Miss Congeniality (32 page)

“Go away,” Brea mumbled, turning over so her face was planted in the back of the sofa, praying they took the hint. Raquel was unmoved, grabbing her shoulders so she was looking back up at them.

“Hell no, we will not go away. Maybe we wouldn’t be here on this 9-1-1 call if your ass would answer your phone.” Brea threw her arm over her eyes, blocking her out.

“There’s a reason why I didn’t answer my phone.” Raquel swatted her arm away, at the end of her rope. Brea glared at her; she just wanted to be left alone to wallow in her misery.

“And there’s a reason why I barged in here to come help you. Get your ass up.” She sniffed, putting her hand over her nose. “Go take a shower and come down here like you want to get yourself out of this mess instead of lying around like a lush.”

“Why did I give you a key?” She scowled at her. Raquel got inches from her face.

“Because Clare is too nice, and sometimes you need a bitch to tell you to get the fuck up and deal with your shit. I will drag your ass off this couch and into the shower if I have to.”

“You are an asshole,” Brea said, pushing her back for breathing room.

“If the shoe fits, feel free to lace that bitch up and wear it. Now, get up and shower; and we’ll clean up your mess.”

“I’m going.” Brea pointed at her when she got up off the couch. “But you’re getting on my fucking nerves.”

“Well, your pity party is getting on mine, so we’re even!” Raquel yelled at her back as Brea left.

“You shouldn’t have been so mean to her,” Clare, the conscientious observer, pointed out.

Raquel sighed, running her hand through her hair. “Someone has to be. She’s given up, and sometimes people just need a kick in the ass.”

“I’m done, bitch,” Brea announced when she sauntered back in the room. Freshly showered with clean hair and clothes, she did feel better but she wasn’t going to tell Raquel.

From where she sat on the couch, Raquel chuckled and patted the place beside here. “Come sit here, baby.”

“Why did you bring her?” Brea asked Clare.

“I was the smarts. She was the muscle.” Clare wasn’t far off; Raquel did tend to be the brute of the three.

“If you guys are done talking about me, let’s talk about her.” She pointed at Brea. “I need a rundown of what’s wrong with your life.”

“Raquel! Be nice,” Clare chastised. Raquel didn’t acknowledge her; she just snapped at Brea to get to it.

Brea sighed deeply, dropping her head in her hands. She looked up miserably at Raquel.

“Let’s see. I was fired. I have been the subject of negative media attention forced upon me. Plus Lance and I got into a fight, and I think we broke up.” She ticked off the various points on her fingers.

Raquel cracked her knuckles dramatically. “Okay, let’s work on one problem at a time. Let’s start with the negative media because if I’m right, that’s what’s causing the other two problems.” Brea nodded her agreement. “What is the problem with the media?”

“I’m just sick of it. I want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it without people commenting. I’m thirty years old, for goodness sake! Why can’t they leave me the fuck alone?”

Clare rubbed her arm soothingly. “Better or worse, this is what we signed up for.”

“I know,” Brea whined, “but they usually left me alone.”

Raquel was having nothing of her pity party. “So, that means you were either really quiet or really boring. I’m going to go with boring, because you’ve spiced up since you’ve been with Lance.”

“But what if this has always been me, and I just never let it out.”

Raquel waved her off. “Then who gives a shit what you do? The producers? The financial backers? You have done nothing illegal or immoral, so just tell them to shove it.”

“I’ve never ruffled feathers before.” Brea didn’t know how to be the bad one; that was Raquel’s job. Brea had been in the shadows, so she was still trying to figure out how to navigate the media.

“Who cares?” Raquel asked.

“I care, Raquel! I care! Because that job was my livelihood. I loved being on the show. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m not on the show.”

“You will put on your big girl panties and deal with it,” Raquel stated.

“Is there no way for you to keep your job? And would you even want to?” Clare wondered.

“Not unless there’s a miracle, and I do want to keep my job. But because our contracts are renewed yearly, as long as I’ve finished out this contract, they don’t have to renew it. My lawyer already looked into it, and he said they’ve done nothing wrong so I have no recourse.”

“So, we’ll put the job situation up in the air because we’ll think of something. If not, you may find a gig you like better than being on
Maggie Beach
,” Raquel reassured her.

“Or you can try movies. I love it, and it’s a nice break from television,” Clare told her.

“I know it’s not the end of the world, but it’s just one more thing to pile on my list of incredibly shitty things which have happened to me.”

Raquel nodded. “It’s not something you’re going to change right away. It’s going to take a while, but you will find your balance.”

“I know,” Brea said, her eyes tearing. She forced them back by sheer willpower, figuring she had cried enough over the last couple of days.

“Now, what happened with Lance?” Clare asked sympathetically.

Brea ran her hand through her hair. “Do we really have to talk about this?”

Raquel butted in. “Yes, because if I could guess, I would say he’s mainly the reason behind your lack of hygiene.”

“Well, after the traffic stop, I called Henry to meet me here so we could do damage control and salvage my job.”

“Stop right there,” Clare said. “You needed support and assistance, and Henry has never provided you with that.”

“I know. Trust me, I know now, but I can’t change it. Besides, Lance went ape-shit on him and slammed him against the wall.” Brea felt the need to defend herself; she wasn’t the only one wrong the other night.

“I wish I could have seen that,” Raquel grinned.

“Raquel, you’re not helping,” Brea chastised her.

