The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention (15 page)

The next time he texted, I told him I was in a great mood because I had just signed my contract for that year and it included the weeklong vacation in September.

“That’s really awesome! You deserve it!” he replied.

There was no “let’s go somewhere together” or “you better be spending it with me!” or anything like that. Okay, now I
really
didn’t feel bad about dumping him.

“I’ve been thinking,” I texted him. “We haven’t really been talking as much lately and I think it would be better if we stopped seeing each other. It’s going to be a really busy year for the both of us and I don’t see it working out.”

He sent back a row of sad emojis, and our conversation continued, with his supposedly regretful words about how he wished it could have worked out, but there wasn’t any begging me to come back or any attempts at trying to change my mind. Before I went to bed that night, to eliminate the temptation of ever texting him again in one of my weaker (or drunker) moments, I deleted his number, email address, and previous text conversations from my phone, reminding myself of Rule 2: “Don’t Talk to a Man First.”

“These flowers are beautiful,” Hannah said the next morning, flicking the giant bouquet of white lilies on my dining table with a lacquered black nail. “Is Aubrey performing tonight?” she asked, that mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

“No.” I chuckled. “Her last show was two weeks ago. You know that, Hannah.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” Hannah drawled. “Give Laura a New Year’s kiss for me. I’ve decided I’m going to Aspen.”

The flowers were a congratulatory bouquet from the producers of the pilot for
Holly’s World
. When E! had presented it as a special earlier that month, it had done well in the ratings, prompting the network to order a full season! I was so thrilled to have this opportunity, but there was barely time to negotiate, let alone celebrate. Figuring out my agreement was a bit sticky, since I was in essence dealing with two very different masters. The network was one; the production company in charge of actually making the show was another.

The deal was amazing in a lot of ways. I was advised to hold out for a “created by” credit, but production wouldn’t grant me that, which I thought was odd because the idea for the show
was
my own. It’s not like someone else came along and said “Hey, I want to do a show about you as a showgirl in Vegas; let me cast you in a live production, put you up in a hotel, and introduce you to a group of people I’ll cast as your friends.” No, this was my life that I had created on my own. Not only that, but it was the same idea I had been pitching around for the better part of the year, one that the very same production company had turned its nose up at initially.

Sure, I had grown a lot since I left the mansion a year and a half earlier, but I still had a long way to go when it came to building up my self-esteem. There was still the part of me that thought I had to cut corners, forgo pay, or settle for less than I was worth because I felt like I wasn’t good enough.

In the end, that’s what I would do when it came to this credit, because, as was typical, I was in a hurry. I knew how fortunate I was to have this opportunity with E! and I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. I didn’t need stalled negotiations holding this project up for months or longer. Who knows, the network could lose interest by then. It had been almost a year since my last episode of
GND
had aired, and a year
can seem like a decade by Hollywood standards. I knew I had to get back on TV in order to make
Peepshow
as relevant and popular as I wanted it to be.

I shoved my concerns under the rug, focused on all the positives, and signed the contract. I was flying high due to finally landing this TV show, and having the hiatus from
Peepshow
just as we would begin shooting was perfect timing. We planned to spend the month filming the first few episodes, which included a trip to the Riviera Maya in Mexico for a calendar shoot. I couldn’t even remember the last time I went on a beach vacation—and it couldn’t have come at a better moment!

Walking into the El Dorado Royale Resort surpassed my expectations. The resort stretched down the white sand beach as far as the eye could see. Everything you could have asked for was on the property: pool after pool (with fountains and rivers), bar after bar (including an open-air lounge with wooden swings and a martini bar), and restaurant after restaurant (from formal dining to a casual poolside palapa). We were taken in a golf cart to our casitas, absorbing the tropical wonderland. I spied an adorable iguana darting across one of the lush green lawns and just knew this trip was going to be magical. It didn’t disappoint. Each of our casitas had its own private pool and each bedroom a romantic, billowing white canopy bed. We spent the next few days shooting photographs for a calendar and filming whatever drama happened to explode in our wake. Luckily, we quickly got all the content we needed and were left with some free time on the final day of the trip to enjoy the resort. The cast, some of the crew, and I headed to one of the beach bars for a drink on our final afternoon. As we made our way over, Angel asked me what was on my mind. I’d been slightly distracted over the last few days and it hadn’t escaped her notice.

“It’s the whole Jeffrey thing,” I confessed, “I don’t get why I still can’t stop thinking about him. It’s like,
I
dumped
him
! So why do I still care?”

My friends knew just what to ask:
Do you really miss him? Do you
actually want him back?
They already knew the answers, but they put it in perfect perspective for me.

“Not really . . .” I cringed. I was embarrassed to admit how I really felt. I didn’t necessarily want him back, but it was as if I was feeling slighted because
he
didn’t want
me
back. The egotism of it!

