“Pretty please,” she’d begged over FaceTime. “I need someone to hang out with Sunny while I’m playing hostess.”
Sunny was another adult film star in Uncle Ray-Ray’s stable, and since I’d been doing costumes for Teddy Ray Fletcher and his band of performers for years, I’d known her as long as I’d known Bee. Which was why I knew the truth. “You just want me to keep Sunny and Jack from getting into a fracas at your barbeque.”
Bee made a face, her full mouth screwing up into a pout as her septum piercing glinted on the screen. “I can’t babysit them while I’m also refilling punch bowls, you know? I need a wingperson.”
I’d pinched the bridge of my nose. “Can’t your floppy-haired boyfriend do it?” Nolan Shaw was the former boy band member who’d inexplicably captured Bee’s heart while they were filming Duke the Halls, despite him being a human disaster who’d single-handedly (or, fine, mostly inadvertently) ruined my favorite ice skater’s career. But I guessed Bee had a soft spot for tattooed boys who looked good in tight pants, because now they were a disgustingly smitten couple and did things like acquire houses together and then throw meat-themed housewarming parties for said houses.
“Luca!” Bee had exclaimed. “Just be there! Or,” she’d added in the voice of a threat, “I won’t tell you a secret. A very special secret that Sunny and I learned.”
“What secret?” I’d demanded. People didn’t hide secrets from me; I hid secrets from them.
“Come and you’ll find out,” she’d sang, and then had hung up.
. . . which was why I was now at a barbeque in Los Feliz, even though I could have been doing any number of more interesting things, like taking a bath or catching up on my favorite true crime podcasts.
But no, I was here to babysit Sunny Palmer when she was the one who’d made an archnemesis of Jack Hart in the first place by sleeping with his stepmom at his wedding. Which I understood, because Rebecca definitely had mommy energy, if you got my drift, but still. Sometimes you had to soak in your own dishwater, and in this case, the dishwater was having a very flexible porn star as an eternal enemy.
Summoning up the sense of loyal, unruffled duty that I was sure I was famous for, I stepped out onto the patio overlooking the pool in Bee’s new backyard and looked around for my curvy, tattooed charge.
Movement near the edge of the pool caught my eye. A lanky form in a vintage cardigan and jeans. Hair shaved close on the sides and left long on top. Big, wire-framed glasses, and before the person ducked their head, I saw thick brows, a long nose, and a very, very kissable mouth.
I froze, my heart liquefying into a toxic sludge in my chest. I couldn’t seem to inhale properly, my chest stuck in exhale-mode, as sparks danced at the edge of my vision.
Angel.
He was back from Europe.
Angel was back from Europe, and no one had told me.
“Breathe,” said someone from next to me, and I turned to see Bee approaching, her face creased in worry. “Breathe, baby.”
“Angel is here,” I whispered. “You didn’t tell me Angel would be here!”
“I didn’t know!” Bee said and held up both hands. “I mean, I suspected there might be a teeny, tiny chance he’d come because the invite was pretty open, but—”
I glared at her.
“Okay, look,” Bee said, changing tack. “You told me that you were completely, one hundred percent over Angel. In fact, let the record show you’ve made a point to announce you’re so very over him at least once a week. Is that the truth or not? Am I going to have to start hosting two parties for every milestone in my life now? Do I need to have a shadow cabinet friend group and then a real friend group?”
I was still glaring, but she did have a very small point, which was that I had been slightly declarative about the fact I was over Angel breaking my heart in the most callous and ungentlemanly way. Which I was. I was over it.
Obviously.
“There’s no need,” I sniffed. “I’ve already forgotten about him.”
“Good.” Bee put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “And anyway, what are the odds you’ll see him again? LA is huge.”
I never did get that secret out of Bee, a fact I realized the next day as I was on the set of the latest Uncle Ray-Ray’s masterpiece, a porn remake of Pretty Woman.
While it would be a stretch to say that costuming is the tentpole of any adult entertainment production, Teddy Ray Fletcher did have a soft spot for remakes, and part of selling any good porn remake was a decent facsimile of the costumes. Of course, the budget was never great and the timeline always super compressed, but in a way, it was no different than being in fashion school. And it also helped me creatively. When the budget was juicy and the time to make something was endless . . . well, then it was hard not to want something to be perfect. And the more I wanted something to be perfect, the less I was able to actually work on it. It was weird. Or maybe it was undiagnosed ADHD. Only Dr. TikTok could tell.
Luckily, the call to perfection was very rarely a problem at good old Uncle Ray-Ray’s. Although I was pretty proud of the costumes I’d been working on for this one, and especially today’s: a faithful recreation of Vivian’s streetwalking outfit, complete with thigh-high boots and a beret.
I was pulling the outfit out of a small tote box in the cheap rented mansion that would double as the penthouse when the director—none other than Sunny Palmer—bounded up beside me.
“Hey, hi, heyyyy,” she said. “Are we ready to roll? Mackenzie’s naked in the next room. Like ‘ready to get dressed’ naked, not ‘ready for fucking’ naked.”
“Tell Mackenzie to cool her tits,” I replied as I carefully reshaped the beret, which had gotten a little smashed in the tote.
“Mackenzie doesn’t have much tit to cool, but sure,” said Sunny. She was bouncier than normal, up on the balls of her feet and practically vibrating.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked and then narrowed my eyes. “Are you drinking that energy tea again? You know the FDA has formed a committee to work on banning it, right?”
Sunny shook her head emphatically. “I’m on one hundred percent raw, organic nerves right now. It’s my first time behind the camera, you know.”
Sunny was a bit of a porn polymath—she fucked, she sex-fluenced, and she did professional makeup on the side, most recently for Duke the Halls. But she hadn’t ever directed anything until now.
“You’ll do fab,” I told her, and I meant it. I didn’t give out compliments lightly, but Sunny was the real deal. Smart, hilarious, and with an ass that would have knocked Rubens dead.
“Merci.” But from the way she was clutching her headset, I didn’t think she felt that reassured.
Mackenzie wandered in like a naked baby deer, lost-looking and spindly-legged. “Um, hi? Does anyone know where my Julie Rogers dress is?”
“The younger generation,” I said in low tones of condemnation, even though Mackenzie was probably only three or four years younger than me. “Okay, missy,” I said louder. “Let’s get you ready for your big moment.”
With Mackenzie dressed, the last performer I’d need to dress was the guy playing the Richard Gere character, who’d been listed in the email as TBD. It wasn’t that unusual in the porn world—sometimes a performer wasn’t even officially cast until the day of the shoot—but it did make my job a little harder, since the trick to making a suit look good was the tailoring, and I couldn’t tailor without measurements. But I was used to working wonders with ironing tape and a portable sewing machine, so I’d make it work.