Starstruck (21 page)

Huh?
she thought.
“Tries” to keep fit?
Carmen had struggled with various things in her life—algebra, her mother’s fame, a tendency toward oiliness in her T-zone—but fitness had never been one of them. Where were these stories coming from?

“Reading up on yourself again?” said a voice, and Carmen, startled, looked up to see Luke grinning at her. “Are you curious about what you’ve been up to lately? Because, you know, you could just ask me.” He sat down next to her and picked up a towel to dry his wet hair. “The indoor pool is too hot, by the way,” he said. “It’s like a giant bathtub.”

Carmen shut the magazine and smiled at him. Even after a whole day together, she was still happy to see him. “Someone’s been talking to the press about me,” she said.

“So what else is new?” Luke asked. “I mean, you’re a public figure. They take pictures of you feeding your parking meter. Saw one of those the other day, in fact.”

Carmen crinkled her nose. “I still got a ticket, though.” She picked up another tabloid and tossed it at him. “I mean, look. There are all these stories that are wrong … or sort of mean.”

But Luke didn’t open the magazine. “Don’t pay any attention to this stuff. It’s not worth your time. This is what these magazines do. You know better than anyone.”

“Easy for you to say,” Carmen answered. “No one’s calling you overweight or spoiled or undeserving of your success.”

At that moment, as if he had some sort of conversational ESP, Drew texted Carmen back. I’M NOT THE ONE WHO’S FALLEN OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH, MISS TABLOID QUEEN!

If I’d fallen off the earth, you wouldn’t see me all over the tabloids, dope
, she thought, setting the phone on top of
Gossip
. Carmen would have liked to text him that retort, but suddenly it felt like too much effort. She was so tired!

“You’ve worked hard for everything you’ve gotten, and you deserve it all,” Luke said. “Let the haters hate.”

Carmen sighed. “I just want to know who the haters are.”

“Maybe it’s me,” Luke said. “Maybe I’m secretly trying to sabotage you because you’re a better actor than I am.”

Carmen laughed. “Yeah, that makes sense. Seriously, though—I want to know who’s doing it. At first I thought it was just tabloids being tabloids, but some of these ‘sources’ know personal details that no one else could know.” Her first thought was Madison Parker. After all, the girl had a history of interpersonal sabotage. (Poor Jane Roberts! She was probably still scarred from Madison’s betrayal....) But she quickly realized that in this case, Madison was innocent. “It had to be someone who was with me at the party in the Hills—”

“The one you broke up with me from,” Luke interrupted, poking her with his foot. “Heartbreaker.”

Carmen was too absorbed in her thoughts to laugh. “Yes, that one. Assuming this is all the same “source,” the person had to be there, because that’s where the hideous pictures came from. And he or she also heard me complaining about Colum McEntire … which I don’t do to that many people. I hope.” She bit her lip—had she been less careful in her conversations than she’d thought?

“So who could it be?”

“Well, it’s either Kate or Fawn or Gaby … or Laurel,” Carmen said, ticking off the possibilities. Then she looked over at the lobby. “Or Lily.”

“Kate would never do something like that,” Luke said.

Carmen shot him a look. He was pretty quick on Kate’s defense, wasn’t he?

“You know what you should do?” Luke went on. “Plant fake information with each of them. Then you wait to see what comes out in the press.”

“Um—”

“Hang on, run with me here. You confide in Lily that you’re going to get lipo and tell everyone you’re going on a vacation somewhere. Then tell Fawn you’re going to start exploring Scientology. Tell Gaby … well, she probably won’t remember whatever you tell her. I don’t think you have to worry about Gaby being the secret source. And tell Laurel that I was your one true love.” He smiled winningly. “Because I am so very desirable.” He flexed a bicep for comic emphasis.

Carmen laughed. “Sure, and I can tell Kate that I’m going to sing backup for Taylor Swift. I do sort of know Taylor, you know.”

“You don’t need to test Kate. She would never do something like that,” Luke said again.

