The bartender put her drink in front of her and Jake paid for it, leaving him a healthy tip.
"Thank you, Jake," he said, quickly making the money disappear.
"No problem," Jake replied. "Whenever you see one of our drinks starting to get low, you come over and replace it."
"Yes, sir," he said. He then proved his true worth as a bartender and made himself scarce.
"So," Celia said after downing half her martini in one drink, "I've been following the entertainment news. You've had yourself quite a year, haven't you?"
"You could call it that," Jake said. "I assume you read the article penned by my now-famous ex-girlfriend?"
"I read it," she said. "It seems you're quite the asshole, aren't you?"
"That's what she says," Jake said. "I'm surprised you wanted to come sit with me after reading that."
She gave a cynical smile. "If there's one thing I've learned since starting on this little venture of recording star, it's that there is little relationship between the truth and what is printed in any form of media. I tend to reserve judgement on things like that until I've heard from the horse's mouth."
"You're a very wise woman," he said.
"I am," she confirmed. "So, now that I have the horse in front of me, what's the story with that chiquita? Did you really beat her up and rape her?"
"Yeah," he said, "but she was asking for it."
Celia's face clouded in shock for a moment and then, seeing Jake's eyes, she burst out in laughter. "Oh Jesus," she said. "You had me going for a few seconds there."
"Sorry," he said, grinning. "I couldn't resist. Anyway, there was very little that could be called truth in that article." He gave her a brief rundown on what the relationship between he and Michelle Borrows had actually been like, including their final encounter on the boat, although he used Nerdly terms to describe the final sex act.
"You orally copulated her, huh?" Celia asked with a grin.
"Right," Jake said. "And then she broke up with me right after."
"She didn't return the favor first?" Celia asked.
"Nope," he said sadly.
"You ate her pussy out to completion and then she broke up with you while you were still standing there with a boner?"
Jake actually blushed a little at her terminology. The media liked to portray Celia as sweet and innocent — they even hinted that she was a virgin — and Jake found it hard to equate that image with the woman now sitting in front of him. "Well... yes," he said. "That's pretty much what happened, although the boner went away when she started laying down her ultimatum."
"That's just a complete lack of moralistic upbringing if you ask me," Celia said, shaking her head sadly. "It's a wonder you didn't rape her and then throw her off the boat."
"The thought certainly crossed my mind," he admitted. "Instead, I went back inside and started partying. That was the first night I ever... you know... did it with a groupie."
"Ahh yes, the groupies," she said. "The guys in my band enjoy their company on a fairly regular basis as well, although we try our best to keep that quiet."
"Understandable," Jake said.
"I saw the pictures of you and that redheaded groupie down in Mexico," she said. "It seems your girlfriend didn't care too much for those pictures?"
"No, she really didn't," Jake said sourly.
"A pity. She seemed like a very nice girl when you introduced her to us at the party last year."
Jake shrugged and then looked down at Celia's left hand where a large diamond engagement ring was sitting on her finger. "Enough about my sordid and fractured personal life. Let's hear about yours. You broke up with your manager boyfriend two years ago, right?"
"Right," she said. "It turns out he was cheating on me quite regularly — with men."
Jake nodded, unsurprised. Her first boyfriend had been a Hollywood talent manager after all — a profession in which heterosexuals were the minorities. "So you broke up with him and fired him?"
"All in the same conversation," she confirmed. "It wasn't pretty. He went all cliché on me and told me I'd never work in this town again." She laughed. "What was funny was that we were in Cleveland when we had the conversation."
Jake laughed with her. "And have you worked in Cleveland since then?"
"No," she said, giggling. "I can't say that I have, so maybe it wasn't so cliché after all."
Their drinks had gotten down to the danger level. The bartender quickly came over and mixed them up two fresh ones. He then made another discreet departure from auditory range.
"So now you're engaged to Greg Oldfellow," Jake said. "Congratulations."
Greg Oldfellow was a thirty-year-old character actor who specialized in playing clean-cut young men who suddenly find themselves having to rise to a challenge of some sort. He had played a rookie cop faced with corruption in the department, a young priest dealing with a homicidal parishioner, and a young divorced man engaged in a custody dispute with his vengeful, drug-addicted ex-wife. He and Celia had met the same way Jake and Mindy Snow had met — at one of the actor's movie premiers. They had been the media darlings of the past six months and no issue of American Watcher was considered complete without at least one shot of the two of them in a restaurant or at the beach or walking hand in hand in Beverly Hills.
"Thank you," Celia said. "Greg's a good guy."
"Have you set a date yet?"
She shook her head, letting a sour expression cross her face. "He won't set one until we get the prenuptial agreement hammered out. It's kind of a sore spot with me, as you can imagine."
"I can imagine," he said, although he was able to see things from Oldfellow's point of view as well. "Is he going to be at the ceremony?"
"No," she said. "He's in Ireland filming his new movie. He offered to break away to join me but I told him not to bother because I wasn't going to win anything anyway. He seemed like he was actually relieved about that."
"At least he made the offer," Jake said.
A female voice on the overhead announced the Flight 109 to Los Angeles would begin boarding in five minutes.
"Oops," Celia said, quickly downing her entire drink in two swallows. She burped and then flushed. "Excuse me," she said with an embarrassed giggle.
Jake laughed at her. "No problem," he said. "I've been known to do that on occasion myself."
"I got time for one more smoke before they seal me into the deathtrap," she said. She pointed at Jake's cigarette pack again. "May I?"
He took one out and handed it to her, once again flicking his lighter and holding it to the end.
"Thanks," she said, taking a deep drag.
Jake nodded and sipped from his drink. "Well, it may be only for two nights, but it'll be nice to sleep in my own bed again. I'm really looking forward to that after two months of hotel beds."
Celia frowned. "I wish I could say the same," she said. "It's just another hotel bed for me."
"A hotel bed?" he asked. "Why are you sleeping in a hotel?"
"First time contract, remember?" she asked. "They lease a condo for me when we're off tour and then lease it out to someone else while I'm touring. Didn't they used to do that to you?"
"Yeah, they did," he said. "I guess I suppressed the memory. What about Greg's house? Why don't you stay there?"
"We're not married yet," she said. "It wouldn't befit my image to sleep at my boyfriend's house without benefit of wedlock now, would it?"
"But he's not even there," Jake said.
"It doesn't matter to the image people who set up my life for me. If I were to sleep there now when he wasn't home it would imply that I'd slept there before, when he was home."
"That's insane," Jake said. "So they just send you off to some hotel?"
"Not even a good one," she said. "All the better places are booked up. They've got me in a standard room at some place down in Long Beach."
"Long Beach? Holy shit. That's no way to treat the talent."
She shrugged. "What can you do?"
"Why don't you come crash at my place?" he suggested.
"At your place?" she said, raising her eyebrows.