Cheap & Classy (Hide Your Crazy) (8 page)

Chapter 14

Your boobs need some padding.

It’s amazing the magic behind music videos. One would swear they are shot on location, getting all the grime and detail from being in a real alley, when in reality we were still at the soundstage, surrounded by fifty-thousand people waiting for me to prance around in my undies. The alley set looked seriously real to the point where I didn’t want to be naked and touching anything. Actually, I didn’t want to be naked in the first place. I wasn’t self-conscious in the sense where I was questioning my body; it was just the fact I didn’t believe everyone needed to be seeing me in my unmentionables.

“Just think of it as a bikini,” Danielle
advised, reaching out to take my robe.

“I doubt it. My swimming attire normally covers up
more than these pieces of lace.” I snorted, slowly starting to untie the belt wrapped around my middle.
Well, here it is for the whole kitten caboodle, the money shot, the homerun on full bases, I’m getting naked
. Sliding the robe off my shoulders, I handed it over to Danielle, who stood there with a stupid cat ate the canary type grin that made me want to smack the shit out of her.

“Give her back the robe
, Danielle,” Reid’s gruff voice came from behind me suddenly.

Turning around quickly, I caught a glimpse at Reid’s pissed off state. Normally, this would be a major turn on. Reid all huffed and puffed, brow creased, teeth gritted, shoulder muscles bulging.
Basically, a walking invitation for women to mess their panties. But standing there almost naked in front of the man I was still in love with, basically naked, having him tell me to cover back up, still basically naked, made me want to vomit.

“The robe
, Danielle,” Reid said again, this time reaching around me to grab it from Danielle. Confusion was overtaking my brain, leaving me wondering what in the hell was going on. Reid wrapped the silk around my shoulders and pushed my arms through the holes. Quickly, he grabbed the ties around my waist and yanked them together, tightly tying a knot in front of me. When satisfied that I was completely covered, Reid’s tense face softened a little. Of all the things to get this man riled up, it took me standing there in my unmentionables to get a reaction from him.

“What are you doing
, Reid?” Danielle snapped, firmly placing her hands on either side of her hips.

“She is not going out there looking like that.”

“It’s a costume, Reid.” She rolled her eyes, letting out a small huff in annoyance.

“Well
, find another costume,” Reid said frankly. I could tell this man was still angry, as the muscles in his jaw started to tense once again.

“Problem
, guys?” James spoke suddenly, breaking the edgy stare down battle between my two friends.

“Reid apparently has an issue with Molly’s outfit for the all
ey scene.”

“She is not going to be prancing around here in her damn underwear!” Reid’s glare shifted from Danielle to James, who looked entirely confused on what was happening.

“You didn’t have a problem an hour ago when her crotch was nearly hanging out of that black number, did you? Get off your damn stick pony and let’s move on.” Danielle laughed wickedly. 

“She’s not doing it,” Reid again stated firmly, this time crossing his heavily tattooed arms across his ches
t.

“Well, what does Miss Molly have to say about all of this?” James said abruptly, turning to look directly at me.

“Huh?” I replied, realizing I had been drooling at the sight of Reid’s sculpted arms and chest. I really had no clue as to what road the conversation had traveled, other than them still bitching about my panties.

James let out a soft chuckle while shaking his head at me. He totally caugh
t me ogling the boss, and I really should be ashamed at my actions. But, fuck it. I’ve done worse. “Do you have a problem with wardrobe?”

“Well, I’m not too keen on parading around in my undies for the whole world. However, I realize this is my job and I’m okay with getting it done.”

“Then I’m not doing it,” Reid sneered, tossing his hands up in the air and quickly storming for the door.

“Wait
,” I yelled out, carefully stepping over cables and cords to quickly catch up with the pissed off elephant in the room. Reid didn’t care that I was following him, slamming his hands into the exit bar, and tossing the door open, letting the light spill into the darkened set.