Carmen thought about this. Luke was probably right. For one thing, Kate hardly seemed like the lies-and-deception type. And for another, it wasn’t as if Carmen had done a lot of confiding in her lately, so how would she know about the Colum business? So, great: She could rule out Kate Hayes. But why did Luke have to look so moony whenever he said her name?

If Carmen thought Luke looked moony then, though, it was nothing compared to the way he looked when the next text came in. Drew had sent a picture of Kate, smiling and holding up her guitar over her head in triumph. Behind her was a blur of teenage faces. Fans. THE FAMOUS KATE HAYES SAYS HI, he’d written. COME BACK AND SEE US SOMETIME.

Luke, reading this, had flushed—then gazed off into gathering dusk.

“You’ve got a Roman expression on your face,” Carmen said, nudging him. “All wistful and yearning.”

Luke took a deep breath and smiled. “Well,” he said. But then he was quiet again.

Carmen flopped back against the deck chair and closed her eyes. She felt a strange and unpleasant twinge of jealousy. Was Drew into Kate now? Is that why she hadn’t heard much from him lately? Suddenly it felt like all the guys she knew had a crush on Kate. And she was so not into that. She was used to them all having crushes on her—and she liked it that way.

A cool October wind blew as Madison and Ryan strolled down the Santa Monica beach, Samson trotting along behind them. There were still a few brave sunbathers dotting the sand, but Madison shivered and pulled her cashmere cardigan closer around her shoulders. Samson, too, wore a cashmere sweater, with blue-and-white stripes, from Coach’s canine line. It had been a splurge, but it was worth it: He looked … well, almost cute. (Maybe if he’d been wearing the sweater when Gaby saw him for the first time, she wouldn’t have screamed, “Rat! Rat!” and gone running from the room.)

“You should see your face,” Ryan was saying. “It’s like you’d rather be tortured.”

“Going to the Santa Monica Pier
is
being tortured,” Madison said. “I had to go there once for the show and I vowed never to do it again.” She shuddered, remembering the smell of fried food, the white glow of tourists’ new walking shoes, and dirty kids running around screaming. “I can’t believe you actually like going there.”

“I used to go when I was a kid,” Ryan said, clearly unembarrassed by his suggestion that they go ride the Ferris wheel at the pier. “I guess it’s nostalgic for me. Also they sell churros.”

“Yeah, I don’t get that whole nostalgia thing. Maybe you have to have a happy childhood for that.”

Ryan laughed sympathetically. They’d been hanging out a lot lately—ever since their fight had cleared the air between them—and by now he’d heard plenty of her horror stories from back home. “Yeah, or maybe just weird taste. I mean, I still think it’d be cool to work at the Rusty’s at the end of the pier.”

“I’m sure five minutes of actually doing it would change your mind,” Madison said. “Trust me. I’ve been a server before.”

As they drew near the pier, Madison reflected on the fact that she could be coaxed into that tourist trap—if it were filmed for PopTV, and if Ryan were with her. It’d be a nice counterpoint to the episode in which Charlie had tried (and failed) to win her a stuffed animal at the air-gun booth. But Ryan had made it clear that he had no interest in being on TV.

She didn’t understand it. What did he have to lose? Unlike Luke, he had no “A-list actor” image he was trying to cultivate. Also unlike Luke, he had a cause he could promote. If he mentioned Lost Paws on an episode of
The Fame Game
, donations would come pouring in; Madison was sure of it.

She’d taken to telling him about her shoots, as if to prove how fun they could be. There was the shopping excursion she’d had with Kate, and the redecorating scene she’d filmed with Gaby at their apartment … Of course, Madison left certain details out. For instance, that Kate had been snooty at Kitson, and that Madison had been forced to lock Samson in her bathroom because Trevor refused to allow the dog on camera. (Madison would have liked to fight Trevor on the point, but she didn’t have much leverage these days. She had to play nice.)

“Are you sure you don’t want a churro or something?” Ryan asked, looking longingly at the amusement park.

Madison elbowed him. “Tell me you know me better than that,” she said.

