How to Sleep with a Movie Star (23 page)

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded without any pretense. My voice didn’t sound like my own, but then again, I wasn’t feeling much like myself.

Sidra looked me slowly up and down, then a slow smile spread across her lips (which looked like they’d been injected with another shot of collagen in the past few days). She slowly swung her legs down to the floor. I clenched and unclenched my fists.

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” she said, batting her eyes innocently. She lazily reached over with one long, perfectly manicured finger and pressed a button on her intercom. “Sally, Samantha,” she said, still looking at me with a little smile. “Come into my office. You’ll never believe who’s here. It’s
Tattletale
’s new ‘It’ girl!” She removed her finger from the intercom and looked me pensively up and down. “You certainly don’t
look
like an ‘It’ girl,” she said with a sly smile.

“Screw you,” I said. I was so angry, it was hard to breathe. Sidra raised an eyebrow in mock surprise.

“What?” she asked innocently. “Profanity from the mouth of Cole Brannon’s new love interest? How inappropriate!”

Just then, Samantha and Sally appeared in the doorway, standing so close together they looked like Siamese twins. Like their fearless leader, they were both decked out from head to toe in fashionable black—Sally in Prada, Samantha in Escada. I wondered for a moment if Sidra called them each morning to issue a Triplet Dress Code for the day. That would explain why they all arrived at the office late, nearly always looking like they’d come off the couture assembly line.

“Claire!” Samantha purred. “We just couldn’t believe it . . .”

“. . . when we saw you in
Tattletale.
” Sally finished the sentence that had apparently initiated in the brain they shared.

“I know,” Sidra joined in with a smirk. “It was quite a shock to all of us. I never would have expected such a thing.”

“Just stop it!” I barked, feeling my face heat up with anger. “Do I look stupid? I know you did this!”

“What?” Sidra feigned shock. “
Moi?
Why on earth would you think such a thing?”

By this time, Samantha had walked over to Sidra’s left side, and Sally flanked her right side. For a moment, as I stared at them in their matching black designer uniforms, they reminded me eerily of old pictures of Saddam Hussein and his two evil sons.

“I don’t know,” I responded. “I don’t know why you would do it. Jealousy maybe?”

“
Me?
Jealous of
you
?” Sidra’s laugh was cold and heartless. She was immediately joined by lifeless chuckles from her two disciples.

“Why are you out to get me?” I demanded. I was starting to feel outnumbered again. It reminded me slightly of elementary school, and I had sudden vague memories of being ganged up on and excluded from kickball games by the “cool” kids. Sidra laughed again.

“My, my, my, this is going to your head, I think,” she said coolly. “The universe doesn’t revolve around you, Claire, dear. Just because something happens, it doesn’t mean anyone’s out to get you.”

“Why, then?”

“You’re playing with fire,” Sidra said, leaning forward, her voice low and menacing. “And you’re going to keep getting burned until you learn to walk away.” Sally and Samantha nodded their agreement as Sidra leaned back, looking satisfied with herself.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I could hear my voice rise an octave to soprano. “I’m not playing with anything. I never was. If I remember correctly, your sister was screwing my boyfriend. You know as well as I do that I didn’t sleep with Cole Brannon.”

“Oh, it didn’t look like that to me,” Sidra said, smiling knowingly at me. Samantha and Sally tittered in unison. I clenched my fists by my sides.

“This had better be the end of this,” I said finally. I exhaled and felt suddenly weary. “Fine, you’ve gotten me back for whatever offense you’ve imagined. But now we’re even, okay? Whatever I’ve done to you has surely been canceled out by this.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sidra singsonged slyly. I ignored her.

“Just stop this now,” I said wearily. “I’m serious. You’ve gotten what you wanted. I’m mortified. Pat yourself on the back. Mission accomplished.” As Sidra and I stared at each other, our eyes locked in some kind of juvenile staring contest, I felt some of the anger go out of me. This was ridiculous. We were grown women, and we were acting like schoolchildren at war on the playground. “Just leave me alone, Sidra,” I said finally. “I’ll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine.”

“Deal,” she said icily. As I turned and started to walk away, she called after me.

“Oh, Claire? Would you like me to give your regards to Tom?”

I froze in my tracks but didn’t turn around.

