Absolutely True Lies (7 page)

“Hey, Jamie,” came a voice from behind me.

I turned and saw a blond guy a few years older than I was, with dark-rimmed glasses and wearing a
Doctor Who
T-shirt under a blazer. He looked like he belonged at Comic Con, instead of on this beach with the world’s prettiest perma-teens. It made him instantly likable.

“This is the writer I was telling you about,” Jameson said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Does this writer have a name?” the blond guy asked, winking at me.

“Holly Gracin,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand. “And you are?”

“Vaughn Royce,” Jamie answered. Vaughn’s mouth was open to speak, but when Jamie responded for him, the producer’s face relaxed into a smile. “You kids good? Great. I’ll see you later.” The agent jogged off down the beach, his eyes already on his phone.

“Does he always speak for you?”

Vaughn shrugged, still grinning. “Jamie seems to think everything in the world is addressed to him. Why would you ever bother speaking to me?”

If I liked him before, I
really
liked him now. Axel, on the other hand, didn’t seem to feel the same way. “I’m bored,” he announced. “You’re boring me. I’m going to go flirt with the cute soundboard guy.” He promptly marched away from us.

“He’ll be disappointed,” Vaughn told me, shaking his head. “The cute soundboard guy has a very sweet—and very large—husband.”

“How long have you worked with Daisy?” I asked.

“I started on her first show with Nick about six years ago,” he said, sighing and shaking his head. “Six years and she still thinks my name is John.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said, laughing.

“No,” he replied. “Daisy always does remember my last name, though. . . .” I looked at him questioningly. “The Rolls-Royce is her favorite car.”

“I see.” I racked my brain, trying to figure out if I had any idea what a Rolls-Royce looked like. After a few seconds of thought, I came up blank. “Daisy seems to know my name all too well. . . . We’ve only met a few times and I’m already her new favorite person.”

Vaughn laughed, his mouth going a little bit sideways with the motion. “Of course you are. You’ve been hired to let her talk about herself all day. I’m surprised she hasn’t requested you be surgically attached to her hip.”

“It’s not a good look,” I replied. “I’d probably make her butt look big.”

I found myself relaxing into the conversation, marking the first time my shoulders weren’t tensed up to my ears since I had landed in Miami. “I have to know—does Daisy parade around set half-­naked?”

Vaughn looked at me, horrified. “What? Ew, no. We would never let that happen, it’s a family network.”

I was pleased that the thought of Daisy barely clothed earned an “ew, no.” This guy was all right. “I swear to God, I’ve had more contact with her breasts in the last few days than my own,” I exclaimed.

Vaughn’s head whipped back toward me. “Excuse me?”

“Hugging,” I added. “She keeps hugging me in weirdly tiny bikini tops. . . . That’s what I meant.”

“Right.” He chuckled.

Daisy walked onstage, fully made-up but still in her cutoffs. She approached the microphone and said sweetly, “I’m ready for sound check whenever y’all are.”

I nodded toward her clear state of undress. “See, I told you. Imagine those things bouncing toward you every couple of hours.”

Vaughn shook his head. “You’re the envy of seventy percent of men in America.” From the stage, we could hear Daisy quietly singing scales. “Listen, do you want to get out of here? As much as I’d love to hear ‘Date Night’ for the millionth time, my work here is pretty much done. We can grab a drink and have an actual conversation.”

“Sure.” I nodded, suddenly desperate to get away from this place. “Sounds like a plan.”

CHAPTER 7

Sometimes you look at gossip sites and think,
When did those two start dating?
It seems like all of our relationships, romantic or friendship, move at the speed of light. And you’d be right. We don’t work with people for a few hours a day and go home to our friends and family. Working on a film set
is
a family, and you see those people a whole lot more than the ones you’re related to.

We’re up before the sun to get ready for work, and we’re usually together long after the sun sets. A typical day can run fourteen or fifteen hours and you can have all three meals with your cast and crew. So when it seems like two people are suddenly thick as thieves, it’s because they’ve spent so much time together. Think about it this way—if you go out on five dates with a guy, you’ve spent far less time with him than I would with a guy I work with, just over the course of one week. It’s called compressed time.

