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The next few days were spent putting out the professional fires my mother’s little announcement had ignited. Olivia was beside herself with anxiety over how this would affect the release of my new book, especially when Georgie started threatening to pull the book all together. To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less.

My focus was beyond skewed as I tried to reconcile my professional doom with my personal sense of peace and contentment. I knew I should be more worried about the fact that my career was essentially in the crapper, but Orlando was making it very hard to be anything but strangely giddy.

I was finding it easier to open up to him, to tell him the things I hadn’t told anyone in a long time, if at all. The desire to suddenly pour my heart out to another human being was overwhelming and, unfortunately for my career, all-encompassing. Olivia finally brought this little problem to my attention, in her own not-so-subtle way.

“Damnit, Peyton,” she fumed after I’d told her for the hundredth time that I wanted nothing to do with her damage control. “This is your career we’re talking about. You are the one who’s up shit creek without a paddle if we can’t fix this. Do you understand that?”

I sighed and shoved away from my computer desk. “I know this is important, ‘Liv,” I said, “but there’s really nothing I can do at this point. If Georgie decides to shelve my new book, I can’t stop her.”

“You could at least pretend to give a shit,” she snapped. “I still maintain that a tell-all interview on a major television program will do wonders for you, but I know you’re not ready for that, so we need to come up with something else. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, what drug you’re suddenly on, but it’s not helping.”

I still hadn’t worked up the courage to tell her about what was happening with Orlando, and she was too preoccupied to ask, so she was completely out of the loop where my attitude change was concerned. I didn’t think this was the time to bring it up, so I skipped her drug comment all together.

“What about a phone interview with a major magazine instead?” I suggested, glancing at the clock on my desk. Orlando was due to call shortly, and I didn’t want the line to be busy.

“The problem with that is that it’s just as guarded as your Dominique persona,” Olivia said, seemingly pleased that I was at least starting to play along, to pretend like I cared. “Your readers need to see you, to feel like you’re opening up to them, like you realize that hiding yourself was a mistake. They need to know that you want to share more than just your imagination with them.”

That idea sobered me for a second. There was no way I could do something so public, invite that kind of scrutiny into my life. The very thought of it turned my stomach.

“What if I can’t share that much of myself with random strangers?” I said softly, twisting my fingers over the zipper of my track suit jacket, working my way up to my neck.

“I know that’ll be difficult for you,” she said, genuine concern in her voice. “But look at it this way. If you can handle what your mother did to you at her wedding last week, you can handle an interview where you call the shots and only tell everyone what you want them to know. We could pre-approve the questions and go over your answers so you know what to expect. It wouldn’t be all that bad, really.”

“Can I have some time to think about it?” I asked, shifting in my seat before getting up and going into the living room. Nerves were jumbling around in me as I tried to picture in my head what such an interview would be like. None of my imagined scenarios ended well.

“I’m having a meeting with Georgie and her bosses tomorrow to talk about how to handle the release of your book, so I need an answer by then,” Olivia said, and I heard her light a cigarette. She exhaled slowly. “If I can go into this meeting with a plan in place to fix this mess, we might have a hope in hell of releasing your book in the spring, as planned.”

The perk of staying on time with my release wasn’t lost on me. The fact was, the sooner my book hit the shelves, the sooner the royalties would start rolling in, and I could stop worrying about my bank account again. Olivia always knew right where to aim to get me to do what she wanted, whether I liked it or not. She knew that, though I was still receiving excellent royalties from my other books, they weren’t coming in as quickly as before. If I wasn’t careful, I might have to start looking for other ways to make a living, and that was definitely not something I wanted to do.

“I’ll think about the interview idea tonight, and let you know in the morning,” I said, pacing in front of my couch. “I have to really look at the pros and cons before I make that kind of decision.”

