Hidden Gem Short Story Collection (9781301405985) (11 page)

“
Maybe you’re coming down
with the flu,” Elsa said though Harper could tell from her
expression that she didn’t actually think so – she was merely
giving her an out. “Why don’t you go spend the rest of your day
with your mom? Let her take care of you. I’ll call her and let her
know you’re coming.”

Harper tried not to narrow her eyes at
Elsa’s transparent suggestion. “I don’t need her to take care of
me, Elsa, I’m fine now,” she said in a groan, finding herself
suddenly resentful of the fact that her Pilates instructor doubled
as a close family friend – one who knew more than her own friends
about certain things. Embarrassing things. Like how completely
dependent she was on her mother after rehab.

While she’d once hated tame activities like
manicures, brunch, movie nights and whatever qualified as “girl
time,” Harper had come out of treatment to find herself
embarrassingly in need of all those things. She had always thought
of herself as fiercely independent. She’d grown up without much
attention from either parent – Hudson had been addicted to work and
Nadine had always been out on the town, doing her best to
regenerate the fame she’d enjoyed before getting pregnant with
Harper at twenty-four. And home life aside, Harper had always
preferred to attend parties solo. Her spontaneity thrived when she
didn’t have to report to friends about where she was going and when
she was leaving. She liked being free.

After rehab though, the notion of freedom
suddenly felt a lot closer to loneliness. She needed people around
to distract her, to make her laugh, to listen to her stories about
the people she’d met while in treatment. She hated that she was
suddenly keeping a diary, cataloguing every feeling, every trigger,
all the emotions she used to pride herself on not having. She hated
that she needed those brunches and manicures and reality shows
marathons.

Especially since Zoe was in Los Angeles.
Either there or somewhere overseas, shooting her Bond girl role.
Wherever she was, it wasn’t New York. And being her best friend –
as well as her least booze-dependent one – Harper had found herself
free but alone and desperately craving girl time.

Fortunately, that was where Nadine came in,
finally stepping into her role as a mother – even if it took
Harper’s overdose to push her into it. And to Harper’s surprise,
delight and mortification, her mother became the twenty-four-hour
best friend she so desperately needed. Together, they took classes
of every kind so she could continue to focus on growth, moving
forward rather than looking anywhere in the past. Pottery, oil
painting, dance, jewelry making, language classes – they took them
all until finally landing on the cooking classes that Harper had
initially refused to take. But she finally relented and combined
with her new interest in detox, the classes led to the eventual
opening of Agno.

Straight from Elsa’s studio, Harper decided
to head over to the restaurant. Hopefully, just being at Agno would
knock her out of her funk. After all, it was where she was most in
control – of not just herself but her staff and her kitchen and her
beloved garden on the roof. No one knew it but she often snuck up
there just to hang out. On occasion, she spoke to the raw snap peas
and basil and zucchini flowers. Not full conversations or anything,
just complimenting them on their growth.

“
Thank God,” Harper
murmured to herself as her Audi reached Fifth Avenue and the
grandiose front doors of Agno. She was still feeling buzzed, dizzy
and on top of that, her heart had begun beating rapidly during the
ride over, which puzzled her but at least she could burst through
those front doors soon and be in her place of peace.

But just as she reached to open the
passenger side door, Harper jumped, yelping in surprise as her
phone vibrated in her pocket.

“
Sorry,” she apologized
hastily to a startled Ron. “One second. Sorry.”

Grabbing her phone, Harper stared at the
text notification on her screen. She didn’t recognize the number
but it was a 310 area code, which meant Los Angeles. Unlocking her
phone, Harper then stared at the text.

I dreamt about you yesterday

Her heart twisted.

Hand clamped over her mouth, Harper suddenly
recalled her dream from the morning – the one that had made her
giggle while changing, even when she couldn’t at all remember what
it’d been about.

