March 2018
Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills
(Sunset at Coldwater Canyon)
Bentley had been fake working on fake planning her sister’s fake shower for more than a month. Since she’d been grounded by her fake mother, there hadn’t exactly been much else to do to fill her off-camera hours, aside from going to the shrink and AA—and thus the library.
Every Wednesday at five, she wanted to tell Venice the truth about everything she was going through. Instead, she told him about the kittens. About how they slept on her bed and used a litter box in her bathroom. How they played with water bottle tops and shoelaces and paper. How they didn’t want anything except the basics—food and water and scratches, so many scratches. (She didn’t tell him she groomed them with the $150 Mason Pearson69 hairbrush Mercedes had given her, or that it was especially satisfying.)
Venice had nodded and listened—he got it. “They get you out of your head.” She’d smiled. If he’d known what was in her head, he’d also have known how impossible it was to escape it.
Every Wednesday at six she went home to proof enough of that: the House of Royce was still crazy, and her sister was still marrying the fraud that was Tomme/Whitey. Bent tried to tell herself she’d been wrong to worry. She tried to think of the engagement as job security; sure, Porsche was marrying a fraud, but that was good television, wasn’t it? The show would stay on the air, and her family would survive. And wasn’t that all anyone cared about, anyway?
Bent wasn’t so certain anymore.
Season six rolled onward, and Porsche’s wedding sped toward them—and the shower that Bentley herself had helped fake plan was suddenly upon them, as the official start of it all.
Now, as she descended through the press gauntlet waiting in the driveway outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bent wondered if it would ever really end.
Bentley! Where’ve you been? Bentley, over here! Bentley, how’d things work out with your sister’s fiancé? Come on, Bent? Where’s the smile, gorgeous?
Porsche, who was all too aware that the bride was generally the center of attention at a bridal shower, hissed at her—“Don’t speak, move!”—and Bent had been grateful to run ahead.
That was where the bridal aesthetic assault began.
There had never been so much pink—which Bentley had quickly learned was not the correct word—in one city block. The hotel, historically famous for its coral blush (and sea-foam-green) grandeur, was already the most retro pink hotel in Los Angeles on any normal Saturday. This was not one of those.
On this exceptional Saturday, the hotel was awash in an entire rainbow composed specifically of various gradations of rose-colored splendor. Porsche’s combination Valentine’s-themed bridal shower plus RWTR shoot plus product launch for Lippies by Porsche had demanded nothing less, and Lifespan had obliged.
When Bentley stepped through the golden doors that opened to the sunken ballroom occupying a large part of the hotel’s lower floor, she was immediately confronted by an enormous pair of reflective electric-fuchsia lips that parted around a furry red-carpeted tongue, leading into the rest of the space.
Whoa. I don’t remember fake planning that….
The lips were momentarily so off-putting that Bent had trouble recalling the theme of her own sister’s party—even after having sat through all the fake planning meetings. When Bent realized she was actually looking at a blown-up image of Porsche’s own roseate plumped and pricked and primed lips, she almost couldn’t bring herself to stumble through them at all. (Bach used the back door.)
Kiss the Bride, Valentine!
That was the theme. It also happened to be the name of the particular color of Lippies by Porsche Slick Stick that was launching today, in her own honor. RWTR’s set decorator had outdone herself.
With the help of a thousand strawberry princess–petaled peonies, a neon-raspberry step and repeat (bearing the Lippies by Porsche logo), watermelon afternoon–hued heart-shaped linen table rounds, salentine rosato heart-dotted netting chair covers, and oversize bubblegum-and-berry weather balloon hearts that had put Production back more than a hundred bucks a pop—the room looked like a four-year-old girl’s dream prom, only if it were sponsored by Pepto-Bismol.
Plus, hearts.
As many as Bentley had been able to track down, from every online crafting site known to man. (Dr. A. would have been proud.)
Porsche herself, in a woven azalea bloom–toned sheath that had cost more than some normal citizens’ cars, was absolutely magnificent. Nobody could argue with that, Bent thought. She wore her curls in a cascade to one side, her magenta laquered-and-clipped hair almost as glossy as her sunlit coral Kiss The Bride, Valentine! by Lippie’d lips. Bentley herself had accepted the salmon-kissed tunic her stylist had picked out for her with relatively little complaining (aside from noting that nobody had probably ever kissed a salmon), and even Bach had eventually managed a warm flush tie. (“Warm flush? Is that a card trick or an Arizona toilet?”)
Not Mercedes, though.
