Almost Easy

2005, not my best year

Zoey’s POV

I rarely if ever thought about Brian. I mean, I did nonstop for a while. I remember calling Zacky almost daily just to see if he’d said anything about me, but it was business as usual.  It was silly to hold on to the childhood crush. I went on with my life. Flash forward 4 more years. I sat at my desk staring at my wedding band and engagement ring. It was beautiful.. a 2 full carat, princess cut, slightly occluded beauty and sadly more real than my marriage had ever been.

After a few years of working at Warner Bros, I managed to meet and fall in love with a pop star. Lee Eriksen was the hottest thing on the Top 40 charts. He was one of my first big production credits and I knew when I met him, he’d be big. He was handsome and charming and genuinely could sing.

When he asked me for coffee after one long session, I was flattered. When he asked me for dinner two nights later, I was happy. And when he asked me to marry him 8 months later, I was over the moon.

It was bliss for a while. I was moving up the Warner Brothers chain, getting a chance to work with bigger artists. He was moving up the Billboard charts and touring. It was amazing. Until I figured out, he was cheating on me. What’s the old phrase, a girl in every city.  It was all over the tabloids, which explained why I was hiding in my office with a few of my artists coming for post-production today.

“You can’t hide in here forever” Hilary Preston one of Warner’s publicists walked into my office dropping herself into the chair in front of my desk.

“I’m not hiding, I’m just not…”

“Anxious to have your picture taken by a million paparazzi who want to know how you feel about Lee’s affair with former Disney teen queen Jade Gentry?” she replied.

“Bingo,” I replied pointing my finger at her like a gun.

“Well then it sucks to be you today,” she announced frowning. “I got a call from Lee’s agent. He wants to meet at the Ivy today in about 30 minutes to sign the divorce papers.”

“Lee’s agent called you?” I asked incredulously.

“I guess Lee told him I was a friend and it would be easier for me to convince you to show,” she said flatly.

“If I step out of that door they’ll swarm me,” I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.

“Better to show a united front and make one big appearance. Maybe we sneak you out and in the restaurant,” she offered.

I considered it as I took my wedding band off and spun it and slammed it down on the top of the desk. “Nah, I can’t hide forever. Let’s get this over with.”

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When I had ducked into the perfume shop on Beverly Boulevard, only three of them had been stalking me, but now there were fifteen—maybe more—a howling, feral pack loose in L.A., cameras ready to shoot my every move. Their flashes were literally blinding. You can handle this, I whispered to myself as I began to walk past them. They began to shout their rude questions—too many questions, too fast, too loud, words running together until nothing made sense. One of them shoved something in my hands— a tabloid—and screamed into my ear. “This just hit the stands, Zoey. What do you have say?”

I automatically glanced down, and there on the front page of Flash was picture of my husband and his new girlfriend.. Lee and Jade were running off to the Caribbean for a secret wedding. Well that would explain the need for the fastest divorce in history.  I was caught by surprise and the blood rushed from my face. The strobes fired, the cameras snapped, and the back of my hand flew to my mouth. After so many months of holding it together, I lost it and my eyes flooded with tears. The cameras caught everything—the hand at my mouth, the tears in my eyes. I’d finally given the jackals what they’d spent the last month trying to capture— photographs of  Zoey Baker Eriksen crying. I dropped the tabloid and turned to flee, but they’d trapped me. I tried to back up, but they were everywhere with this blinding flashes and heartless shouts. I moved as fast as my feet would carry me, my head high and my heart in stomach.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brian’s POV

 I watched the nasty scene unfold from the Michael Kors across the street. I had just emerged from shopping for a birthday gift for Michelle when the commotion broke out. I hadn’t seen Zoey since her wedding. She was beautiful and smiling. But now, as I watched the paparazzi attack, she looked scared and upset and I felt the need to wander over and start punching those fucking jackals that were in her face.  Some of the paps held their cameras over their heads; others shoved their lenses in her face. Damn her, she’d married that dumbass teeny bopper heartthrob and when he’d fucked up by screwing around with a Disney teen princess, Zoey became one of the hottest selling tabloid pics.

The paparazzi hadn’t spotted me. A7X was still making a name for itself and I wasn’t on the list of hot selling photographs…yet.

 Things suddenly took an uglier turn when two of the paps got into a shoving match, and one of them bumped her hard. She lost her balance and started to fall, and as she fell her head came up, and that’s when she spotted me. Through the madness, the wild jockeying and crazy shoving, through the clamor and chaos, she somehow spotted me standing there barely thirty feet away. Her face registered a jolt of shock, but I couldn’t tell if it was from falling or from seeing me.  Before I could call her name or make it across the street, she stood up and moved into the restaurant as the manager and Valet blocked off the paps from entering. Before I knew what I was doing, my feet had carried me across the street to the restaurant door.  I opened the door and walked into her mess.