“When he didn’t go to my screening,” I explained, “that was, like, the beginning of the end for me. It was just so disappointing because I thought he was this genuinely nice guy.”

“So if you don’t really miss him, why are you so bummed about it?” one of our producers asked.

“Because I feel like
I
just got dumped. Even though I’m the one who broke up with him, I feel like that’s what he wanted.” I sighed. “Like he was just pulling away and blowing me off until I pulled the trigger, because he was too much of a coward to do it himself. It’s like this is a reverse dump. I just don’t get it. I thought he really liked me, and I thought I was moving slowly and doing everything right, but he lost interest so suddenly.”

My bikini-clad support system quickly reminded me how I used to say that Jeffrey had no sense of humor. They pointed out that he didn’t like Vegas and that Napoleon didn’t even like him.

“That’s true,” I conceded, stirring my piña colada. “How come it’s so easy to forget about those things that weren’t working when you’re scrambling to pick your ego up off the floor?”

It was almost as if I was so eager to check “boyfriend” off the list of things I wanted in my life that I focused only on the positive aspects of Jeffrey, instead of being a little more discerning. I should have truly taken the time to decide if he was right for me or if I was even passionate about him before letting myself become emotionally attached. I began to realize that I approached Jeffrey the same way that I approached shopping for a house. I was ready to jump at the first okay option instead of waiting for the perfect gem to come along.

“Maybe I just need some time to myself,” I thought aloud.

“You’ll find somebody better,” the bartender cut in. “In the meantime, can I get anyone another drink?”

“Yes!” we all answered in unison.

As I curled up on the plane to try and catch a nap on the way back to Vegas, I thought about how truly ridiculous my relationship with Jeffrey seemed in hindsight. I had approached it with a method. I had done everything right, followed all the advice to a T, and Jeffrey
still
lost interest in me. Not only that, but I hadn’t felt like I was truly being myself while I was following all this protocol. It’s not like any book could ever tell me how to find the one who is right for me, anyway.

O
F COURSE, AFTER YOU
break up with someone, so much comes to light. As it turned out, some time later, on the set of a music video, Lindsay met a gorgeous model who couldn’t stop complaining about her ex. The ex turned out to be Jeffrey Decker.

“She ended up getting tossed to the side a few months after they met,” Lindsay shared with me. “She was really blindsided by it because she swore he was
really
into her. She would always say that he came really fast when they had sex because he was so turned on by her, that he talked about having kids in front of her a lot and always just seemed like such a
nice guy
. She was devastated when he moved on to someone else.”

It appeared Jeffrey had a formula. Even his bedroom shtick sounded familiar! Yuck.

Ironically I had tried to work my “
Rules
magic” on this guy while he seemed to be doing the same thing with me . . . and it had worked like a charm! It was as if he had picked up a manual telling him exactly what the “typical woman” wants: to feel special in bed; to finally find a guy who values her, who can’t stop talking her up to all his friends, who loves kids and talks about starting a family. The whole time I had been trying to turn myself into one of those “bitches” that men “love,” my target
seemed to have been fooling me with his own set of Man Rules. All that time I was convinced that the dating books were actually working for me and that I was the one holding the reins, he appeared to have been playing me.

As if dating wasn’t tricky enough, I was about to find out how much more complicated it could be when you add a reality show to the
equation
.

“In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets.”

—L. Frank Baum,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I
don’t know . . . I don’t really like these two,” I said, pointing at one image before clicking on a second one on my laptop screen.
Peepshow
had just reopened after a six-week hiatus and the first performance back had been photographed for promotional purposes. I was given the shots to approve before they went off to be published in our new programs. The first photo in question was from the new spider-web number that had been added to the show. In the picture, I was facing the camera straight on, wearing a baby-blue chemise and boy shorts set. My midsection, which peeked out from under my cropped chemise, looked a little too wide for my taste. What had happened to my hard-won hourglass figure? Clearly my
Dancing with the Stars
physique wasn’t going to last without any maintenance.

“Okay, strike that one off the list!” Angel declared, making a notation on one of the countless Planet Hollywood notepads that littered my dining table.

“And look at this one!” I exclaimed. “I totally have a gut!” I pointed
at a photo of me standing sideways, wearing the same outfit. “I’ll have to suck it in when I’m onstage tonight.”

“Stop it! You look amazing!” reassured Angel, giving me her best “you have to be kidding me” look.

“Thanks.” I sighed. “There’s always going to be a few bad pictures in every set, right?”

I didn’t give it too much thought after that. But the reality was, I was eating really badly. I thought I was making healthy choices and indulging only every once in a while . . . but living like Eloise at the Plaza with unlimited free-of-charge room service—not to mention trying every restaurant in town—had made it really easy for me to treat myself. My typical lunch included what I
thought
was a healthy choice: a grilled chicken sandwich with Swiss cheese and avocado. Sure, it came with a side of fries, but since I only ever ate a few of them, they didn’t count, right? Meanwhile, that heavy sandwich would put me in a food coma each day, and an hour-long midday nap was either had or sorely missed, depending on my schedule.