She wore her winter morning all-white suit as if it were her battle armor, which Bentley knew it was. It wasn’t clear that Mercedes was going to even make a cameo at Porsche’s shower until that morning. While Porsche blamed Bentley for throwing herself at her fiancé, Porsche blamed her mother even more for not blaming Bentley too. But Mercedes had never recovered from the canoodling headlines, and even now rarely acknowledged Whitey in public. So, while the fighting between bride and bridesmaid was bad, the fighting between bride and mother of the bride was worse. Much, much worse. Poor Bach just tried to keep his head down as he dodged the bullets.
“Stay by my side,” Mercedes said as soon as she spotted Bentley.
“Where are you imagining I would want to go? The Lippies Testing Table? Or the Here Comes the Bride Makeover Tent?” Bent rolled her eyes. Ever since the grounding, she was never allowed out of her mother’s sight, especially not in public.
“Very funny,” Mercedes said, grabbing a glass of rosé champagne from a passing waiter. When Bent reached for one, she slapped her hand away. “Nice try.”
Bach and Bent looked at each other. They’d been sneaking champagne since season one, and nobody had ever said a word.
Mercedes’s new approach to motherhood had been a hot topic between them lately. Bach had tried to shrug it off. “What if it’s legit? What if she’s, I don’t know, changing?”
Bent didn’t buy it. “Mercedes? You can’t fall for this parenting shtick. It’s like Charlie Brown and the football thing. The minute you let your guard down and start thinking she’s going to actually let you kick the football, she’ll yank it away. That’s what Mercedes does.”
Now Bach had his cards in his hand. “I’m going to hide out on the patio. Less pink out there.”
“No you don’t,” Mercedes said, grabbing him by the arm. “We have to do forty minutes. Right here where everyone can see us. That’s what Pam said.” She gritted her teeth. “Not a minute longer.”
It was true; if Pam and the RWTR producers hadn’t stepped in with a color-coded line graph that vividly detailed the potential impact on production costs of her nonattendance (as Mercedes was technically an executive producer on the show, these all impacted her profit-sharing percentages as well) she might not have come at all. Which didn’t mean the next forty minutes were going to be pleasant.
Bach looked at Bentley, panicked.
Bentley pointed at a nearby waiter. “Mercedes, isn’t that the fried chicken you love? Chef Ludo?”
Luckily it was, and so as the bride circulated the room—trailed by photographers—the mother of the bride stood by the nearest waiter, recklessly accepting paper cone after paper cone of Hollywood’s favorite fried chicken, until Bentley began to worry that the splashiest headline to come out of Porsche’s party was going to be something like MERCEDES ROYCE UPCHUCKS CLUCKS!
“Why don’t we just find our table?” Bach finally suggested.
Bentley caught her sister’s immaculately made-up eye as mother, brother, and sister moved through the ballroom. Predictably, the seating plan Bentley had (fake) spent the last ten days on had been abandoned. And, true to Porsche’s threat, all three of them—Mercedes and Bach and Bentley herself—not being sufficiently Team Whitey—found themselves at table sixteen, nearest the restrooms.
Point taken.
“How many minutes has it been?” Mercedes asked as they sat surrounded by two D-list actresses (from RWTR season two and season three), Porsche’s high school acting coach, and an alternate Death Eater from Porsche’s Beauty Team. In the last seat was Tallulah Grunburg, who held up her Shirley Temple and winked at the exiled Royces. “To family!”
“How many?” Mercedes said again, with a slightly strangled voice. “Minutes.”
Bent looked at her watch. “You don’t want to know.” Thankfully, forks were already clinking on glasses as she spoke. The toasts were about to begin.
“Oh, thank god,” Mercedes said.
Over on the other side of the room, Porsche cleared her throat and began to read off a notecard. “Thanks so much for being here to celebrate our special day. The Kiss The Bride, Valentine! by Lippies line is a very special product to me, because it’s my very first foray into Porsche Royce Bridal, not to mention Here Comes The Lipgloss, and I wouldn’t have either today if it wasn’t for my wonderful fiancé, T. Wilson White.”
Bentley and Bach kicked each other.
“Mazel tov,” Tallulah said, holding up her Shirley Temple again.
Mercedes drained another champagne glass.
Porsche held out her hand for Whitey to join her by the mic. He kissed her fingers as he stepped to her side. She beamed and looked out at the crowd.
“This wonderful, strong, sensitive man is not just the love of my life, he’s the like of my life. And while I’ve fallen in love before, I’m not sure I’ve ever liked someone this much.”
Porsche’s former acting coach, a tiny woman with red glasses and a severe geometrical bob, leaned forward and tapped on Bentley’s arm. “Look at that. She’s doing love. Love is such a tricky one. Porsche really couldn’t do love at all when she studied with me. Now, look. She’s nailed it. Great progress. Huge.” The woman sat back in her chair.
