The Fame Game (12 page)

“So, it’s been great,” she said, “but I should really—”

“I thought if I left, then things would get better,” Charlie said, as if they were in the middle of discussing a topic neither of them had even gone near today. The sun was in his eyes and he squinted at her. It made him look much older than his forty-two years.

“Well, they didn’t,” Madison said coldly.

Sophie, who had briefly vanished, reappeared with a giant snow cone. “Yeah, Dad, it was bad.” She shook her head as if lost in a horrible childhood memory. “Really bad.” She didn’t seem angry so much as baffled. Maybe that was part of her new goddess-of-love trip: She wouldn’t blame him for leaving them with a mother who drank Wild Irish Rose for breakfast and whose best efforts in the dinner arena amounted to a few slices of wet ham on sale-rack Wonder Bread.

Well, Madison wasn’t Sophie. She was
pissed
. Her mother couldn’t even keep a jar of mayonnaise in the fridge for the awful sandwiches! So what if she hadn’t realized how much she missed her father until right this very moment—it didn’t matter. She was still furious.

“I’m so sorry,” Charlie whispered. “I tried to explain in my letters.”

God, those stupid letters again
, Madison thought. As if they
mattered
, as if they even
existed
. And if they did? Well, you could have a stack of letters ten feet high and they still didn’t add up to a father.

She turned on her heel and walked to the edge of the pier. Leaning over the railing, she took a long breath of ocean air. Any dad who vanished for a decade and then showed up only after his daughter had made it was obviously in it for the money. Two could play that game, couldn’t they? She, Madison Parker, was in it for the ratings.

Ratings
, she whispered
. Ratings, ratings, ratings.

It was a mantra that kept her from flinging her mike pack into the Pacific Ocean. It gave her strength to turn back around and smile her megawatt smile.

“So,” she said to her family, “how about that cotton candy?”

Standing in her colossal walk-in closet, Madison brushed her fingertips along the sleeves of her silk tops, arranged by color from deep jewel red to coral, from lime to lavender. Even in her wildest dreams, she’d never imagined a life like this. That she would own these nice things. She’d been an eight-year-old scrubbing her jeans by hand in the kitchen sink because her mother couldn’t be bothered to take them—or anything—to the Laundromat. And now she didn’t have to even
touch
her dirty clothes: She tossed them into a basket from which they magically disappeared, and days later they reappeared, wrapped in plastic: crisp, fresh, and clean.

Madison didn’t open the dresser toward the back of the room, but she didn’t need to. She knew what was in there, nestled in the top drawer: a soft form, its synthetic fur faded and slightly matted, its horn drooping. She felt silly for keeping it all these years.

But
, said a nagging voice in the back of her mind
, what if he meant what he said? What if there really were letters? Did that really mean
nothing
?

Almost without thinking, Madison pulled her BlackBerry from her pocket and punched in her mother’s number. It rang for a long time, and Madison was just about to hang up—probably Sue Beth had lost her phone one night at a bar—when her mother answered.

“Hello?” Sue Beth’s voice sounded weary and old. But not drunk: surprisingly sober.

“Mom?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Madison.”

“Madison . . . ?” Her mother sounded confused.

“Mom, it’s Madelyn.” She tugged on one of her platinum extensions. It had been years since she had heard her mother’s voice.

“Nice of you to finally call,” Sue Beth said, not unkindly. There was a long pause and Madison knew her mother was taking a drag on a Parliament cigarette. “I’ve seen you on the TV. You look really nice.”

Madison’s heart clutched with that comment. A compliment was not what she’d expected. “I wanted to tell you that we heard from Charlie,” she said. She waited for a response, but none came. “Mom, you still there?”

“I’m here,” her mother said. “What exactly do you want me to say? It’s not nice to speak ill of a girl’s father, even if you think he’s a lying rat bastard.”