“He’s having dinner at my parents’ house tonight,” she continued. “My sister thought it was time she brought him home to meet the family.”

The words hit me like a cold slap across the face.

“Yes, give him my regards,” I said softly without turning around. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

I walked away, leaving Sidra and her designer henchmen behind in their weird little world that I wanted no part of.

The Ingenue

T
he night the
Tattletale
story appeared had to have been the worst night of my life. Wendy was nice enough to stay with me, but even her comfort didn’t help much when I saw my face splashed across
Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight,
and two editions of the local news. Friends I’d gone to high school with in Georgia called, drawling in excited tones about how they couldn’t believe “Little Clairey Reilly” had hooked up with Cole Brannon. My mother called to chastise me yet again, just in case I hadn’t gotten the point that morning, and even my little sister Carolyn called to tell me, “Everybody knows, Claire. It’s just soooo embarrassing for me.”

Life eventually started returning to a semi-normal state. I never heard from
Access Hollywood
or
Entertainment Tonight
again, and although I kept a close eye on Page Six and
Tattletale
for the next few weeks, there wasn’t another mention of me. I started to breathe more easily.

Although my mother hadn’t apologized, she was at least starting to act more normal. Well, normal for her, which might not necessarily qualify as normal in anyone else’s world. Still, she was back to her old ways, nagging me about finding a husband before I hit thirty (geez, I still had four years to go!), picking at me for being so career-oriented, and criticizing me for putting on a few pounds.

The next few weeks of work, however, were hellish. There was a sudden chill in the air when it came to me securing celeb interviews for
Mod
. Publicists who had always called right back were suddenly no longer available; interviews that had been set in stone were mysteriously canceled; and I caught coworkers gossiping about me in the break room three times.

On top of that, it was pretty rotten to have everyone believe I’d gotten laid by the hottest guy in America when in reality, I hadn’t had sex in so long I probably wouldn’t remember how to anymore.

Each week I struggled to meet deadlines I’d never had a problem with before. I spent hours waiting by the fax machine for responses to interview requests—sometimes for
faxed
interview answers from celebs who were suddenly “too busy” to talk to me—and I worked late most days to overcompensate for the fact that my career seemed to be going steadily downhill.

Perhaps the worst work-related fallout from the whole Cole incident was that Margaret still seemed to believe the
Tattletale
story and treated me as though she expected my behavior to mirror that which the tabloid had attributed to me.

When I told her I was having trouble securing an interview with Orlando Bloom, who really shouldn’t have been a problem, she had winked at me and said, “I’m sure
you
can come up with a way to convince him.” When Jerry O’Connell canceled an interview with me, Margaret suggested wearing sexier lingerie. With Hugh Grant, her suggestion was to show a bit more cleavage.

It had been the same story for every male star I’d failed to snag in the past six weeks, and my continued denials that anything had happened between Cole and me seemed to always fall on deaf ears. Margaret had even referred to me twice in staff meetings as “our little
Mod
vixen.” I had turned a decidedly un-vixen-like shade of red.

June and the first half of July were good months—outside of work, at least. Wendy moved in a week after the
Tattletale
article, like she’d promised, and I quickly discovered she was the best roommate I’d ever had. When she got home from work before I did—which was most nights, thanks to the increasing difficulty of my job—she often cooked dinner for us, and Jean Michel usually joined us when he had the night off. Her meals were always delicious, and she swore that all of her recipes were from scratch.

“I want to open my own restaurant someday,” she told me shyly. It always amazed me when I walked into my apartment and was greeted by the steamy smells of spices, meats, and baking bread.

*

The summer was a hot one. Wendy and I spent weekend days sunning and sipping lemonade in the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, riding the subway out to the ridiculous attractions of Coney Island, or wading into the water at Sea Bright or Highlands along the Jersey Shore.

As the weeks dragged on, I couldn’t seem to shake being bothered by the fact I hadn’t heard from Cole. Not once since the
Tattletale
article. I knew he thought it was my fault, which broke my heart. But he was obviously sleeping with Ivana. I knew I shouldn’t care. But I did care. Too much.

