Jamie was poised and ready- for what, I wasn't quite sure. She hadn't moved an inch in the last ten minutes, nor spoken a single word. She sat at her desk staring intently at the computer in front of her, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. I stood a little ways away, leaning against the wall and staring at the clock. Of course, that just made the time pass even slower.
"If you're not going to give me an assignment, then can I just go home?"
Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn't pull her eyes away from the screen. I sighed and waited another beat before I posed my next question. "What are you waiting for?"
Silence.
"Seriously Jamie, are you ignoring me or have you suddenly gone deaf-"
"Shut up," she hissed, her eyes finally meeting mine. "For two goddamn minutes, just be quiet. Is that really too much for me to ask of you?"
I let whatever words that were about to come out of my mouth die in my throat and sighed. It'd only been a few days since I started working for her, but it was already a few too many. I considered the idea that I might need to give Jamie a little extra encouragement to find me a bigger scandal than her affair, because I had a feeling that if I just sat back on my heels and waited, nothing would ever come. But even the thought of blackmailing her once again, seeing that hopeless expression come across her face the same way it had the night we met, was not something I had any desire to do. I wasn't sure why, because in the time that I'd known her she had spoken to me with nothing but bitterness and resentment. Rightfully so, but still, I had no particular reason to pity her. That fact, though, seemed not to matter.
"Fuck," she shouted, banging her fists on the table. "Vultures, I swear to god."
"Context would be nice."
She sat back in her chair and exhaled, turning around her monitor to show her security system and the van of reporters parked out front. I didn't know why, but I did know there was always a reason; someone had had a hunch and decided to pursue it. "I'd tell you to look out the window and see for yourself, but I bet if you peeled back those curtains they'd already be right there waiting for you. I can see it now, your eye printed on the cover of every magazine in this country. That's all they'd need. Just your eye would be enough for them to create some elaborate story; who do those stunning hazel eyes belong to- a mystery girl perhaps? In Jamie West's mansion? And while Cassidy isn't home, too!" She gasped. "Absolutely preposterous."
I somehow managed to gather that she was off on a rant about the paparazzi, but that was about as far as my understanding went. "To which you'd point out that I'm your assistant... why do you have to make everything so complicated?" After a moment, I smirked. "Stunning hazel eyes, huh?"
"Do not flatter yourself, I'm just mocking mass media. Your eyes are sub par and even if they were worth looking at, I would never tell you that. Seems like you've got quite the ego already."
"Spoken like a true sweetheart," I said sarcastically, "you really are just as kind as the media portrays."
"Well you of all people should know how reliable the media is," she answered, flashing a smile. "In any case I will have to publicly announce that you're my new assistant at some point; it would be plain stupid to think I have any other choice. But I'm hoping to avoid doing so for as long as possible, because the second I declare I have a new assistant, people will start speculating what happened to the old one."
"So? Let them speculate. What's the worst they could come up with?"
"Well I imagine based on the fact that Melinda was my assistant for five years and I haven't released a statement on why I got rid of her, the first idea people would have is that Melinda and I were involved and when Cassidy found out, she kicked her to the curb. Which would essentially defeat the whole purpose of firing her, because if I wanted to entertain rumors of my infidelity, you wouldn't be standing in my living room. Would you?"
She had made a fair point, one that I didn't even have an answer to. So I chose to remain silent. She seemed to have a better understanding of how writers for celebrity magazines worked than even I did, and I'd been working with them directly for years. Although, I imagined, she'd been living with them most of her life.
"If you're so aware that your every move is being watched, I don't get how you could possibly forget to close the curtains. I didn't really expect to get the picture, to be honest. I figured if I had any chance at all at catching you with someone other than Cassidy, I'd have to actually break in."
"That's so comforting," she said, "knowing the lengths you're willing to go to ruin my life."
"I wasn't really thinking of you. I was thinking of my brother."
Jamie stayed silent for a moment. With her eyes locked onto mine, I seemed to stop breathing. Something passed between us; it seemed almost as if, for just a second, she let her resentment towards me slip away. I considered then that maybe there was someone in her own life she felt responsible for protecting.
"At least you're honest," she said. "I guess for one night I wanted to just live without having to think about what the consequences might be. Sometimes I swear I feel like that guy in The Truman Show, like my entire life is just one big reality show. I like to believe that I get moments to myself. Even if those moments involved kissing a guy like Zach, I still had this crazy idea that for once they'd be mine. But I was wrong."