Bent nodded, but she knew it wasn’t true.
She knew it the same way she could tell Bach knew it, sitting bolt upright in his salentine rosato heart-dotted tulle-swagged chair.
The same way her mother knew it, even over her haze of chicken regret.
Her sister was a terrible actress.
Porsche wasn’t doing love. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just telling the truth. Even if the truth was the last thing anyone could ever expect from a reality show, or a reality star.
You’ve been such an idiot, Bentley Royce. None of this is going to work out.
You aren’t going to save the show with a season six wedding and a season seven divorce.
Your sister’s gone, all the way gone.
And now you have to do something—
Across the room, Porsche was unveiling a secret project, a special Lippie that she’d designed just for her groom. “It’s called First Kiss, and I’m only going to wear it once, on our wedding day. Then I’ll retire it forever, because you only have one first kiss with your first husband….”
Awwwwww! said the room.
“Babe,” said Whitey, sounding choked up.
“And I’m so happy it’s you,” Porsche finished. Then the future Mr. and Mrs. T. Wilson White kissed tenderly as the room broke into thunderous applause.
That was it.
This had to end.
The situation was now way beyond pink.
Things had gone Code Red.
Bentley threw her watermelon afternoon napkin down on the table in disgust, though she didn’t know who she was more disgusted with, herself or her sister or the idiotic fake groom who had somehow managed to take her entire family down with him.
“I gotta go,” Bent whispered to her brother, trying to keep her head lower than her toasting sister’s sight line.
Bach looked at her like she was as crazy as she felt. “Go? Has it been forty minutes? We don’t get to go—do we?”
“Something came up, and I have to meet a friend. It’s important.” She clapped her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Keep your eye on Mercedes.” She grabbed her bag and slipped past him.
Hurrying away, Bent felt sick with regret, and not the kind you get from too much fried chicken.70 She had made a mistake. She had messed with her sister’s heart and mind and now she needed to make things right.
She needed a new plan.
One service elevator, one kitchen hallway, and one loading dock later, she was on her way.
Bentley was still wearing her salmon party tunic when she climbed out of her Uber on Santa Monica and Seventh, at the Santa Monica Library.
It had begun to rain, so she pulled off her twelve-hundred-dollar shoes (free to her; at least her feet were sample size!) and took the slick concrete stairs of the library so slowly, they might as well have been wet cement.
Robert at the Help Desk offered her a mini water bottle.71 She declined. Ivy in the Teen Section pointed out a poster for Movie Night. She kept walking. Librarian Josh waved. She ignored him.
Instead, she headed straight to the nearest empty monitor and flung herself into the chair in front of it. This wasn’t Wednesday, and it wasn’t five P.M., and she didn’t know if any of the regulars would be there, but she didn’t know how else to find them.
And she had to. She had to talk to someone.
No.
Not someone—one person.
Him.
It was only five minutes until Venice rolled his chair up next to her. “What’s going on, Sweet B? How’s it hanging? You look—ruffled.”
“Do you mean my clothes or my mood?”
“Both, kind of. Now that you mention it.” He shook his head admiringly at the dress. “Those are some killer threads, though. You’re…really…clean.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I guess I am.”
“I’ve never seen you in here on the weekend,” Venice said.
“What, do you live here?”
“I get around.” He shrugged. “So? Lay it on me.”
“Lay what on you? It’s—it’s nothing.”
Venice shot her a look, then rolled his chair closer to hers, pushing back his damp hoodie a few inches. Brown curls came springing out.
He reached for one of her hands, then the other. His fingers were as warm as she remembered, and she exhaled.
Slowly, he leaned forward, until his forehead was almost touching hers. She could smell the ocean in his hair, like always.
When he spoke, his voice was low. “Baby B, you’re wearing a party dress, you came running up the stairs in no shoes, and you don’t even have your zombie book, okay? Whatever’s going on, you didn’t come here because it was nothing. You came here looking for me. So start talking.”
She closed her eyes and let her forehead touch his. “I don’t know how.” Now she could feel his hair curling against her cheek.
“I’ve heard you talk, B.” His arms came up around her shoulders, and Josh coughed in the background. Still, Venice didn’t move. “I know you can do that.”
Bent’s heart was beating so loudly, she imagined he could hear it. She took a deep, steadying breath.
“I don’t know how to say the things that matter, Venice.”
I don’t know how to say the things that are true, because no one I know wants to hear them. And it’s been like this for so long, I can’t remember a time when I did.
His words were so quiet now, they were practically a whisper. “Try. I think you can. I think you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know you could trust me.”
