Between the Raindrops Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Susan Schussler

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0989033317

  ISBN 13: 9780989033312

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013919093

  Rocky Shore Media LLC

  Saint Paul, Minnesota

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Between the Lies

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  I often look back on the past four years and wonder what I could have done differently. Could I have changed anything in any way to make a difference? Or is my life driven by fate, out of my control, and I’m just falling to the ground like the raindrops, only to be pushed and pooled into the eroded channels already carved before me? I’m not sure what I believe, but I remember the disastrous night four years ago that first made me question whether I was in control, and it changed my life forever.

  At nineteen, my life was finally moving in the direction it was meant to go. I had endured my share of setbacks and failures for my age, but I’d had a decent run so far. Some might say I lived a privileged life, but it’s all relative to where you start.

  Growing up, my family life was stable. My parents had been married two and a half decades, which is unheard of where I come from. Where I come from, marriages are measured in months, or years, if they are successful enough. Los Angeles, Brentwood, Los Feliz, Hollywood—it’s all the same. People always define themselves by where they live, but in reality, if you work in the business, it doesn’t really matter where you call home. The only thing that matters is how successful your last movie was and if you have another one lined up.

  My brother, Jack, and I practically grew up on my dad’s movie sets, so it was natural for us to go into the business. I had my first acting job when I was six—a Play-Doh commercial. I don’t really remember it much. I didn’t have any lines. I just smiled a toothless grin and pushed down a handle, spewing fire-shaped Play-Doh out of a dragon’s mouth. I get blindsided with clips of that commercial every once in a while. It’s embarrassing to see myself in a TV commercial, but we all have to start somewhere, and besides, I was cute.

  I was in my first movie at the age of twelve. I played the younger brother of a teenage psycho killer. I only had a few lines, but I had lines, and that was a big deal at the time.

  By nineteen, I had acted in six movies. One of them was uncredited, as my scene never made it into the final cut of the film, but I had the experience of acting in it and got paid, so I still count it. I was the lead in two of the six movies, and my career was just taking off.

  On that horrible night four years ago, my sixth movie hadn’t been released yet. Its status on IMDb hadn’t even been changed to postproduction. We wrapped the filming in Vancouver the day before, and I had just gotten back into Los Angeles that afternoon.

  It was my biggest film yet. It had a huge budget—bigger than any movie I had ever worked on, bigger than any movie my dad had ever directed. Shooting proved grueling with fourteen- to eighteen-hour days. The days and nights blurred as filming consumed me. I did most of my own stunts. It was very physically demanding, but I was in the best shape I had ever been in, thanks to my personal trainer. The movie took almost six months to film, and postproduction was expected to take another year. I felt like my acting career was definitely heading in the direction of every actor’s dream.

  My brother Jack’s career had taken off too. He’d stowed several financially successful films under his belt and had just been signed to play the lead in The Houston Chronicles with a $5 million contract. We went out to celebrate that night I got back into town. We were celebrating our successes of finally making a name for ourselves and were showing off a bit going to Club Priela. It was the place to be seen, where all of young Hollywood hung out. It was packed with celebrities and trust fund kids, and the sidewalk was packed with paparazzi. The paparazzi didn’t care about me back then. My big movie hadn’t been released, and no one really knew my name.

  Jack, on the other hand, at twenty-one, screamed up-and-coming A-lister. He had worked all through high school and built a credible reputation. He’d successfully made the crossover from child actor into solid adult actor with his last film, and his fame was growing. His recent interview and cover shoot in Men’s Health had fostered Jack Williams as a household name. Jack seemed to embrace the newly found attention, and that night didn’t seem out of the ordinary to him. Maybe it was because I had been away filming and hadn’t been exposed to my brother’s growing notoriety that I was agitated by the photographers that night. But I could feel it in the air when we entered the club. The paparazzi were hungry, and something just didn’t feel right.

  Inside the club, the lights bounced off the walls in colorful, graphic patterns that gyrated to the beat of the music. The large booths with dim-colored lights emitting through the glass tabletops provided intimate seating for parties of six to eight. The club really was a good place to network with others in the business, and Jack introduced me to several people.

  We met up with Jack’s girlfriend, Camille Moss. They had costarred together in his last movie and been dating for seven months, but this was the first time I really had a chance to talk to her. A feisty redhead, she seemed to be a good fit for Jack. She stood thin, but not a waif. She possessed some semblance of a brain and big tits. She was exactly his type. Jack always fell in love with busty redheads. He knew what worked for him. I, on the other hand, had never found my type. I dated enough to know what was out there, but I had never been in love, never found that connection with anyone.