“Reid
, please slow down, I don’t have any shoes on yet,” I exclaimed, tumbling into the Californian sunshine. A slight breeze took the bottom of my short robe as I scrambled to pull the hem down. “Balls,” I grumbled, as I hurried behind the man whose stride was three times the length of mine.

“I can’t believe you are okay with this,” Reid said suddenly, immediately stopping in his tracks.

“You think I want to be out in public in this, Reid? Seriously? I had about four shots before coming out of the dressing room with the damn robe on to just even be comfortable with the thought of following through.”

“Then why didn’t you say something
, damn it? How in the hell are you still so concerned with everyone else and not what is best for you, Molly Anne?”

“This had
nothing to do what was best for me, Reid. It’s a job; nothing more, nothing less.” Reid’s hand shot up into his hair as he closed his eyes. He looked absolutely stunning as he stood there and contemplated my words.

“
Molly, I don’t want the whole world to see you in that. I refuse to have the woman I love be degraded in such a sense that men will be fucking jerking off at the sight of you!”

“R
eid, that’s not going to happen.” I laughed softly.  I was not sexy enough for men to use me as their visual. I was just hot enough to make it enjoyable for the video, and that was pushing it.

“
It’s about self-respect, Molly Anne.”

“Reid, I have plenty of self-respect. Rocking this outfit isn’t going to make me a whore, or dissolve my values the moment I drop the robe.” Taking a step closer, I boldly grab
bed the belt loops on his pants and pulled his body closer to me. Reid instantly wrapped his arms around my back, forcing me to lay my head against his chest. “Reid, it’s really okay.”

“No
, Molly Anne, it’s not. I don’t want you out there in that.”

“Alright.
That is all you needed to say. I’ll talk with James and Danielle about wearing something else,” I said softly. Reid loosened his grip around my back, and gently grabbed my chin, tilting it up to delicately meet his lips. The kiss was light and thoughtful, passionate and caring, and short but ever so sweet. Even with the time spent apart, there was never any doubt that this man was it for me. He would always be my other half, no matter what life threw at me.

“I think we are going to need to pad the top a little,” Danielle mumbled while fiddling with the top of the red dress she stuffed me into. Yes, it was a welcomed change from the lacy number that had Reid fuming ear
lier, but it still screamed a little slutty. With a sheer back and a straight across neckline, I felt like I needed some more boobage to give the dress a little more oomph.

“Not to be mean, but you really should just get your boobs done. I mean
, with this tiny little body, you should have some amazing knockers to rock alongside it.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Just stuff some cutlets down the front and get this shit over with,” I argued as she continued to pull on the front of the dress.
I refused to fall into the Hollywood trap of needing a better body. I loved the cards I was dealt. Sure, my tits were small, and I could use a little more in the ass department, but at least my boobs wouldn’t be hanging around my midsection in twenty years, and hopefully there would always be some definition between my ass and thighs. Cringing, I got a visual of the dreaded ‘thut’.

“What are you cringing over?” Danielle questioned, stopping to give me a weird look.

“Thuts.”

“
Thuts?”

“Yeah, you know………
thut. When you can’t see the stop between your thigh and butt?” Danielle’s laughter took me by surprise as my mind had already wandered back to the dreaded shape of doom.

“You are absolutely crazy, you know that?” Danielle managed to spurt out between giggling fits.

“You laugh now, but it could happen. Just think of a world full of thuts. Not a pretty picture,” I threatened while adjusting the implant she had placed into the dress.

“I’m pretty sure you have no reason to worry about that. Now…………
where did I place those booties?” Danielle rambled, digging through the twenty pairs of shoes underneath a clothing rack.

“It’s going to be an epidemic I tell you.” Catching a glimpse in the full length mirror propped up on the far wall; I slightly turn
ed to check out my ass, silently saying a quick prayer that my ass still looked decent in the dress.

