The F List: A celebrity romance Read online

  “This is Edwin.” Vidal chimed in. “He’s in charge of your social media presence, branding, messaging, and calendar coordination.”

  Edwin beamed at me. “Don’t worry, I’m only a hard ass when you mess up.”

  “Okay. So…” I set my bag down on the table. “Do we meet weekly? Or what? How does this work?”

  Dion and Edwin gave each other a look, and Edwin trilled out a laugh. “Oh, honey, you’re so fresh. No, we basically live here now. Your life is ours.”

  “Not in like a creepy, we want your lifestyle way,” Dion drawled. “More like, you’re turning over every aspect of YOU”—she made a hand motion that encompassed my entire body—“to us.”

  It should have irritated me, but I craved the turnover. Everywhere around me, I saw what I didn’t have. Spotless exteriors of lives full of love, travel, and money. I couldn’t even get a table without Vidal’s help, couldn’t get a post to attract more than a thousand likes, and was beginning to see my investment in myself and my fame as the shallow and pointless fantasies of an ugly and uninteresting girl.

  “From now on,” Edwin said. “Everything is going to be different.”

  He was right. Bringing them on brought everything to a different level. They were expensive and horrible and invasive as hell, but they knew the three F’s better than anyone. When Danica Franks left rehab, I doubled their paychecks to keep them with me. I needed them, even if I hated them for it.

  “With all the attention on Emma Blanton, it seems crazy that she could have had any secrets. But she did. Twice a week, for four hours, no one knew where she was. And no one noticed it, for a really long time. Even her team. Someone like Emma is assumed to sleep until the middle of the day, not be driving down to Outlier Ranch at six in the morning.”

  Rob Presley, Just Jarad

  28

  #sohappy

  I sat on the floor of the gym, my legs splayed open, and rolled the basketball toward Wesley, who mimicked my pose fifteen feet down the court. He watched it approach, then captured it with his hands. “This is a baby game,” he complained.

  “Yeah, well—I’m an old lady.” I nodded to the group of four at the other end of the court. “You can go play with them if you want. I’ll be your cheering section.”

  He didn’t reply, just spun the ball in front of him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He rolled it back to me and stayed silent.

  “Is it Becky?” His courtship had gone well, according to Monica at the front desk. She and Wesley were eating lunch together every day and holding hands when they thought the staff wasn’t watching.

  “Not Becky.” He beckoned with his hands. “Bounce it.”

  I gave it a careful and low bounce, one that he missed. I waited as he chased the ball down, waved at a boy he knew, and then returned back, his focus on bouncing the ball for a few times before he sank back down to the polished floor.

  “So, what is it?”

  “Big brother,” he said sullenly.

  Ah. I struggled, as I always did when he brought up Cash, with what to say. I needed Wesley in my life, but I understood that, at some point, Cash might discover this secret. When he did, I’d lose visitation and volunteer privileges at the Ranch. It was a thought that filled me with an unnatural amount of anxiety, an emotion that increased the closer I grew to Wesley.

  I was lucky that the staff at the Ranch was mostly ancient adults who barely knew what Twitter was. Add that to the fact that my glammed up internet persona was a far cry from my make-up-free natural look, and I’d be shocked if one of my followers ever recognized me in my volunteer garb. I pushed the anxiety to one side and sighed. “What’s wrong with your brother?”

  “He got mad at me on the phone.”

  Anger ticked in my chest. “Over what?”

  He laid back on the floor and laced his fingers together over his chest. “He didn’t come this week.”

  Oh. I scooted closer to him, moving until the toes of my sneakers hit his side. “Wesley, listen to me. He’s out of town. He can’t come.”

  I knew, because he was on the RedBull Tour, MCing to sold-out arenas each night, his social media feeds filled with athletes and celebrities that were all reposting the content. It would be a three-month follower avalanche of epic proportions, and I was so jealous of the opportunity, my jaw hurt from clenching it so hard. What were they paying him? A million? Two? It’d been four days, and he’d already jumped at least that in follower count.

  “I am his BRO-ther,” he enunciated, stabbing his chest with his thumb. “He always said I come first.”

