Hollywood Nights Read online

  * * * *

  Hollywood Nights

  By Sara Celi

  Copyright © 2016 by Sara Celi

  Published by Lowe Interactive Media, LLC

  Cover Design by Pink Ink Designs

  Formatting Design by JT Formatting

  Development and copy edits by Lauren McKellar

  Proofreading by WriteDivas, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For more information on Sara Celi

  and to stay up to date on her future works,

  join her mailing list, The Celi Circle.

  Subscribers can participate in exclusive giveaways and events.

  Keep in touch with Sara Celi here

  Other works by Sara Celi:

  Natural Love

  Prince Charming

  The Palms

  The Undesirable

  Dedication

  For those who encouraged me when I couldn’t encourage myself

  TITLE PAGE

  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

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  He came into Twisted and slid into a seat at the far end of the bar. Barked out an order to the bartender. Asked if he could smoke an e-cigarette. Looked at his phone. Downed a Manhattan in three gulps. Ordered another. Then another. He drank them all like water, as if they had no effect on him.

  Only people with thousands of problems did that. I’d seen enough of it in my lifetime; I knew how to spot it in seconds thanks to a childhood spent taking care of an alcoholic father. This guy at the end of the bar had issues.

  Not good.

  At first, I tried to ignore him. Twisted had plenty of customers with money to burn and things to forget. My shift could continue as normal. The man at the end of the bar didn’t have to be any different than the usual customer.

  But when he slammed down the third glass and demanded a fourth, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from him any longer.

  Three tables of full of drunken, lecherous, leering men could wait for their watered down happy hour beers. I’d seem them all before, anyway. Could have exchanged these tables of men for any others on any given weekend. One group came to Twisted to commemorate a divorce. Another to celebrate a wedding. The third came to celebrate Friday. But they all came to Twisted for something else, too. The women.

  The naked women.

  Waiting on Twisted’s regulars bored me. The guy working on his fourth Manhattan didn’t. And there was more than one reason to think why.

  “Honey, get over here,” called a bleary-eyed man at the first table, the one celebrating the divorce. His gut hung over the waistband of his pants, and the way he lounged in the red leather booth made me think his zipper would bust open at any moment. “We need another round. Now.”

  His annoyance snapped me out of my daze, and I wandered over to his table. “What can I get you?” No one would have mistaken me for interested.

  “Another bottle of Grey Goose. Make it quick.”

  I blinked as his hand found my exposed thigh, then traveled up to the hem of my black leather skirt, which left nothing to the imagination. I slapped his fingers away and cursed under my breath. If he tried it again, I’d hit him with the tray I carried in my left hand.

  “What’s wrong, babe?” he said. “Just admiring the goods.”

  “Admire that.” I nodded at Crystal, who stood center stage, taking off her silver thong.

  He shook his head. “I’m not interested in another blonde. I want a brunette. Like you.”

  “Well, too bad. I’m not for sale.”

  “Now, come on. Everyone has a price.” He looked me up and down. “Been wondering all night what yours is.”

  I glared at him, and he grinned at me. He liked my reaction; he thought I wanted to flirt with him by playing hard to get. Probably figured he’d own me by the end of the night.

  Twisted was a strip club, after all. A strip club on a winding stretch of Sunset Boulevard, nestled against the nape of the Hollywood Hills. The girls on stage wore skimpy bikinis and stripped down to nothing. On weekend nights, Twisted featured porn stars and required $200 tips at a minimum. Cocktail waitresses like me wore black leather skirts, silver-chain halter tops with no bra, and mandatory red lipstick. We made twenty-five dollars an hour before tips, and most nights my purse overflowed with cash at the end of it all.

  Best job I could get in Los Angeles. And believe me, I had tried everything. Waitressing at an all-night diner called Jerry’s. Cleaning houses in the Valley for cash under the table. Working as a front-desk clerk at a hotel in Santa Monica. Even a stint as a drive-thru attendant at In-N-Out Burger. None of it paid enough to survive in LA and attend auditions for my sad-ass acting career. If things didn’t work out at Twisted, I might have stoop lower, and I didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

  Maybe I should have stayed in Ohio and gone to college…

  “I’ll get your vodka,” I told the bleary-eyed man as I stacked a few of his table’s empty glasses on the tray. “It will be a few minutes.”

  I walked away from his group and wove through the crowded mess of tables rimming the center stage. I took the long way to the bar, knowing it would take me right by the man who still sat downing Manhattans. When I got a closer, my heart fell into my stomach.

  Holy shit.

  “Tanner Vance—God, he’s
hotter in person,” I said to Edna, Twisted’s best bartender, once I arrived at the other end of the bar. I nodded toward him and kept my voice low so that only she would hear me. “That guy over there. That’s him.”

  “Looks like it. Or at least a pretty good double.” Edna didn’t glance in Tanner’s direction, but instead kept filling up fresh glasses of overpriced draft beer from the large bar tap. “Recognized him right away when he ordered the first drink, but I didn’t want to say anything. You know how celebrities are.”

  Tanner Vance could hardly go anywhere in LA without being recognized, and Twisted’s low lights didn’t hide his signature thick black hair, the sharp curves of his jaw, or the thick lips every Hollywood starlet wanted to kiss. He’d made a fortune in the last few years off the fact that women wanted him, and men wanted to be him.

  Edna’s gaze slid in his direction. “He’s super sexy.”

  As we watched, Tanner pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen as he worked on his latest drink. Behind him, Lacey, one of the biggest draws at Twisted, wound her former gymnast body around the pole on center stage. Every guy in the room had his eyes on her.

  Every guy except Tanner.

  “What do you think he’s doing here?”