Ryan laughed. “All right, I guess I do. Sorry.”

She smiled back at him. He was so easy to hang out with, and she never would have guessed it when they first met. He’d picked on her then; he’d worked her like a rented mule. (Of course, he still made her work, but now the disgusting jobs were distributed more fairly among the Lost Paws employees and volunteers.)

She found herself thinking about him a lot when she wasn’t with him. She wondered what he was doing and who he was with, and whether or not he might be thinking about her, too.

They weren’t dating, because they weren’t making out. But they spent so much time together—surely they were more than just work friends?

Or maybe they weren’t. Madison wasn’t very experienced when it came to being friends with guys. This was new territory. She’d always seen men as … well, as a means to an end. A rich boyfriend meant fancy gifts or a nice apartment to stay in. An actor meant more publicity, more pictures of her in the tabloids. A chef meant delectable meals and a trip to Paris or something.

But what did she want from Ryan? He certainly wasn’t the kind of guy she ought to be interested in. He wasn’t a director or a producer or a CEO or a TV personality; he was her boss from her court-ordered community service! He was so not anyone who could help her get to the next level of her career. He wouldn’t even film.

But already he’d introduced her to parts of L.A. she’d never bothered to go to: the farmer’s market in Venice, the rose garden in the Palisades, LACMA. (Madison never thought she would willingly enter a museum, but she had actually enjoyed it.) It was as if the two of them had lived in different cities, as opposed to different neighborhoods. Hanging out with Ryan, away from the tourists on Melrose or photographers on Robertson, Madison felt herself relaxing. One afternoon she ate an ice-cream cone. (A tiny one, but still.) Another time she went into the Gap.

“So do you want to grab dinner?” he asked.

Madison laughed and gave him a little shove. (She was always finding reasons to touch him!) “It’s barely six p.m. Who are you, my grandpa?”

“There’s that seafood place—I forget what it’s called. But they make really good ceviche.”

Madison bent down and picked up Samson. He could only walk so far before he got tired and even sadder looking. “Will they let Sam sit outside with us?”

This wasn’t what she used to ask about when it came to restaurants—she used to only care if she and her date could get the best (i.e., the most visible) table. And the comped champagne. And the owner to come out and thank her for her patronage, etc.

Ryan reached over and scratched Samson’s ears. The dog closed his eyes in pleasure. “Sure they will,” he said. “Who could resist a face like this?”

Madison smiled. It really was strange. The more time she spent with Ryan, the less she thought about the things he could or couldn’t do for her. What did she want from Ryan Tucker?

Maybe she just wanted him.

Kate and the rest of the
Fame Game
cast sat in the green room, along with a handful of presenters for the PopTV Movie Awards, touching up their makeup and waiting for their moment in front of the cameras and the spotlights. The
Fame Game
girls were featured guests of the ceremony, invited to plug their show and present the teaser for
The End of Love
. Of course, they were already being filmed by the PopTV cameras as they loitered backstage, and Gaby was playing around with her new mini digital recorder, too. “Hey, guys, say something funny!” she kept crying, but everyone was pretty much ignoring her. Even Madison, who hadn’t been on-camera with them much lately and should have been trying to monopolize every inch of film, was sitting quietly in the corner, texting on her phone.

It was going to be the day of a thousand cameras, Kate thought, sidestepping a thick mike cord lying on the ground. She’d been eating handfuls of M&Ms from the snack table in her nervousness, but probably she should just have a Xanie. She’d grown fond of those little blue pills; they made so many things so much easier. Like, for instance, the fact that Ethan, her ex, had started emailing her ten times a day. What did he want from her? She was certainly never going back to Ohio.

And just the other night, completely out of the blue, Luke had called. Maybe, if she’d been thinking more clearly, she wouldn’t have answered. But she saw his number on the screen and said, “Hello?” in a voice that she knew must have sounded almost breathless. As if she’d been waiting for his call. For weeks.

But she hadn’t! She was doing all sorts of things—she’d hardly been thinking about him at all!