Beautiful People | wlw

Thirty: Consequences

Wincing, Vera accepted the coffee he handed her. "You heard?"

"Who hasn't heard? What a mess. I wouldn't be surprised if Marina's team reaches out with a change of plans."

"Oh, shit." Vera's stomach clenched uncomfortably, and she lowered the coffee without taking a sip.

She had forgotten they still had to dress Marina for her premiere today. Carmen had told her that Marina's sexuality was an open secret in Hollywood, but she wasn't out to her fans. Or she hadn't been, anyway. And the public still thought she was in a relationship with Troy. This couldn't be a good look for her.

She rubbed her forehead. "Can you let her team know you're the contact today? I don't know if my phone's recovered."

It took her a solid minute to remember what she had done with her waterlogged phone the night before, but eventually, she found Jay's container beside the jewelry case and shook it out in a tumble of desiccant packets. She pressed the power button.

The screen remained black.

Jamming her thumb into the button, she held it there until a few pixels flickered to life on the screen. They died again a moment later.

"Fuck."

If she hadn't already been deep in a pit of despair, the sight of her dead phone would have been enough to push her off the edge.

Jay tossed her a charging cable. "Worth a try."

"Is it?"

But she plugged it in, just in case. Then she sank into the bed and watched listlessly as Jay arranged his tools. There was nothing she was less interested in doing than facing Marina right now, let alone dressing her so she could go out there on the red carpet and get torn apart by the vultures.

"Lily's late," Jay complained as he spaced out an array of industrial-strength hair products. "Do you know when she left last night?"

"No idea." Vera hadn't thought about Lily once after they'd arrived at the party. She probably should have asked Jay if he'd followed through on his plan to talk things out with her, but she just did not care. "What are we doing, Jay?"

His brow wrinkled. "Our jobs?"

"How can you keep doing–" She gestured wildly at his meticulously arranged tools, the clothes rack, the whole city. "Marina was outed because of our plan! How can we face her after that?"

"Your plan. And no, she was outed because someone at that party thought the payday for selling those photos was worth Carmen destroying their life when she finds them."

"Carmen thinks it was me."

Jay looked up from his makeup brushes with a sharp bent to his lips. "What?"

"Yeah, she fired me. And Sharise broke up with me." A hysterical laugh jumped from between her teeth. That was better than the furious tears that threatened to burst out, at least. She explained in a few brief, ugly strokes what had happened that morning.

"Well, shit." He tugged at his chin. "Did Carmen say anything about me?"

"You didn't come up."

"When she's on the warpath, no one is safe. I'd better avoid her attention for a while." He threw himself into a chair, a worried frown creasing his cheeks. "As for Sharise... Don't do anything rash. It sounds like she just needs to sort out her feelings."

"I don't know, Jay. I've been dumped enough times to know that breaks never end well." The tears really wanted to flow now. She pressed her knuckles into her hot eyes to hold them back. "How do you even take a break when you live together?"