Stereo (5 page)

Adam was officially fascinated by her.  Or possibly fascinated by how wrong he’d been about her. Though he’d never been close to a black woman in his life, he felt like he could potentially be close to Shaun.  Not as a real girlfriend, but definitely as a buddy to kick it with every once in a while.  She was smart, sharp, and she wasn’t afraid to call him on his shit.

“It was nothing, just a stupid interview.”  The moment he said those words he knew that he already cared more than he’d ever imagined he would.  He cared about her opinion, what she thought of him. At this stage in his career honesty was so rare, but she was just overflowing with it. That wasn’t something he was prepared to let go of.

“You’re a bad liar,” Shaun told him.  “Just tell me.”  When he still didn’t answer her, Shaun sighed and reached into her purse, pulling out her phone.  “Fine, I’ll just have to look it up myself—“

“Wait, no.”  Adam stood halfway from his chair and tried to take her phone from over the table, but she pulled it out of his reach.  As she pitter-pattered away Adam knew that he couldn’t cause a scene in the middle of that restaurant with all of those eyes and cameras on them.  Janelle would kill him.  So he sat back down, on the edge of his seat, his heart pounding.  The smile on her face gave him the worst kind of anxiety because he knew it wouldn’t be there for much longer.

Shaun’s eyes scanned the screen of her phone, reading hungrily, and Adam was sure he saw it the second it happened--the very moment when she read the words that had gotten him into this whole mess to begin with.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, her eyes rising to his, then back down to her phone. “Oh my god.”

“I know. But just hear me out--”

She didn’t even let him speak.  Without another word she gathered her things and jumped out of her seat, hurrying towards the front doors of the restaurant.

Adam watched her go in shock. When he saw a busboy catch her arm as she tripped and nearly fell on the way out, he fingered a hundred out of his pocket and dropped it on the table.

“Shaun,” he called out to her as discreetly as he could, crossing the crowded restaurant just as she disappeared out the doors.  All conversation had stopped as Adam bounded out the doors after her.  Once outside he looked down the sidewalk and saw her wobbling down the street with dozens of cameramen on her heel.

“Shaun!” He jetted down the cobbled sidewalk, holding his jeans with one hand as he ran, well aware of the flashes of lights beaming behind him.  Once he reached her he took her arm, reveling when she didn’t immediately pull away.  He came to face her and leaned in close so the cameras surrounding them couldn’t hear.

“I swear to god I thought you knew,” he said, breathlessly.

Shaun scoffed in disgust and tried to walk away, but Adam pulled her back, pressing his lips to her ear and taking her waist to turn them away from the cameras.  With crossed arms, she pressed her back up against a random black truck.  He followed her, his face alongside hers, cheek to cheek.

“We had an agreement didn’t we? You get your face in the paper and I get to wipe the tarnish off my name,” he said softly in her ear. “I’m not asking you to forgive me, I’m not even asking you to like me. I’m just asking you to hold up your end of the bargain, and your end of the bargain isn’t to be the lady who hates my guts, it’s to be the lady who’s on my arm.  We’re just two people doing business and then cutting all ties when that business is done.”

With every word he said Shaun became more and more relaxed, not because she was liking him any more than she had five minutes ago, but because he was making sense--a lot of sense.  If she broke ties with him now there was no way she’d be able to write her article.  If Adam was going to use her as a pawn to fix his broken image, why should she have a problem using him as a pawn to further her career?  She suddenly didn’t feel bad anymore.  She didn’t feel deceitful and she didn’t feel like a liar.  She felt like a woman who was ready to start
taking
in a world full of takers.

Her eyes shut and she begged for patience when Adam continued to whisper in her ear, “Now, I need you to hug me because these cameramen are taping us.  We don’t hate each other. We adore each other.”  His arms went around her waist and he pulled her body to his, sighing as that damn perfume wafted into his senses, again.

Shaun stood with limp arms, like a dead fish, and saw the knowing look in Adam’s eyes when he pulled away.

“You adore me,” he reminded her with raised eyebrows, taking her hands and placing them around his neck. Bending his knees, he reclaimed her waist and brought her to her toes as he stood tall, forcing her to hold onto him.  He breathed deeply.  A girl who was destined to hate him had no right to smell so good.

The camera flashes intensified.

Shaun took a deep, disgusted breath, and let her arms plop lazily against his back. It was the best hug she could muster.  “Your jeans are stupid,” she mumbled.

“That’s not very adoring,” Adam chided, tucking his nose into her fragrant neck.

What the
hell
was she wearing? It was dangerous.

Three

Shaun stirred awake, cringing against rising sun outside her bedroom window.  She felt like hell but still managed to roll sluggishly onto her side to glare disdainfully at her ringing cellphone.  When she saw the time blaring up from the screen, she almost took the phone and threw it at the wall.

The
rage
this induced. Anyone who knew her knew not to call her any time before noon if they wanted to keep all their fingers and toes.  With a groan, she answered. “What?”

“Hey.  It’s Adam.”

”
What
?”

“Uh. Hey. It’s. Adam.”  Adam said, more slowly this time.

Flashbacks from Sushi Samba the night before hit her from every direction and she was unable to sort her thoughts.

“How did you get this number?”  Was she dreaming?  This had to be a dream.  “Do you have any idea what
time
it is?”

“I just got done slamming my fifth Red Bull since 4am so, yeah, I have a pretty good idea what time it is.”

Shaun covered her forehead with her hand.  Her skull was suddenly pounding.  “What do you want?”

“I need you.”  Adam faltered, “I mean… I have a job for you.”

Her eyes popped open.  Was this conversation actually happening?  Her brain raced but all she could manage was an idiotically mumbled, “Huh?”