“Fair enough,” Olivia said, exhaling again. I could just imagine the cloud of smoke surrounding her head at that moment, and it made me smile through the knot in my stomach. “Just remember how strong you were to even go to that wedding, Peyton,” she added quietly. “You’re starting to realize that maybe you’re not as bad as you thought you were, so don’t let your asshole mother take that away from you and ruin your career in the process, okay?”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I promised, then disconnected the phone.

I still had a few minutes before Orlando was to call me, so I went into my bedroom and sat down in front of my mirror. I pulled my hair back, away from my face, and really looked at the scars on my neck and around my ear. This was something I avoided doing usually, but I wanted to know if I could handle looking at them closely before I decided if the rest of the world could handle it, too. I tried to see myself from an outside perspective, one that wasn’t totally warped by a shallow, selfish mind, and it was harder than I’d thought it would be.

I hadn’t realized how long I’d let my hair grow, and I never picked out the faint reddish highlights that seemed to peek out from under the brown strands, but there they were. My face, while rounder than I’d really like, was not ugly, exactly, but kind of different. There wasn’t anything remarkable about my features, but in their own subtle way, I guess they could be described as decent, with nothing crooked or in the wrong place. Would strangers see that? Would they be able to look passed the twisted flesh that screamed for attention, or would they be so disgusted by that one part of me that they wouldn’t give the rest of me a chance? More importantly, was I brave enough to find out?

I was still looking in the mirror when the phone rang, so I jumped up and went into the living room to answer it.

“Right on time,” I said as I picked up the phone, knowing it would be Orlando. He usually called right when he said he would.

“Is it sad that I’m so prompt about this stuff?” he teased, and I could hear the grin in his voice. He’d been a lot more relaxed since I’d told him everything, and he was usually in a good mood when he called.

“Yes, you know it is,” I said, my own grin splitting my face. I knew I was acting like an idiot, some teenager with her first crush, but I couldn’t help it. He made me feel wanted, like I was worth having around, and that was a first for me, so I wasn’t going to let stupid cynicism and sarcasm get in the way of enjoying it.

“Oh well,” he sighed lightly. “Actually, I would have been early today, but the line was busy.”

“Olivia was trying to convince me to do damage control,” I said, stretching out on the couch and pulling Sherman into my lap. He purred contentedly as I stroked his back. “She’s telling me to do a TV interview.”

“How do you feel about that?” Orlando asked, almost hesitantly. He knew what was coming.

“I promised I’d think about it,” I said. “She had a good point about that being nothing compared to what my mother did to me, and at least this would be on my own terms, if I did decide to go through with it.”

“Being on the telly is a big deal, Peyton,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he was discouraging me, which I appreciated. “The upside is that you can do the interview without a live audience, if you want to, so it’ll really just be you and the interviewer, and a camera, which is fairly easy to forget about if you put your mind to it.”

“I’m still having trouble setting foot outside my own door, Orlando,” I reminded him gently. “I haven’t left since the wedding, and I have no immediate plans to do so. I’m still quite content being a recluse, and if it wasn’t messing up my new book release, I would continue to stay that way.”

“There has to be some way to make this better,” he said softly, concern in his voice.

“The problem is, I’ve backed myself into a corner, and I can’t get out of it,” I sighed, feeling the frustration wash over me. I’d always sworn that Olivia would be the one to stress about my career, and now I was letting her doubts get the best of me.

“Peyton?” Orlando said after a few seconds of silence.

“I’m thinking this stupid television appearance is the one thing that will actually help,” I admitted, hating the idea more and more with each word. “Anything in print, like a magazine or what have you, is going to be just as false and shallow as everything else I’ve done so far.” I shuddered. “I guess seeing me, in all of my hideous glory, will be the only way to actually show my audience that I give a damn about them.”