V
aughn drove to the Titanic Brewery, a cute little restaurant and bar just a few minutes from the beach. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was bad luck to name an establishment—so close to a major port—after the
Titanic
. On the way, we chatted about Daisy’s career and her strange habits and stranger family. I learned that despite being the star of the show, Daisy couldn’t make any set call time before 11:00
A.M.
and how if she didn’t have the very last line in each
episode, she ad-libbed one. Badly. I found out more in ten minutes than during the last twenty hours.

“Are you hungry?” Vaughn asked as we were seated in a back corner.

“I had a burger about two hours ago,” I told him. “Though I wish I was hungry. . . . I have a feeling I won’t get many judgment-free meals on this trip.”

Vaughn snorted. “Let me guess . . . the queen of tomatoes and onions doesn’t approve of solid foods?”

“It’s apparently very 2004 of me to eat beef.”

He flagged down the waitress, smiling a little to himself. “Come on, it’s totally hot when girls eat.”

“You should become a life coach and preach this to all of the emaciated girl-children in Hollywood,” I told him.

“Does life coaching come with dental? I’m told I grind my teeth. It’s a very expensive problem.”

Our cute, blond waitress stepped up to the table, offering a smile to both of us. “Hi, my name is Danielle, and I’ll be your server today.” After looking at me, she did a double take, her eyes going wide.

“Is everything okay?” Vaughn asked.

Danielle nodded, never taking her eyes off me. “Yeah,” she replied, seeming a little starstruck. “Ummm . . . can I get you something to drink?”

“I know it’s still a little early,” I said sheepishly, “but I would love a strawberry margarita.”

“A Fat Tire, please,” Vaughn told the waitress, who still hadn’t looked at him.

In fact, Danielle didn’t even scribble anything on her notepad. She just continued to stare at me, now looking more than a little disgusted. I almost wanted to ask her if a strawberry margarita killed her mother.

“Is something wrong?” I said finally.

“Are you
sure
you want a margarita?” she asked.

Vaughn and I exchanged looks of confusion. “I’m well over twenty-­one, I assure you,” I replied, in case that was the problem.

This earned me an even dirtier look. “Look, if you want to drink, I can’t stop you,” she said. “But I don’t have to be happy about it.”

Danielle turned on her heels and marched back to the bar, leaving me and Vaughn bewildered. “Did I miss something?” I asked, laughing.

“Maybe she’s Mormon and doesn’t drink?” he suggested.

I shook my head. “Then she shouldn’t work in a bar. Plus . . . she didn’t seem to care about your beer.”

“Touché,” Vaughn replied, shrugging. “Does it really matter? The only consequence of Danielle’s words is her ever-shrinking tip.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I agreed. But I was still bothered by the waitress’s behavior; I know I shouldn’t care what someone else thinks of me, but I always do. I’m perpetually that weird, desperate little girl who’s willing to pull up her dress for attention.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” Vaughn told me.

“Have you met Daisy’s father?” I asked. I hadn’t really thought about the peculiarity of his absence until just now. Not that I’d spent a lot of time with Daisy until Miami, but part of me was starting to think her father didn’t really exist. Even though Faith hadn’t traveled with them to Florida, she was still referenced quite a bit. No one talked about Daisy’s father at all.

Vaughn smirked and made a face I couldn’t read. “Yes, I’ve met Deacon.” He nodded slowly, still with that same expression plastered on his face. “Many,
many
times.”

“His name is Deacon? Deacon Dixson?” At this, Vaughn nodded. “So they’re Deacon and Faith. . . . That’s a little too perfect for my taste.”

“Nothing about them is perfect,” he said.

Before he could say any more, a man walked over with our drinks. Surprised, I looked around for Danielle, who was watching us nervously from behind the bar. When she caught my gaze, she quickly looked away.