“And I bet he deserved it. If I know our favorite Alpha, Henry probably spoke disrespectfully toward you and Lance was honor-bound to defend his woman.”

“Maybe. But he still shouldn’t have said shit about my mom.” Raquel and Clare just watched her, waiting for Brea to explain herself. “Lance tells me I’ve been hiding behind the shit with my mom and that I’m so worried I’ll turn out like her, I overcompensate by being too nice and agreeable.” Raquel and Clare exchanged looks with each other; Brea felt she was missing part of the equation. “Why are you two looking like that?”

“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but he’s probably right,” Clare said sympathetically.

“But he also told me I’m too controlling, and try to play people like chess pieces, and life’s messy, and I was never the nice one.”

Clare patted her back. “Yep, still agree with him. I’m a lot nicer than you, but that’s not how the chips fell when it came to our nicknames.”

“Which is part of the problem with the producers. Our personas became this living, breathing monster. Some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy no one anticipated, and now it’s got you stuck in a bind and you’ve lost your job because you weren’t abiding by it,” Raquel pointed out.

“Yeah, that was one of the issues focused on in the meeting. I shouldn’t be acting this way because I was Miss Congeniality. And as far as the stuff with my mother, I’m not making up for her. I’m trying to become so unlike her I probably took it to the extreme.”

“We all have baggage in our past we want to get rid of; the big issue is making sure it doesn’t consume your life. I believe yours has, up until a certain bad boy came into your life,” Clare spoke from experience, nudging her when she talked about Lance.

“But he said I was controlling.” She pouted.

“Do you really think you’re going to be able to argue you’re not?”

Brea thought about her life, the meticulous emphasis she placed on order, and figured she had to give him that one. “Probably not. But Henry does have a point when he says all the bad press I’ve experienced recently has been since Lance was in my life.”

Raquel threw her hands up in exasperation. “The boy is newsworthy! If he shits, it becomes a big deal. You just weren’t prepared for them to follow your every move. We’ve taken shots in dive bars before and it never made the press, or gotten into verbal altercations where nothing was said about it after. The difference is now you know and are better equipped to handle cameras following you around day and night. I always act as though a camera is pointed at me, but I didn’t care with Ginger because I wanted to hit her, so I let my guard down. What really matters is just being cognizant of them, and you shouldn’t have a problem. The last thing, and then I’m done, is it shouldn’t matter what you do on your own time. You’re an adult. I’m sure most people could give two shits about what you’re doing, and if the producers can’t respect that, then maybe you should be looking for another job.”

“You’re right, about everything, Raquel.”

“I know.” She grinned.

“That still doesn’t solve the problem of being on the outs with Lance.”

“Now, I can’t help you with him.” Raquel held up her hands in defeat. “If you’re asking my opinion, give the boy a couple more days to see if he gets back in touch with you. If not, go pound his door down like we did you. He’ll be unable to resist your charms, as long as you keep up that whole hygiene routine you seemed to have lost there for a minute. He’ll at least listen to what you have to say, if not agree with you.”

“Have you guys seen him since all this happened?” She was desperate for any information about him. She had wallowed in her own pity long enough to realize they were printing crazy shit about Lance, too. Clare and Raquel exchanged a long look; they weren’t telling her something. “Just tell me what you’re not saying?” They continued to stare at each other, seeming to have a conversation with their eyes.

“Lance called me yesterday. We’re supposed to meet him today for coffee,” Raquel finally told her.

“You’re supposed to meet him,” she asked slowly, not comprehending.

Raquel cringed. “We’ll meet him when we leave here, but we didn’t want to go until we talked to you. We hadn’t heard from you, so we figured it had something to do with you.”

“Are you going to go? Forget I asked; of course you’re going to go. You’re not going to tell him you saw me. You can’t.” Brea worked herself into a frenzy.

“Calm down, Brea. We’re not telling him anything about you. We were worried about you, and we just wanted to check with you before we saw him.” Raquel glanced at the clock, noting the time. “We probably need to head out now if we want to be there on time.”

Brea nodded, not wanting them to go. Or maybe she just wanted to go with them to see Lance. Clare and Raquel hugged her before heading to the door.

“Do me a favor and turn on your phone. Go through all the messages you have, and contact whomever you need to and erase whatever you don’t. You’re not going to fix shit hiding out in the house, getting drunk, and lying around without showering.”

“Thanks, Raquel,” Brea mumbled, knowing she had a point but wanting her gone.

“Love ya.” She waved, putting on her sunglasses, squaring her shoulders and walking out into the paparazzi camped out on Brea’s driveway.

Brea plopped back down on the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest, wondering how her life spiraled to this point. She missed Lance. He was her guy, the first one she wanted to call when anything happened, and she had come to depend on him being there for her. She could count on one hand how many people she could depend on, and he was one of those people. She hoped she hadn’t messed up anything else because when she went through her phone messages, there were none from him. She told him to leave, but how was she to know the one time he listened to her was the one time she didn’t need him to?

Brea called Derrick, Silvia, and Alex, who had left multiple messages of concern to assure them she was well. She confirmed her plans to visit them in two weeks, although they begged her to come now and get away from all the craziness in LA. Brea felt it was a bit like running, and she was determined not to run anymore. She waited all evening for Lance to call, figuring once he talked to Raquel and Clare, he would try to get in touch with her. But he didn’t call her that night or any other night for the next week, and she slowly realized maybe it really was over between her and Lance.