  When we were ready to leave, the valet pulled Jack’s silver Audi to the curb. I got into the driver’s seat, and the smell of new leather filled my lungs as fifty or so paparazzi swarmed around us. Being under twenty-one, I was usually Jack’s designated driver when we went out together. It’s not like I couldn’t drink at the club if I wanted to, but I had drank too much the night before at the wrap party and just wasn’t in the mood to poison my body any further. As my father always said, when you live your life in the public eye, you need to be better than everyone else because the entire world will know about it when you screw up. It’s good advice, and I was lucky I upheld it that night.

  Jack and Camille posed on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes before sliding into the backseat. I was naive back then, not understanding the feeding frenzy stirred by an on-screen couple hooking up off-screen. The spray of flashes blinded us, and the intrusive questions the photographers hurled boggled my mind. I had seen this obnoxious behavior before,
but not directed toward Jack or me. I inched the car forward cautiously as the camera lenses clacked against the darkly tinted windows. I didn’t want to run over anyone’s foot and be sued, so I took it slow. Once freed, we made our way down West Sunset Boulevard. Traffic was light, so we actually moved along, hitting green lights.

  I didn’t notice him right away, the paparazzo on the motorcycle. He pulled up alongside us when we stopped at a light. I remembered his long horse face and ponytail from the group on the sidewalk, and he hung way too close to the Audi for my comfort. When the light turned green, we picked up speed again, making our way through three more green lights.

  The guy on the motorcycle hovered around my front-right bumper as if his hand rested on the car. I worried he would follow us back to the house, so I tapped the brake just a little to shake him off. The guy apparently decided that now was his chance. He pulled in front of us and whipped his camera out of his jacket. It all happened so fast that I didn’t realize what he was doing at first. The idiot was attempting to take a picture through our windshield without crashing his motorcycle. He wasn’t successful. He spilled his bike right in front of us, and his body skidded across the pavement. My first reaction was not to kill him, though now I wish I had. I instinctively slammed on the brakes and swerved to the left to avoid splattering the biker. But I forgot about the oncoming traffic, and when I saw the giant black Escalade barreling toward the Audi’s passenger side, I panicked.

  Even though time sped by so fast, I saw it in slow motion, just like the movies. Maybe the adrenaline in my body made everything around me seem to slow down, but I saw the mammoth SUV coming at us, and there was nothing I could do. At the same time, all I could think about was how Jack was going to kill me for destroying his new car. I didn’t realize that things were much worse until I heard the screams from the backseat and the explosions of the side air bags. I heard a deafening crushing sound and a piercingly loud screeching of metal scraping against metal. The acrid smell of burning rubber grew in intensity as I sat unable to move, dazed in the moment.

  I didn’t feel any pain—not yet, anyway. I called out to Jack—no answer. I couldn’t hear anything more, only the pounding of the blood in my head, and then I was on the ground, lying in the street. The heat of the pavement scorched my back. Someone had dragged me out of the car. A fireman, a paramedic, or just a guy on the street—I wasn’t sure. I must have passed out then, because the next thing I knew, I lay in a fog in the emergency room, and I didn’t even remember the ambulance ride.

  The Internet, my fickle friend, my two-faced enemy, what would life be like without you? Where else can I be anonymously anyone and yet, have no anonymity at all?

  Jonathan pushed back from the oversized desk and glanced around his cluttered home office. Towers of half-opened cardboard cartons were stacked high against the wall behind his chair. The insides of the boxes intentionally strewed out over the rims to remind him of their contents. The disorganization of the room troubled him, but he couldn’t fathom a practical way to fix it long term. As soon as he or his assistant cleared out a box, two more would arrive at the house, beckoning him to empty them. The packages of free merchandise were just one of the cursed perks that came with his celebrity status. He knew he was lucky to have any products sent to him at all, and he would never complain about the swag. Most actors only dreamed of such a privilege, but Jonathan felt overwhelmed by his fame and longed for a less complicated life.

  He spun his chair around to face his open laptop and clicked on the icon that had become such a habit over the last few months. When the gossip website appeared on the screen, he uttered, “Wow, I really need a haircut.”

  He brushed the dark wavy hair off his face as he read the caption: “Jonathan Williams grabs a cup of joe after a late night of partying.” The fan he had posed with this morning outside his favorite coffee shop must have tweeted the picture from her phone.

  That was fast, he thought.

  He sipped his coffee as he scanned the website for any surprises. Convinced he had a good handle on the day’s gossip, he took out his phone to contact the website’s manager. He had spoken to Paris Borel many times before. Every once in a while, he would feel so wronged by the gossip on her site that he would call her up just to set the record straight. Her site was one of the better ones—in his mind. Sure, it published gossip disguised as news, but it rarely put up paparazzi pictures and never leaked his whereabouts until after he had left. Paris didn’t misquote him and usually gave Jonathan the benefit of the doubt when it came to the wild rumors that seemed to hound him lately. The latest one was about him getting engaged to Mia Thompson, his costar from the romantic comedy Love Twice.