“You’re not hideous,” Orlando whispered, as I knew he would. He didn’t like me berating myself, no matter how true it happened to be, and he always made mention of it if I said anything negative. I just kept telling myself that he hadn’t seen me when I wasn’t made up like a circus clown, so he had no idea what the true horror of plain, fat me really was. To be honest, that was the one thing that kept me from agreeing to meet him again, in person, where we could actually be face-to-face for more than just a few awkward minutes.

“I am, and you know it,” I said firmly, then moved on. “I just don’t know what show I would end up on, and who I’d end up talking to, and how much control they’d give me over what was said or asked. Olivia would have to settle all of those details.”

“It seems like a bit of a leap, don’t you think?” he said, a light, teasing tone creeping up in his voice. “You know, you could always try something simple first, like dinner? Or even just coffee?” The silence that followed his words was heavy with expectation and apprehension. I winced to myself.

“We haven’t actually talked about that since the wedding,” I said slowly, not sure how to tell him I’d rather have my toe nails ripped out with rusty pliers. The walls were down between us emotionally, but as soon as I exposed myself to the ridicule that being seen in public with someone so physically perfect would surely bring, I knew I’d crumble where I sat. Being seen amongst my mother’s hideous wedding guests was bad enough, but to be the only other person at the table with such a gorgeous person was going to make me ten times uglier in comparison, and that wasn’t something I was willing to open myself to.

“Don’t you think it’s time we brought it up again?”

I blushed at the warmth in his voice, despite myself. “I thought you just did,” I said, trying to be light and teasing, too. I didn’t want this to turn negative, Lord knows there was enough negativity in my life at that moment. Hell, at any moment.

“Peyton, I’m serious,” he pressed, as I knew he would. “We’ve already met in person twice, we’ve had some amazing conversations, and I already know your secrets. What difference does it make if I see you now?”

I couldn’t very well tell him what I was thinking on that particular topic, so I stalled.

“Aren’t you busy with our movie now?” I asked. Rehearsals had started two days prior, so I was amazed he even had time to call me, let alone try to get together with me. The idea of his lack of time had been my saving grace over the past few days, any time the idea of seeing him again became too hard to resist.

“I have time,” he said simply. “I’ll make time.”

“Orlando, I can’t,” I said, closing my eyes against the tears that were threatening to fall. “I’m sorry.” Suddenly the idea of being on TV was appealing, compared to the images that were running through my head at that moment.

He sighed, and it sounded like the cheer in his voice was a real effort. “Okay, I won’t push,” he said. “So you’ve decided to give the telly a shot, huh?”

Grateful for the change of subject, I smiled to myself. “I don’t see any way around it, unfortunately. I’ll make sure Olivia is a hard ass with whoever gets the interview, so that I get my way. And of course, there’ll be make-up artists and trick lighting and all that stuff. Maybe they can shoot me from the chest up, with only the right side of my face showing. Oh, and don’t forget the paper bag I’ll need over my head. That’s crucial.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” he teased, and I pictured him shaking his head, his dark curls bouncing onto his forehead, his eyes sparkling with amusement. The picture gave me goose bumps.

We chatted for awhile longer, our conversation getting considerably less serious as we continued. By the time we’d hung up, I was actually feeling half-way confident about this television idea. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to see the reactions of the people who watched the program, so I wouldn’t know if they were grossed out by me, and I was hoping the interviewer would be professional enough to not make a face or anything until after I’d left the studio.

I went into my bedroom again, changed into my pajamas, and dialed Olivia’s home number. She answered after two rings, which told me she was waiting by the phone. Normally she let her machine get her calls, even when she was home.

“What did you decide?” she said as soon as she answered. Damned caller ID.

“If you can meet my terms, and the show you choose can as well, I’ll do it,” I said, almost begrudgingly. I had a feeling I was going to regret this, but I couldn’t see any hope for it.

“This is going to be just what you need,” ‘Liv gushed, excitement clear in her voice. “Trust me, Peyton, I’ll make you look like a star.”

“Right,” I muttered as I disconnected the phone. “That’s just what I need.”