“You ruined her then and you’ve ruined her now.”
“Ruined herthen?”
“The moment you snapped that picture of Winnie at the Chateau Marmont. She’d just won the surfboard forTreasures in Heavenand you took a picture of her passed out like just another LA party girl. Like a little whore.”
My fingers twitched, begging to form a fist, and beside me Gretchen clenched her jaw.
“The media got their grubby little hands on that photo, and it tainted Winnie’s reputation. And now, you think you can just—what? Give her a little carnal pleasure and think that’s it? You made her look like a slut then and you’re turning her into one now.”
“Leave,” I growled. “Now. You better pray I never see you again.”
“Oh, brother Kallum, I’ll pray all right. I’ll pray for my dear Winnie and that she sees you for what you truly are—a washed-up celeb with nothing to offer. And even then, you were just the funny fat one who no one ever seems to remember. You’re forgettable, which is just as well, because soon you’ll be a memory Winnie would rather forget.”
“It’s time to go,” Gretchen said. “You’re disrupting my production.” She crossed her arms and sniffed. “And you’re a bigoted, woman-hating piece of shit.”
Between us all, a credit card skittered across the floor. “You’re all checked out,” said Stella from behind the check-in desk. “You were charged for your full reservation due to our cancellation policy. Oh, and the printer’s broken, so I can’t get you a statement either.”
Michael rolled his eyes and then bent over to pick up his matte black credit card. He turned to Gretchen. “To be clear: I plan on doing more than disrupting your production.”
He left with his ass clenched—or maybe his butt was just that muscular.
Stella chuffed. “Good riddance.”
I turned to Gretchen. “Coffee?”
“Please,” she said before sitting down at my table as I fetched her a cup of coffee and a random selection of breakfast foods.
“Thanks for defending my honor back there,” I told her once she’d had a little bit of caffeine.
“Well, I can’t have Santa walking around like he just got in a donnybrook.”
“Did you just say the worddonnybrooklike a 1950s gangster?” I asked.
She sighed. “It was my word of the day on some app Pearl had me download that teaches you a new word every day.”
“So a dictionary?”
Gretchen grinned, and she had one of those toothy grins that could have gotten a decade of modeling contracts after her years as a child actor if she’d wanted that kind of life. “It’s better than the meditation app she had me on last year. I got so enraged by the calming Englishman telling me to pretend I was in a meadow that I purposefully dropped my phone in our pool.”
“But phones are basically waterproof now,” I told her.
“Well, I know that now.” She looked up over her mug of coffee. “But Pearl didn’t and still doesn’t.”
“You remember that picture Michael was talking about?” I couldn’t ignore the way it was gnawing at my brain. I ruined Winnie? How could that be?
“How could I not? ‘Purity Princess Passes Out After a Long Night of Partying.’ ‘Abstinent? Not from the LA Party Scene.’ ‘Winnie Baker Lets It All Hang Out.’”
“God,” I said, wincing. “I can’t believe we survived that shit as teens.” I knew it was bad back then, but time had taken away some of the sting. And I couldn’t shake the fact that, in a way, this was my fault.
“Not all of us did, Kallum. Don’t you think it’s a little too perfect that Winnie and Michael got married just days after her eighteenth birthday? I can’t say for sure, but the rumor was Winnie’s team and parents basically strong-armed her into getting married to save her reputation. People were literally talking about whether or not she was still a virgin on morning talk shows.”
My stomach curdled and it was more than the hangover. “I took that picture. I thought... she was so cute... just snoring there in her car while everyone else was trashed inside. I thought it was so sweet. I posted it as a joke.”
Gretchen picked apart a muffin and gave me the most pitying look, like somehow in all of this, she felt bad forme. But I wasn’t the one whose parents basically married them off to maintain social capital.
“Winnie went on an apology tour, and then she and Michael announced their engagement onEllen. You remember that last part at least, right?”
“Painfully,” I said. “We were on tour in Germany, and Isaac and Nolan took me out to lick my wounds, but I just sat in the black SUV waiting for them in the alley, drinking tiny bottles of liquor.”