  He and Mia had gone out for a while, he couldn’t deny that, but it wasn’t anything serious. She was a riot to hang with and could handle herself in the press. Besides, his publicist, Remi Delano, didn’t like it when he went to events alone. She said it was bad for his image. Mia didn’t mind going out with Jonathan. She liked to be seen. She liked to be seen with Jonathan. He always brought a lot of attention, and that was what Mia liked most about Jonathan Williams.

  At least the Mia story had some foundation. It wasn’t relevant anymore, though. Jonathan and Mia both knew that the relationship had just been convenient. They were too different. Mia, a curvy, high-maintenance brunette, liked to live in the press, and Jonathan was too busy with his career to play press games. Mia was also known for hitting the LA nightclubs pretty hard, and Jonathan just wasn’t into the club scene anymore. He would much rather hang out with friends at a house party or hit a concert than a club, and having his life unfold in the press did not excite him. So eight months ago, after the press tour for their movie had ended, they decided to remain just friends. They still went out for coffee once in a while, just to catch up, and used each other for dates to award ceremonies or charity events when they didn’t have anyone else, but nothing more. They knew where they stood with each other, and that made it easier. Still, every time they were seen together, the rumors exploded. It kept his publicist happy, and Mia too, Jonathan thought.

  Jonathan hadn’t always drawn so much attention. But since his big break, his life had changed. It astonished him how one movie could transform everyone’s opinion about him. His movie The Demigod became a blockbuster hit that made $687 million worldwide. Its release three years ago had skyrocketed Jonathan Williams to the actor’s A-list.

  His career sped from zero to sixty overnight, out of his control. The media took over, and the public wanted answers—answers about Jonathan’s personal life. How many times could he endure the same questions over and over? “Do you have a girlfriend?” stood as the most common question asked, but “Boxers or briefs?” irritated Jonathan the most. He didn’t see how his boxer briefs held any bearing on his acting ability. So one day, he decided to end the underwear debate. During a now notorious interview on national television, he showed just how frustrated he was with the senseless inquiry. Instead of his usual skirting around to something more relevant, Jonathan simply unbuttoned his trousers and let them drop, showing his choice to the world without a word. It became a joke, but at least no one asked him anymore.

  His popularity cycled up and down slightly over the next three years according to the release of his films, but never wavered. With The Demigod sequel to start filming this fall, Jonathan’s hype was climbing again. These days, he couldn’t step outside without having his photo taken or someone tweeting his whereabouts. His fans stalked him, and some days, he was convinced that his hand was going to fall off from signing autographs. He rarely said no to fans and had signed some pretty crazy items and body parts.

  Though the fans were exhausting, they didn’t aggravate him like the paparazzi. The paparazzi hunted him. They dug through his garbage searching for anything they could use against him. They hid outside his condo or his parents’ house in the heat and wind just waiting for him to leave. Then they followed him all day long with four-foot-long camera lense
s, disappearing behind bushes and Dumpsters, all in the hopes of getting the perfect shot—a picture of Jonathan in a public display of affection with some random girl, or doing something illegal, or just compromised in some way. The worse Jonathan looked, the more money the picture brought. The paparazzi shouted in his face and blocked his way as he walked. They tried to provoke him into violence just so they could break the story about the hottie gone crazy. So far, he’d been good and managed to keep his cool, but it had been close a few times.

  He realized that his love life was just as messed up when an aspiring actress recorded their date on her phone and posted it online. Though the picture was poor, every word was audible. The next day, it went viral on YouTube, tagged “A Date with a God.” He had planned to ask the actress out again, until his publicist forwarded him the video link. At first, Jonathan laughed about it, because it wasn’t too incriminating and it wasn’t the worst date he had been on, but obviously, the girl didn’t want to go out again. The incident convinced him that dating wasn’t worth the headache. He shrunk deeper into his tight group of friends and rarely put himself out in the dating world. He always worried that his dates were just using him to promote themselves in the Hollywood press and wouldn’t even go out with him if not for his celebrity status.

  Jonathan found the website manager’s number on his phone and pushed send. As he began chatting with Paris, he knew he would have to watch what he said to her. After all, it was her job to report breaking news about celebrities, but he felt comfortable because they had built some rapport. Jonathan also knew that he would have to give up a piece of himself to her. A small bit of his personal life would have to be sacrificed in order for him to get what he wanted. He knew which part it would be and thought it may help him in the long run.

  “Jonathan, it’s good to hear from you. Did you cheat on Mia last night and need some PR help? You looked a little tired this morning,” chided Paris.

  “Nooo,” he said slowly, taken aback by her question. “I wasn’t partying last night. I was home in my own bed. Besides, Mia and I are just friends. We’re not back together, and we’re not getting back together.” That was the part he was giving up. He thought he might as well get it out in the open right away. He wanted her to take him seriously and recognize that there was nothing to gossip about when it came to Mia Thompson and him.