I know, she thought. I don’t even know why I know that, and yet I still do. How crazy is that? Crazier than Porsche Royce falling in love with a TryCycle instructor? Who am I to talk?
Slowly, gently, Venice pulled his head back from hers, until she could see the blue-blue of his eyes. “I’m here for you, B. What did you come all this way in the rain to tell me?”
All this way.
She nodded, but the words caught in her mind.
All this way.
She pushed her chair backward, opening up the space between them. “How do you know how far I’ve come?”
“What are you talking about?”
“All this way. What way? Where did I come from?”
“I don’t know, it’s just an expression.”
“Venice. Don’t tell me to be honest with you and then lie to me.”
“It doesn’t matter. You can tell me.” Venice pulled his hood back with one hand, exasperated. “This is about the guy, right?” he said. “Your sister’s hitch? Whitehead? Whitesnake?”
“You know about him? Whitey?” Bentley’s eyes went wide. “You know about me?” She stood up, grabbing her bag.
“Bentley—” He stood up too.
“I trusted you. I thought we were friends. I thought this was real.”
He looked frustrated. “It was. It is.”
She kept her bag between them. “One real thing. Do you understand what that means to a person like me? Do you know how important this was to me? How important you were?”
“Voices,” Librarian Josh said from the reference desk.
Venice whispered. “Yes, I do.”
“But you’re a liar,” she hissed back, still stunned.
“Am I?” Venice looked frustrated. “Have you been a hundred percent honest with me?”
Bentley stared at him. She knew it was over. She knew she already should have gone down the stairs. There would be nothing to salvage here. There never was.
“Would you give me a chance to explain?” Venice whispered, tilting his head toward the reference room. “Come on.”
Bentley followed him into the room. Josh stood behind the reference desk, watching with interest as they slipped past him and locked the glass door.
Josh knocked on it. “You can’t do that.”
“Five minutes,” Venice said.
Josh gave up, pointing at his watch. Five minutes. He walked away in a huff.
Venice sat down at the small table in the center of the stacks and pulled out the chair next to him. “Time out. We have to talk.”
Bent sat down.
She stared at him in disbelief. “You know everything? You know about the show too?”
He sighed. “Yeah, okay. I should have said something.” There was a pained expression on his face now—not just embarrassed, but guilty. “Nobody here knows. Josh and the other regulars, they don’t have a clue.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“It was a newspaper kiosk, right outside the front door. There was a big headline, with your face on it, one day. It said ‘Why, Bentley, Why?’ And I thought, I have no idea who this Bentley is, but it must suck to have strangers talk like they know you. And when you walked over to the table and sat down that day, I knew right away it was you.”
“Wow,” Bentley said. “And I thought I was playing it so cool.”
“Come on, B. Even your raggiest clothes cost a hundred times more than a piece of that cake you like so much.”
She knew he was right, but it didn’t make her feel any less betrayed. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Are you kidding? You would have bolted. At least, I would have, if I were you. And I used to be like you, you know? The big house. The fast cars. The pretty people.”
She nodded. “I figured you had a story. You and your boats and your Latin and your operas.”
Venice looked surprised. Then he drew in a breath. “Yeah, well, I did. Have a story. I mean, I do. A big one.”
“And?” She looked at him expectantly. “Come on, it’s only fair. You and the rest of the world watch my whole life story on the news every day. I should get to know at least the Twitter version of yours.”
He shrugged. “The Twitter version is, my brain sucks. It fell through a wormhole, kind of. That’s how I tried to explain it to my dad, anyways. Before I left.”
“Yeah?” She was careful not to press him. For a year, he’d been as guarded about his life as she was about hers. She didn’t imagine this conversation was any easier for him than it was for her.
“Oh yeah,” Venice said. “My brain just sort of freaked out. Big-time. Started playing tricks on me.”
“What tricks?”
He looked at her. “At first everything looked all wrong, and then it felt all wrong, and then it was all wrong. By the time I came out the other side—”
She smiled. “Of the wormhole?”
He nodded. “That’s right, the wormhole. By then, I figured out that I was on my own. Because no matter where I went, that’s how I felt. I was alonenotalone.” He said it like it was one long word. “See?”
“Not really. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Venice closed his eyes, trying to piece it together. “I’d walk down the street, and it was like everyone I saw, they were all together, they were part of one big thing, the same thing, or something.”
“And you weren’t?” Bentley asked quietly.
His voice was soft now. “And I wasn’t. I couldn’t feel what they felt. The together thing.”
“Ah,” said Bent. “That thing.” Strangely enough, she knew almost exactly what he was talking about.
