We Are Made of Stardust - Peaches Monroe #1 (28 page)

Instead, there was a video clip of big-haired Brooke Summer interviewing me on my front steps. I had to watch it three times to figure out what the hell I was seeing.

Brooke: “I understand you’re sleeping with Dalton Deangelo. How would you describe sex with him?”

Cut to me, with my blond hair mussed up from recent sex: “Yes. It’s very nice, if you like that sort of thing.”

My reaction to this video clip was complicated. I was angry at that c-word for tricking me, but I was also pleased to be getting a few minutes of fame for something other than running a successful pledge drive for the local library.

Again, the universe was hinting that I might actually be a wild and crazy girl.

“Whatever,” I said to Shayla. “That’s not too bad.”

She shook her head. “There’s more.”

My stomach dove into my other organs. Now here would come the nude photos in the hot spring.

Shayla fiddled with her phone for a second, then handed it back, sucking in air between her gritted teeth.

“Um, this could be worse,” she said. “You look cute.”

On her phone, I found photos of a girl in brown trousers and a lacy bra, no shirt, standing on a stepladder and installing a light fixture. It took several views of the same images for me to reconcile that it was me, inside the bookstore.

“Cute, right?” she said.

“This is it?” The text that accompanied the photos said I was
linked to
Dalton Deangelo, but didn’t even say I was dating him. “This is nothing,” I said.

“That’s the spirit!” Shayla said. “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but nasty words will never hurt us.”

Words? I hadn’t read any nasty words. I’d just been scanning in a panic, then relieved by how tame the photos were, compared to the eyeful they could have gotten.

I shouldn’t have read the text below. I should have stopped after one cruel nickname, but I didn’t.

Horrible internet comments.

About me.

One of the posts had a whole list of awful names for me, as well as a poll. People were voting on a nickname for me.

In third place was Porky Peaches.

Second-most popular was Peachalicious.

And leading the polls was… Peaches by the Pounds.

I’d been called names before, and while most of these were new ones, the feeling in my heart wasn’t a unique experience. I’d been to this heartbreak rodeo before.

I was used to some people being disgusted with me. I knew that if I wore a short skirt, some dipshit ugly asswad would sneer at me like I’d ruined their appetite with my dimpled thighs.

What I wasn’t accustomed to, as I’d never been
linked to
a popular movie star, was the raw anger.

As I read through the anonymous internet comments, a part of me died. Perhaps it was the last shreds of my youthful naivete. Or my faith in humanity. Either way, it died.

I fell back on the bed. If this had been a comedic moment in my always-wacky life, I would have tugged one of my pillows across my face and growled into it hysterically.

Instead, I stared at the ceiling and silently began to weep. Not just about this time, but every time people had been cruel. Despite the wet tears, my eyes felt hot and dry. When I caught my breath, the ragged sobs began.

~

Bless her heart, Shayla knew just what to do.

She didn’t argue with me about how bad I ought to be feeling, but she did take away my phone and laptop so I couldn’t jump further down the black hole of reading more posts and comments.

I cycled through the emotional stages rapidly, with the bargaining stage lasting only about an hour.

During the anger stage, we planned out revenge on Brooke Summer. Shayla had been seeing her dining at the restaurant she managed, and had already given her full-fat milk in her latte instead of skim a few times. And that was before the fake interview with me, just for being a c-word.

I started to feel better, and then got hit with another wave of what felt like… everything. It wasn’t fair. I pushed Shayla out of my bedroom, locked the door, and buried myself under my blankets. Barely able to breathe, I sobbed.

I’d come so far in the last few years, with my body image. I’d come to accept that I’d never have a thigh gap—that triangle of space between the upper legs that skinny girls have. I had a healthy body that functioned well, and took me places, and even gave me pleasure. I enjoyed my curves, and was only a little self-conscious about certain views while nude—something even my skinny girlfriends said they felt, too.

On bad days, I accepted myself; on good days, I even loved how I looked, and how I rocked certain outfits, like my red leather pencil skirt.