He’d been nothing but nice with me, taking care of me when I got drunk, comforting me about Tom, and even coming by my office to make sure I was okay. And now he thought I’d paid him back by telling the tabloids that we had slept together. I’d probably embarrassed him beyond words. For a Hollywood star, it was probably mortifying to have everyone think you slept with some frumpy Plain Jane with a low-paying job, A-cup breasts, and clothes bought on sale at the Gap. I was definitely not normal Hollywood fare. He was used to sleeping with women like Kylie Dane—tall, curvaceous, flawlessly complexioned, perfectly dressed—or women like Ivana—coldly beautiful, oozing wealth, with flashing eyes and a throaty, sexy voice. It was stupid to think he’d even looked twice at me. The realization made me feel even more plain and boring than I already did.

It didn’t help that everywhere I turned, I seemed to see him. He was on billboards all over the city. His face was on the sides of buses, and early trailers for his movie were on TV. Some nights I’d be flipping through the channels and see a rerun of the night he was on
Saturday Night Live,
or a romantic comedy in which he played the lead. It was like having salt rubbed in my wounds, and each time, I remembered with guilt how I’d left things with him. I’d practically told him I never wanted to see him again. After he’d gone out of his way to make sure I was okay.

I’d started dreaming about him sometimes, which scared me. I was sure it was because he seemed to surround me and because guilt over how things had ended still weighed on my unconscious. I finally talked myself into believing that when
Mod
’s August issue came out in a few days with my cover story about him, that would be it. I would send him several copies of the magazine along with a polite and formal note via his publicist, as I always did each month for the celeb featured on the cover. Then I could forget him once and for all. The article would be out. The
Tattletale
rumor was old news. I would no longer have any kind of connection to Cole Brannon.

The thought should have made me feel relieved, but it didn’t.

And that scared me.

Journalism 101

Cover Stories

T
he second Wednesday in July started out like any other day, except perhaps a bit better. Two publicists called in the morning to confirm interviews with the actresses they represented, I’d already secured commitments from Molly Sims and Kirsten Dunst for the covers of the November and December issues, and I was almost done with the latest silly article Margaret had assigned me: “How to Make Him Fall for You in Less Than a Week.”

I was feeling so good, I was barely worrying about the fact that the August issue would be released that day.

After all, it would almost be a relief to have my decidedly unsexual Cole Brannon article hit newsstands so I could be done with him once and for all. Maybe once the article was out, he would stop haunting my thoughts. I was still acutely aware that I hadn’t heard from him. I knew he hated me.

The first copies, which would arrive bound in stacks of twenty-five, hadn’t arrived by 12:30. I ducked out to lunch without worrying too much about it.

I had already paid for my Styrofoam container of salad and was sitting at an uncomfortably small table—wedged in the back of the Paris Cafe on Broadway and Forty-fifth Street—when Wendy called me on my cell phone.

“You’d better get back here,” she said as soon as I picked up. Her tone sounded nervous, and I sensed something ominous behind her words.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering if something had happened between her and Jean Michel. I had been afraid it was too good to last.

“Where are you now?” she asked instead of answering my question.

“At the Paris Cafe. Do you need me to come back?”

“Meet me in the courtyard outside our building as soon as you can,” she said tersely. “I’ll be right down.” She hung up before I could say another word. My heart pounding, I quickly threw out the remainder of my salad, grabbed my purse, and pushed my way out of the restaurant onto Broadway. As I waited to cross the street, I could see Wendy standing outside the building, her carrot hair blowing in the wind. In her hands, she held a magazine, which I guessed was the August issue of
Mod.
She was looking around nervously and hadn’t spotted me yet.

“Hey,” I said, coming up behind Wendy and startling her. She jumped and turned quickly around, her eyes wide. I tried a smile. “What’s the big emergency?”

Wendy didn’t smile back, which had to have been a first. A strange gnawing began in the pit of my stomach as I took in her nervous posture, her wide eyes, her serious expression. I strained to see the magazine in her hands, sensing that it was central to whatever was wrong, but she held the cover just out of my view.

This couldn’t be good.

“Let’s sit down,” she said finally, taking my arm and leading me to one of the cement planters in front of the building. I obediently sat and waited for Wendy to speak.

“Are you okay?” I finally asked. She looked at me for a moment, and without saying a word, thrust the magazine into my hands, a look of grim resignation on her face.