When doing interviews, I’d often get asked how I stayed in shape and would always quip that I was “onstage dancing every night!
Peepshow
is my workout!” I think I actually started to believe that sound bite, but in reality I had become so accustomed to my nightly routine that it was hardly a workout anymore. It was safe to say I didn’t even break a sweat.

Immediately, I resolved not only to be more conscious of how I held myself onstage but also to go on a diet or start an exercise routine. However, those resolutions quickly fell to the bottom of my ever-growing to-do list. After I finished going through the photos, I asked Angel if she wanted to come check out the new house I had just purchased.

“Yeah! I can’t wait to pick out my room,” she said cheerfully, gathering her things and following me down to valet. I had invited Angel and her son Roman to live with me in my new home. She was almost twenty-one and I assumed she would be anxious to get out of her parents’ place. I always hated the idea of living alone, so it seemed like an
ideal arrangement. Not to mention, it made her spot on the show more secure. One savvy network exec would always ask
why
I was friends with the people I wanted on my show. She wasn’t questioning my choice in companions, but rather approaching it from a viewer’s perspective: What justified this person’s constant presence in my life? Josh was my costar, Laura was my roommate, and Angel was my assistant . . . but somehow “assistant” never seemed like a good enough answer for the executives. Having her as a roommate seemed like a good answer to that question.

The valet swooped around the corner with my pink Porsche, and Angel and I jumped in, put the top down, and made the journey twenty minutes south to the suburb of Southern Highlands. My new house was lovely, but it was surprisingly cookie-cutter for my taste. I would have loved something older and more unique, with an interesting history, but options were limited. In the early 2000s, Las Vegas saw an influx of new residents, which produced row upon row of Spanish or Tuscan tract houses, all nearly identical. I had thus in essence chosen to live in the desert’s answer to Stepford. There were still a few neighborhoods that had unique homes with a bit of history, but those houses rarely came up for sale . . . and I didn’t have that kind of patience. Instead of waiting for “the one” to appear on the market, I was determined to make the purchase quickly for the sake of achieving my goal.

“When do you want to be settled in by?” Angel asked, pulling her hair into a ponytail as the wind whipped it around.

“Actually, I’m not sure,” I replied, watching the lights of the Strip go by in a blur of LED and neon as we flew by on the freeway. “I’m still going to be spending a lot of time in the suite, so I’ll play it by ear. I only just started ordering furniture.”

No one ever asked me why I was so anxious to buy a house so quickly. In fact I never even asked myself. It was just another goal I had set, another one I was manically determined to check off my list. The goal-checking had become an addiction, one that took my mind off of my past and my problems with it.

We went through the guard gate and rolled into the driveway. My house didn’t look much different from the others that surrounded it. It was a four-bedroom Spanish-style home with a screening room in the basement. I loved the natural rock pool with the water slide, Jacuzzi, and palapa hut in the back, as well as the curving princess staircase in the home’s entryway. The property’s biggest downside, as I would later learn, was the isolation I would experience out in suburbia, feeling far from the excitement and energy of the Strip, but like I had with Jeffrey, I hadn’t focused on the features that weren’t right for me. In the beginning, I focused only on what I did like, eager to get the purchase done as quickly as possible.

I unlocked the door, turned on the chandelier in the entryway, and led Angel through the house, our heels clicking on the travertine floors. After she saw all the rooms and chose neighboring guest rooms for herself and her son, we went back downstairs to tour the kitchen.

“Do you know what we’re going to be filming this month?” Angel asked me as she took a seat at the kitchen island.

“Good question!” I said, grabbing two Perriers out of the fridge. “I asked the last time I was in L.A. and nothing was set in stone, but I did suggest we shoot a blind-date episode. So I might need you to set me up.”

Now that Jeffrey was out of the picture, I was starting the rest of the season without a boyfriend. While the series was never sold with the idea that I would have an on-screen love interest, I wasn’t opposed to discussing my love life and establishing, for viewers, where I stood . . . which, at that moment, was absolutely nowhere. I had suggested the idea of a blind-date episode and the producers loved it. I promised we would find a good candidate for the episode.

The following week, Angel and Josh scoured
Vegas
magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelors list for a suitable suitor. Josh was on the list himself and suggested they browse the other candidates. They wanted to find someone young, good-looking, full of energy, and of course willing to
be on the show. Finally they landed on Ricardo Laguna, a handsome, olive-skinned, professional BMX rider.