  “This was a huge opportunity for him.” I patted his arm. “He had to take it to make money, so he could pay for this place.”

  “He can be like you and work here.” He stared up at the ceiling, blinking quickly, his eyes wet.

  I sighed. “I don’t work here, Wesley. I volunteer. I come to visit and hang out with you. Because we’re friends.”

  “You clean toilets,” he reminded me. “Friends don’t clean toilets.”

  I laughed and captured the ball before it rolled away. “Yes, you’re right. I clean the toilets.”

  “Gross toilets.” He wrinkled up his nose. “Poop.”

  I smiled. “Yes. Poop.”

  He laughed. “Miss E said POOP!” He shouted the word, and I reached out and gently bopped him on the head with the ball.

  “Shush. You’re going to get our ice cream sandwiches taken away.”

  He tried to sit up, his short legs lifting from the effort. I held out my hand and helped him upright. “Ice cream sandwiches now.”

  “No, it’s too early.” I scooted back to give him some room. “Wesley, look at me.”

  I waited until his attention was on me before I spoke. “I need you to forgive your brother. This is going to be hard on him, being away from you. Even though you’re the little brother, I need you to be a big man for him.”

  He puffed out his chest. “I can be a big man.”

  “I know you can. You’re the bravest man I know.” I smiled at him. “I’m so proud of you.”

  No one else in the world would have cared that I was proud of them, but he lit up with a glow that stayed with me for days.

  29

  #vitamansea

  EMMA: 8,010,221 FOLLOWERS

  Three days before Christmas, I laid on my stomach, my fingers interlaced underneath my cheek, and squinted lazily at the drone, which hummed across the brilliant blue skyline. For the thousandth time this year, I mentally pinched myself. Last Christmas, I was in my old apartment, my mouth swollen and stuffed with bloody gauze, watching Hallmark and flipping through a scant number of social media messages. Now, I was on a yacht in Aruba, next to a billionaire, with an inbox of thousands of messages I’d never get through because I had people for that.

  Beside me, Bojan propped up on one elbow, his stomach covered in a thin carpet of dark hair, and flipped a football into the air, then caught it. Pointing it at the drone, he reared back his hand.

  “Don’t do it….” Vidal’s voice warned through the walkie-talkie beside me. “We’re almost done, I promise. Bo, put your hand on Emma’s ass.”

  I felt Bo’s warm palm settle on my bare ass cheek, and I rolled away, shrieking in pain when my elbow connected with a handle on the yacht’s deck. I kicked in his direction and connected with his shin.

  “Stop it,” Vidal said sharply. “I only need a few more shots, then you can both be idiots. Emma, roll over for me.”

  I groaned and rolled onto my back, stealing one of the fluffy blue pillows off the pile and stuffing it under my head. I glanced slightly left, giving my good angle to the camera, and shifted my hips, moving the bikini tie higher and positioning the Luli Fama emblem to a place of higher visibility for the camera. Everything was about the angles. A slight hip swivel made me look thinner. A twenty-degree head tilt made my face prettier. Good posture made my small breasts bigger, my stomach flatter, and a slightly arched foot would
trigger #footfetishnation to surge to their, well, feet.

  “That’s it. Spread the ends of your braids out more. I’m going to get a close shot, then a far. Bojan, can we get your watch in? And move your drink closer where we can catch the colors from it.”

  Bojan tossed the ball in the air again, and caught it. “Ten seconds, V.”

  There was a fumble of sound and I heard Edwin mutter in the background. “Bo…” I warned him, my lips barely moving.

  “Okay, we got it,” Edwin came on the walkie, exasperated. “You’re done until four when the girls arrive.”

  Bo arched back his arm and let the ball fly. I shaded my eyes with my hand and watched it completely miss the drone, which dipped to one side. The football bounced off the bottom deck of the yacht, then skittered to one side. I reached over and flipped off the walkie, which connected us to the chase boat—a mini version of our own that was housing Vidal and Edwin. Dion had stayed in LA, but packed me nineteen different garment bags, each with its own perfectly coordinated and sponsored outfit, down to the sunglasses. We were on day two, and I was already six outfits in. This one—an emerald green bikini with Versace sunglasses (perch on top of the head, not on the face) and a gold Tiffany’s anklet. Pale pink polish on toes and fingers. Hair in low twin braids. In addition to the captain, chef, photographer, and butler—I had a makeup and hair stylist who had already slept with Bojan, a development which had quieted down his level of bitchery quite a bit.