Now, the images flooded her mind again,
repeating in a loop as she stared at the text from the unknown
number that her heart suddenly knew belonged to Levi. The Levi whom
she had seen in her slumber early that morning, reliving the day on
which they’d met – at the famous Westin estate in Beverly Hills,
when she had broken into the so-called back house and run her
fingers along all the spines of those books.

Her fingers composed a response before she
could tell them not to.

I dreamt about you too.

“
Christ, Harper,” she
hissed at herself the second she hit ‘Send.’

“
What?” Ron asked,
confused.

“
I’m an idiot. It might
not even be his number.”

“
What?”

“
Nothing.” Harper tried to
give Ron a look of apology for her curt tone but she couldn’t take
her eyes off her screen. She knew it was him. Levi. She could feel
him – she had been feeling him all morning. I should’ve known,
Harper scolded herself, her heart slamming in her ribcage the
second she read his reply.

Was it about the day you broke into my
house?

Harper’s neck tensed as her breath locked in
her throat.

Yes.

~

It had been nearly ten
years ago when she’d gone on that trip to L.A alone. Any time she
looked back on it, Harper wondered if it ever should have happened.
But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had an excuse. Technically, it had
been for work. The modeling agency that she had signed to at
fourteen had finally booked her a job. It had come as a surprise
considering she had gotten absolutely no prior work as a model –
not even a damned catalogue shoot. Harper had made her peace with
the fact that she’d probably been signed as a favor to her mother,
which was why it had shocked her when the agency actually booked
her the role of “Cool Girl #2” for an insanely popular tween show
at the time. Called
Outta This
World
, it starred then-reigning teen
queen, Zoe Mercury.

“
Hey. I need you to use
your peripheral vision.”

Those had been Zoe’s first words to Harper.
They had been on set and she had strutted over to her and the other
extras, fresh from hair and makeup and wearing a tight, pink sequin
dress for some party scene. Initially, she’d approached the other
blonde casted as “Cool Girl #1,” but when the girl had looked
startled and asked, “I’m sorry – what?” Zoe had walked away,
instead approaching Harper with her out-of-context request.

“’
Kay. What am I looking
at?” she had responded, unfazed, keeping her dull eyes locked on
Zoe. TV shoots, as it turned out, were boring as all hell and
repeated the same takes over and over despite the fact that they
all seemed pretty similar and usable.

“
Marco Donovan. You know
which one that is?” Zoe asked.

He was the actor who played Zoe’s love
interest, Justin. Harper hadn’t known him by name but she could
guess who he was and why Zoe was asking. “Yeah, he’s looking at
you,” she responded before the question could even be asked. When
Zoe grinned, Harper couldn’t help snorting. “He looks like a
douche. Why does he wear sunglasses between takes?”

Zoe burst out laughing. “Dude, I have no
idea, but he’s hot.”

“
If you like
guidos.”

“
I’m kind of in that phase
right now.”

Harper wrinkled her nose. “I hope he’s
really good in bed or something.”

Zoe’s brows shot up. She looked at Harper
with wide eyes and a crooked smile, seeming taken aback. “Uh.” Her
glossy lips parted to say something else but she decided against
it, snapping her mouth shut. Suddenly, Harper felt as if she had
the upper hand in the conversation. She smirked.

“
Oh. You’re a
virgin.”

Zoe’s eyes went wider as she shot her a
look. “Jesus, be louder. I don’t think Cool Girl Number Five heard
you.”

Harper opened her mouth, faking as if she
might actually repeat herself. Before she could, Zoe made a
squeaking sound, pressing her finger to her lips and grabbing
Harper by the arm, dragging her off set and toward her trailer.
“Taking fifteen – sorry!” she’d called breezily to her sputtering
director.

“
Dude
,” Harper laughed once she’d been successfully shuffled into
Zoe’s trailer. “Stop freaking out, you’re supposed to be a virgin
right now. Aren’t you like, fourteen?”

Zoe shot daggers. “I just turned fifteen.
How old are you?”