On the day of our “date” Ricardo came to pick me up at my brand-new, sparsely furnished home. My mom had come to town to see my new place, so she and my friends sat Ricardo in the hot seat and grilled him for a few minutes before he and I left for Pole Position Raceway to race go-karts. This was my kind of first date: all action, no talking! When we finally did sit down to have a bite to eat, our conversation was stunted. As one can imagine, it’s not easy to get to know someone when there are cameras hovering over your shoulders. A producer prompted Ricardo to ask me something like “so where do you see this relationship going?” which is of course a bit of a stretch question for a first date, and it made me laugh. Even though, in my mind, the date was all in good fun for the show and not a “real” date, that outing was my first clue that meeting men on-camera wasn’t going to be easy.

M
Y LOVE AFFAIR WITH
Las Vegas aside, it was still necessary for me to be back in L.A. every Wednesday for business. Whether it was meetings, press, or photo shoots, there was always something that needed to be done. On more than one of those Wednesdays, I was caught getting coffee with Benji Madden, the guitar player from Good Charlotte.

The unwanted side effect of meeting for coffee in L.A. isn’t overcaffeination, it’s the high probability of photographers seeing you exit together. I was convinced, for a time, that half the people I would see “working on their next screenplay” at the ’bucks were really spies reporting every entrance and exit of anyone remotely recognizable to the blog-arazzi. From there, a romantic narrative inevitably gets created by the press. Ordinarily, this particular situation wouldn’t have been that annoying to me. Sure, the press linked us together, but the talk had been pretty innocent. There wasn’t the sexual innuendo that had been layered on my
alleged connection to Russell Brand almost a year earlier. It seemed like pretty harmless stuff.

What
did
complicate things was the fact that I was at that time shooting a reality TV show. The audience, the producers, and the network had the expectation that I would be honest and thorough when it came to opening my life up to the cameras. And for the most part, I was. I wasn’t afraid to discuss any issues I had or break down in tears or appear in a skimpy bikini. But when it came to another person’s life, someone who wasn’t a cast member—well,
that
was a different story.

Besides the fact that I wasn’t going to bamboozle anyone into being on my show, I didn’t really think rushing someone I dated on-screen would be good for my love life. I wanted the producers to put themselves in my shoes. If you met a guy you were interested in, would you drop “hey, do you mind filming for my reality show?” on him on the first date? Probably not. And what kind of a guy would say yes to something like that right away? Women get the brunt of the “gold digger/opportunist” L.A. stereotypes, but it’s really not fair. There are plenty of guys out there trolling for the same thing. I could name several guys who were “famous” chiefly for dating a woman (or women—some of these guys were serial!) who had her own reality show. This was the
last
type of person I wanted to attract!

But I didn’t want to scare away the good guys, either. Asking a guy too early could send him running for the hills. While the opportunity to appear on a reality series might sound like the chance of a lifetime to some, there are plenty of people who don’t think it’s so cool. It may not fit in with their career or brand, or they may be genuinely too shy to be on camera.

I didn’t feel like I was cheating the audience or anyone else by not asking a specific date to be on the show. Besides, in my ongoing quest to establish myself as a single woman, I didn’t feel the need to have a man on this first season of
Holly’s World
. Doing a blind-date episode was a dif
ferent story. It provided an opportunity for me to show the audience what my life as a single person was like. The episode even ended with my mom and me having a heart-to-heart at the Peppermill, where I confided in her that I wanted to have a family, but for now I was happy being single.

When production got wind of the rumors and asked me about Benji, I told them that I wasn’t comfortable asking him to be on the show. I even lied and said I wasn’t seeing him when they wouldn’t drop the subject. But they wouldn’t accept it. One particular higher-up made me feel like shit, telling me, “If this guy cares about you at all, he should have no problem being on your television show.” I knew in my head that that wasn’t necessarily true, but in my heart I started to get paranoid. I was so self-conscious! Any guy who crossed my path couldn’t win. If he was eager to be seen with me, then perhaps he was using me for publicity. If he wanted to keep things private, it must be because he was embarrassed by our relationship. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Despite my adamant denials, the powers that be continued to do everything they could to put the subject on the show. They had my friends talk about him on-camera when they did scenes without me in hopes that it would force my hand. To be fair, Josh and Angel didn’t even know how I felt about the situation. I hadn’t confided in them how production wasn’t letting the situation go. When Angel asked me on-camera if I was disappointed that Benji didn’t come to a party we filmed, I responded that I wasn’t because I wasn’t expecting him to. I didn’t think they would use that footage, simply because Benji had never been established on the show, so how would it even make any sense? I didn’t know that they had already logged interviews with Josh and Angel talking about him. I refused to say Benji’s name in interviews at all for the longest time, resulting in a major blowout. Eventually, one of my favorite producers even told me, through tears, that her boss threatened her with her job if she didn’t get me to say his name on-camera. They simply refused to let it go.