Or maybefutileis a better word.
She takes the seat across from me again, squinting at me like she doesn’t trust the question. “I’m Emma.”
“Lovely to meet you, Emma. I’m Jonas.”
“Are you, though? Or are you someone who looks like him and knows Razzle Dazzle movies by heart so that you can sneak into an unsuspecting woman’s villa to get the inside scoop onherdisastrous life like a complete and total bastard?”
Would you look at that?
I have a smile in me after all. “I swear on my favorite Razzle Dazzle film, I’m Jonas Rutherford.”
“If you were really Jonas Rutherford, wouldn’t you have security?”
“Ditched them.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want tobeJonas Rutherford right now.”
She’s full-on scowling now. “Are you sure you’re not usinghissituation to try to weasel your way into my life right now?”
“I—sorry?”
“You don’t know whoIam, do you?”
Ah, fuck.
My mother always said this would happen, and now, it won’t be toast that kills me.
Jonas Rutherford, secret two-faced prick, dies at the hand of a stalker after refusing to listen to his mother’s advice to lay low at his brother’s favorite hideout while waiting for the media shitstorm to blow over.“I always warned him not to trust strangers whose porches he passed out on while he wasdrunk, but the child had a mind of his own,” Mrs. Giovanna Rutherford is quoted as saying.And now, we have questions about his drinking habits in addition to his feelings on the place of his wife in a marriage.
“Have we met?” I ask. Nearest exit is probably the back door, but I don’t know how fast I can run in my current condition.
Probably fast enough—instincts would take over, wouldn’t they?—but unlike that time I got trapped with my brother in a port-a-john when I unwisely snuck off a set and got spotted by fans despite my disguise, my security team isn’t close by.
“Never mind,” she says quickly. Her freckled white cheeks take on a pink hue, and she ducks her head into her knees. “Just never mind.”
I reach for the ginger ale, then pause.
Idon’tremember how I got here last night, but I—oh.
Oh.
This house is familiar.
The black curtains patterned with embroidered pineapples. The island sandscape painting with the weird shell in the corner that looks out of place. The layout of the kitchen and living room and the door. The sleek lines of the ivory furniture and the straw rugs on the floor.
Fiji.
The Morinda.
I’ve stayed in this house.
I shot a movie in this house.
With Peyton.
The headlines are getting better and better by the moment.