“
Huh,”
Adam mimicked. “When in the last twenty-four hours did you become dyslexic?  What happened to the know-it-all wordsmith sitting across the table from me last night? I’m telling you I have a
job
for you.”

Shaun was so confused that she was struck silent.  It was obscenely early in the morning and she was talking to a man who was already on his
fifth
Red Bull of the day.  This conversation couldn’t possibly be going anyplace good.  She sputtered something incomprehensible that sounded like a toss-up between “coffee” and “fuck off.”

Suddenly, something that sounded akin to a plane crash chimed in from Adam’s end of the phone, making Shaun pull it away from her ear and stare at it in shock.

Adam’s voice rose in an attempt to be heard over the chaos going on around him. “And don’t give me some line about not getting out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day.  You’ve never even been down a fashion runway so I’m guessing you’re not really in a position to be picky here. Wake up.”

With every word he said reality hit Shaun harder and harder.  She was now wide awake and sitting halfway up.  It had finally occurred to her that a man who thought she was a model was telling her that he had a job for her.

Her heart began to race wildly, blood pumping pure fear through her veins.  “Uh, wait a minute.  I don’t think I can…I have plans today,” she spat anxiously. Plans to curl up on her couch and watch Modern Family re-runs, but plans none-the-less.

“Cancel them,” he demanded. “And give me your address so I can send someone to pick you up.”

“I’m not going to uproot my life just because—“

“As much as I’d love to be Merriam-Webster-ed to death by you, I really can’t do this right now.”

Shaun huffed and stared at her ceiling, begging for patience, “Adam, you don’t understand—“

“Just get down here. And thank me later,” Adam interjected. “I’m putting you on the phone with my manager, they need me on set.”

“On set?”  Shaun shot up in her bed. “Wait. What set?!”

But Adam was already gone.

--

The jet black Expedition that had picked Shaun up from her Inglewood apartment finally came to a stop. As Shaun took the drivers hand and allowed him to help her out of the truck, her mouth dropped.  She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d ever felt so sick to her stomach.  With fearful eyes and a heaving stomach she took in the madness. 

There were hundreds of people milling about the huge private lot.  Some were in jeans and t-shirts, carrying cameras, lights, microphones and rigs.  Others were dressed to the nines with club ready hair and make-up, looking bored out of their minds.  Shaun’s eyes scanned the entire area. The first strings of The White Keys’ latest single filled the air and she finally accepted that she was on a music video set.

Adam’s music video set.  She saw him almost immediately.  He was in those skinny jeans of his, except these were a little looser on him—a little nicer.  The black leather jacket he wore looked crisp and expensive.   Taking him in as he stood alone in the middle of a deserted road, singing into a moving camera, Shaun actually managed to take a deep breath.  She was surprised that just the sight of him relaxed her stomach a little.

The driver walked away, leaving Shaun to look down at her black sweat suit and wonder why she hadn’t taken the time to make herself a little more presentable.   Adam couldn’t have mentioned to her that his driver was bringing her to a video shoot?  She wished she’d at least done something more to her hair, which was thrown up into a sloppy bun.  She looked up into the sky and wondered if she’d even washed her face today.  Angry at him and feeling set up, Shaun looked back to where Adam was performing and was stunned when she found him looking right back at her.

The man behind the camera, sitting in a high folding stool, fussed at Adam.

“CUT,” He cried. “Ay, Adam!  Focus, please!”

Adam was already making a beeline for Shaun, pushing past workers and extras until he was face the face with her, his green eyes intense.  Without saying a word he took her hand and began pulling her onto the set.  All eyes were on Adam and, in extension, now on her.

The panic was back.  Shaun resisted Adam as he tugged her along, trying to reclaim her arm so she could run for her life.   Every person she and Adam blew past seemed to be sizing her up, one by one.  She could almost hear their heinous, mean spirited thoughts.  She made eye contact with nearly every person that she passed, none of them friendly.  As she and Adam came closer to the director, who was now standing from his chair and staring at her as well, she resisted him more.

Adam turned back to her, giving her a look of death. “What is wrong with you? Come here.”

The director, a balding man with a handsome face and bright eyes, removed his large headpiece and looked Shaun up and down before turning to Adam. “‘Dis is ‘jour model?”  The director asked in a deep Colombian accent, motioning to Shaun with a raised eyebrow and curled lip.

Adam put an arm around Shaun’s shoulder until she was by his side, shaking her like she was a football buddy and not his stand-in girlfriend.  He gazed into her eyes as he spoke.  “This is her, yep.  Shaun this is Zizo Perez.  He’s one of the most famous directors in the world.”  Adam and Zizo waited for any reaction, but all they were met with was Shaun’s stunned face.

Adam couldn’t make sense of the naked distress he read in her eyes, and brought his voice down to a whisper when he realized she couldn’t even bring herself to look at Zizo, let alone speak to him.  He began speaking exclusively to her. “The model who was supposed to star in the video backed out at the last minute…”

Shaun’s mouth went dry as her eyes searched Adams.

Adam nodded, attempting to relax her. “You’re the star now.  This is gonna be epic.  You’ll be on a runway in no time after this…”  He waited for her ecstatic response and when it never came, he shook his head.  This girl was something else.  She was sharp, but at the same time so incredibly
green.
 She was hard to figure out. “Be excited.”

Shaun wondered if she could throw up right there without anyone noticing, and though she wasn’t looking around, she’d already mapped out at least five different ways to escape this nightmare the second Adam turned his back.  Looking up at him in that moment, as much as she hated the things she’d learned about him the night before and as terrified as she was, she couldn’t help but feel warm.  Sure, she wasn’t
really
a model, and though the thought of being the female lead in a music video made her physically ill, she couldn’t help but feel a little touched that Adam had thought of her.  Plus if she stood any chance of pulling off this whole ordeal, she couldn’t make him suspicious in any way.