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Chapter 4

Tenley

I don’t move. Everything in me grows icy, the sweat that was accumulating between my breasts under my fancy blouse and at the nape of my neck now feels like droplets of ice water.

“What? Who? Ms. Garrison?”

“Yeah. Tenley is married to Nash Westwood,” Fisher explains and I finally find the ability to move, spinning back to face them.

“Fisher!” I hiss out his name. He doesn’t even look at me.

“Avery Westwood might have been a saint but the twins aren’t. We interviewed Crew Westwood’s ex-wife and got some juicy tidbits from her too.”

"Fisher!" I don't hiss this time, I yell—so loud Patrice jumps a little in her Louboutin's. Finally, Fisher looks at me, his big brown eyes blank. Like he has no idea what the hell he's just done. "We signed an NDA about that footage and Crew Westwood did not sign off on any of it so whatever that ex said is hearsay and could get us sued."

“Leave the law stuff up to our team,” Patrice advises. She looks at me with the first spark of interest I’ve seen in her. “Are you really secretly married to Nash Westwood?”

“Maybe.” I feel sick giving her that much information. “It’s a personal matter. It’s being dissolved as we speak.”

She walks closer to me and smiles, but there is nothing friendly about it. She reminds me of a viper suddenly. “I’ll put your show on the air in September, of this year. Guaranteed. If you agree to include your own marriage and start filming during the playoffs, not in the summer.”

“The playoffs? These playoffs? But that starts this week.”

“I’ll have a crew ready.”

I look at Fisher who looks like he just won the Super Bowl. By the time I’m done with him, after this meeting, I’m going to make sure he feels like his cat just died. Turning back to Patrice, I explain, “I don’t want to be on camera. I want to be behind it. I’m the producer and the director. I went to school for that—not to be a WAG. Hell, I could have done that right out of high school.”

"Well sometimes in this business, Tenley, you have to do the things you don't want to get the things you do want," she says like L.A.'s version of a botoxed Buddha. The excited glow in her eyes dims a little. "It's not like he's hard on the eyes. Both those twins are hotter than a wildfire."

Gross analogy.

“So, are you up for it? Or do I toss you and your documentary back onto the shelf?”

I swallow but there is no saliva left in my mouth. "I need forty-eight hours. I'm not the only one in this… marriage." Oh God, I hate that word. "And I would have to get Nash's consent, obviously."

“Obviously,” she agrees. “You have twenty-four hours. Have a good day.”

She walks over to her desk and sits down. I turn to the door and march myself out. I can hear Fisher striding along behind me. I pick up the pace so he doesn’t catch up. The doors are closing on the elevator before he reaches it but he manages to slip inside. We’re the only two in it so as soon as the doors close and it starts to chug downward, I turn to face him, step into his broad chest, and demand, “Why the fuck would you do that?”

“It got us picked up, didn’t it?” Fisher says. “Isn’t that your ultimate goal? Don’t you want this that badly?”

“Badly enough to stay married to Nash Westwood? No!” I bark and run my hands through my hair. I lean against the back wall of the elevator and close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose because I might cry. From stress. That hasn’t happened since… high school. I hate that it’s happening again. “Fisher, do you understand that what we did was a joke? A colossally bad, immature, and purely stupid joke. My mom and dad are going to be fucking furious and Nash’s dad… oh fuck, he might actually have a stroke. For real. We can’t tell them about this, let alone the whole fucking world.”

Fisher lets me stew in my feelings the rest of the ride down. When the elevator doors open and we’re back in the lobby, so gleaming white and stark, I immediately put my sunglasses on. We walk side-by-side to the two sets of front doors. He tries to open one for me so I walk directly over to the other one and open it myself.

“Look, you aren’t the only one that has invested time and energy into this project, even though you clearly think you are,” Fisher says once we’re on the path that skirts the building.

I'm walking toward the car—his because we stupidly carpooled—when I come to a screeching halt at his words. "Excuse me? This is my idea. My baby. Yes, you worked on it, as part of your school project, and I worked on your short film too. That's how things work. I appreciate you staying involved but I'm the one who fronted all the cash to get this far, not you."

“You have rich parents.”

“Fuck you.” I stomp toward the exit gate of the compound that makes up the studio ‘lot’. Really it’s just three skyscrapers in Burbank that take up a city block.

“Oh come on. This is the result we both wanted.”

“If I agree to stay married to Nash, which I haven’t. Because that would be pure insanity,” I tell him, still marching toward the gate.

"You don't do this, and the project is dead. Done," Fisher states the obvious, but I still curl my fists at it. I want to punch him more than I've wanted to punch someone in a very long time. "And you know she won't look at a single other project you pitch. She'll blackball you."

"Fuck you!" I call out and the security guard at the front gate glances over. I don't care. I march right past him as I pull out my phone and call for an Uber.

How is this happening? How did I get so close to my dream coming true and now it’s about to get squashed like an ant on a picnic blanket? And worse still, how does the whole damn thing—all my blood, sweat, and tears—now hinge on whether I stay in this unholy union with Nash Westwood?