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Tyler Beauford
She did not!
She didn’t.
“Mr Beauford… Tyler, I’m sorry but it’s all over the internet, and a couple of the tabloids have picked it up too.”
I close my eyes and press my thumbs into the corners of the sockets. The action fails to release the pressure building behind the lids. This is a disaster. My first adult audience-aimed film goes on general release in twelve days and thanks to my ex-girlfriend’s determination to prove herself an absolute bitch, it’s likely to be my last. I know it’s a dog-eat-dog industry, but I don’t understand why this is happening, and what I did to her to deserve this shit shovelled on me. “What the heck does it gain her?”
“Money, Tyler. It’s all about the cash,” my oldest friend and the voice of reason whispers in my ear. Thank God, Seth’s here to cut through the bullshit and give me his honest gut opinions on the subject. “It’s not about you. I hate to say it, but it was never about you. I doubt she’s given you a second thought throughout the whole of this. Sorry to break it to you, but you were a means to an end, mate.”
I reached the same conclusion myself shortly after she left, but it still smarts to hear someone else state it. Truth is, Trisha was never interested in me. Our brief relationship was built entirely on lies. I was simply the means by which she could spy on my co-stars, and ultimately sell their secrets to the tabloids. Well, doing so spectacularly backfired. The only person who emerged with egg on their face following the release of that sexy clip of Dare Wilde and Flicka Caine getting it on together was Trisha, when she got herself fired. Now no decent director is ever going to hire her again. Hence, I guess, why she’s now resorted to selling stories about our relationship.
The PR lady my agent has hired to deal with the matter spreads today’s tabloids out before me. Each headline is more ghastly than the last.
“It could be worse.” Seth claps a hand upon my shoulder.
He’s right. It could be, but only if I was actually a vile person who routinely abused people.
“Try not to take it personally.”
“Only, it is personal when she alleges that kissing me is on a par with snogging an octopus, and that I ought to receive the Guinness World Record for the shortest hair trigger while in the sack.”
“We can’t all be wild in bed,” the PR lady—Sandra, I think her name is—remarks. Great! So the woman here to mitigate things believes the crap that’s been written. I’m screwed. Utterly screwed.
Her word choice is interesting too. It’s not that I’m simply no good; I’m not wild in the sack, like Dare Wilde. Will I ever get free of that man’s shadow?
“So, the plan is that we’ll put out an official statement,” she continues, failing to see that her own bias has already punched holes in my defence. “We’ll call her out, make it plain these are the bitter recriminations of a—”
“Stop.” Seth slams his palm down over the layer of newsprint. “A statement, for real? Ty, I really think you’d be better off just going about your business as normal and letting this whole thing fizzle out. You don’t want to blow this up any more, and you saw what happened to Flicka when she made a statement following the release of that video clip. The backlash was astronomical.”
It’s true, and he has a point.
“If you don’t say anything, the story will be dead in a day.”
“Maybe.”
“The Wilde-Caine situation was entirely different.” Sandra sticks her rather severely pointed nose in the air. “We highly recommend you make a statement, Mr Beauford.”
One assumes that’s the royal we, as she’s the only representative here from her firm. My agent is notable only by his absence, but he’s exactly the weasely sort that ducks out of sight the second there’s the merest whiff of scandal. I can hear his voice in my head, explaining that he doesn’t want to risk tarnishing the reputations of his other big fish clients by association.
“Sandra, I need some time to think through this. It’s a lot to digest.”
“Time isn’t something we have an abundance of. It’s best in these circumstances to make an immediate, decisive response. We ought to aim to get something out before the main nightly news broadcasts.”
Seth groans. “Don’t,” he says to me. “Going off half-cocked is going to be way worse than saying nothing at all.”
Sandra’s beady eyes narrow to slits. “I’m sorry, who are you?” she asks.
“Seth Lindsay. I’m Tyler’s friend. His oldest friend.”
Apparently that means nothing to her. “Well, Mr Lindsay, that’s lovely for you. Now, if you could just step back and allow me to do my job, I promise that I will get your friend out of the sticky mess he’s landed himself in.”
Seth doesn’t budge an inch, thank ever-loving God. The man has Wolverine’s adamantium backbone. No one moves him if he doesn’t want to be moved, and he’s a protective soul. I’m proper glad of that fact right now as this whole nightmare could rapidly escalate into something truly soul destroying.
“Sandra, I have to admit, I don’t really see that there’s a sensible response I can give to this. It’s a case of her word against mine, and there’s no real way of proving either side. Perhaps Seth’s right, and silence is the better option. The last thing I want is for this to turn into a massive spat on social media.”
“Not a spat, no. But…” I can virtually see the cogs of her mind working. If we get my fans riled up, they’ll come out to defend me. They’ll drown out Trisha’s remarks with their defensive rumblings. I think she’s overlooked the ways in which that could backfire, and the size of my fan base. I’m small fry in the world of entertainment.
“I can’t prove to the world I’m actually a decent lay.” Sadly I’m bereft of a string of high-profile ex-girlfriends with whom I’m still on fantastic terms to weigh in and contradict Trisha’s assertions. Maybe I’m even glad of that fact. “And I find the public are always predisposed to believe the worst, so unless you have J.K. on hand ready to tweet in my defence, I think we should give this a chance to blow over before drawing more attention to it.”
Seth vigorously nods his agreement. The look Sandra casts him is withering. She fixes on a rictus grin and beams at me. “Must I be blunt, Mr Beauford? No one wants a leading man who’s known to be shit in bed.”
“Rumoured to be,” Seth corrects her. Bless him.
Sandra snorts at him. “You. You, please stay out of this, unless you can provide corroborative evidence to counter these revelations.” She stops abruptly and pulls her shoulders back in order to look us both over. “You can’t actually do that, can you? What I mean is if you two are intimate, then now would be the appropriate point to confess that fact.”
I swear she almost rubs her hands in glee at all the potential ways me being gay would allow her to spin this.
“I’m not homosexual,” I say, before her mind goes bouncing off along those tracks, and she starts spinning my lack of enthusiasm for sex with Trisha as a dawning sexual epiphany, and look how very, very happy I am now with my new boyfriend. “Seth and I aren’t lovers, we’re just friends. Platonic friends.”
She deflates immediately, shoulders sagging and lips drooping at the corners. “Well, if you won’t do a statement, then we ought to line up some interviews. I’ll get on to Breakfast A.M., and some of the post-watershed chat shows. At least then you can share your side of the narrative.”
I’m not sure that I have a side to this narrative that needs sharing, other than I’d like all this nonsense to go away. Sure, I hope I’m not crap in bed, but I can’t prove it. What if I am? What if everything Trisha’s said is absolutely true? I mean, I haven’t forgotten the mortifying ordeal of having Dare Wilde show me how to stage kiss my leading lady effectively on the set of my last movie. I don’t think I’m ever going to live that one down. Kissing gorgeous women is supposed to be instinctual, right?
“Hey, Tyler,” Seth deadpans in the style of a chat show host. “So tell us, do you really have a two second fuse?”
There are some actors in this business that could turn that question to their advantage. I’m not one of them. My cheeks immediately flame, and a desperate, nauseous desire to pace takes over.
“No interviews,” Seth concludes. “Look at him. He’s dying a little death right now. Do you want him puking on live T.V.? He can barely get through a round of ‘Cards Against Humanity’ without unravelling due to the mention of the word jism. He’s not going to go over well being teased about his premature ejaculations, which incidentally is exactly what putting out a statement tonight will be.”
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