CHAPTER 3
Cleaning Ashton’s had taken longer than he thought. Not that he had important plans today, he only had a few radio call in’s and some stupid paperwork about what he liked to do in his downtime for some bopper magazine.
Ha what would happen if I told them what I did with my downtime last night? They’d shit a brick.
Stuck in traffic on the 101 he impulsively decided to pass the time by calling Lance. He had talked to JC a few days ago and Chris last week so Lance was next on the constant call back list he had. Scrolling through the L’s in his address book he found Lance’s name, right above Lola Dean’s. He smiled at the gesture and quickly contemplated calling her to chat but remembered that she was at a spa and probably wouldn’t appreciate a call while she was taking a mud bath or being wrapped in seaweed or whatever other weird only in LA stuff she was having done to her body.
Her body. The thought of it was enough to make him forget about catching up with Lance. So in theory he hadn’t actually seen much of it but it was obvious that the California girl had kept up with the surfing all these years. Or at least some form of athletic exercise. In Hollywood everything tending to be mostly smoke and mirrors- especially ones body. Just like the rest of the world everyone in La La Land had a well-hidden flaw that they didn’t want the world to see but unlike the rest of the world but they had the privilege of having said flaws erased by make-up, airbrush, retouching, and computer manipulation. But no, not Lola, her body had been 100% hers.
It was also kind of sad on some levels, the lengths she was forced to go to in order to get back what she so desperately wanted- her career and in turn her life. He had dated gorgeous famous women who didn’t have to work half as hard as Lola probably did to get ten times the recognition. Britney could put out whatever bull shit product she wanted and still not truly fail. Prime example, her attempt at acting or her attempt to become a restaurateur. Both ventures had got her a lot of money but were ultimately failures. Alyssa, who had seemingly done the impossible in Hollywood with little to no effort and something Lola was currently trying to do- leave behind a famous childhood character, Sam Micelli and have an equally successful adult character, Phoebe Halliwell.
His train of thought about Lola in comparison to his ex’s was interrupted by a honking horn. The traffic in front of him was moving again.
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Lola stepped out of the shower into the steamy bathroom. She had just come from the beach and was now getting to go out with Lindsay for a girl’s night. They had decided to go to dinner and then out for drinks. And like any girl’s night that twenty-something-year-old girls would have, they would of course be meeting up with guys later in the night.
She grabbed the Missoni silk slip dress she had picked out for that night and held it up for examination before slipping it on. She sprayed in some Frederic Fekkai hair crap that she couldn’t live without and left it to dry naturally. The intercom next to her bed beeped just as she finished, “Bitch let us in” Lindsay’s voice crackled over the intercom and Lola buzzed her in. Soon she heard the sounds of two pairs of shoes on her hardwood stairs- one obviously stilettos and the other flats.
“Yo bitch” Nicole Richie shouted. “Let’s go!” Nicole catapulted herself onto Lola’s large bed and started bouncing up and down, giggling while she did little acrobatic moves.
“I’m borrowing your Chloe top,” Lindsay shouted from inside Lola’s closet. Lola looked up from the mirror and smiled at the scene that had overtaken her bedroom in less than a minute. Her crazy friends always made her smile a little even when she was a little down. She had been feeling a type of pathetic girl sadness that could only stem from the fact that Justin hadn’t called. Granted the rational part of her said that she had only given him her phone number last night but the slightly irrational, completely girlie part of her said he hadn’t called immediately upon discovering her number and she pouted over that all day.
But her pouting was put on hold for the time. They had decided to go to Koi for sushi and then out to The Spider Club, where Nicole’s boyfriend, Adam was DJing for the night.
“Okay I’m good” Lindsay walked out of Lola’s closet in Lola’s canary yellow Chloe camisole. Each girl grabbed her respective “it bag” and hopped into Lindsay’s BMW.
“Hi George” Lola smiled at Lindsay’s bodyguard/ driver for the night.
Arriving at Koi they all stepped out of the car while George went to park. Koi being a place where many celebrities went it was safe to assume that the few photographers that were there were not specifically for Lindsay or Nicole but that their arrival was definitely a plus for the photographers. So they snapped away at the three girls while they tried to appear nonchalant to the cameras and keep happy smiles on their faces.
A few hours later they left the restaurant happy from the sushi they had eaten and the saki they had drank.
Yes, a night with the girls was just what Lola needed.
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So his easy day of radio call in’s and teenybopper questionnaires had been interrupted by his manager, Johnny insisting that he had told Justin the interview with Z100 was an in studio interview and to get his ass on the plane that had been chartered specifically for him. So here he was on a flight to New York City with his cell phone in his lap, pouting at it. What good was it to call Lola if he was going to be 3,000 miles away, not to mention that he was currently 30,000 feet in the air. No, he was not going to grow some cojones and call her when he was jetting across the country. So it would just have to wait till he was back in LA.
He pouted again when he thought about waiting. He wanted to simply call her up and ask her out, like a normal person. He didn’t want to postpone it or even deny it for the few days that he would be in New York. A normal man wouldn’t have to do that, they would simply call Lola up and ask her to dinner and a movie or dinner and dancing or dinner and something else that involved them spending time together. Normal men worried about ‘Do I have too much cologne on’ or ‘Is she going to like the restaurant I picked’ or ‘Is she going to let me kiss her‘ but he had to worry about ‘Is someone going to interrupt us for an autograph’ or ‘Is somebody going to take a picture of this’ or ‘Am I going to get a call from Johnny and have to leave’. Bullshit. Fucking Bullshit.
But he had to worry about those things. They were his reality. So he would have to wait.
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Lola groped her bed stand until she felt her offending ringing cell phone.
“Hello” Lola said into the phone, voice husky with sleep. She didn’t bother looking at the screen to see who was calling. She already knew that the only person who seemed to have the uncanny sense of always calling when she was asleep- Ruby, her agent. First name only. Like Madonna or Cher.
“LOLA DARLING!” Ruby, shouted into the phone. Dull roar being her inside voice Lola pulled the phone away from her ear. She should know better than to put the phone up to her ear when Ruby was talking. She could completely picture Ruby at the very moment. Cell phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other, wearing one of the more hideous pantsuits Versace had come up with in some horrid color that should only be used for highlighters.
“Hello Ruby, to what do I owe this phone call.” Despite her eccentricities Lola was always polite to her agent. After all it was Ruby who would go to bat for her and get her the role that would launch her comeback. Not that she had ever truly gone away…
“GREAT NEWS LOLA!” Without waiting for Lola to say anything “VH-1 WANTS TO DO A SPECIAL ‘MAKING WAVES- WHERE ARE THEY NOW’ AND THEY WANT TO INTERVIEW YOU HONEY!”
Lola groaned, loudly “How is that a good thing?” she demanded. All current thoughts of being nice to Ruby out of her head. If Ruby couldn’t see how awful doing a Where Are They Now would be then maybe she wasn’t the spectacular agent Lola had thought. A spectacular agent would have tore the suits at VH-1 a new asshole for even considering Lola the type of has been that would do that show and demand that they make it up to her by giving Lola her own show.
“WELL IT COULD GET YOUR FOOT BACK IN THE DOOR, CASTING AGENTS WOULD SEE IT, PEOPLE WOULD REALIZE YOU AREN’T DEAD!” And like any other agent in Hollywood Ruby was blunt- almost hurtfully so. “THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST OFFERS I’VE GOTTEN FOR YOU IN AGES, YOU SHOULD DO IT!”
“No Rubes, forget about it. Thank you for thinking of me but I’m not interested.” Lola said quietly and hung up the phone. Her sad mood from last night was back but for an entirely different reason.
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