He opened his eyes. “I’ve never known what that feels like. And the only thing I could feel was that, the feeling of not feeling it. The feeling that I wasn’t one of anything.”
“Which didn’t help, I’m guessing.” Because it doesn’t.
“Of course not. So I just kind of gave up. I stopped fighting it. I knew I was alonenotalone because I lived on the other side of the wormhole, the wrong side for everyone else. The alonenotalone side. I accepted that. Even with my friends, even with my family. I just gave up.” He shrugged again. “Probably sounds strange.”
“Not entirely.”
He slid his hand closer to hers, until their pinkies were almost touching.
“Sweet B, that’s a bad place to be. Take it from me. You end up in a place like that and you start convincing yourself it’s better to be plain old alone. You tell yourself that at least actually being alone is real, you know? At least you’re not imagining it’s any different.”
“I guess not,” Bent said.
“But it’s not true. You can’t figure everything out all by yourself. Sometimes all you can do is all you can do. Sometimes, you gotta let people help you.”
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it.
It was still Venice’s hand—no matter how annoyed she was at him—and she still felt better holding it.
“You think so?” she asked.
He smiled at her. “Yep. Even when your sister’s marrying a punk or your brother is running a poker game. Even when you’re stuck on some crappy television show that makes you out to be someone you’re not. Even when your mom is scary as…well, scary.”
Bentley looked at him for a long moment, then squeezed his hand. “I guess I should have known you’d recognize me sooner or later. It’s your crazy memory thing. The way you see every single detail of every little thing.”
He laughed. “That. And also, because of your crazy face thing.”
“My what?”
Venice was still grinning. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I seriously don’t.”
He shook his head. “Do I really have to spell it out for you?”
“Yeah. You actually kind of do, I guess.”
“Because, Bentley. Because you have the most unforgettable face on the planet, and not just because it’s in the news. Because you’re the single most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life, inside and out. Because you’d be friends with a guy who wears the same hoodie every day for a year. And a table full of homeless dudes. And a librarian with a stick up his butt.”
“You’re delusional,” Bent said, but she found her face turning hot and red, all the same.
“I’m not. And I never was. Not even when we were pretending, all that time. I know I should have said something, but I was scared. I was being selfish. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for you to be yourself around people, and I didn’t want to ruin what we had.”
Bentley smiled. “Have,” she said. “I’m pretty sure we still have it. You didn’t ruin anything. You probably couldn’t, even if you tried.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” He ran his hand through his tangle of curls. “Here’s the thing. You can’t play their game, Sweet B. They don’t care about you. You have to find the people who do, and stick with them. They’re your team. No. Not team.” He searched for the word. “Tribe. They’re your tribe.”
Bent looked at him doubtfully. “What if I don’t have a tribe?”
“You do, Sweet B. You have a whole library full of them. Just like you have me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, B, I have you.”
Venice reached into the pocket of his ragged hoodie and pulled out a crisp white envelope. “Don’t open it now. It’s for later. Something you might find interesting, that’s all. If you need it.”
“What? Why?”
“You ask too many questions, you know that?”
His eyes were bright and blue, she noticed. The light almost seemed to come out of them, even in the fluorescent-lit glass cube of the reference room.
“Fine.” Bent smiled and reached for the envelope—and he caught her by the hand again.
“Not so fast, B.” He shook his head.
“What is it, Venice?”
“You gotta do one thing for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Start talking.”
“Venice—”
“You gotta talk to someone. A person can’t survive on their own for that long. Not even when they’re alonenotalone. Not even when they’re stuck on our side of the wormhole.”
She locked her fingers in his. “I can’t. Everything’s wrong. My brother—”
“The card shark.” He nodded.
She sighed. “The card shark is out of control.”
“That’s not good,” Venice said.
“And my mother is either pretending to be a mother for the first time in her life or having actual feelings—I don’t know which of those things is scarier.”
He winced. “I’d say they’re both terrifying.”
“Then my sister is in love with her fake fiancé.”
“Okay, that sucks.”
She nodded. “I don’t know how to fix any of it, and I don’t even know how to talk about it.” It was true. Not Bach, not her family, not even Dr. A. knew the kinds of things she was keeping to herself now.
Venice smoothed back a strand of her rainbow-tipped hair. “But this isn’t the zombie apocalypse. Like I said, you can trust me, B. You want to know how you can tell?”
“How, Venice?”
“Because you already do.”
And as Bent looked at him, the guy in the ratty hoodie, the one she’d only ever hung out with at the computer table in the public library with their homeless crew, she knew he was right.
She could tell him anything. Probably everything.
And so she did.