The man set Vaughn’s beer in front of him but continued to hold my margarita. “You ordered the margarita, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, now even more confused.

“And you
are
aware of the dangers of alcohol?”

Again, I looked to Vaughn, wondering what this was about. I was starting to feel like we’d stumbled into some weird religious sect. Why run a bar if you have so much trouble serving alcohol? “Acutely,” I answered, irritated. “As are most people.”

“All right, then,” the man said, setting down my drink. “I hope you enjoy it.” From his tone of voice, I think he really hoped I’d choke on a chunk of ice and die.

As soon as he left the table, I stared at Vaughn in astonishment. “What the hell was that all about?”

•  •  •

“
Y
ou know, I wouldn’t peg you as one of L.A.’s infamous ghostwriters,” Vaughn told me two hours later as we sat on the beach. We had long since stopped talking about Daisy and her entourage.

“I’m not,” I freely admitted. The prevailing wisdom in Hollywood is to “fake it till you make it,” meaning that I should have gone to the ends of the Earth to pretend I was some unknown literary hotshot, even if that meant lying outright. But I am a terrible liar under any circumstances. “I’m an unemployed movie critic for a now-defunct magazine no one’s ever heard of.”

Vaughn stared at me for a moment. “Hmm,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t peg you as one of those, either.”

“Is that a fact?” I laughed. “Do you see me as a secretary or a biochemical engineer?”

“A novelist, actually. I can totally see you on some author panel, dazzling your sycophantic fans with your dry wit and pretty hazel eyes.”

No one ever notices that I have hazel eyes; they’re so dark everyone just thinks they’re brown. You have to look at them really closely to see that they’re green around the edges. More than once, I’d gotten pissed at some long-term boyfriend who thought it was cute to croon “Brown Eyed Girl” to me. I’d given up thinking that guys ever noticed things like that.

“That’s the dream. Now I just have to write a novel. Except that when I have the money, I don’t have the time, and when I have the time, I’m too worried about money to be creative.”

“At least you’re writing.” Vaughn shrugged and turned to stare at the preparations down the beach. The number of people had tripled since we’d left for our drink. “Not all of us get to do the job we set out to.”

“You mean, as opposed to producing a show for preteens and watching as the IQ-challenged star makes millions for warbling songs about her boyfriend’s convertible?”

Vaughn still didn’t turn back to look at me, but he smiled ruefully at my question, the grin not making it all the way up to his eyes.

“If it’s not producing, what is it you want to do?”

I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Vaughn reddened slightly. He finally glanced back toward me, his expression that of a little boy who’d just been caught doing something embarrassing. “Promise you won’t make fun of me.”

Since I’m not that in control of my emotions, it would be a promise I couldn’t possibly keep. “I won’t laugh as long as you don’t tell me you want to be a trapeze artist or rodeo clown.”

That earned a real grin. “What, you don’t think I could pull off the floppy shoes?”

“A bright red nose wouldn’t go with your complexion.”

I expected him to laugh, but instead, he inhaled deeply. “I went to college to be a director,” Vaughn blurted out. He made it sound like some deep dark secret.

I stared at him for a brief second, trying to figure out what was so embarrassing about that. “Unless you want to direct snuff films, I can’t imagine why you would hide that.”

“Because everyone wants to be a director. In L.A., that’s the next worse thing to saying you want to be an actor.”

We both stayed silent for a few beats, watching the warm bluish green waves wash up onto the shore. It occurred to me that I never go to the beach in Los Angeles, maybe because I’m terrified of being mugged at knifepoint. “I’m willing to bet thousands of people would kill for your job.”

“I’m sure I could find tons who want your job, too.”

I shrugged, acknowledging he had a point. “I’m sure there
are
thousands of tweens who would die for my access to Daisy Mae Dixson. And men of all ages, if she continues to wear her underwear to work.”