“Right,” Madison said. “I just didn’t want you to be surprised when you saw it on TV—when you see him on the show, I mean. I didn’t ask him to come here. He just showed up. Well, after Sophie reunited with him during rehab. You knew Sophie went to rehab, didn’t you?”

Her mother sighed. Or maybe it was just an exhalation of her cigarette. “Yes, Madelyn. I may not have been mother of the year, but I did know that Sophie was in rehab. In fact, I spoke to her several times while she was there.”

“You did?”

“I did,” Sue Beth said.

“Wow, if I’d known the fastest way to get my parents’ attention would be to crash on booze and drugs maybe I would have tried it,” Madison said drily.

“Didn’t figure from the looks of your life that you needed me much anymore,” Sue Beth said. “That why you called then? To tell me you saw your dad?”

“He mentioned something I wanted to ask you about. Some letters.” Madison scrunched her eyebrows together and tilted her head. She wasn’t sure which answer she wanted. “He was lying, right?”

Her mother waited a long time before answering. “No, there are letters.”

“There are? How many?”

“I don’t know. A few dozen, I guess.”

“For me? And for Sophie?”

“For both of you, I think,” Sue Beth said.

“And you didn’t feel like sharing them with us?”

“I didn’t want to give you false hope. That man never did anything right in his whole life. I figured those letters were full of promises he never would’ve kept.”

Madison’s fury at her mother was matched by her surprise. Charlie wasn’t lying. Yes, he’d abandoned her. But he’d tried to stay in touch. He really had. And now he’d come back. He’d finally, after all these years, come back to take care of her.

Chapter 14
The Best Idea You Ever Had

Kate was curled on the couch, her guitar in her lap and a mug of green tea steaming on the coffee table in front of her. She hummed quietly to herself as she strummed:
E minor, D, A minor, C, E minor
—but then what? She was stuck on the bridge. She tried a few chords and then shook her head in frustration. She frowned down at her fingers as if it was their fault.

She considered giving up for the night. Maybe she should bake a batch of cookies or something. Presumably the oven worked—not that she’d ever turned it on. (There were just so many good restaurants in L.A., so many convenient take-out joints. It wasn’t at all like her little suburban slice of Columbus, Ohio, where the dining choices were either Chili’s, the Olive Garden, or the all-you-can-eat Super Buffet.)

She was halfway to the kitchen when she reminded herself that one did not forge a successful music career by baking Nestlé Toll House when times got tough. One
persevered
. She turned, sighing, and headed back to the couch.
E minor, D, A minor, C
 . . . What was that stupid poster her first guitar teacher used to have on his wall? “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”?

She picked up her guitar again but kept stealing glances at her phone. She hadn’t talked to her sister in a few days. Maybe she should call her. Or maybe Luke would call. They’d hung out a lot in the last week, mostly at the little cottage he rented in Venice. They had taken long walks along the water, people-watched on the boardwalk, and watched old Gregory Peck movies. They’d talked and talked, about all sorts of things—but Kate never said a word about PopTV. She had done just as Madison instructed.

E minor, D, A minor, C, E minor, D, A minor, C
 . . . Ugh, she was going crazy.

When her buzzer sounded, she tossed her guitar onto the cushions and ran to the intercom. Madison, Sophie, the cable guy—she’d be happy to see anyone, as long as it meant she could take a break from that damn chord progression. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Carmen said. “Buzz me in,
chica
.”

Kate happily obeyed and in a few moments Carmen was in her doorway, smiling and holding out a white box tied with pastry string. “I brought cupcakes.”

Kate had to stop herself from snatching them from her friend’s hands. “You have no idea how badly I was craving sugar. It always happens when I’m stuck on a song.”

Carmen followed her into the living room, looking polished and vaguely French in a pair of slim black pants and a sort of Marcel Marceau–ish striped top. “Rough day at the office?”

