I nodded, but as she walked away and I started toward thebar, my stomach felt hollow. Because even afterDuke the Hallswrapped, I’d still have to be in Clean, Unobjectionable Nolan mode. No way would Steph let me openly date a porn star, even if that porn star was successfully siloing off her new career.
Bee and I would still have to hide.
Steph reached her fingers into the jar as I sat, pulling out a cherry and holding it like a jeweler inspecting a diamond. Judging by the whiskey and vermouth bottles next to her, she’d been here for a while, although she was still wearing the jacket of her pantsuit, as if she was going to take an important bar meeting at any moment.
“More cherries?” I asked.
“It’s a deconstructed Manhattan. Shut up.”
I slumped back. “I hope you have good news,” I said. “Dominic Diamond is here, and I think he’s out for blood. Is there, like, some kind of amazing Steph D’Arezzo plan for this circumstance?”
“Plan?Plan?!For the goddamn pizza boy releasing a goddamn sex tape?” She waved the hand holding the cherry around. “There’s no plan for that! And now all anyone wants is to remember every scandal INK has ever been associated with. They’re dredging up stuff about Brooklyn and Isaac. They’re even running clips of the time Kallum dropped a Teen Choice Award surfboard on Winnie Baker’s foot. And—okay.” She sat forward, suddenly looking very sober and very kind. Which was unusual enough for Steph to send a bolt of alarm through me. “Speaking of dredging up, have you checked your tags tonight?”
“No,” I said warily. “I’ve been ice skating and fending off Dominic Diamond. Why?”
Steph unlocked her phone and then pushed it toward me. Her face was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Nolan. I really am.”
The headline on the screen was the sort of pseudosympathetic verbiage made to garner clicks and yet deflect criticism at the same time: “Nolan Shaw’s Tragic Secret.” And then the subhead: “Troubled former pop star struggling to support ailing mother and young sister.”
My face numbing, I scrolled quickly through the article. There was a picture of my house, small but neat as a pin, festooned in the Christmas decorations I’d put up before I left for Vermont. A tire swing hung from the big tree in the front yard, the top humped with snow. Maddie’s battered Honda Civic was parked on the street in front of the house.
My mom’s asymmetrical hipster wreath hung on the front door.
Invasivewas not the right word for this—or maybe not the only right word—because I didn’t feel this like it was an army at my gates or a navy sailing into my harbor. I felt this like it was weeds growing inside my chest, like many mouths gnawing on my bones. Eating at my life.
Deeper in the article was a picture of my mom and dad, and then all sorts of details about our family that weren’t public.Recentdetails. Like my mom’s diagnosis. Like that my mother had just been in the hospital.
Luckily, the actual reason for her hospital stay remained private, but unluckily, it opened the door to all kinds of speculations. And when I opened up a new browser on Steph’s phone and typed innolan shaw mother, I saw that the internet had spent the entire night spitballing about why my mom hadbeen in the hospital. Spitballing that was three percent totally absurd, and then ninety-seven percent really shitty about bipolar disorder and mental health in general.
I felt sharp stabs and dizzy tingles, like I was being pricked all over with needles, and my voice was shaking when I asked Steph, “How?”
Becausehowwas the only question I needed to ask. Certainly notwhy—I knew why. Because I wasn’t a person to the internet, and my mom wasn’t either. We were bags of blood for the gossip vampires, and we were content fodder for everyone else. Disposable, moldable. Easily flattened into a joke or hammered into a soapbox. Or worse.
“And I didn’t tell anyone on set, like you said not to,” I added, not mentioning that I had told Bee. I trusted Bee completely, so I knew this had to be something else.
And it was.
After fortifying herself with a cherry, Steph reached over and tapped something open on her phone, pulling up a social media account I hadn’t seen before. It belonged to Maddie, but it had a cutesy username.
“Your sister has been posting on this account,” Steph said. “Normal teenage stuff. Very diary-like, very detailed. About everything.”
“Shit,” I mumbled. “I didn’t even think . . .” When I’d first been cast as the duke, I’d asked Maddie to scrub her socials of anything with any identifying details, where she lived, what school she went to, things like that. But it looked like she’d made this account, thinking that a different username would make it private enough, and then went on posting about whatever she wanted. Including posts about our mom that ranged from loving to teenage-angst-infused.
“We’ll have her make it private,” Steph said. “But in the meantime, there’s a lot on there that you hadn’t planned on making public.”
My hands curled into fists on the table. I was so fuckingangrythat people had found this and thought it was okay to use for articles and posts and tweets, and I still felt like I was being stabbed all over with hot, burning needles. It was one thing to bring up all the shit I’d done. I deserved it. But my mom and sister were off-fucking-limits.
“Look,” Steph said, leaning forward. “I know I said we had to keep this locked down, but the situation has changed since then. Which means we need to reframe the narrative, and quickly.Weneed to be the ones to sell the version of the story that’s going to stick—not Dominic, not random Twitter citizens. Us. And if you could step out and talk about your mom and your sister and why—”
“I don’t want to use my family as a prop,” I said tightly. “I’m not interested in that.”
“Not a prop, Nolan,” Steph said. “A reason.”
“But a prop is what they’ll get reduced to.” I jerked my head toward the phone. “Mom is already being turned into a stereotype as we speak.”
“Then make sure that your version of the story can’t be reduced. Make sure you give it all the nuance, all the context you need.”
I snorted. “Yeah, like Dominic will write a nuanced, contextual post about this.”
