He sneers. "You think this makes you powerful? You don't know what power is in this city. You'll lose eventually."
"I'll make the call right now," I say, pulling out my phone.
"Fine," he says. "You can keep your show. It's going to fail anyway. It's not good enough."
I turn to Michael, who's eyes are wide. "You can handle the legal side of it?"
He nods. "I can."
"Good, let's go." I walk toward the door, and I hear Clay snicker. I turn, "And if for some reason you think that you can still call and put this in the papers before all the legal stuff is worked out, I've been recording all of this. I'll happily send out copies to whoever wants to listen to you claiming that a woman you mentored owes you sex because she dared to want to learn from someone who's considered the best in their field."
Clay slumps against the wall, and finally, I think I can relax. There's no options for him. No matter what he does, it's going to end badly for him. And even high out of his mind, he knows that. I blow out a sigh of relief as we close the door behinds me.
"Holy shit, Peter," Michael says. "You couldn't have given me a heads up about what I was walking into?"
"There wasn't time. I'm sorry."
"Jesus." He shakes his head. "I can't believe this. And believe me, we're going to talk about the fact that you're sleeping with her."
I sigh. "No, Michael, we're not."
He raises his eyebrows. "I told you that this isn't a good look. That you can't do this."
"We're not going to talk about it because this isn't what you think it is. You don't know the whole story. You don't need the complete history, but you can know enough." I give him the short version of our history, and the fact that this isn't either of us sleeping with the other one because we're lusting after one another or we don't have enough will power.
Michael scrubs a hand across his face. "This is a lot of fucking information."
"I know."
"You could have told me more than that you just to know each other. I'm not a complete dick. If you'd told me that she was the love of your life, I wouldn't have been such an asshole about you not going after her. So you guys are together?"
I nod. "Yeah. We thought that it might be good to wait until after the show has some good critical acclaim, and then come out as a couple together. Cute interview, story about our past and how we reconnected. We wanted to make sure it didn't get broken by the tabloids. Or like this."
"Yeah," Michael says, "I'll take care of that fucker. He won't be able to touch you when I'm done with him."
"That's what I was hoping to hear," I say, "but there's one more thing we need to talk about."
He's already on his phone, typing away, but I cover it with my hand, and he looks up at me. "Fantasia."
"What about it?"
"You don't remember?"
He shakes his head. "I don't. I remember getting there, and I remember getting home. I don't even know what was in the drinks that they served me that would have gotten me that wasted. Please tell me I didn't do something monumentally stupid."
I sigh. "You did, but it was just in front of Amber and me." I tell him.
"Ah, Jesus," he says. "I'm sorry. I'll make sure that I apologize to Amber. This is why I don't drink normally. I get fucked up and the side that has no social manners comes out."
"You have social manners at all?"
He narrows his eyes, but he's trying to keep a smile off his face. "I'm about to save your ass, watch what you say."
"Thanks, Michael. I like knowing that you've got my back."
"I do," he says, clapping me on the shoulder. "And I'll have Amber's too."
I nod. "Speaking of, I've got to go. She's obviously pretty freaked out by all of this."
"It'll all be in motion by tomorrow," he says, heading to his car, head ducked down to his phone again.
For once, I did the right thing. I fixed it. I didn't do something that ruined someone's life, or career, I made it better. Hopping in my car, I speed back to the restaurant. Amber is still in the corner booth, and I can see that she had a second piece of pie, and she looks way more at ease. She smiles when she sees me. "What happened?"
"It's done," I say.
"But what?"
I pull her to her feet. "Let's go home," I say, "and I'll tell you everything."
"Okay."
"Can Gloria pick up your car?"
She nods. "That should be fine. I'll text her."
I wrap my arm around her waist and walk with her out on to Sunset Boulevard. "Perfect, because for the foreseeable future, I don't want you out of my sight."
20
Amber
Present
In the car, Peter tells me everything that happened, and I can't believe it. I can't believe that he would do that for me, be willing to risk his entire career for me. And yet I can believe it, because that's Peter. Even when I didn't want to see it, he's been willing to give up everything for me.
"But how did you know?" I ask. "How did you know that he was high?"
The look on his face is grim. "When you grow up with an addict, you learn the signs."
I reach over and take his hand. "I never realized that it was that bad. I'm sorry. You mentioned her earlier today. What happened?"
And then he tells me that his mother came back into his life and pretended to be clean just so she could use him for money and a place to live, and when he refused, she took everything he had. "That's awful."
"It is what it is," he says.
My mind is racing, and I put two and two together. "She's the real reason you didn't want to keep quiet about the fainting." Peter says nothing as we pull into the garage of my apartment. "You'd already seen someone you love fall apart, and you didn't want to see someone else do the same thing."
"That was why," he says quietly.
I squeeze his hand as he pulls into the parking space. "Thank you."
We barely make it up to the apartment before our clothes are off and he's carrying me into the bedroom, sprawling on the bed together. "I want to make sure that this is okay," he says, "after what happened."
"Yes," I say, pulling him to me, wanting his skin on mine. "I don't want to think about him. I only want to think about you."
"In that case," he says, rolling away from me, laughing when I whine, "I have two more questions."
He pulls a couple things from his bag which he dropped in the hallway. "How much do you trust me?" he asks, coming back over. He has some papers, and something black. Sitting on the side of the bed, he hands me the black thing. I unfold the soft fabric and it takes shape in my hands as a simple black mask, for sleeping. "A blindfold?"
His hand is on the back of my neck and he pulls me in for a kiss, my nipples brushing his chest. "I don't want you to be distracted by anything, not even what you see me doing."