Kate laughed. “Well, it’s no rougher than being in front of a dozen cameras, that’s for sure. But I hate composer’s block. It’s the worst.” She opened the box and selected a pink-frosted cupcake dusted with edible silver glitter. “Ohh, almost too pretty to eat.” She smiled.

“Yeah. I actually brought these as an apology,” Carmen admitted.

“For what?” Kate asked, her mouth full of delicious cake.

“I accidentally told Luke about you being on
The Fame Game
.” Carmen reached for one of the chocolate cupcakes and slowly peeled off the paper wrapper. “I didn’t know you were keeping it a secret from him. Why
were
you keeping it a secret from him? Also, why were you keeping
him
a secret from me?”

Kate groaned. “I wasn’t—on either account. I mean, I just haven’t seen you much this week because you were prepping for your audition. And with Luke, I didn’t mean to not tell him, not at first. I just wasn’t thinking about it the night we met.”

“Fair enough. I forgive you,” Carmen said, licking a bit of frosting off her fingertip. “But as for Luke, what about the nights after that first one?”

“Madison told me that I shouldn’t tell him.”

Carmen shot her a questioning look. “And since when do sane people take advice from Madison Parker?”

Kate looked down at her hands. She had frosting under her fingernails and her polish was beginning to chip. “She said that if I told him, it might mess things up. Maybe he’d be totally put off and he wouldn’t want to see me anymore. Or maybe he’d be so into the idea that pretty soon he wouldn’t care about spending time with me—he’d only care about spending time with the PopTV cameras.”

While Kate was talking, Carmen was nodding thoughtfully. “Not terrible advice, especially when you consider the source.”

“Oh, Carm.” Kate laughed. “She’s not
that bad
.”

“Everyone is entitled to her own opinion,” Carmen said. “But seriously, if it was anyone other than Luke, I’d think she was onto something. Of course, she was probably motivated by some nefarious angle she’s trying to work with your story line. But anyway, I’m sorry I screwed it up.”

Kate frowned. “Was he mad?”

“No,” Carmen said. “I mean, I don’t think so.”

“I should have just told him.” Kate sighed. “I’m so lame.”

Carmen reached out and patted her hand. “Hey, Hollywood is crazy. Celebrity is crazy. Trust me, I was born on the sidelines of this game and now I’m on the playing field. And it only gets crazier in there.”

“Why does everyone who ever counsels me use sports metaphors?” Kate asked.

Carmen looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Kate shook her head, smiling. “Nothing, nothing. You were saying?”

“I was just trying to tell you that getting involved in show business, or whatever you want to call it, can really mess with a person. You have to try to remember who you are. And right now, you’re just Kate Hayes, singer-songwriter extraordinaire. Enjoy it like you are enjoying those cupcakes. Seriously, is that already your second?”

Kate looked up guiltily mid-bite. “Urmm?”

“You’re going to ruin your appetite for dinner.” Carmen laughed. “Oh hey, I think your phone just beeped.”

Kate had to search under various pillows for it. When she found it, there was a new text from Luke. Speak of the devil.

IN UR HOOD. CARE 4 COMPANY? She felt a jolt of excitement. Yes, she wanted his company. She wanted to climb on the back of that motorcycle and ride up into the hills with him. But Carmen was on her couch, and pretty soon the two of them were going to have to head over to film an “impromptu” dinner party at Madison and Gaby’s place.

“It’s Luke,” she said to Carmen. “He wants to come over.”

“Well, by all means,” Carmen said. “I’ll make myself scarce until dinner.”

Kate texted him that he didn’t have much time, so he’d better hurry, and it seemed like she’d hardly said good-bye to Carmen before Luke appeared in her doorway, wearing that motorcycle jacket of his and smelling like wind and sand and leather.

“I didn’t hear the buzzer,” she said, flustered. She was both excited and nervous to see him.

“Carm let me in,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. He’d shaved the stubble that he’d worn for
The End of Love
auditions, and his skin was tan and smooth.

“So, are you mad at me?” she blurted. She couldn’t help it. She just had to know for sure immediately.

