A Very Dirty Christmas Read online

  "Why not just fire me?" I ask. "If it bothers you so much." Honestly, I'm shocked she's kept me around this long anyway. I don't know why she has. I'm sure she could have found another assistant who would manage shit and keep an eye on her. I really don't know why she needs someone to babysit her -- it's not like she's snorting coke off male strippers in the living room or dancing on tables at the club. I haven't even met these so-called friends of hers, the ones she was getting into trouble with.

  Addy shrugs and looks at her phone, preoccupied with texting. She looks up at me. "Because my lawyer advised me not to," she says.

  "You talked to your lawyer?" I ask. I'm not sure whether to be offended or impressed that she was smart enough to try to get rid of me.

  "Yeah, duh," she says. "What, you think I just rolled over and took my label's advice? Do you think I'm dumb?"

  "I think I've been with you this whole time," I say. "Practically."

  Addy smirks. "I took a meeting with my attorney and it wasn't any of your business," she says.

  "When?"

  "Don't be so nosy, Hendrix," she says, her voice clipped. "Not everything in my life is your damn business. When I said before that I didn't need a babysitter, I meant it. On my attorney's advice, I'm stuck with you until this all plays out."

  "Shit, you're no picnic either, sweet cheeks," I say. I rack my brain trying to figure out when the hell she talked to her attorney. I'm irritated that she tried to get rid of me. And after I've been so goddamned agreeable, doing her grocery shopping and cooking for her and refraining from ripping her clothes off in the damn hallway.

  What I am is a goddamned saint.

  "Well, then, maybe you should quit." She looks at me, her eyebrows raised, practically daring me to walk out.

  "Nah," I say. "That would be too easy. I'd rather be up your ass twenty-four, seven."

  "Up my ass," she says. "That's super professional, Hendrix."

  "That's me," I say. "I am professional. Which is why I didn't say I'd be crawling up your ass like one of your thongs."

  Addy wrinkles her nose. "The fact that our parents thought you should be the one babysitting me demonstrates their complete and utter lack of judgment."

  "I agree," I say, raising my coffee cup in a mock 'cheers' gesture. "It's shocking. Appalling, really."

  Addy slides off the barstool, her coffee cup in one hand and her phone in the other. "They think you'd never look at me the way you did in the hallway," she says. She turns and walks away, without another word.

  Our parents are fucking blind. I was looking at Addy that way for two years before I left. Looking at her that way is why I joined the Marines. I thought it would get her out of my system. Instead, I wound up thinking about her that way for five damn years.

  I tell myself I need to stop looking at her that way.

  Maybe this time it'll finally sink in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ADDY

  SIX YEARS AGO

  I lie on my back on the blanket I share with Hendrix, looking up at the night sky, my hands behind my head. We lie there together in silence, and I listen to the waves roll in, the sound soothing like a lullaby. Hendrix has been weird today, even though we've spent the entire day hanging out together, doing stupid tourist shit, mini-golfing and go-kart racing and playing frisbee on the beach. Yeah, too-cool-for-life Hendrix played frisbee. Obviously something is wrong with him. I'm half-concerned he's about to tell me he has a serious illness.

  "Do you ever think about what would have happened if you hadn't been on that show?" he asks, breaking the quiet between us.

  "Yeah," I say. "My mom and Grace and I would be back where we were before the show."

  "Was it that different?" he asks.

  "Yeah," I say, laughing bitterly. "Of course it was that fucking different."

  Hendrix tsk-tsk's me, pushing himself up to a sitting position. I can't see his face in the blackness of the evening, but I know he's looking at me and it makes me self-conscious, as I lie here. I feel the familiar heat rush through me at the thought of being under his gaze. "You're always cussing now."

  "What can I say?" I ask. "You're influencing me."

  "I hope not," he says. "You shouldn't take anything from me."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I'm not a good influence, Addy-girl," he says. I hear him fumbling for a cigarette, and then his face is illuminated in flickering shadows by the flame from the lighter. He looks at me, the glow of the cigarette giving him an eerie appearance. "I'm not a good person."

  "Don't be a dumbass," I say, rolling onto my side to look at him. "Why did you start smoking again?"

  Hendrix shrugs. "Because I'm a dumbass."

  "You're not a bad influence," I say.

  "Says you."

  "As opposed to my mother?" I ask. "Or your father?"

  "They wouldn't like this, you know," he says. "I shouldn't be here with you. On a road trip."

  "So?" I ask. "We can hang out. What's wrong with it? Why shouldn't we go on a road trip?"

  Hendrix turns, blowing smoke in the opposite direction, and then he faces the water, not looking at me while he sits in silence. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I sit up on the blanket, drawing my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. I think Hendrix is about to tell me we can't be friends anymore.

  It feels like we're having a breakup conversation, except that you can't actually break up with someone you're not dating. The thing is, I don't want to be just friends with Hendrix. Every time he touches me, it's like electricity flows through my body. That's not normal. That's not what happens when the boys I've gone out with have tried to hold my hand, or kiss me, or...go farther than that.

  And all I can think about, all the time, is how it would feel for Hendrix to touch me.

  "Sometimes a road trip isn't just a road trip, Addy-girl."

  "You're so annoying," I say, only because I don't know what else to say.

  I can hear him exhale. "You're no picnic yourself, sweet-cheeks."

  "Yet you keep hanging out with me."

  "What can I say?" he asks. "I'm just a glutton for punishment."

  "Now you're saying that hanging out with me is punishment," I say.

  He's quiet for a long time before he speaks. "It's goddamned torture," he says. "Every moment of every fucking day I'm near you is fucking torture."

  The strain in his voice is evident by the way it cracks around the edges. My heart thumps louder, and I wonder if he's able to hear it in the quiet stillness of the evening. Doesn't he realize it's fucking agony for me to be around him all the time, wanting him the way I do? "So why even hang out with me if you hate it so much, Hendrix?"

  "You don't get it, Addy-girl," he says, not moving.

  "Get what?"

  "Being away from you is a million times worse."

  * * *

  PRESENT DAY

  Being in close quarters with Hendrix after what happened is a form of torture -- cruel and unusual punishment. I wanted to drive myself to the recording studio, but the record label sent a car to take us to the interview with the magazine and then the recording session, as if they don't trust me to show up on my own. So now I'm stuck sitting a foot away from him, pretending as if nothing happened between us. Pretending that Hendrix didn't overhear me speak his name from the other side of my bedroom door.

  Just the thought of it makes me flush white-hot.

  So we sit here on opposite sides of the car, ignoring each other, Hendrix looking straight ahead and me scrolling through the messages on my phone, trying to distract myself from the fact that I can smell Hendrix's aftershave from where I sit. "You're making a face," Hendrix says.

  He's not even looking at me, sitting beside me in the back of the car, so how would he know?

  "This is my regular expression," I say.

  "No, it's not," he says. "It's your checking-text-messages-you-hate face."

  "How do you know I'm getting text messages I hate? Have you been reading my te