  This afternoon the other influencers would arrive. It was a bit of a cheap hack to more followers—put four girls in bikinis on a billionaire’s yacht—but it worked. The girls were all carefully selected, all in the three-million-follower category, and with varying audiences. Our combined reach would get us trending, and our followers were the sort that were easily courted and captured. We had cultivated my last twelve posts to appeal to their market, and I should get a three or four hundred thousand bump, easily, if it was performed correctly. Lots of open mouth laughter with the right ratio of cleavage and fun. Water gun fights on jet skis. Cannonballs off the top level into the Aruba water, set to a song selected from a music studio that was paying for the placement and would share it on their feeds.

  I was at eight million followers and growing. Cash Mitchell, despite my reluctant click on his ‘follow’ button, had not returned the favor and joined the ranks. Since our awards argument, we’d crossed paths three times, and he’d completely ignored me at each instance.

  I leaned forward and pulled my phone out from underneath the towel. Checking my feeds, I flipped to Cash’s. His numbers were insane, and his latest post—a sponsored ad for Ray-Bans—had a nine percent engagement. I growled under my breath and fought the urge to like it.

  “Stop being a stalker,” Bo intoned, pulling my phone out of my hand and tossing it toward my bag. “You’ve got to get over this obsession, Em.”

  “It’s not an obsession,” I said tartly. “It’s an annoyance. Cash is annoying.”

  “Completely agree.” He pushed his sunglasses up on the top of his head. “The guy is a tool.”

  I swallowed an automatic defense that seemed to rise, unwelcomed, whenever Bojan trashed him. “Sure.”

  He groaned. “He likes beauty queens. No offense, but nothing is going to happen with you two.”

  “Obviously,” I griped. “He won’t even look at me.” I twisted the cap off a bottle of Evian.

  He squinted at me. “I bet he looked at the thong pic. Every man alive looked at the thong pic.”

  The thong pic had been a holiday one where I stood on a half-ladder in four-inch stilettos, my body lit by Christmas lights, a Santa cap on. In it, I’m stretching up to put a star on the top of my tree. Well, not my tree. I was wearing, if you haven’t guessed already, just a thong. It was a Victoria’s Secret placement, and one I had gotten a ration of shit for, due mainly to the skinniness of my legs. They were scrawny, yes. They’d always been scrawny. Bird-legs, my mother used to call them. The internet had other words for them. Toothpicks. Chicken bones. I was trending under #anorexia for four hours before Vidal squashed it. That week’s video, I focused on thin shaming and went viral again, this time in a more positive light.

  I took a healthy sip of the water. “Tell me it’s a lost cause.”

  “It’s a lost cause.” He stretched back against the cushions, his hands propped under his head. “You’re too damaged for him. He likes caviar, not jalapeños. You want to win that boring heart, go volunteer somewhere. Adopt an orphanage in Africa. Then, you know.” He shrugged. “Hope he doesn’t see through it.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry grin. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have something to take care of before your models arrive.”

  I followed his gaze to Mattie, my beauty girl, who was coming up the stairs to our upper deck. I grabbed my phone and pushed to my feet. “I’m going to go get a nap. Don’t let Vidal catch you on the drone.”

  He said something in response, but I didn’t catch it and didn’t care. I passed her and smiled, then took the steps down to the cramped private bedroom on the bottom deck, where I stretched out as best I could and stared at Cash Mitchell’s social feeds.

  Bojan was right. I was too damaged for Cash. The girls he was photographed with, which was a rare event in itself, were polished and perfect, the sort who attended private schools, wore pearls and spoke Latin. They were the complete opposite of me. Another reason why it was laughable for me to hold onto my deep-seeded crush.

  I locked the screen and laid back on the mattress, fighting a wave of nausea.

