Not only did Michael get a call about Sophie’s audition the next morning, it came straight from Mr. Thorne’s private line. According to Michael, who recapped their discussion to me over coffee later that day, Thorne Corp’s casting director had been so impressed by Sophie’s reading of the script—and frankly, surprised that she’d shown up—that they were bypassing any sort of callback in order to go straight to filming. It was a compliment and a risk, Mr. Thorne had said, and warned Michael that although it was a gamble he was willing to take, he was also ready to fold on the entire campaign at the first sign of the project turning south.

“Sanctimonious bastard,” Michael muttered as he downed his double-shot of espresso. “No wonder Phil’s such an ass.”

I agreed with Michael, of course, but that didn’t stop me from texting Phil with the promise of buying him a few rounds of beer the next time that I saw him.

Within hours of Sophie signing the contract with Thorne, every major gossip magazine and website had a headline featuring the news. Some were kind and offered her encouragement, but most articulated the decline in her career with varying degrees of scorn and ridicule. For her part, Sophie didn’t seem to be affected by what was printed, and if she was, she kept whatever emotions she had bottled up inside throughout the first commercial’s shoot.

Things were starting to look up for her, especially after one tabloid quoted the ad’s director as having said that Sophie was ‘delightful to work with, an absolute gem on the set.’ Producers were starting to return my calls, directors’ assistants didn’t hang up on me quite as often, and Sophie was getting jobs—small ones and primarily in advertising, but it was a start. In two short weeks, everything seemed to be turning around. In fact, it almost felt like things were too good to be true and that was why I wasn’t terribly surprised when everything came crashing down three days after Thanksgiving.

Slumped against the passenger’s side window of Melanie’s car, I groaned each time the sedan's wheels rumbled over a pothole. My head was throbbing, I felt like I was going to be sick, and after four days with the Schroeder family, I never wanted to see, smell, or drink alcohol again.

“You didn’t have to agree to whiskey night with my dad, you know,” Melanie said, glancing at me with a sympathetic smile.

“Are you kidding me? Your dad is awesome,” I mumbled, shutting my eyes as the clouds finally broke and sunlight began filtering into the car.

After spending Thanksgiving Day in a semi-coherent food coma, Mr. Schroeder and the other men of the family had taken me to play golf at the Pelican Hill country club while the women of the house spent Black Friday raiding stores at the nearby Fashion Island shopping center. After a few hours with Melanie’s dad, it was easy to see where she got her sense of humor, as well as her startling red hair. It was also pretty apparent that alcoholism ran rampant in her father’s side of the family, as her cousin Murphy had passed out before the ninth hole with an empty flask clutched in his hand.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, my entire family adores you—even Kevin’s kids, and I’m pretty sure they don’t even like him that much.”

“Great,” I said, as I remembered the five painful hours that I’d spent dressing Barbies with her brother’s twin daughters and wrestling with his son. I didn’t know if I was more embarrassed to admit that I could now identify nearly all of Barbie’s work outfits or that every rib in my body was likely bruised thanks to the surprise body slam that I’d received while lying in bed.  “Really wonderful.”

Silence settled over the car as I lowered the back of my seat in order to take a nap. I matched the pace of my breathing to the beat of the pulsating ache that coursed through my body, grateful when I began drifting off. I had probably been out for ten minutes when my back pocket vibrated aggressively.

Groaning, I ignored it, expecting the text to either be from my parents or Scott; they could wait until my head had escaped the clutches of death, I figured. Twisting in my seat, I had nearly lulled myself back to sleep when my phone began to buzz against my leg in a series of sharp, punctuated hums.

“What the hell,” I said as I fumbled for my phone, entering my password to bypass the lock screen.

Four messages from Michael awaited me and a sense of dread rose in my throat before I’d opened any of them. There was no way that he was texting me with good news. More nauseous than ever, I opened the first three messages, all of which featured pictures of a tabloid’s cover and an article inside. I squinted but couldn’t make out the text, although the image of the house on the front page and the blonde superimposed over its front gate was enough to make my heart pound.

The final text was simple enough to understand: Call me ASAP.

Melanie must have seen the panicked expression on my face because she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I need to call Michael,” I said and she nodded, intuitively understanding that it was a phone call I wanted to make in private.

“I need gas anyway,” she said, signaling to enter the freeway’s exit lane.

Once in the parking lot of a Mobil, I stepped away, promising that I wouldn’t take long to return. Anxious, I selected Michael’s name from my list of contacts and waited for the call to connect. He picked up before the first ring had ended.

“Parker,” he said, his tone thick with barely concealed anger. “What took you so long?”

“I’m driving back from Newport. What’s going on?”

“What did Sophie say that she was doing this weekend?” he asked, and I could hear cabinets slamming in the background. 

“She said she was having some friends over for Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t know what else she had planned,” I replied, biting off a piece of nail and grinding it between my molars.

“Whatever it was resulted in the cops being dispatched to her house at two in the morning today. Didn’t you look at the pictures I sent you?” he demanded.