Sometimes in the movies, when something terrible is about to happen, the characters suddenly see everything in slow motion. A bullet inches toward a person’s head, and he’s able to watch it come, contemplating his life before it strikes him dead. A train is about to run over a young family in their car, but they’re frozen in place, watching the barreling steam engine come toward them so slowly it feels like they could get out and run a mile before it hits. A woman is pushed off a bridge, and as she falls there’s time to see the whitecaps, the rolling sea, the fish beneath the surface, before she crashes into the water.

In the first moment that I looked at the cover of the August issue of
Mod,
it felt like time had suddenly slowed for me too. In the mere seconds it took for me to scan the cover, the world seemed to suddenly stop moving. The sudden and intense rushing in my ears blocked out all the sounds I’d normally hear on a summer day: chattering theatergoers streaming into a matinee at the Winter Garden Theater across Broadway, honking traffic inching impatiently and loudly southward. Instead of noise, there was just emptiness.

“Claire? Claire?” I could hear Wendy’s concerned voice, but it sounded very far away. My eyes were locked on the cover of
Mod,
which I kept reading and rereading, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Each time I squeezed my eyes closed and opened them again, I hoped against hope that the words would have vanished. But they didn’t. They were still there, in vivid, unmistakably permanent bright blue ink.

“Claire? Are you okay? Say something!” Wendy finally reached over and gently shook me. I looked up at her in a daze.

“There’s been some mistake,” I said softly, my voice barely above a whisper. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I couldn’t have imagined this.

I looked at the cover once again, taking in the beautiful curves of Cole Brannon’s shoulders, the suggestive gleam in his eyes, the arch of his eyebrows, the moistness of his lips, which were parted in just the faintest smile. It was one of the best pictures I’d ever seen of him. For one crazy moment, I was sure that if I just focused on his picture and nothing else, everything would be okay.

Then inevitably, my eyes were drawn back to the glaring blue headline splashed just beneath the level of his shoulders. The right margin was filled with the usual
Mod
fare: “35 Ways to Lose Weight,” “20 Sex Tricks to Try This Month,” “50 Fashion Finds for Fall.” But I barely saw them. Beneath Cole Brannon, who looked perfect and just slightly mischievous beneath the graceful
Mod
logo, a horrible headline screamed out in block letters. I knew it would make the magazine fly off shelves across the country.

HOW TO SLEEP WITH A MOVIE STAR: OUR WRITER’S ONE-NIGHT STAND WITH COLE BRANNON—A
Mod
exclusive by Claire Reilly

“Oh my God,” I whispered finally. I looked up at Wendy in horror. Her eyes were wide with concern, and her forehead was creased with pity. “How . . . ? What . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” she said seriously. “Claire, I don’t know.”

I just stared at her.

I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.

“And inside?” I choked on the words. “Is it just as bad?”

Wendy hesitated for a moment, then nodded solemnly.

Numbly, I flipped the magazine open, turned to the table of contents, and quickly found the article. Right in the middle of the page was a huge, blown-up, grainy picture of Cole hugging me good-bye at the doorway to my apartment building. It didn’t look familiar, but it had to have been from the morning that Sidra had caught us. It was the only time Cole and I had been together visibly, as he was leaving my apartment. It wasn’t a professional shot—clearly, from the slightly out-of-focus blur and nearly imperceptible tilt to the left, it hadn’t been taken by a member of the paparazzi. At least their photos came out straight and clear. Sidra must have come back with a camera after she’d left my apartment that day.

The text was even more damaging than the photo. I began to read, my heart racing.

For years, men have been the ones to spring one-night stands on unsuspecting women, taking them in their arms and murmuring sweet nothings, making them believe in love at first sight and all the other things that come true in fairy tales.

I realized in horror it was the hastily written lead to the last-minute “10 Reasons to Have a One-Night Stand” article Margaret had assigned just days before the Cole Brannon interview. My breath came in ragged gasps as I read on.

Because we believe in their promises, we’ve had our hearts broken and our feelings trampled. But who’s to say we can’t turn the tables on the men and take control? Ladies, you have the power to go after a one-night stand yourself and to turn the tables by breaking
his
heart.

“Oh no,” I murmured as I read on, feeling ill. Suddenly, the one-night-stand article transitioned into the third paragraph of the Cole Brannon cover story I’d written.

