Indiscreet by Nicole French
Prologue
Will
The flame flies high, translucent in the bright sun. I let it run until the metal burns my fingertips, and finally drop the lighter in my lap so I can suck the sore spots away. I wait a few minutes until it cools enough to touch, then start the whole process again.
I swear to God, I could rip these walls down. Throw the furniture through these fucking fish-bowl windows. Maybe take a match to the angora carpet and watch the whole golden palace burn. I’ve been sitting in this fancy rattrap for two weeks, ever since Benny practically airlifted me out of Newman Lake right as the entire neighborhood was overrun by photographers looking for their next big payday. I know how it works with the paps. Celebrity photography is a bidding war. Twenty-five dollars for the shot everyone else has…but a shot of me? After four years where everyone thought I was dead? That could earn one of those bastards tens of thousands, maybe more.
So, yeah, after Maggie slammed the door in my face, I had no choice but to cut and run. It was either that or bring the whole fucking circus down on her. And I won’t do that. Ever.
“Yo, F. Do you think you could limit the pyromania to the rooftop? I’d like to avoid burning down my apartment.”
I extinguish the flame, set the lighter back in the box of incense on the coffee table, then turn around to face Benny, my agent and best friend, who’s looking at me like I need a straitjacket. Well…he does know me better than almost anyone else.
“Sorry,” I grumble, leaning forward onto my knees. “I’m in a mood.”
“Yeah, yeah. What else is new?”
I snort, but don’t answer. Benny doesn’t need it. He’s a schmuck, but the best kind of schmuck—jaded and opportunistic, but fiercely loyal to a select few. Benny grew up in one of the shittiest parts of New York, then proceeded to make himself into one of the most in-demand agents in the business. He’s a shark in negotiations and a charmer everywhere else—ask most women in Manhattan, and half in LA too.
We owe each other everything. I began his career by making him my agent when he was starting out, and he helped me put mine behind me. Four years ago, when I left the business for good, Benny was the only one who knew what really happened and where I’d gone. We planned it together—the crash, the escape, all of it. He managed my accounts, sent out the press releases, and funneled every inquiry in the right direction so that although no one officially declared me dead, it looked that way to the point people believed it anyway. Sure, I paid him decent coin to do it, but people don’t keep secrets like that without loyalty.
And I’ll never, ever forget it.
Benny drops a stack of thick manila envelopes on the glass coffee table in front of me. They land with a loud thud.
I look up. “What are these?”
“What do you think?”
I pick one up. “Scripts, huh? Fucking vultures don’t waste time, do they?”
Benny shrugs while he flips through his phone. “You’re the hot news. I know you say you want to stay out, man, but there’s some top-shelf material in there. Everyone’s drooling. Van Sant. Soderberg. Shit, I think even Ava sent something over.”
He straightens his cuffs, checking his suit, pocket square, cuff links and hair in one of the many mirrors lining the walls of the living room. Benny says they make the apartment look twice its size, not that it needs it. My friend has done very well for himself since I’ve been gone.
“Plus,” he added with a smirk, “the ladies love looking at themselves while I—”
I grab the lighter and flip it open, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence.
“Yo!” he exclaims, snatching it out of my hand. “I said cool the flames, man!”
I shrug. “Sorry.”
“There’s more, you know.” Benny goes back to smoothing his hair. “You can take your pick of Late Night, and the Today Show’s been blowing up my phone. SNL wants you to host, and every single ladies’ talk show is begging to have you on. Who’s it gonna be, papi? Who gets the first interview?”
I sink into the couch and stare at the stack of scripts. They might as well be shackles, the way their existence weighs on me. Part of me wants to flip through them, see what kind of things are coming my way. I waited most of my career for this kind of demand, after spending so many years as a child actor, then working to break my way into more legitimate roles. Getting requests from some of the most important directors in the world, the ones who define artistic merit rather than abide by it—it’s every actor’s dream come true. I don’t care how famous you are; it feels good to be wanted by the greats.
But then there’s the other side of it. Shooting a movie takes three or four weeks, maybe a few months if it’s a long shoot. And you have to promote. Interviews. Premieres. Photo shoots. Pap strolls. You’re expected—no, required—to put every aspect of your life on display for a public that’s more unforgiving than anyone dreams. And when you do that, there are no boundaries. There’s no privacy. Everything—your trash, your home, your family, your friends—is fair game.
Life becomes a fishbowl. And you’re trapped. And sometimes people get hurt.
I look around the mirrors and the picture windows around us. On the forty-eighth floor of Benny’s Midtown high-rise, we’re suspended well above the purview of the cameras. But I can’t help flinching every time I see a news helicopter circling the New York skyline. Even up here, I feel like I’m on display. The only thing I want to do is run for cover.
Into the woods. Into my house. Camp under the safe canopy of pine trees, well off the road, where no one can find me. If I close my eyes long enough, I can smell the lake: the clean, fresh waters, the sharp scent of pine sap. I can hear the gurgle of water playing around the edge of that flat rock where my Lily—I can’t think of Maggie Sharp as anything else—gave herself up to me, right there, in front of God and nature and everyone else.
I could be on a plane tomorrow, even if I had to take a full security detail with me. I could build the world’s biggest fence around the entire property to keep out the fucking jackals and their telephoto lenses.
But I’m not going back without her. Not the woman who’s responsible for every fucking beat of my heart. Without her, I’m dead. It’s as simple as that.
“No interviews,” I say, knowing that Benny and I are about to have the same argument we’ve been having since I holed up in his place. He wants me to embrace the chaos. I’m convinced it’ll go away if I wait long enough.
Benny flops down on the couch, for once giving no thought to whether it’s going to crease his custom Armani suit. “Will, come on. You can’t expect them to take that as an answer.”