“I couldn’t read what they said, the writing was blurry.”

“That’s because I’m so pissed off that my hands kept shaking when I took the photos. Where are you?”

“Gas station.”

“Go inside, buy a copy of The Scoop, and call me back when you read the story on page thirteen.”

Michael hung up and I said a silent prayer that whatever he was talking about was nothing more than a bad mix-up. As I ducked into the station’s convenience store, Melanie called to me from the pump and told me that she wanted to stretch her legs and to take my time. I nodded in response, thinking to myself that girl really deserved some sort of medal for everything that Michael put her through, even indirectly.

Inside, the cashier directed me towards a busy magazine rack with a stern warning not to read anything before I paid. The Scoop was the first magazine that I spotted and I tossed a five dollar bill down at the register as I hurried back outside, not bothering to wait for my change.

The tabloid’s cover was far more damning in person than the fuzzy images that Michael had sent me and the words plastered across the page made my blood run cold. Under a particularly terrible photo of Sophie was the tagline: Hollywood’s Hot Mess: A Thanksgiving Celebration with Drugs, Booze, and Boys!

Frantic, I ripped several pages in my rush to turn to page thirteen where certain words leapt out at me--rager, three arrests, and cocaine--but the rest of the page blended together in a stream of nonsensical letters. I staggered over to a bench, collapsing onto its concrete seat.

Sophie, what did you do?

The thought of her losing everything that she--and I--had worked for in the past month was pushing my stomach close to the point of no return and I lowered my head between my knees as I tried to calm my breathing. There was no way that Mr. Thorne was going to go through with filming the rest of the commercials now; Thorne Corp’s unofficial motto was that it was a company for families run by a family. The last thing that the cupcake mogul needed was to be linked to an actress who wasn’t satisfied with getting a sugar high.

So much for never doing drugs, I thought bitterly as I remembered Sophie’s protests over breakfast a few weeks before.  

The next time that my phone rang, I didn’t hesitate to answer, knowing it was Michael without even having to check the caller ID.

“I thought I was supposed to call you.”

“You took too long,” he said. “Did you read it?”

“I started to but it gave me a headache. What the hell happened?” I asked, shutting my eyes as my downturned face was warmed by the sunlight reflecting off the concrete.

“Sophie apparently took off to Cabo Thursday night and asked one of her drugged out friends to house sit for her,” Michael explained and I frowned.

“Wait a minute. If she was in Cabo, doesn’t that mean this has nothing to do with her?” I asked, straightening slightly.

“You’d be right if she was anyone else, but as it is, the tabloids are having a field day.”

“But that’s not fair,” I said, fully upright. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Guilt by association.”

I spat out the last bits of nail that I had been chewing on and ran a hand through my hair. “So what do we do now?”

“Serious damage control--go find out who had the key to her house and if necessary, remind her of her constantly shrinking fan base.”

“She won’t tell me,” I blurted, imagining the scowl that I would receive if I even broached the topic with her. “But I bet I know who it was.”

The face of the heavy-lidded man that Sophie called her best friend filled my mind and I grimaced. For her sake, I hoped I was wrong about Vinny being the cause of this mess, but I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be.

“Fantastic,” Michael said. “And she’d better pray that Mr. Thorne doesn’t sack her because I’m sure as hell not going to him and groveling for her job back--and neither are you.”

With that, the line went dead and I got to my feet with a heavy sense of defeat. The dull ache that had been pounding in my head all morning became sharper with each step that I took until I finally sank into the passenger’s seat of Melanie’s car where she was waiting and massaged my temples.

“Are you alright?” the redhead asked as her brows furrowed with concern.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”

“Go back to sleep,” Melanie suggested. “We have another hour until we’re back in L.A.”

I nodded and let the side of my forehead rest against the cool glass of the window, hoping that I’d wake up with the solution to all of Sophie’s, and my, problems.

-----------------------------

“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Donahue,” Frank, the security attendant of Sophie’s community, said as he handed me a residential guest pass for my car. “Did you have a nice holiday weekend?”

“Yeah, but it was too short,” I replied and Frank offered me a rueful grin as the entrance gate eased open.

“Aren’t they always?”

I didn’t waste any time fawning over the homes as I made my way to Sophie’s house this time. Instead, the frame of my car rattled angrily as I flew over the speed bumps that littered the street, not bothering to mind the posted speed limit of 15MPH. According to the memo that I found on my desk that morning, Sophie’s flight landed at LAX around midnight, yet her phone conveniently remained disconnected. Michael’s face had been so flushed with fury by the time I offered to drive out to check on her that I was afraid he might have a stroke.

“Parker,” Michael had said as I’d turned to leave his office. “Bring her back with you. I want to have a chat with her—face to face.”

