SLEAZE: A Hollywood Comeback Story (Book #1)

Chapter 50

If I thought that Sophie cried a lot on the day that the story about us broke, that was nothing compared to how much she cried in the days that followed. A seemingly never ending stream of tears rolled down her cheeks from the moment she woke up until the time she went to sleep, though it felt as if she rarely slept at all anymore. It didn't matter if it was midnight or four A.M., chances were that if I got up in the middle of the night, Sophie would either be running on her home gym's treadmill or obsessively reading articles about herself online. She insisted that she wasn't tired but the purple circles under her eyes told a different story. I didn't question it, though, largely because I wouldn't have known what to say if I had.

Sophie, on the other hand, never stopped asking me how I was doing and I never stopped telling her that I was fine. She didn't need to know that my email's inbox was full of hate mail or that the text messages coming through to my phone weren't from worried friends, but people who'd somehow found my number and shared it online. Sophie didn't need to know any of that, and neither did my mom who called three times a day to make sure I hadn't changed my mind about going home. I didn't feel like I was lying to either of them by keeping those things a secret; I was fine. In the grand scheme of things, did it really matter that I had to change my phone number?

I ended up going back to work on the same day that Sophie was called into the studio to continue filming, by which time Michael and Richard's agent had launched into full-blown damage control mode. They both seemed to agree that the most important thing was to downplay the cheating aspect of the scandal while maintaining the illusion that Sophie and Richard were happy together. Carefully worded press releases were sent out to magazines on a near-daily basis and the now-infamous couple never went anywhere except as a pair. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't understand the logic behind the strategy and told Michael as much.

"They need to have a clean break," Michael explained, while I paced around his office during my lunch break one day. "It hurts both of them if they break up right after a story like this leaks."

"But, why?" I asked, allowing myself to feel openly frustrated for the first time in days. "Pretending they're together is what caused all of these problems in the first place."

"No... Really?" Michael swung his legs up onto his desk and leaned back in his chair. With his hands behind his head, he added, "If I had a time machine, trust me, there's no way I'd tell Sophie to go through with it again. In fact, I'd kick myself for even suggesting it. Unfortunately for all of us, unless you know someone with a Flux Capacitor, that's not an option, is it?"

"Guess not," I admitted. I walked over to the bookcase in the corner of the room and began studying the collection of plaques on its shelves. Michael appeared to have an award for everything, whether it was to celebrate a career achievement at the agency or winning a charity golf tournament -- and I had to admit that I was impressed. The last award I'd received had been for having perfect attendance in the fifth grade.

"Like I said when we were at her house," Michael said, "there are only two ways to go at this point: ride this out and make the best of it, or go ahead and admit the two of them were never dating in the first place."

I turned to look at him. "Remind me why the latter would be so terrible?"

Instead of responding, Michael rolled up the sleeves of his shirt with precise folds. When he finished, he glanced at the clock hanging on his wall. "Well," he began, "it would mean admitting that we lied to a lot of people: fans, publications, clients... It would also raise questions about why we lied." He drummed his fingers on his desktop in time with whatever rhythm he heard in his head. "Sure, it was to drum up publicity for Kelly's movie at first but don't you think the tabloids would find a way to say that Sophie was only using Richard for jobs?"