“They’ll let it go,” I reply stubbornly. “As soon as we find out where she is, we’ll be gone too.”
“F, you know they’ll follow. The media is like fuckin’ cats, my friend. Act like they don’t exist, they’ll be rubbing their ass and getting cat hair all over your tailored pants. Throw ’em a mouse, they’ll leave you alone.”
“And who’s the mouse? Maggie?”
Benny looks at me like I’m crazy, and honest to God, maybe I am. He didn’t suggest it, but the thought of giving her up that way makes me feel violent. Mine. I said it to her, but the word might as well be written across my forehead, not hers.
He has no idea how deep this runs. Hell, she has no idea how deep. She doesn’t know the way her voice vibrates in the fucking marrow of my bones. I belong to that girl, body and soul.
Because I never had the chance to tell her. Instead of laying myself bare, the way she did for me, every time she let me inside her in a million tiny ways, I kept it all hidden, thinking it would be better to protect her from the disaster of my life. And now that loss is eating me up inside. I’m a ruined man without her. So much more than I ever was before.
I’ve done some stupid things. I’ve hurt plenty of people. But this was the worst. This will always be the worst.
“That bad, huh?”
Benny hasn’t lost his touch, that’s for sure. It’s been four years since we’ve seen each other, but he can still read my face like a book, even if it is covered with two weeks of beard. Part of me wants to keep shaving it off. The jig is up, as they say, and when I took it off for Maggie, I was glad not to have half my face covered in hair. That shit itches. It really does.
I shrug. “I miss her.”
There’s no point in hiding it. She’s all I think about. Every day I call her mom’s house, only to be told again and again that she hasn’t returned. Lily is still here, somewhere in this shithole called New York City, maybe a matter of blocks from where I’m sitting right now. And I can’t fucking find her.
“Yo, yo! Good news, man.”
I look up. “If you tell me again that Ellen wants me to dance on her show, I swear to God, Benny, I will punch you in the face and ruin those pretty veneers of yours.”
Benny snorts. He’s never been scared of my threats, and he’s not about to start. And why would he? He’s seen a lot worse than a pissed-off actor from Connecticut.
“Motherfucker, you been gone for too long. These are all natural. Did they not have good dental care in the sticks either?”
“Just tell me your news, asshole.”
Benny grins, then turns his phone to me.
“211 Christopher Street,” I read off the screen. “What’s that?”
“The place I know you’re dying to be.”
It takes me another half second to register what the fuck he’s talking about. When I do, I can’t move fast enough.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, my friend. Where do you think you’re going?” Benny lays a hand on my chest when I spring up from the couch, readying to run to the elevator.
I jerk to a stop, feeling like a balloon that’s been popped. Shit. I forgot. One thought of being with her again, and every piece of common sense gets knocked out of my brain. What do I think I’m going to do? Take a fucking stroll down the middle of Fifth Avenue? Get mobbed within fifteen minutes; have my clothes literally torn off my back within twenty? I’m sure Maggie would love having a psychotic group of teenage girls and photographers arriving at her front door along with the asshole who broke her heart.
“Man, stop the pity party. It’ll take five minutes to make sure Garrett and everyone are in place, all right? A little shell game, remember?”
I press my lips together. I tell myself it won’t be this bad forever. I don’t even look the same as I did four years ago, when I was strung out half the time and about forty pounds lighter. Even the biggest names in the world can lose their draw if they work hard enough at it. There are other actors who have managed to avoid the spotlight. Damon. Fraser. Brosnan. It can be done.
“Yeah, man, but they ain’t you.”
It takes me a second to realize I said all of that out loud. I frown. “What are you talking about? Pierce Brosnan played James Bond. For a while, it didn’t get bigger than him.”
“He didn’t have the fan base you have,” Benny points out. “And that was before social media. If the world thought they had lost Brosnan, even right after Golden Eye, they would have been sad, sure. There would have been some tears. But your fans have loved you since you was, what, six? You have a more devout following than DiCaprio in his prime. They’ve been mourning you for four years. They ain’t leaving you anytime soon, my friend.”
I rub my face, pressing hard enough that my fingers catch on the skin, pulling a little. It hurts. I don’t care.
I drop my hands and stare across the room at the face I haven’t looked at—really looked at—in years. “Classically chiseled,” they’d say. Whatever the fuck that means. Do I look like a statue?
I tap my chin, briefly wondering what it would be like to take it all off. This stupid fucking face. It wouldn’t take much. A bad nose job. Shave my chin, or maybe some filler. I scowl. I hate that I even know this shit, know that half the people in this industry—men and women—have the top five plastic surgeons in the world on speed dial. People have no idea how fake the faces they see on the screen really are. But I could do it. I could disappear again…this time for real.
“Stop it,” Benny interrupts as he fixes his tie. He always was a bit vain, but I swear he’s gotten worse in the last four years.
I drop my hands and look up. “Stop what?”
“I know what you were thinking,” he says. “You looked like you were measuring your face. And ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna let you go under the knife just to avoid some damn photographers. No way.”
I fall back, annoyed that he can read me so easily. I’m not used to it anymore. “Yeah, well. A little shift here and there might be worth losing these assholes.”
“And your girl, too?” Benny looks at me knowingly as he fixes his watch. “It wasn’t some Freddy Krueger-looking face she fell in love with, F. It was that one, just like everyone else. Would she still love you if it wasn’t there?” He finally finishes brushing himself down, and at that moment, his phone buzzes. “Especially if you could see her right now?”
In a second, I’m on my feet, all thoughts of reconstructive surgery vanished. “Everything’s ready?”
Benny smiles, showing off his pearly whites. All real, my ass. “Ready and willing. Let’s go get your girl.”
