“Elena, we haven’t finished fixing the script.”
I heard Henry’s voice behind me and winced. The hair on my arms stood on end in revulsion.
“Yes, we have,” I said, turning around, putting more distance between the two of us. I said those words with as much determination as I could muster given the circumstances.
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to have to call Fred and tell him you did a poor job,” Henry said. He was a powerful person who could probably have me fired, and I panicked.
Then I reminded myself that even if Henry wanted to ruin me, I wasn’t nobody. I had lots of friends and connections from college who all worked in the industry. Try me. I would find another job. Also, not in a million years was I going to go back to that creep’s trailer.
“I’m sure,” I said, and I may have even sounded smug if I hadn’t still been trembling.
“Suit yourself, but Fred won’t like hearing about it.”
Amelia got there then. She had a late call time as her character was supposed to appear only briefly in that sequence.
“Dashing, quit frightening the writers, will you?” she said in a joking tone, and I think we probably started our friendship then and there.
Amelia and I talked about this months after it happened. At the time, she didn’t suspect anything. Henry had never tried anything with her. He was smart. It wasn’t until Amelia’s then girlfriend, now wife, Brenda, who was a production assistant at the show, told her that Henry had attempted shoving her into a closet and kissing her that Amelia started putting things together about that day with me. She wondered what other things she may have missed, and she felt guilty about it too, even if she wasn’t the one to blame.
Dashing went back to his trailer after Amelia scolded him that night. I gave her a relieved smile and went to make a much-needed phone call. I called David first. But when he didn’t pick up on the third try, I remembered he was supposed to be meeting a source for a story he was doing on corruption at city hall. That article would eventually mean the beginning of the end of the former mayor.
My sister was too young to burden her with the dirty story I was carrying, so I made the next logical call: my dad.
He was on the set in twenty minutes. I’m still not sure how he managed such a speedy commute from Beverly Hills. He played the role of the entertainment lawyer overjoyed with his daughter’s career to perfection that day on set. I felt safe having him there. He’s been denying it to this day, but I know he talked to Henry at one moment or another that night. The actor never tried anything else with me. He didn’t even look my way or smile at me more than necessary. Fred never mentioned any dissatisfied call from him.
When my dad found out that David was going to get home late that night, he decided to drive me to the Freire Valls family home instead of the place I shared with David. I spent the night in my old room. Dad even arranged for someone to drive my car there.
I’m spoiled if nothing else. I get in trouble and call Dad, and he rushes in and fixes everything.
He hugged me and comforted me. But he made one request: not to tell David. My mother was going to run for mayor. I’d suspected it but nothing had been officially announced yet, not even at the family level, and apparently we couldn’t risk David trying to advance his career by writing about the next LA mayor’s daughter as the victim of Dashing Henry’s predatory practices.
And I, for some idiotic reason—basically because I was feeling unempowered and weak—promised not to tell the man I loved, the one person I didn’t have any secrets with, the one thing I most needed to get off my chest.
Insecure Elena was born that day.
24
Friday, February 23rd
After the chat with my dad that Friday of February, two days after Henry’s death, I did the only thing that made sense and called David.
He picked up right away, and I couldn’t avoid thinking that some things had dramatically changed for the better after we’d separated.
“Where are you?” I asked
“Miss me already?” he answered, his tone playful.
“I need to see you.” I nibbled nervously at my nails and hangnails and paced in David’s bedroom area, phone tucked between my ear and my shoulder.
“Be there in literally two minutes,” he said, flirtation still in his tone, but I’m not sure if he added anything else as I dropped my phone then and accidentally kicked it under the bed.
I crouched to reach under the bed and get it, and that’s when I found something else there. Something troublesome.
“What the actual fuck?”
…
Exactly one minute and forty-seven seconds later, David opened the door of his apartment. I was still in my sexy underwear, seated on David’s most comfortable chair. A chair, I should probably add, we’d been favoring as our favorite place for sex for the last couple weeks or so. We went through phases.