One glance at Cole Brannon, and it was immediately clear how he’d managed to charm his leading ladies on-screen and off. His smile lit up the room, his laugh was kind and genuine, and his handshake firm and gentle.

Then the article deviated horrifyingly into something written by someone else.

I knew I had to have him from the moment I first saw him.

I gasped. The article rapidly switched tracks again, back to the lead of my one-night-stand article. I was amazed at how seamlessly it all seemed to flow together, making it sound like I’d really written about a one-night stand with Cole.

Why have a one-night stand? For one thing, it’s a great way to stroke your own ego, especially when the one-night stand is with a guy you’ve had your eye on.

I recognized the first reason on my hastily assembled top-ten list—which I’d written tongue-in-cheek—cringing at my own words. Now they’d been turned against me, and I was horrified by the next line, the implication of which was obvious.

Like most women in America, I’d had my eye on Cole Brannon for quite a while, making him the perfect person to share a one-night stand with.

I moaned in horror.

It’s been rumored that Brannon has been having an affair with his
On Eagle’s Wing
costar Kylie Dane, a report he flatly denies.

“I’d never do that,” he told
Mod.
“She’s a nice woman and I enjoy working with her, but there’s nothing between us. I would never, ever, ever get romantically involved with a married woman.”

I recognized the quote he’d given me on the street after we left Atelier. The next line, not my own, made me cringe again.

So he sounded single, and with the arch of his eyebrow and the smile he shot me, I began to understand that he was getting at something else. Like he was available. To me.

“Oh my God!” I moaned to Wendy, who was sitting quietly at my side with a frozen look on her face. “I would never have written this! I would never have even thought it!”

“I know,” she said softly. I read on, horrified.

One of the top reasons for a one-night stand: Because we all know that getting laid feels pretty damned good.

I blanched, recognizing my tongue-in-cheek reason number ten from the original article, which Wendy and I had expected Margaret would primly edit out. No such luck, apparently.

And who better to get laid by than the hottest star in Hollywood?

“No!” I wailed to Wendy, finally looking up from the article. “I can’t believe this!”

“I know,” she said miserably. “Me neither. It’s horrible.”

I read on. Altogether, there were four whole pages, blending my one-night-stand article with the Cole Brannon feature, tied seamlessly together with damning words I’d never written. It ended just as badly as it had begun.

As we parted ways in the doorway to my apartment, I looked at him tenderly and remembered the best thing about a one-night stand: You might really hit it off with the guy and begin to develop a relationship.

“No!” I moaned, looking at Wendy. It was the third reason on my original list, the one she’d teased me about.

Time will tell with Cole Brannon. He’s the kind of man any woman would fall in love with. I’m sad to say, I’m one of those women. But no matter what happens down the road, I’ll always have the memory of our one-night stand.

I closed the magazine as soon as I’d read the last line, handing it immediately back to Wendy. Maybe if I got rid of it, it would be like it had never happened. I couldn’t handle having it in front of me anymore. This made the
Tattletale
disaster look like child’s play. This was the worst thing I could have imagined.

“What do I do?” I finally whispered to Wendy.

“I don’t know,” she said, for once at a loss for words.

“It was Sidra, wasn’t it?” I asked flatly. I was suddenly beyond furious.

“It had to have been,” Wendy agreed. She hesitated and then added, “She’s the one who did the editing.”

“But I
saw
her edited version,” I whispered.

“She must have come back and changed it later that night, after you signed off on it,” Wendy said. “This is perfect for her. She gets back at you for supposedly sleeping with a
real
movie star and wins the executive editor position over Maite with her genius editing debut.”

“Oh my God,” I said softly, looking at Wendy in horror. Of course she was right. I was an idiot for not realizing it on my own. “This is going to increase our circulation, and it’s going to look like it was Sidra’s editing that did the trick.”

Wendy looked at me gravely.

“I have to do something,” I said finally. Wendy nodded.

“You could sue, you know,” she said softly. I looked at her in surprise. The thought of legal action against
Mod
had never occurred to me. Wendy read the reluctance in my eyes. “You know, this is the kind of thing you’re
supposed
to sue for. It wouldn’t be a frivolous suit. You almost have to, or it will be like you’re agreeing that it all happened and that you wrote this.”