With a curtsy, Sunny held the door of the Dirty Snowball open, and we all filed inside and tucked ourselves away into a quiet booth at the back.
Sunny pointed to me. “Beer?” And then to my moms. “Beer?”
Mama Pam and I nodded as Mom said, “A cab sav would be ideal.”
“Roger that,” Sunny said, and wandered off toward the bar.
Mom, whose heart was always buried a little deeper than Mama Pam’s, made the frowning-smiling face that she always made when she was so happy she could cry—thus the frowning.
“Bee,” she said. “Our sweet Bee. We’re just so proud of you.”
“We always have been,” Mama Pam added, reaching across the table just as I noticed Teddy taking a call at the bar before walking back outside into the heavy snowfall with his phone pressed to his ear.
“Your grandmother is so excited she can watch this one,” Mama Pam said.
And then, because I hadn’t said so out loud or realized this was even a decision I had to make for myself, I said, “I think I’m still doing ClosedDoors and probably adult films, too, just so y’all know. I... don’t want to disappoint you, but it’s possible this Hope Channel stuff might be a one-and-done type of thing, ya know? And—and I love my job. I really, really do.”
All softness shed from Mom’s expression. “You could never disappoint us, and don’t for a minute think we are more proud of you for this than we are of your adult work. We raised a self-assured, confident young woman who is compassionate and clever. Whatever makes you happy makes us happy.”
My heart swelled. Knowing I had them both at my side made my very uncertain future feel a little less terrifying.
“We couldn’t have asked for more,” Mama Pam added as Sunny returned with a pitcher of beer and a glass of wine.
“I managed to find one menu for us all to share,” she said as she pulled the water-damaged paper from where it was wedged under her arm.
My mothers took it from her and began to deliberate over the very limited list of bar food.
Just as Sunny began to pour the pitcher of beer, Teddy appeared and leaned over the booth as he did the throat-clearing thing that he did when he was uncomfortable, which was sometimes the case around my moms. Mainly because other performers’ parents weren’t usually as involved as mine. “Uh, Bee, could I borrow you for a moment?”
I nodded.
Sunny briefly stood so I could squeeze past her, and I followed Teddy as he led me through the bar.
We stopped at the exit, and from the coatrack he threw at me some random stranger’s coat, which was huge and black and puffy and much more like a real winter coat than anything I’d ever owned. I held it over me like a blanket.
We stepped outside into the bar’s narrow alcove, the wind gusting past us, and I said, “What’s the deal, Teddy?” I couldn’t imagine what he would need to talk about that couldn’t wait.
He looked out into the street and pressed his lips together for a moment, like maybe if he just tried, the words would stay inside of him and never truly exist. Something about the way his shoulders slumped and how he couldn’t quite find the right words reminded me of many times in my life when my parents had to tell me about problems there were no solutions to.
“It’s not good,” he finally said. “They found us out, kid.”
It took a minute for my mind to process what he’d just said and for my smile to melt away. “But... how? What does this mean for the movie?”
“Hell if I know,” he said, gritting his teeth against the cold. “It’s just now hitting Twitter.”
My hands flew up to cover my mouth, but I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking as I said, “Oh my God. Nolan.”
At that moment the door swung open, and Steph held the glowing screen of her phone up for Teddy to see, her whole body vibrating with fierce anger. “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t just sink this whole motherfucking ship. Tell me you didn’t just turn my client’s career into theTitanic.”
Teddy opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“It’s not his fault,” I blurted as some sort of need to shield Teddy after he’d spent years protecting me bubbled to the surface. “He didn’t know!”
On the screen of her phone was a very topless picture of me on Dominic Diamond’s website; he’d covered my nipples with Santa Claus hat clip art. The headline read “Nolan Shaw’s Christmas Costar Is on the Naughty List.” Teddy scrolled down to the next photo, of me and Nolan with Prancer, our favorite stripper.
The one who’d promised not to share her picture.
Dammit.