“
Almost
sixteen.”

“
When did you lose
it?”

Harper hardly wanted to answer. Even she
felt as if she’d lost it too early. It had happened shortly after
Hudson and Nadine divorced. Mortified over her parents’ pictures on
the front page of every tabloid, Harper had gone to stay with Joie,
her best friend from The Cabot School whose older brother she’d
been eyeing for a year. To him, she had lost her virginity and
since, she had been with three other boys – which even she found
excessive.

“
I lost it, that’s all you
need to know,” Harper responded to Zoe’s question.

“
Seriously? You
suck.”

“
I don’t know you. At
least buy me a drink before you start asking such personal
questions,” Harper joked dryly.

Zoe gave her another curious look. “You act
older than fifteen,” she said with narrowed eyes, as if she
believed Harper might actually be lying about her age.

“
I feel older.”

“
Does… that happen when
you lose your virginity or something?”

Harper gave a laugh – a genuine one, though
that didn’t make it any less mocking of Zoe. “You act way younger
than fifteen.”

Zoe gave a laugh of her own. “And you act
weirdly dickish for someone who doesn’t even know me.”

Harper tried to suppress her smile.
“Speaking of dicks, how old is Marco, anyway?”

It was Zoe’s turn to want to keep mum.

“
I’m just going to Google
it if you don’t tell me.”

“
Almost
twenty.”

Harper stared, her face contorting with
disgust. “I will literally call the cops if you have sex with
him.”

“
You didn’t strike me as
someone who cared about the law,” Zoe snorted.

“
I care when I want
to.”

Zoe cooed. “Does that mean you care about me
already?”

The question actually made Harper think. She
was already more interested in Zoe than she was in her friends back
home but maybe that was because she was sober. And because Zoe was
younger than her and already independent, with millions of dollars
that didn’t come from her parents. Harper shrugged. “I mean I
definitely don’t want to see you have sex with that douchebag,” she
finally answered.

“
I mean I wouldn’t want
you watching, anyway.”

When Harper stared, Zoe
stared back, deadpan for a second before bursting out laughing.
“
Joking
. That was
a joke. I won’t have sex with him, okay? Jesus,” she said. “But if
I don’t, that means you have to find me a hot guy to lose it
to.”

“
What do I get out of it?”
Harper asked with a smirk.

Zoe barely needed to give
the question any thought. “I’ll bring you to a really good party
tonight. Like,
really
good. You haven’t been to a party unless you’ve been to this
party.”

“
I’m from New York,”
Harper said skeptically.

“
Yeah, where places close
at 4AM. Everything closes early in L.A so we have to have good
house parties. Wait for me once you wrap for today. I’ll have my
driver take us there together.”

~

The virgin was
right
, Harper thought to herself
wryly.

No party in New York could be anything like
the one Zoe had taken her to – though it perhaps had to do with the
sheer amount of space available. Behind the gate and never ending
driveway was a European villa of nearly twelve thousand square feet
sitting upon a two-acre lot.

“
You know Oro Records?”
Zoe asked, referring to one of the top four recording companies in
the music industry. Harper gave her look as if she’d asked an
utterly stupid question. “Okay, yes, duh. So, you know the head of
Oro? Cliff Westin?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well, this is his
house.”

Harper raised her eyebrows. “Nice,” she
said, sounding less enthused than she was. Her voice never seemed
to convey its actual excitement. “So.” She looked around at the
house teeming with about a hundred teen actors and models and
people who, if they weren’t actors and models, certainly looked the
part. Pretty much every last one of them held a beer or drink of
some sort in their hand. “Why is Cliff Westin throwing a party for
a bunch of teenagers?”

Zoe snorted, hooking her arm into Harper’s
and weaving her through the crowd of people saying hello, taking
her through the opulent white great room and out onto the deck.
There, on the outdoor onyx countertop, she fixed Harper a
surprisingly good martini with a twist.