With that ominous task in mind, I’d once again braved the streets of Beverly Hills to pick up Sophie. Rather than giving into road rage as morning commuters furiously weaved in and out of my lane, I’d spent the drive envisioning myself as a knight in the service of an evil king. I was on a quest to bring back the rogue jester, and although she would undoubtedly be sentenced to the dungeon for her latest folly, at least I could give her some warning… or a head start, if she decided to run for it instead of dealing with Michael’s barely harnessed wrath.

As I turned onto Sophie’s street, I made a mental note to research fantasy screenplays with city settings before gasping and slamming my brakes.

Whoa.

Sophie’s house was completely trashed.

A dozen hired members of a cleaning crew glanced at me as I parked and hurried towards her front gate’s call button. Bottles lay strewn across the grass, empty Solo cups covered the walkway like a makeshift red carpet, and a pair of stained pants hung from a tree branch. The fountain in the center of Sophie’s driveway looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it and a vile collection of trash floated in its basin. Bags overflowing with debris lined the fence that contained Sophie’s ruined home, and compared to her neighbors' pristine lawns, her property looked like the L.A. city dump had found a new waste disposal site.

I peered through the slots in the metal gate, the action reminding me of my visit the other day. Aside from the cleaners, Sophie was alone this time, and standing in the middle of the chaos, she looked lost and incredibly young. She reminded me of a little girl who’d come back from playing in the ocean to find her sand castle had been washed away. I watched as she spun from side to side, presumably taking in the damage, while shouting into her cell phone’s speaker.

“You had no right, Vinny—“

So I’d been right about that. What a surprise.

“You’re right, it isn’t your fault but why would you give the keys—my keys—to him? I know he’s your cousin, but… What? How could this be any worse, Vinny? Seriously, tell me.”

I heard her voice crack slightly as she used a shaky hand to pull her tangled tresses into a tight bun. “Forget it,” she said with a shuddering sigh. “I’m going to send you the bill; we can figure it out when you’re back from Thailand.”  

Still clutching her phone, Sophie buried her face in her palms, her shoulders heaving with each deep breath she took. When she looked up, our gazes met and I shifted guiltily as I took in her swollen eyelids and stained cheeks. She scoffed and ran the back of her hand across her face before stalking towards me and jamming in the key code to her gate.

“Well, you certainly didn’t waste any time,” she snapped, sniffing as the metal bars slid aside to let me step through. “Michael wasn’t kidding when he said that you’d be over first thing in the morning to pick me up.”

“Sophie, what happened?” I asked, gesturing to the workers who pretended as if they weren’t listening.

“Just a party, you know? It’s no big deal, I have insurance. I can replace most of this stuff.” She rubbed her eyes again and chewed mercilessly on her bottom lip. A thin trickle of blood began to run through the cracks of its chapped surface. “Michael’s going to fire me, isn’t he?”

I shook my head. “He just wants to talk.”

“Yeah, right, Parker. I saw The Scoop’s headline—in English and Spanish. I’m smart enough to realize what this means for me.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Soph,” I said, lifting a hand and awkwardly patting her on the back. "Just meet with him while they finish cleaning up and everything will be fine, okay?"

The action had the opposite result of what I’d intended and I began to tap her shoulder blades more briskly as tears pooled in her eyes.

“Hey, don’t—“

Genuine remorse clouded Sophie’s face as she looked up at me. The tip of her nose was a dark shade of pink. “I’m so sorry, Parker,” she whimpered. “I was in Cabo, I gave my keys to… to a friend, and I didn’t think—“

“It’s okay, Sophie. Michael just wants to talk, don’t worry about it.”

“How do you know?”

I hesitated. I didn’t know what Michael was planning, but then again, I never knew what went through his mind. Who did?

“It’ll be fine,” I said, avoiding answering her question directly.

“Why does this always happen to me? I didn’t even do anything and everyone’s still treating me like some sort of junkie—and that photo, oh my God.”

“I thought you looked fine,” I lied, smiling weakly as I continued stroking her back. “Want to see my driver’s license? Now that’s a bad picture.”

Shaking her head, Sophie sniffled again and stepped towards me, closing the space between us by wrapping her arms around my midsection. I flinched as the top of her knot tickled my chin but stopped myself from reflexively pushing her away. It took a moment for the contact with Sophie to fully register in my mind, but when it did, I raised my arms and returned her embrace, holding her in a tight hug as she cried silently against my shoulder.

------------------------ 

A/N: Huzzah, the latest chapter! What did you all think, any opinions on Vinny or Sophie’s reaction? This chapter was partially inspired by Zac Efron’s house being trashed by friends while he was on location, as well as the damage that The Wanted caused at a rented home while partying. Hopefully it was decent but if you see grammar problems or typos, please let me know! Also, if you have any guesses as to what is going to happen next, I’d love to hear them. Friday was my last day of work so hopefully my updates will continue to be somewhat regular. 

Dedicated to @xxSilverWordsxx for always making me smile with her kind words and support. I honestly feel that finding a reader as dedicated as her has been a huge, unexpected blessing and she is a constant source of encouragement as I write. -Watthugs-