Now these strangers had taken this little bit of progress away from me. The hurt was fresh and raw, like no years had passed, and I was fifteen again, a victim of the disconnection between me and my body.

I stopped breathing, but the pain still found me.

~

Late Sunday afternoon, I emerged from my bedroom on shaky legs. After a longish hot shower (as long as our water tank would allow), I felt better. Not great, but better.

I joined Shayla downstairs, and we ordered pizza for dinner. We swivelled the couch in the front room around so we could watch the window for the delivery guy’s arrival.

“I’m going to phone Dalton,” I said. “Gimme my phone.”

It was fully charged, but Shayla took a minute to clear through the alerts from our friends about the crap they’d seen online. She stayed next to me as I called Dalton, insisting she wasn’t being nosy, but had to stay so I didn’t read horrible things.

I frowned at her as Dalton’s line rang and rang, then went to voicemail. I tried him three times, getting voicemail each time.

I left a message. “This is Peaches Monroe calling for Dalton Deangelo. I’m sorry I ran off yesterday. I didn’t mean to be so flakey, but… things got a little intense there. I don’t know how long you’re in town, but I do want to see you again. I… um… I like you. Bye.”

After I hung up, I stared into Shayla’s amber eyes for clues. Had I sounded desperate? Needy? Clingy? And all those horrible things people say about girls, just because we have feelings?

“He’ll call,” Shayla said.

“No, he won’t. He doesn’t want to be photographed with Miss Porky Poundcake.”

“I need to confess something.”

I crossed my arms and waited. Her tone frightened me.

She continued, “I was a little jealous of all the attention you were getting. Yesterday, when the news crew was on the front lawn, I knew they were there, and I answered the door like that on purpose. Dressed in almost nothing.”

She put her face in both hands.

“Why would you do that?”

“I’m a terrible person,” she sobbed between her fingers. “I put on makeup before I answered the door.”

I bit my lower lip, fighting back the urge to laugh.

“You put on makeup, but not pants?” I asked.

She nodded, her face still in her hands.

“You thought this was your chance to get fifteen minutes of fame?”

More nodding, still sobbing.

I patted her knee. “Hang in there. I’m sure if you keep doing stupid stuff, you’ll get your chance to have strangers vote on mean nicknames for you.”

She sniffed. “You think?”

“Oh, absolutely. These days, it’s basically inevitable. How about you volunteer to tutor at the high school and seduce a teenaged boy who’s just the other side of legal? That could be a good scandal.”

She dried her eyes and stared at me, blinking repeatedly as she tried to figure out if I was joking or not.

“Or maybe two boys,” I said.

“Brothers.” Her eyebrows gave away that she was kidding along with me.

“Definitely twins. Super hot.”

She made a gagging face. “Speaking of twins, remember how I made out with Golden’s brother, Garret?”

“Yes. You guys were in the bathroom all night at that party, and I had to pee super-bad. I hated you that night.”

“What I didn’t tell you is Garret had terrible back and chest acne. We had the light off in there, and he took his shirt off. I guess he thought I wouldn’t know, but I could feel it. I could feel all these gross cystic pustules under my hands.”

I covered my mouth with my hands. “Ugh.”

“But it was kinda hot, you know? Like making out with a monster. That mix of revulsion and attraction.”

Giggling, I tossed a couch pillow at her. “Stop! You’re making this up.”

“I totally gave him a hand job with one hand on his cock and the other hand stroking across his acne-covered shoulders. He fucking loved it, too. Guys love it when you accept them completely, warts and all.”

“I guess… I can relate.”

“And also when you make them come. Hand, mouth, pussy, ass… thigh crease.”

“Boobs,” I added.

“Who?”

“Toby.”

She got quiet, nodding. We didn’t usually talk about Toby.

Outside, a man with a pizza box walked by, looking confused. We jumped up and ran to the door together.

The pizza from DeNirro’s was the best in town, but the delivery driver had some sort of cosmic block that prevented him from locating our house.

We got our pizza and spent the rest of the evening eating and sharing details of dark sexual escapades. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Shayla, but there were some fantasies we’d not yet delved into.

