I leave before she can try to stop me again, keeping my head down, avoiding eye contact. Instead of taking the awaiting limo and heading straight back to the hotel, I stroll a few blocks, slipping into a small bar. It’s quiet, not very busy despite it being Friday night. I find an empty stool along the edge of the bar as the bartender approaches.
It doesn’t take long, just a few seconds, before recognition happens, his eyes widening, but he doesn’t announce my presence.
“What can I get for you?” he asks, not calling me by name.
“Whatever’s on tap.”
He pours me a beer. I don’t ask what it is. I sit in silence after he slides it in front of me, wrapping my hands around the cold glass. I can smell it. It’s cheap. Not the cheapest shit, but still… cheap. My mouth waters, and I can damn near taste the golden liquid, my tongue tingling from anticipation as I stare at it.
“Something wrong?” the bartender asks after a few minutes, motioning to the beer I’m not drinking. “Would you like something different instead?”
“No, it’s fine. I just… I haven’t had a drink in a while.”
“How long?”
“Twelve months.”
It’s been a long year—longer since I touched anything harder. I’m stuck between steps eight and nine of AA, between admitting I’ve wronged people and making up for what I’ve done. You see, there’s a catch to those steps, one nobody mentions until you get there. It isn’t so cut and dry. There’s a bit of fine print to making amends that says ‘except when doing so would cause further harm’.
“So, I know it’s none of my business,” the bartender says, “but twelve months is one hell of a streak. You sure you want to ruin that?”
“No,” I admit. “Not sure about much these days.”
He doesn’t wait for me to say anything else. The beer in my hand is snatched away and replaced with Coke.
The soda. Not the drug.
“Been a while since I’ve had one of these, too,” I tell him, but I don’t hesitate to sip this drink. It’s heaven in a plastic pint glass. Soda does hell on the body, though, with the empty calories, the bloating. Or well, at least that’s what the nutritionist says that the studio hired to make sure I stay in shape.
“You wanna talk about it?” the bartender asks.
“About what?”
“About whatever has you almost breaking a twelve-month streak of sobriety tonight.”
I shake my head. I would if I could. It’s been eating me up inside. But what’s bothering me isn’t something I can talk about, because unlike most of what Hollywood Chronicles peddles, this is a real scandal.
“I appreciate it,” I say, taking another sip of the soda before standing up. I toss a few dollars down out of gratitude and turn to leave before I’m tempted to spill my guts and tell the guy a story that could earn him retirement-level money.
Using my phone, I order a car and step out of the bar as it connects me with a driver. Three minutes away. The second the warm night air greets me, something else does, too—a small crowd. A couple girls, just teenagers. Nobody ever gives teenage girls enough credit. They’re smart. They probably aren’t even old enough to hang out at a bar, but they knew how to track me down. No paparazzi yet, but they won’t be far. They never are.
The requests fly at me. Autographs. Pictures. Hugs. This time I stop for them. I’ve got three minutes to spare. The least I can do is give back to a few of the fans that have probably been looking for me all day. Hell, I'd be nothing without them. I scribble my name in sharpie on whatever they shove my way—pictures, t-shirts, even an arm—and take a few photos, putting on a smile that would make Cliff proud.
“Can you sign this? Please?” a blonde girl asks, shoving a DVD of the first Breezeo movie at me. “And make it out to Bethany?”
“Bethany,” I mumble, jotting down her name, earning a squeal when I say it out loud. “How you doing tonight?”
“Amazing,” she says, sounding like she means it. “My friends and I drove the whole way down here to see you when we found out you were filming.”
“Yeah? How’d you find out?”
“It was all over the gossip blogs,” she says. “There was even a video of Serena talking about it.”
Serena. No matter how many times she’s warned, she always slips up and says shit she shouldn’t. “So you drove down here? From where?”
“Bennett Landing,” she says.
My stomach sinks. “You’re from Bennett Landing?”
“Yep.”
“Nice place,” I lie—or maybe I’m not lying, but as everything gets fuzzy, it sure as hell feels that way. “I’ve been through there a few times.”
“I know!” she says. “Or well, I mean, I’ve heard stories.”
“Stories, huh? What kind of stories?”
“I heard you got arrested once for running around naked in Landing Park.”
She blushes as she spits out those words, while I laugh—genuinely laughing. I haven’t done that in a while. “Damn, didn’t think anybody knew about that.”
“They do. They talk about it all the time. They say you got drunk and went streaking.”
“Not quite,” I say. “I wasn’t streaking. I was with a girl.”
Her eyes light up. “Really?”
“Really,” I say. “She was hiding when the police showed up. The charges were dropped the next morning, but it’s nice to know my moment of indecent exposure lives on in infamy.”
She laughs. I laugh. It’s a nice moment. I almost forget myself because of it, letting my thoughts slip back to that time, letting myself think about that world again. Guilt eats me up inside. I take a photo with Bethany and sign a few more autographs before my car shows up to whisk me away. Six o’clock will come early, without a doubt, and I have a feeling I won’t be getting much sleep tonight.
A few minutes outside the Albany city limits sits an elite private high school.
Fulton Edge Academy.
Fulton Edge has the distinction of having taught more government officials than any other school in the nation, an honor they carry with pride, evident in the fact that it’s displayed everywhere. Seriously. Everywhere. There’s even an unsightly banner hanging in the main corridor. College preparatory, with an emphasize on political science, it’s the perfect place for a high-profile congressman to send his rebellious teenage son—a fact you know well, considering that’s how you ended up here, drowning in a cesspool of blue and white uniforms for your fourth year in a row.
Classes have already started, first day of your last year, but you’re wandering around, in no hurry to get where you’re going—American Politics. Not to be confused with Comparative Politics, of course, which you’ll have later in the afternoon, bookending the oh-so-exciting subjects of Literature (Political Literature Between the World Wars) and Math (Mathematical Methods in Political Science). The only thing in your schedule unscathed is P.E., likely because they haven’t figured out how to incorporate the government.
Fifteen minutes late, you open the classroom door and walk in, disrupting the teacher already invested in a lecture. Your footsteps stall for a fraction of a second, like your feet can’t bear to go on, before you shut the door and commit to being here. You’re a walking, talking dress code violation, with your tie hanging loose, your white button-down not tucked in, a bit of chaos in the midst of manufactured perfection, throwing off the whole political prep school aesthetic.
“Mr. Cunningham,” the teacher says, casting you a narrowed look. “Nice of you to grace us with your presence this morning.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” you say, your voice dripping with sarcasm as you head to the back of the classroom, to the lone empty desk. “Would’ve shown up sooner, but well… I didn’t really care to be here.”
There’s an awkward stirring, a throat clearing, a long pause of nobody talking, as you settle into your seat. You don’t just throw off the aesthetic—you alter their whole image. It makes them uncomfortable.