"I'm sorry," I answered, suddenly not being able to meet her gaze. Hers was unwavering; I could feel her eyes trained on me and it made me shift uncomfortably. I thought for a moment that if one set of eyes had this much of an effect on me, I would suffocate in Jamie's position. She had three-hundred million sets of eyes on her at any given time, and somehow she had learned to be okay with that. "I know it might not seem like it but I am. I think your way of life is ridiculous and I think your girlfriend is a psycho, but you're right, I don't really know anything about you and I don't know if you deserve to be blackmailed."
"Even if I did deserve it, you don't magically get to appoint yourself the judge of my karma."
"I know, and that's why I'm saying I'm sorry."
"You've given me absolutely no reason to believe that," she said, bitterness lacing her voice once again. The small part of her that seemed genuine had already slipped away. "If you were really sorry, you wouldn't still be sitting across from me. If you were really sorry, you'd make a decent life for yourself instead of leeching off of mine."
"I plan to, but I intend to start at an even playing field as everyone else. If it takes using your money to right the wrongs done to my family, then I'm going to do that despite whatever moral obligations you may think I have." I crossed the room and sat down in the seat next to her. The appalled look on her face was to be expected, but I didn't pay it much mind. "I'm not going to force you to accept my apology, but maybe if I offered one in the form of help you'd change your attitude."
"Please," she scoffed, "what could you possibly help me with?"
Instead of responding with words, I decided to scoot closer and reach for the mouse. I logged into the account I usually used for tracking celebrities and clicked on Jamie's profile. A schedule with basically everywhere she had been in the last two weeks appeared on her screen and I leaned back to watch as her eyes widened. She simply shook her head, baffled.
"You do the same thing every day. You go to the same places, at the same time, with the same people. I want to help you avoid people like me, and more importantly I can, but with a schedule like this I'm beginning to think you don't actually want to."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Come on Jamie. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that your consistent schedule is the reason you're always tailed by the paps." I was about to take a huge shot in the dark, but I was desperate to figure out Jamie's relationship with Cassidy and if it was actually as off as I thought it was. "What I'm saying is I think a small part of you wanted to get caught."
"That's ridiculous. If I wanted to get caught, why the hell would I be paying you so much money to keep your mouth shut?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. And I'm sure I will, regardless of what you tell me now. But it'd be awesome if we could speed up the process a bit and be honest with each other so I can help you."
"I'll be honest with you if you're honest with me. Why do you need my money so badly?"
I considered lying for a moment, or saying nothing at all. I didn't talk to anyone about my family, and I really didn't want to start with Jamie. But being honest with her was the only foreseeable way to get her to tell me the truth, and I just had to know.
"My mom was arrested for enrollment fraud," I said, refusing to meet her gaze. "Judge gave her five years in prison just for trying to give my little brother a better life."
Jamie simply shook her head. "Enrollment fraud?"
"She 'falsified records', wrote down the wrong address so that my brother could go to school in a district where people don't get murdered every day. It's a felony, apparently, to want your kids to be safe."
"So... the money?" Jamie asked.
"She owes the state thousands of dollars when she gets out of prison. And the minute she got put in prison, my brother went back to putting himself in a lot of dangerous situations—"
"What kind of dangerous situations?"
"The kind that requires a large sum of money to pay people off. Let's just say that."
Jamie narrowed her eyes at me. I was being a little vague, but that was more than I had told anyone since my mom got arrested. That had to be enough.
"That must have been hard," she said softly.
"So am I any less of a bad person in your eyes?" I realized how desperate for her approval that sounded and started backtracking. "Not that I care what you think, you're just some—"
"Stuck up celebrity," she finished. "I know. I wouldn't say that I like you any more than I did... but I guess I don't like you any less, if that means something to you."
"So comforting."
Jamie offered a fake smile, and I decided to test my luck. "It's your turn Jamie. I told you my story, now what's yours?"
For a second I thought she'd really stay true to her word. But then her eyes moved from mine to her computer, and she stood. "The van is gone. Let's go."
"Hey you owe me a story," I said, stepping in front of her. "You're really gonna go back on what you said?"
She pushed me out of the way. "I promised you the truth. And the truth is, my relationship with Cassidy is none of your damn business."
Then she took the keys to her car off the rack and dropped them on the floor beside me, expecting me-of course- to pick them up.
And for the sake of my family, I actually did.
***
Hi guys! I have some tinkering to do with the logistics of their ages and the timeline of events, but for now enjoy!