My phone rang in my pocket, and I answered immediately.
“Mason, finally! Thank fu—dge!” I amended when Blue Hair gave me a death glare over her shoulder. I widened my eyes in the universal gesture for “Back off, sis,” and when she harrumphed and faced forward again, I continued. “I need you to come get me. As in, posthaste.”
“Uh. Tommy? Mi angel, it’s Aron. From the bar. And, uh, from Dive the other night, too. Remember?”
I huffed. Did I remember? Did George Washington remember Benedict Arnold? Did Jesus remember Judas Iscariot? Did Britney remember whoever the heck had provided her with those hair clippers?
It wasn’t likely I’d forget the instrument of my downfall, especially when it came packaged as a hot bodybuilder I’d flirted with at a bar last weekend who’d invited me to the exclusive backroom VIP party Wednesday night at Dive.
“Come on, Tommy,” Aron had said, flexing all his muscly muscles and smiling with every one of his professionally whitened teeth, which had been such a welcome change from his blathering about his chances in the upcoming Muscle Man of Manhattan competition that I’d agreed without thinking and hadn’t even bothered correcting him when he’d used the wrong name.
I hadn’t understood that he’d meant we’d attempt to party with an actual rock star, and had therefore not comprehended the possibility that I could be caught on camera with said rock star in what appeared to be a very compromising position.
This would be the last time I was a fool for a muscle-bound guy with a perfectly sculpted ass, I vowed to myself. The very, very last time. I’d officially hit rock bottom.
“I am not your angel, and of course I remember you, you dick—ens,” I corrected, in deference to the children. I added in a furious, accusatory whisper, “You staged that whole scene and sold me out for forty pieces of silver.”
“No way, man, it was twenty-five thousand dollars.” Aron’s voice was both sincere and sincerely awestruck, and the confirmation infuriated me. “And I didn’t sell you out… exactly.”
“No? What do you call pushing me to the ground at the exact moment a photographer snapped the picture?” I whisper-hissed.
I wasn’t sure which was more mortifying: that I’d been so busy plotting my escape from another deadly boring night at a club with young try-hards, I hadn’t seen the move coming, or that I’d been so incensed by Aron’s braying laughter and his insistence that it was a “harmless prank” to notice a photographer was even there until Jeanette showed me the picture earlier.
I hadn’t lived a blameless life by any means, but I had one rule that was inviolable: I kept my shit contained. No gossip, and sure as fuck no scandals.
Thanks to Aron, I’d broken that rule, and now everything I’d spent the last ten years working for was in jeopardy…
And I was almost positive that wasn’t me being quirkily dramatic.
“It’s me making lemons outta lemonade,” Aron insisted. “Look, Tommy, the story’s gonna come out one way or another, it’s only a matter of time. That singer dude wasn’t acting like any virgin I’ve ever met, so we can’t be the only ones he’s fooled around with.”
“We?” I demanded. “Nuh-uh-uh. We were not involved in any fooling, Aron. You were the one kissing him. And then you stood up and pushed me so I was the one who got caught in the picture.”
A picture which not only showcased the aforementioned shoulder tattoo, but also Jayd’s hands reaching out to embrace me and his chart-topping face, complete with beard burn and kiss-swollen lips, contorted in what appeared to be incredible pleasure—and, let me just say for the record, totally would have been incredible pleasure, had I actually been doing what it looked like I was doing, because blow jobs, especially with me, were fucking life-changing.
Only Jayd, Aron, the photographer, and I knew poor Jayd had actually been yelling and trying to grab me because I’d tried to break my fall by bracing a hand on his nuts.
“What’s done is done,” Aron the punk-ass philosopher reasoned. “You can’t change it now, so you might as well tell your side of things on the record. Control the narrative, Tommy. Don’t be the victim in your own story. I read that the other day.”
“Yeah? Truly inspirational,” I muttered. “Thanks oodles.”
“Don’t thank me, thank the advice lady. What’s her name? Aunt Something.”
Don’t say it, Aron.
“Aunt Aggie?”
Don’t you do it, boo.
“Aunt Agatha!” he said triumphantly.
“You mean Hagatha,” I corrected flatly.
“You sure?”
“Very.”
“Huh. Well, that bitch is fierce, whatever her name is, and she knows what the fuck she’s talking about, so you should listen to her.”
I rolled my eyes. Little did Aron or the rest of America know, America’s favorite advice columnist, Aunt Hagatha, was a total fraud who didn’t know shit about shit, and she was only able to comment on other people’s poor choices because she’d made one or two of her own.
Life advice for you, precious: should you find yourself in a competitive job market looking to put your state school communications degree to use, and you accept a part-time gig answering advice letters at minimum wage for a silly tabloid, and your boss, Jeanette, is so blown away by the public response to the silly, snarky, Twizzler-loving, romance-reading, middle-aged agony aunt you created that she offers you a full-time job with benefits and a salary so extremely cushy you’ll be able to afford the mortgage on an Upper West Side one-bed with a gorgeous view of the park, it’s important to ask questions.
For example, “Will my identity be more closely guarded than most CIA operatives’?”
And, “How will I show my judgy, homophobic parents back in Ohio that I’ve made it if I can’t tell them about my column?” along with the slightly more positive but no less crucial, “Wait, what will I tell my best friend I do for a living?”
Then I’d suggest you follow it up with a humdinger like, “How can HiWire Entertainment News be both entertainment and news, anyway?” Because that might be illuminating.
Alas, I hadn’t had an Aunt Hagatha to consult about becoming Aunt Hagatha, so after agreeing to take the job Jeanette offered at America’s most-read tabloid, HiWire News, I’d signed contracts.
Reams of them.
Entire ironclad forests of them.
Which was part of the reason my fleeing from Manhattan had been so perilous.
I didn’t only care about the inconvenience and embarrassment of being found by the paparazzi (though no one dreams of being famous for a blow job), and I wasn’t just trying to help Jayd by refusing to confirm his identity and his presence at the club (though there were lines I wouldn’t cross, and outing someone who deserved the right to tell his family, friends, and fans whatever he wanted to tell them, whenever he wanted to tell them, even if he never wanted to tell them, was one).
No, my fear of being found out could best be summed up in just three tiny letters: N. D. A. As in, the one I’d signed that showed I’d be responsible for damages—likely equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small nation—should my identity as Aunt Hagatha be divulged, even if it was an accident.