“Alright
, lunatic, put these on and get out there. I swear to god if that man has an issue with this dress, his life is over,” she threatened, holding out a pair of black studded ankle booties. Flashing a smile, I grabbed the shoes and carefully slid my feet into them. Luckily the heels were low, thus allowing me not to look like a newborn calf wandering around the place.

“I’m sure the dress will be fine,” I teased, reaching over and smacking Danielle’s ass before scurrying to the door.

“I will kill him,” she yelled as I slid out the door. Turning around, I blew a quick kiss at the irritated Danielle and began to carefully skip over to the set. I couldn’t tell if I was happier that I didn’t have to rock the undies or the fact that Reid and I seemed to be on the same page. Either way, the rest of this shoot was going to be a breeze.

“Why is it that Reid got to have all the fun with Molly in this video?” Brody whined from behind a monitor.

“Because no one wants to touch you with a ten foot pole,” I shouted back, rolling my eyes with a snicker.

“Fuck that. My ten foot pole is amazing.”

“You walked right into that one,” Reid whispered into my ear, sending laughter through my body. Nodding my head, I give Reid’s hand a little squeeze, flashing him a naughty smile. “I can’t wait to get you home tonight.”

Pulling back, a frown appeared on my face. “I have to catch a plane back to the boys tonight.” Of course when things
were finally starting to straighten out, I had to go running back to PD.

“You can’t stay one night?” Reid pleaded, his eyes begging for me to say yes.

“Reid, I have a job to do.” Dropping my hand, Reid pushed himself off the wall and stepped around me. “Perfect,” I grumbled.

Moody Reid had returned and made his disgust known. Lord how I
didn’t miss that damn two sided personality. Just when I once again thought I had that man figured out, he flipped a switch and I was left standing there wondering what would be my next move. Reid glanced over his shoulder as he stepped out the bright lights.
Fuck you
, I thought silently. I refused to run after that man for a second time today.

Chapter 15

“Would a flesh eating disease make me skinny?”

My phone rang as we waited on the tarmac to taxi. Grabbing it from my bag, I sighed when I recognized the number. Accepting the call, I tossed Danielle the look while rolling my eyes.

“I’m sorry I’m such an ass,” Reid’s voice quickly gushed.

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Molly Anne, I’m serious. I’m sorry t
hat I don’t make it easy on you. I really need to take your life into consideration.”

“Reid, you have to remember I have been surviving without you these last couple months. Sure, I missed you, and yeah it hurt, but I have been taking care of myself.”

“I know and I’m sorry.” I could hear the tenderness in Reid’s voice through the phone line. Leaving tonight killed me, not knowing where we stood. We obviously have chemistry and still care deeply for each other, but neither of us was willing to bend after that last little tiff. How could we ever make it work on two separate paths; Reid recording a new record and going out to promote it, and myself on tour with PD?

“So where do we go from here?” I asked casually, trying hard not to get my hopes up. I always had that little black rain cloud that followed me around constantly. Just when things started to go my way that dark cloud dumped buckets of shit upon me. This was the perfect instance for the rain cloud to open up and start pouring its bad luck all over me.

“We make it work. We have another two, three weeks in the studio until it goes for mixing, and then we have the next four weeks off as it gets finished and PR decides the best path to take with the release. How much longer do you have on tour?”

“A couple weeks.
After that I think we are headed back to Seattle and the guys are heading into the studio to rework some of the tracks,” I replied gloomily. Too late on getting my hopes up, cause it was already crashing down around me.

Reid let out a sigh on his end of the line, which in
turn caused me to sink lower in my seat. Cue the heartbreak in three………..two………..one.

“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to turn off your device,” a flight attendant told me as she was passing through the cabin.

“Reid, I’ve got to go.”

“Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay, bye,” my voice said quietly while fighting the tears pooling underneath my lashes.

“Molly Anne?”

“Yes?”

“We are going to work this out. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I replied, quickly ending the call and wiping the tears from falling down my cheeks. 