  30

  #byefelicia

  Losing Vidal was such a cliche. I couldn’t have picked a more boring parting of two individuals. I had considered, over the last fourteen months, the concept that he would drop me as a client. In the early days, when we were just starting to gain traction, the idea scared me. Once I had Dion and Edwin, my concern lessened to the line just above not caring at all.

  Maybe he could feel it. Maybe that’s why he did what he did.

  The money had been growing, along with my numbers. My one-wall backdrop had been upgraded to a professional studio with three different settings, natural and artificial light, and an editing and promo team that took every broadcast and sliced and diced it into a dozen different shareable pieces of content. I filmed each morning—a fifteen minute live and unfiltered opinion fest about celebrities, current events, and pop culture. Afternoons were spent in photoshoots, meet and greets, or meetings. Break for two hours with a maniacal personal trainer, a dinner of carefully modulated calories, and then back into hair and makeup. Evenings were mostly with Bojan, at clubs and parties—my appearances short and well-documented.

  Working my newly muscular butt off was starting to pay. I was averaging three sponsorships a week and had started to book appearance spots. My bank account was finally creeping back toward lotto cash-in day, and I was hoarding money and cutting expenses wherever I could. Online, my life was filled with designer clothes, shopping sprees and expensive champagne, but it was all show. My well-photographed shopping sprees were paid for in cash, and followed by Dion returning everything. Furniture purchases were limited to things shown on camera, which meant I had a beautiful bedroom and couch corner but nothing else. The team worked on a folding table in my dining room and my closet was almost entirely stocked by sponsors.

  A lifetime of pinching pennies had built in a fear of debt and failure, and I was well aware that one wrong move could send me into a tailspin of obscurity. Goodbye followers. Goodbye fame. Goodbye money. I needed to suck every dollar I could, and leaned more heavily on Vidal.

  It was at a Vitamin water shoot when the crack occurred. I was in an impossibly fluffy white robe, perched on a cushioned stool, in a back lot trailer, when our set coordinator gently knocked on the door, then peeked inside. “You decent?”

  I swiveled away from the mirror, a wet cotton ball in hand, smeared with eye makeup remover. “Sure, come on in.”

  “GREAT s
hoot,” she said emphatically, stepping in and closing the door shut behind her. “Really great work.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I brought you this.” She fished a water bottle out from under her arm and held it out to me. “Not that you’re dehydrated.”

  No, after three hours of sipping the latest flavor and trying not to grimace into the camera, I was certainly not dehydrated. Instead, I’d squatted over a tiny toilet in a temporary stall and pissed for a solid minute, until my thighs started trembling from the effort.

  Still, I took the bottle. “Thanks.”

  “And… here’s your check.” She held out an unsealed envelope. I hesitated, then took it. I’d never been paid on shoot before. Not that I had a shoot like this before. Most of my work had involved them mailing me an item, me using or wearing it in a post, and getting a check in the mail, two to four weeks later. This… the lights, the crew, the trailer—it was all new.

  “Take your time in the room, but swing by security before you leave and return your pass. They can validate your parking then.”

  “Great. Will do.”

  We said our goodbyes, and I waited until the door clicked closed behind her before I opened up the envelope and looked at the contents. It was a check and a copy of the contract. I stared at the amount, surprised. Vidal had told me that I was getting eight thousand for the video, plus $500 for each time I shared the video on social media. But this was for twice that. I reviewed the contract, one with my name already scrawled on the second page, surprised to see that the numbers matched the check. Had I been mistaken? Had I not read the contract before signing it?

  No. I may be a ditz about proper social protocol, or how to sit across from your crush without offending him, but money was something that I was focused on and serious about. I knew what I was getting paid, I knew what I signed, and this… this wasn’t it. I looked back at the check, which was payable to Vidal Entertainment, and stood. Twisting to the mirror, I quickly grabbed a fresh cotton ball, dragged it through Vaseline, and cleaned up my other eye. I dressed in record time, tossed my items into my painfully expensive but necessary Birkin bag, then pushed sunglasses on, grabbed the check, and went to find the set coordinator.