A gust of wind blew my hair directly into my mouth, and before I could reach up and brush it away, I felt Vaughn’s hand gently pull the strands from my lips. The move made me both uncomfortable and a little flushed. Good God, I needed a date—of the nonfeline variety. Worried my red face betrayed my thoughts, I stood up as soon as his hands were clear from my face.

“Listen,” I said, smiling politely. “I really should go. I need to start transcribing and maybe even write a few pages.”

Vaughn looked openly disappointed. “Sure, you’re right. I should probably get back to the stage, anyway. I don’t really have any work to do, but I should at least pretend.”

I brushed the sand from my clothes, trying to act as though I wasn’t in a hurry to escape. I was just about to start walking back
toward the street when I remembered I had come here with Daisy’s entourage and my rental car was back at the Fontainebleau. Damn. “Would it be too much for me to ask for a ride back to the hotel? I think I need a night off from the Dixson clan.”

“No problem,” Vaughn said, standing up and taking his keys from his pocket. “Are you going to be around tomorrow? We don’t fly back until Sunday.”

“Maybe,” I told him. “I don’t really know what the plan is for the rest of this trip.”

“I’ll take maybe,” he said, smiling.

As we headed back toward his car, a question popped into my head. “If you don’t have anything to do, why are you here?” I asked, partly out of curiosity and partly as a writer trying to grasp the inner workings of this odd little circle.

“Nick is doing the awards show in conjunction with several of our sister stations and crossover shows,” he answered, as though that explained anything at all. “I’m not here officially working so much as acting as a show rep. Gotta protect your brand.”

Maybe because I’m just one person or maybe because I live in a single tiny, perpetually messy room, I didn’t know the first thing about branding. I also didn’t know what a crossover show was. “Does that mean you’re here for free?”

Vaughn laughed, actually throwing his head back a little. “Oh, God, no. I wouldn’t show up unless I was being paid. Believe me, I’d much rather spend the weekend in my apartment, playing video games, than hugging a thousand people I can’t stand. Most of whose names I don’t remember, anyway.”

“So . . . you don’t have anything to do, but the show is still paying you to . . . just be here and talk to people?”

“Yes.” He nodded. We reached the car at that moment and Vaughn turned to look at me, noticing the strange look I was giving him. He chuckled. “I guess it sounds pretty bad.”

“You are never allowed to complain about your job again.”

•  •  •

A
s I knew very little about filming and even less about awards shows, I had no clue how long the Kick-Ass Somethings would take. My hope was that the Dixson gang would be tied up all night and I could enjoy a blessedly quiet evening. I know I hadn’t been in Miami long, but it already felt like an eternity.

I did sit down with my digital recorder and my laptop, but I didn’t get much work done. After thirty minutes of listening to Daisy ramble on about absolutely nothing worth putting onto paper, I knew I was correct about being unqualified for this job. Even if I could get her to open up to me, I didn’t know the right questions to ask. The instant they asked to read pages, I was dead.

As I was puzzling over my uncertain future with Daisy, my room phone rang. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after ten. Crap. Was there another opening tonight? A photo shoot? A séance? I considered pretending I wasn’t there and letting it ring, but this was my job, not a vacation.

“Hello?” I asked, trying not to sound too forlorn.

“Have you had dinner yet?” The voice was Vaughn’s. “Because I haven’t.”

I smiled. “I had a cupcake from the bakery downstairs at about five o’clock. Does that count?”

“It does not.”

I looked down at my current clothing, a pair of
Sailor Moon
pajamas I’ve had since college. Definitely not appropriate for dinner. “I need to change first.”

There was a polite but firm knock on my room door. “No, you don’t. I don’t care what you have on.”

“Come on, Vaughn—”

The knock came again. “Uh-uh. You’re not making me wait. These bags are very heavy.”

I heaved myself off the bed and grabbed the first sweater I saw. I couldn’t do much about the pants, but at least I could cover my tank
top. I opened the door and found Vaughn in the hallway, holding two enormous plastic bags. “Are several dozen more people joining us for dinner?” I asked him.