“You ready?” I ask, nodding at the waiting cab.
The girl won’t meet my eyes, but she nods back.
“See you tomorrow, JD.”
“OK,” he says, walking off and lighting up a cigarette at the same time.
The girl is already climbing into the cab, so fuck it. He doesn’t know about that asshole Gabriel tonight, and I’m not about to tell him until I have a chat with Ray about it. So I let him walk off while I join the girl.
“Where do you live, darling?” I ask her, the cabbie looking over his shoulder at us.
“My boyfriend is waiting over at Skates Pub.”
“Your boyfriend?” Do boyfriends let their girls do this shit? I swipe my credit card and key in the address so we can get going. I have a lot of editing to do.
“Yeah,” she says, looking out the window so she doesn’t have to meet my eyes. “We’re having some trouble paying the bills.” And then she does look at me. “He lost his job a few months ago. I have to feed my kids.”
I nod at her, shoot a smile to let her know I don’t judge. But internally I judge. Not her. Him. What kind of asshole lets his girl do porn to feed their kids?
“My girlfriend worked for you guys a while back. Four or five times. She does real movies now.”
“Oh.” Real movies my ass.
“Her husband told my boyfriend about it. So we went looking for you guys. And that’s how I met JD. He’s real nice.”
I guess. I ignore her for the rest of the ride because honestly, I can’t understand how a man could let his girlfriend suck another man’s cock for food money.
“This is good,” the girl says, knocking on the glass that separates us from the driver. “That’s my boyfriend.”
The cabbie pulls over and I smile at the girl when she says thank you. Her boyfriend waits a ways off, letting her come to him.
“Where you going, mister?” the cabbie asks me, jolting my attention away from the scene playing out in front of me.
“Back to 16th and California,” I say, swiping my card again.
I think about Gabriel the whole five minutes it takes me to get back home, and then I go down to our parking garage and grab my Jeep. I wonder if JD is upstairs with Blue yet? I’m tempted to go check, but I can’t see him alone yet. Not until I talk to Ray. Because all that bullshit will come pouring out, and I’m not sure that’s good for anybody.
Not because I’m selfish. Not because I want JD to forget the past and concentrate on the future. I do, but that’s not why I don’t go up there and tell him his kid might be alive.
I don’t tell him because the last time he got wind of this, he was obsessed for months and it ended with a trip to the emergency room to pump his stomach from an intentional overdose.
This is a no-win right here. Don’t tell him shit and lose our friendship if he ever finds out. Tell him, and he gets obsessed, never gets any closer—because I’m not fucking a pack of sister-wives to get that info—and he tries to kill himself again.
I need advice. I need Ray’s advice. JD and I don’t see him together that often. Holidays mostly. But I know Ray takes care of JD like I do. He watches out for JD as best he can. And he lets me know when I need to step in. Ray will know what to do.
I get in the Jeep, start her up and then pull out of the garage and head north.
A few minutes later I pull into the garage and park on the top level. Cut the engine… and sit. I have no clue what I’m doing. Why the fuck did I let this shit get so far along without having an exit strategy? What if Gabriel is lying?
And then a thought pops into my head.
A traitorous thought that derails my whole night.
What if Ray is somehow involved?
I’m waiting on the couch, wide awake, when JD comes through the door at ten minutes to two. He immediately smiles at me.
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, plopping down next to me. His smile is contagious, but in my head, all I see is the destroyed man in the first entry of the video diary.
I manage to give him a weak smile back. “Waiting up for you. I didn’t want to miss you. And I didn’t know where you wanted me to sleep.”
JD shrugs. “We can sleep in my room. But Ark won’t come in and join us. So we might as well hit the sack in his room. That way he can’t avoid us.”
“Why would he want to?” I’m genuinely interested. Plus, this is a whole lot better than talking about JD’s dead girlfriend.
“Ark’s not into this shit, ya know?”
“What shit? Sharing?”
“No,” JD laughs. “He’s down with sharing, obviously. But sharing isn’t a real relationship. If we want him to be in a real relationship, we gotta talk him into it.”
He’s serious.
I lean in and hug him, but he pushes me back. “I need to shower first. Get the smell of that whore off me.”
“Oh,” I snort. “Mood-killer.”
“Yeah, well, three more nights and we are done. I’m retiring from acting and going strictly into acquisitions.” And then he pats my leg and gets up. “I’ll meet you in there in ten minutes. Go get naked.”
I watch his sexy ass as he walks off to his side of the loft. My heart has this little ache in it. Not for myself—for once—and not for the best friend I probably lost. Or the sadness that comes when I think of my parents and what they must be going through.
But for him.