I caught her up to speed on what had happened at the hot spring and Dolphin Falls, but I didn’t have to go over what happened Saturday morning when I was riding
Lionheart
. We’d accidentally left the door open and she’d gotten the general idea, even with her pink noise-cancelling headphones on.

Monday.

Kirsten at Java Jones was practically undressing me with her eyes as she made my mocha.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You saw the photos.”

She gave me a flirty look. “You should be proud! You were rocking that lacy bra. He’s a lucky guy. What’s it like dating a famous actor?”

“We’re just friends,” I lied, the goofy grin on my face probably giving me away.

Damn it, I was proud. My tits were all over the internet, and I was dating a hot actor. This was my life now! It was terrifying and also awesome.

“How did you meet him?” she asked.

“He just ran into the bookstore, Saturday before last. A TV crew was chasing him and he found—”

Kirsten interrupted with, “Sanctuary. In your arms.”

“I was the one who fell into his arms, but sure. Sanctuary.”

She handed me the mocha and gestured for me to wait a moment. She opened up the glossy celebrity magazine she was reading and showed me a picture of Dalton’s gorgeous face, his jaw speckled with a three-day beard. They’d done something with his eyes to increase their intensity and lighten them to a pale green.

“Sanctuary,” Kirsten said with a sigh.

Next to his photo was a quote from what I assumed was an interview:

The darker aspects of a role are no small things. When you pretend to be evil, even if it’s just for the camera, it robs you of a drop of your soul. Even a lake can be drained, one drop at a time. That’s why the thing I value most in a lover is the sanctuary they give. Only in loving arms can I feel my soul replenish.

I looked up at Kirsten’s expectant face.

“He does have a flair for the dramatic,” I explained.

She looked like she wanted to hear more, which was exactly why I needed to get the hell out of there.

I grabbed my mocha and was getting a matching lid when I noticed someone skulking nearby. She was trying to hide, with a baseball cap pulled down to her eyebrows, and she would have passed as a teenaged boy, but she made eye contact with me for just a second, and I knew.

“Alexis,” I said, striding right up to the table where she was sitting. “Trying to get another photo of me to sell to the highest bidder? I hope you didn’t give me away for nothing.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, confirming my suspicions. That was all the proof I needed.

“Just great! Maybe later I’ll have my pants off, and you can get a nice, big one of my bare ass. If they pay by the size, that should get you a lot more than you made selling my tits off to the highest bidder.”

Some seniors having coffee at the next table over perked right up and trained their ears our way.

“It’s perfectly legal,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

“So is me telling you my opinion that you’re a parasite. You don’t do anything of value to society. You just take, and destroy.”

Kirsten called out from behind the counter, “You tell her, Peaches!”

I leaned down and put my face right in front of hers. “What’s your problem with Dalton Deangelo? Why are you in his business?”

She finally looked up at me, her eyes wide with fear.

“Because he left us,” she said.

“Left who?”

She shook her head. “Can’t say. Not allowed.”

I snorted. “You hide in bushes and sneak around photographing people without their consent. You’re not exactly a credible source.”

“I didn’t send all the photos I had,” she said. “I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Oh.” I put my hand on my hip. “You didn’t send all the photos you took of me without my permission. Well, gosh. Let’s be best friends. Come over tonight and we’ll give each other pedicures.”

And then, because there’s nothing you can say to top premium sarcasm, I turned and walked out.

I crossed the street, opened the bookstore, and tried calling Dalton’s phone again. Still voicemail.

I called Shayla and asked her to check if there was anything new online about me, or him. We’d installed an app on my phone to block my browser. She assured me nothing else had shown up. I could hear keys tapping in the background. We had internet on the computer at Peachtree Books, but I wasn’t going to risk googling myself and having another meltdown.

“That’s interesting,” she said.

“How bad is it?”

“Not bad at all, actually. A couple of prominent bloggers have picked up on the story and are talking about… oh, the usual stuff. Fat-shaming, bad; body acceptance, good. Evil media conglomerates, bad; bloggers who run the exact same advertisements on their websites, good.”