Tears flooded her eyes and she tried to swallow, but there was a knot in her throat.
“Well that lying snake! How could he print such lies about you! My god! It sounds like a soap opera! That’s horrible! Why, you haven’t done any such a thing with Scott, and what a bad light to put him in! It’s unthinkable!” Malaika came right to her defense.
Naomi sat back slowly in her chair and raised her eyes to meet both Malaika’s and Keisha’s. “It’s true. Every word of it is true. I just… I don’t know how he got it all… I mean… I know that he took that photo while I was sitting in the café with Eva last night, and she and I were talking about all of this, but I just… I don’t know how he got it all and put it in this article for the paper today. I can’t believe this.”
Keisha and Malaika both stared at her, speechless. Naomi shrugged and nodded at them. “Yes, I had an affair with Scott. Yes, I am pregnant with his baby. Yes, he wants a paternity test and yes, he got some other woman pregnant. My life is a wreck right now. All of that is true.” She admitted miserably.
Keisha gulped. “Um… Naomi… that’s not all of it.”
Naomi looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean, that’s not all of it?”
Keisha turned the page and all three of them saw that the article continued on the next page. In explicit detail, the reporter went on to say how Naomi was an interior designer now, and that she had worked on both Scott Thompson and Jennifer Jones’ houses, but that she had started out as a stripper in college, dancing without her clothes on as she worked her way toward graduation.
There was another photo that the reporter had somehow managed to dig up. It was an image of her in her sequined bikini costume on the stage at the strip club. Her leg was wrapped around the pole and she was giving the camera a sugg
estive look in a sensual way. It was her promo shot from the strip club.
Naomi wished that the floor could open up right there and then and swallow her completely. “Oh my god,” she barely managed to get out. “I can’t believe he did that.”
“Is that true too?” Keisha asked, ignoring the photograph on the page beside the article.
“Yes… Keisha. It’s true. I was a stripper in college so I could pay my way through and not have any debt when I graduated. I did it for the money, and as soon as the debt was gone, so were my days as a dancer. Long gone. I would never do that now. I’m dedicated to my business and my future, and that was just a means to an end.” She wiped at the tears in her eyes. “I’m never going to be able to hold my head up in the business world again.”
Malaika was just finishing reading the article. “It says here that he’s looking for information on the mother of the other baby. The one night stand woman. He’s offering money to anyone who can give him her name.”
“He’s like a blood hound. I can’t believe he found all of that out and printed it. Is he trying to ruin my life?” Naomi asked, leaning back in her chair and staring upward to the ceiling.
“You could sue him…” Keisha offered helpfully.
Naomi shook her head. “No, I can’t sue him. Everything that he printed is the truth. I just can’t do anything about it.” She leaned forward and laid her arms on the desk, burying her face in them as she began to cry in earnest.
Keisha and Malaika both went around the desk to her and hugged her tightly, comforting her.
“It might be true, but you’re not going to go through it alone. We are here for you, and we’ll be here for you no matter what happens. Don’t you worry on it too much. You’re not alone,” Malaika said lovingly.
Naomi wished that none of it was true, and that she could wipe it all away, but there was no way to do that. All she could do was hide in the arms of her friends until the storm passed, if it ever did.
Chapter5
The story of Naomi that was printed in the Times went viral on Los Angeles social media in almost no time. To her surprise, the phone at the design firm began ringing off the hook with requests for her and Malaika to do design work for homes and businesses as far north as San Francisco, and as far south as San Diego. They even got calls from Las Vegas.
Most of the callers didn’t care about the fact that Naomi had been a stripper, although some of them requested that she come dance at parties and events, which she summarily turned down; the biggest portion of their callers were contacting them because Naomi had done Scott’s house and Jennifer Jones’ house, and everyone wanted to use the same decorator as the hot beautiful couple who graced the pages of the magazines and newspapers.
Other media agencies blew the phones up calling in, and they emailed almost non-stop, wanting to get an interview with the side girl who Scott had been seeing behind Jennifer’s back. Some people were angry with her, calling her a home wrecker who was trying to break up Scott and Jennifer, and some people didn’t care about the celebrity politics of it, they were more interested in her association with Scott.
Churches and organizations called about the baby, and Keisha fielded all of those calls, stopping anyone from getting in touch with Naomi who wasn’t calling about serious design job. Their calendar, which had echoed with emptiness, was suddenly overfilled and in the matter of a week, they were completely booked out six months in advance.
None of the ladies could quite believe the chaos that came in the wake of the article. The one thing that seemed almost like an anchor in the storm was Scott. He told her he had gotten an appointment for the paternity test and asked her if he could go with her to the first baby appointment, and she told him that he could. He had been more than a little excited, and she was far more than a little surprised about it.
Three days after the article was published, Scott met her at the doctor’s office, and greeted her with an enormous hug. He held her for a long while, breathing her in and losing himself in her before he let her go and looked at her sympathetically.
“I saw the article that was published in the Times,” he said quietly.
She looked down in misery. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he was there. I was sitting in a café talking to my best friend… we were talking through everything, and… well, I guess he must have been listening in. I’m so very sorry.”
He nodded. “Now you know why I’m so careful with the media, with who I take with me in front of the cameras, with how I handle being a celebrity, it’s such a volatile place to exist… all of the time. I never wanted you hurt. I never wanted you to experience this.”
“It’s bad for both of us,” she told him, looking up at him into his blue eyes and finding some solace there. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through as well. Everyone is calling you a cheater, and me a home wrecker because they think I’m trying to break you and Jennifer up… it’s crazy!”