I appreciated his outrage on my behalf. “The story went viral, and my photo was taken down because of Instagram’s community guidelines, but I liked the attention. It made me feel powerful. I went to college for a semester but started my ClosedDoors account while I was there, and then I dropped out without telling my moms and moved to California. It was pretty much zero to sixty in terms of people looking at me as a sex symbol. I went from cutesy fat girl to a fantasy in a matter of months. I met Teddy and that was pretty much it. He was the only porn producer out there who didn’t require an exclusive contract or expect me to split some of my ClosedDoors profits.”
“Teddy’s a little . . . odd, but I’m glad you found him. A lot of people in the entertainment industry are vultures. I shouldbe shocked that anyone would expect a cut of your ClosedDoors paychecks, but I’m not. I think I told you that our contract with our manager was laughably bad? He basically let us sign our identities away to the label.”
“You did tell me. God, that’s so awful,” I said quietly, feeling a little bad for feeding the label and manager monsters with my INK obsession.
“Yeah, when things started falling apart, our manager left town and took whatever money he still owed us with him. Isaac was fine, he was always going to be fine. And Kallum had saved enough money to start Slice, Slice, Baby. But I’d been hemorrhaging cash faster than a gushing artery onGrey’s Anatomy.”
“Which is why you need this movie to pan out.”
He nodded.
“I have to know,” I said. “McSteamy or McDreamy?”
He grinned and bit down on his lower lip. “Both.”
And that thought, of him with two impossibly hot, salt-and-peppery ER doctors in a sexy Nolan sandwich, gave me a thrilling rush straight to the groin. “I have to ask you a very serious question.”
He turned to me with a nod, his rigid shoulders bracing for the worst.
“As a hard-core INK fan, I could die happy at this very moment if you would finally answer the question that has burned in my brain since ninth grade. Did you or did you not hook up with either Kallum or Isaac?”
He threw his head back in a laugh. “I’m afraid the answer might disappoint you.”
My shoulders drooped, and my lower lip pouted.
He leaned over, his shoulder knocking against mine. “We did fool around once or twice.”
A shrieking giggle so loud that some of the skaters turned to look at us tore from my chest. “I think my brain is exploding. I feel like I’m in heaven and asking God or whoever what happened to the dinosaurs.”
He gave our onlookers a dashing but firm smile that saidNothing to see here. “Well, at the risk of you combusting, I’ll admit that Isaac and I had a very enjoyable heavy petting sesh on the road one time, but the rumors about wild threesomes on the tour bus are sadly untrue. That’s mostly Kallum’s fault. He’s basically a one on the Kinsey scale. God bless his mostly straight soul.”
I threw my body back against the bench, my chest heaving like I’d just completed the most astounding orgasm. “I don’t know what to do with this information, and my legs feel like Jell-O.”
He laughed as his gaze dragged up my neck and to my lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
“You were one of my bi icons,” I admitted. “I loved that it was never a question for you. Though, I gotta be honest, it didn’t really prepare me for how much porn would be interested in only the straight-male fantasy version of my sexuality. So much of it has felt like a man using two women as his blow-up dolls.”
He sighed heavily. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. Porn is a business where women should hold all the power.”
I booped him on the nose. “Correct. Teddy is good, though. He knows that for everyone who wants the fantasy of porn, there’s someone out there who wants the reality of intimacy.The stuff he produces really runs the gamut, but even with him being better than most, you sometimes still get a director who treats you like a poseable Barbie or someone who won’t work with a plus-size performer.”
His nostrils flared. “That’s fucking nonsense. Is it bad that I want to go all macho asshole right now and tell you that I’ll beat the shit out of all them?”
“It’s kinda hot,” I confessed. “But only in theory. Anyway, it was just so amazing to see someone like you—in the spotlight—owning your bisexuality.”
“I’ve had it easier than a lot of people in the business. Unlike, say, Isaac—who was the heartthrob and was supposed to be every girl’s potential fairy tale—being bi fit my INK narrative. I was the party boy. The epitome of the slutty bisexual. And sure, I was bi and I was slutty, but I was more than that too, even if I didn’t always believe it myself at the time. But so goes the tale of the bisexual disaster.”
Even though we sat there on display for the whole ice-skating rink to see, I touched my hand to his thigh and said, “If two bisexual disasters find each other, does that negate the whole disaster part? Like how two negatives equal a positive?”
“It’s so sexy when you talk math to me,” he rasped.
“I think I might have to start making a list of all the things I want to do to you after this movie is done,” I told him.
“Well, to tide you over, you might as well watch Kallum’s sex tape. The man is an artist.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about it,” I said, and then remembering the anxious mess Nolan was this morning, I added, “Are you doing okay?”
He sighed. “Yeah, Steph is trying to put out little media fires everywhere. Suddenly every magazine, website, and celebrity gossip show wants to relive the downfall of INK. Kallum is flipping out. His mom, whose biggest dream is for her son to meet a nice Jewish girl, is convinced the only path forward is to move and abandon the family name.”
