long enough to get on my feet.
Then again, most downward spirals probably started that way. Small moral adjustments made and justified by income needs. Maybe that was how my parents’ crimes had started. I sucked in a deep breath, startled by the thought.
It was a lot easier to be judgmental and morally sound, back when I didn’t have to worry about money.
40. Codeword: SugarTits
I sat cross-legged on my couch, a bowl of cereal in my lap, and flipped through channels. My cell rang and I glanced at it, Vic’s name on the display. I wavered, a second of indecision before I picked up the damn thing and answered it.
“Hello?”
His voice whipped in and out, bursts of static hitting the receiver. “Hey babe.”
“Hey Vic.” I gave a convincingly aggravated sigh and then mentally high-fived myself.
“You dating movie stars now?” Ah. There was the reason for his call. Jealousy had always been Vic’s weakness, possessiveness his calling card.
I looked at my half-eaten bowl of Lucky Charms. “Seriously? I don’t have time to talk about this.”
“Joey Plazen is a piece of shit, Chloe. He’s stuck his dick in half of LA.”
There were so many immature comments I could make in response to that but I shut my mouth and managed, for once, to not sound like the jilted ex. “Shocker. You don’t like him. I do.”
I hung up quickly, before he could say something that stung. My chances of dating Joey were slimmer than Nicole Ritchie, but the chances of falling back into Vic? That was a real danger. I shouldn’t have answered the phone, shouldn’t have fanned his fire. I stared at the phone and wondered if he’d call back, then scooped out a handful of Lucky Charm marshmallows. I shouldn’t have egged him on, especially since Joey’s photos with the girl from Mixing had already hit the Internet, his quest to distract the press through sex completed. Using Joey to make Vic jealous was a lost cause.
I had a moment of weakness and pulled up Vic’s Instagram, scrolling through his recent posts, all from Dubai where forty-six minutes ago he’d posted a