With all the hear
tache and pain that this man had brought in our relationship, I could honestly say it had all been worth it one-hundred percent. I would cry a million tears over and over again to hear the simple words of ‘I love you’ coming from his lips.

“So obviously you are still tickling his pickle,” Danielle blurted out after taking a sip of her white wine.

“There was no pickle tickling today,” I replied, rolling my eyes in the darkness of the plane.

“Alright
, fine. Are you back to fucking the man? Does that sound better?”

“You are so crude.
” I laughed lightly, pulling the blanket further up on my lap. “When do you think there was time for us to do any fornicating in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Really?
All you really need is a dark corner and five , tops. Sometimes I can get it done in sixty seconds, but that entirely has to do with the size of the cock I’m working with.” I could see the grin Danielle had plastered on her face, and knew she wasn’t kidding on the whole sixty second’s thing.

“No
, Danielle. There was no bashing the beaver, no tubesteak fandango, no parallel parking, no shucking the oyster, and definitely no quickie sex.”

“Are you insane? You had a hot piece of ass that was basically all cave man hormonal on you and you didn’t get a peek at his pecker?”

“I didn’t say that.” I laughed, snatching the wine glass from her hands and taking a quick gulp. The dryness from her Pinot Grigio slid down my throat with ease, tempting me to take another sip or order my own glass for the remainder of the flight.

“Alright, so if you’re not knocking
uglies, then what in the hell was that phone call about earlier?” I loved this girl something fierce, but keeping this a secret was like a fox in the hen house. Something was going to get eaten, or in her words blabbed when I didn’t know if I wanted anyone in on what was going on with Reid and me right now. Hell, I didn’t even know what exactly was going on between us.

“So I take it that blonde tramp of a movie star is no longer in the picture?” Danielle questioned, raising her eyebrow for dramatic flair.

“He said they were never a thing in the first place.” I shrugged casually. I had to trust that man, considering if we were going to make anything work, we had to have some foundation to stand on.

“Well, then………can he explain these pictures?” Danielle shoved the gossip magazine she was reading into my lap and pointed
at the half page spread of said blonde and Reid. My mouth dropped open as I stared at the pictures. There, the happy fucking couple was doing dinner, holding hands, oh, and better yet……………..kissing. “I don’t think that is a friendly, I love you like a sister kind of kiss,” she said dryly, snatching the magazine back.

“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled, hitting the call button for our flight attendant. I was goin
g to need something stronger than wine to get this awful taste out of my mouth now.

“What a cock,” Danielle said while flipping the pages. Little black rain cloud
again? Fuck that, it was a damn tsunami that wrecked my life this time. Send out the Coast Guard, because my boat was sinking fast.

It was the same talk I had with myself constantly. I really should have been able to just recite the whole conversation and my thoughts in autopilot; however I still struggled with the battle almost daily now. Why I let things get to me, how they ended up in my head, why I battled them so hard is something that I can’t explain. Most people can pick up and move on. Dust themselves off. Hell, roll with the punches. But no. I sat there and stewed over the same damn thing each and every single time. Relationships in this business ended up like a bull in a china shop; broken, damaged, and non refunable. Why I couldn’t force myself into the life raft and get off the damn boat was something eventually I had to come to terms with.

“Stop waging war in that pretty blonde head of yours and call the man,” Danielle hissed as we waited at baggage claim.

“It’s not that simple.” I glared.
If it was that easy don’t you think I would have done it the moment the plane landed?

“Aren’t you always spouting off some nonsense that it’s ‘simple as that’ or ‘it’s that simple’ bullshit?”

Reaching over and grabbing my small bag from the belt, I knocked my shoulder into the side of Danielle, throwing her off balance.

“Bitch move
, Molly. Complete bitch move,” she grumbled, readjusting her hat with a scowl.

“I don’t want to call him and come off as a stark raving mad lunatic. Shit
, Danielle. We just started talking again.”