Luke laughed. “You’re not even going to say hello?”

She looked up at him, her expression a mix of embarrassment and hope. “Hello. Are you mad at me?”

“Hmmm,” he said, folding her into a hug. “Let me think about this. If I say I’m mad at you, will you be extra, extra nice to me?”

Kate nodded into his broad chest. This was a good sign, wasn’t it? You didn’t hug a person you were mad at. “Yes,” she said, relief flooding through her. “Extra, extra nice.”

He put his finger under her chin and lifted it. Their lips met in a swell of warmth and softness, and Kate wrapped her arms around his waist. She felt like she could have kept kissing him forever, but after a moment, Luke pulled away.

“I do wish that I didn’t have to hear about it from Carmen,” he said. “But I
think
I can forgive you.”

“I’m really sorry,” she said, twining her fingers in his as they walked into the living room. “I just didn’t tell you when we met because it didn’t seem important, and then, I don’t know, I thought you might think less of me. I’m a jerk, I know it.”

Luke laughed. “No, you’re not. You’re just new to this kind of thing.” He took off his jacket and draped it over the arm of the couch. He was wearing a flannel shirt underneath it, and it sort of made him look like the foxiest lumberjack she’d ever seen.

“Do you think it’s a bad idea?” Kate asked. “Being on a show like this?” She didn’t know why she was asking him; it wasn’t like she could back out now. But then again, she didn’t want to.

Luke picked up her guitar and idly strummed a G chord. “I say, whatever helps you live your dream. If
The Fame Game
brings you attention for your music, then it was the best idea you ever had.”

Kate flopped down on the couch. “I hope you’re right. But the music is . . . well, I’m stuck on this song,” she said. “I’ve got this four-chord progression and the beginning of a melody, but then it all falls apart. I can’t get the right chords for the chorus. I’m stuck on those stupid four.”

Luke smiled. “Well, I know your problem,” he said.

“You do?” she said, blinking hopefully at him. From what he’d told her, she gathered he was a pretty decent bassist—maybe he wrote songs, too.

“Yep. You’ve got one too many chords. It’s like Willie Nelson said: All you need is three chords and the truth.”

“Oh, shut up,” Kate said, tossing a pillow at him, which he deflected, laughing.

“Ask your friend Carmen,” he said. “Her dad’s Mr. Pop Music. He knows I’m right and so does she.”

“Whatever,” she said. “I’m going to stick with my four chords until I wrestle them into submission.”

“Uh, you can wrestle me into submission,” Luke noted.

Kate threw another pillow, and it hit him in the chest.

“You know what they say about aggression,” he said, smirking. “It’s a sublimation of intense sexual desire.” His green eyes glittered playfully at her.

She laughed and scooted across the cushions to him. How could he be so sexy and so goofy at the same time? She kissed his neck and then his lips. “Mmmm,” she said. “But you’re the one who said you were mad at
me
, remember?”

“Well, last I checked, sexual desire is often a two-way street.”

She crawled onto his lap and threaded her fingers through his, sighing. “But I have to go soon,” she said. “It’s almost time for my ‘spontaneous’ dinner party.” She sat up suddenly, a thought striking her. “Hey, you don’t want to come, do you? Like, to take down the estrogen concentration a notch?”

Luke shook his head. “
The Fame Game
is going to be great for you,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be so good for me. Not at this point in my career.”

She sighed. “I know, you’re right. I just thought—”

“It was a sweet thought,” he interrupted, kissing her again. “But let’s keep us . . . between us.”

“Well, Carmen already knows,” Kate reminded him.

“No, I mean, let’s keep us away from the cameras and all that. Cool?” He continued kissing her.

She closed her eyes. She was glad he didn’t want to be on PopTV. A moment like this was perfect and private.

And if they were to keep their relationship a secret? Well, there’d only be more perfect, private moments like this one. Which was fine by her.