“Well, I think ramming your tongue down his throat constitutes for more t
han just talking.” Danielle shrugged, grabbing her ginormous suitcase and popping the handle. Stepping out into the cool air of Salt Lake City, I took a deep breath in and held it. There was something soothing about getting out of LA. Maybe it was the air quality, or actually having some cloud coverage for my poor pale skin. I really didn’t know what people saw in that city, considering I would never subject myself to living there.

“So did you grow a pair of balls and decide to call him?” Danielle asked as we flagged down a cab to take us to the arena.

“I’m going to sleep on it,” I said with a frown. Maybe a good night’s sleep was all that I needed to clear the fog from my head. Then again, maybe a couple shots of Fireball could clear the haze as well.

“
I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that you really don’t matter then,” I snapped, slamm
ing the cab door shut harder than I should have.

“Good Lord. What have you done with the nice Molly? Can I request you send this epic bitch back and let the old one take her place?” Danielle started to dig through her hobo bag, fumbling around for something.

“I resent that comment.” Crossing my arms snugly under my chest, I glared out the window while watching the traffic pass us by.

“Someone needs to get laid,
” Danielle grumbled as she handed over a set of batteries. “Please, do everyone on the tour a favor and stick these in your vibrator. Otherwise, I believe we might just kill you.”

Letting out an unsatisfied snort, I snatch
ed the batteries out of her hand and stuffed them into the front pockets of my black skinnies. I didn’t need to get laid; I needed a good man who wasn’t going to break my damn heart with every magazine page turn.

“I’m so glad you are back!” Megan shrieked as I wandered in the backdoor of the arena. Throwing her arms tightly around my neck, she squeezed my body so tightly I almost lost my breath.

I chuckled, prying myself away from my assistant.
“It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“You have no idea,” she replied in exasperation. “I hate to throw this at you this second, but you might want to see this………….” Grabbing my hand, Megan pulled me down the hallway quickly.

“Please don’t tell me there are hookers in the dressing room?”

“Ha
ha, nope not this time,” Megan said with a nervous laugh. Tossing the headliners door open, I noticed Chance sitting on a table in the back corner.

“What is going on?”
I questioned, nervously looking around the room. Chance was sitting upon a table with his shirt off, and some strange man in a blue dress shirt was examining his left arm.

“Well, technically we don’t know yet. But the doctor said he would send the scraping off for analysis right away,” Megan said with panic in her eyes.

“Chance, I told you not to fucking touch the hookers!” I shouted at the idiot across the room. Shaking my head in disgust, I quickly wandered over to see the extent of the damage.

“Hey Molly, long time no see.
” Chance laughed, letting his pecks flex as the laughter tore through his body.

“
I was gone for two days, Chance. Two fucking days and you go and get yourself contaminated with some disease.”

“Hi, I’m Doctor
Aphtner,” the older gentleman said as he peeled off his gloves and extended a hand to me.

“Molly
McGlenister,” I replied as our hands touched. “Can you give me a little insight as to what is going on here?”

“Well
, from what I have gathered, it seems to be some kind of bacteria of the flesh. I have done a skin scraping and will send it out first thing once I leave here.”

“So is this
, like, contagious?” Taking a half step backward, I looked at the ugly red patch covering his forearm.

“Not that I can tell, but I’m advising you to keep it covered until we get some answers from the lab.” Doctor
Aphtner put a clean pair of gloves over his hand and set out to cover the nasty looking rash on Chance’s arm.

“Thank god,” I
muttered, silently cursing Chance out in my mind. I had told that man a million and one times those girls on the road were dirty, nasty, filthy creatures that should not be trusted with skin to skin contact.

“Um……….Molly?”
Megan piped up, looking like she was about to hurl all over the room.

Turning around
, I raised an eyebrow in question.

“Would a flesh eating disease make me skinny?” Megan laughed nervously as she pulled up the hem of her tank top and flashed another disgusting spot on her hip.

“Fuck. You might want to rethink that contagious comment, Doctor.”