  “What people do in a place like this?”

  Cheers and claps erupted closer to the stage. Lacey no longer wore her bikini top, and her silicone-enhanced breasts glimmered under the red and blue stage lights.

  “He’s—” I broke off and took a deep breath. “I can’t stop thinking about the season finale of LA Stands for Lana.”

  Edna’s eyes widened. “Oh, I know. That bitch dumped him on national television. For a woman.”

  “He was so sad, too. Didn’t seem like he saw it coming.”

  “Helluva year.” Edna arranged a few bar glasses on one of Twisted’s trays. “I saw The Flash Returns a couple of weeks ago On-Demand, and the critics were right. He was horrible. Killed the franchise.”

  “And now he’s here. Drinking in this place.” I shook my head. Tanner Vance didn’t belong at Twisted. The bar might make bank every night, but it was Sunset Boulevard’s seediest joint. Plenty of bespoke restaurants and culinary outposts dotted this part of West Hollywood, and so did a lot of higher level sex joints. Twisted and Tanner didn’t fit together.

  “What are you going to do?” Edna said. “Tell him to leave?”

  Lacey flipped upside-down on the pole, and she slid down it using only her thighs. My stomach turned. I’d never imagined working in a seedy place like Twisted; that hadn’t been the plan back when I put Ohio in my review mirror and California in my front. If only the money hadn't been so good. An off-night like this one had already earned me more than $100 in tips.

  I turned my attention back to Tanner in a deliberate effort to disregard the men still ogling Lacey. “Do you think he’s lonely?”

  Edna scoffed. “Guys like him are never lonely, trust me. He looks like he has a lot of money that he cares nothing about. Why don’t you go over there and talk to him? Maybe he’ll give you some. Make a donation.”

  I laughed, but I didn’t find it funny. I didn’t follow her advice, either. Instead, I walked over to the bachelor party table and delivered them the bottle of Grey Goose, a party-girl smile plastered on my face. Every minute they breathed on me, I hated myself a little bit more. But I had to make my share of rent that month.

  When I walked back over to the bar a few moments later, Tanner Vance was gone.

  Since Twisted sat on one of Sunset Boulevard’s better curves, the bar shared a small underground parking lot with two other restaurants and a nightclub, all of which catered to a classier crowd than those who thought watching naked women shake their boobs qualified as a decent night out on the town. One of those spots, Craving, catered to celebrities. It had a rope line as long as a marathon, and paparazzi staked outside every single night.

  That night, the photographers outside of Craving reminded me of circling sharks. Their telephoto lenses reminded me of snouts and the clicking shutters of chattering teeth. They wanted a big fish, and they would wait it out until they caught one. Each person crowded the small gap of public sidewalk between Craving and the short entrance of the garage.

  When I passed right by them, no one noticed me. Not that I cared all that much. I walked out of the bar’s employee entrance with my cell phone at my ear, listening to my latest Voice mail from Janet, the assistant to Andrea, my agent.

  “Lynn, er, I mean Brynn—that’s right, Brynn, we have an update on the callbacks you went on last week. The ones for The Dancer, Green Gardens, and Lover’s Choice. All passes.” Janet’s raspy voice paused. “Let’s chat next week. Give us a call Monday.”

  My thumb punched “end” on the phone, and I tossed it in my bag. One more slew of failed auditions to round out my week. How many had it been? Too many, really. This Hollywood dream of mine hadn’t come close to working out. In five years of Southern California sun, I’d only scored two national car commercials and a print modeling campaign for Land’s End. At least I had $250 in my pocket from tips, so my two roommates wouldn’t bother me about paying for my third of the week’s groceries.

  I was almost to my car when I heard the coughing and gasping. It echoed through the garage, and it made me stop short. One second later came a telltale splatter.

  There, a row or so away from me, stood Tanner Vance. He was about two hundred feet from the hungry lenses of the photographers, and behind the large pylon where no one could see him but me. He had one hand against the cinderblock wall, and he kneeled over as vomit spewed from his mouth. As I watched, my heart jumped around in my chest and my hands went clammy.

  “Jesus Christ, this is insane,” I said under my breath.

  I shut my eyes and shook my head. I needed to leave. That was it. Leave. I might have wanted to talk to him and to see if he was okay, but I also knew I didn’t have any business doing so.

  I pulled my key out of my black tote bag and walked closer to my car. Tanner threw up again and swayed. I looked away and kept walking. Then he vomited a third time, coughing and sputtering as bile and spittle spewed from his mouth. When he braced his hand against the wall, I broke my silence.

  “Are you okay?”

  He mumbled something and dry-heaved again. I glanced over at my car and back at him.

  “Do you need some help?”

  “What could you—” He stumbled across his next few words. “Who are you?”

  “I work at the bar over there.” I jerked my head. “I’m a cocktail waitress at Twisted. You were there earlier tonight.”

  “Was I?”

  I bit my bottom lip and crossed over to him. “You’re throwing up a lot over there. Kinda scared me.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his right hand, and he leered at me with bloodshot eyes. “I’m fine.”

  “Doesn’t seem that way.” I opened my purse and tried to ignore the small throb beginning to grow in the back of my head. “You’ve been drinking, right? Let me at least call you a cab.”

  He waved me away. “It’s okay. I can handle this.”

  “No, you can’t. Not in your condition.”

  The photographers stalking the parking garage would eat him for a late-night snack, and he could get himself killed if he drove home, or someone else. At the least, he’d wind up on every Hollywood gossip blog in the world by the following morning.

  “I’m calling a taxi.” I fished my phone out of my bag, then cursed when the buttons didn’t dial right away. Ten bucks at the store for a phone that only took calls or text messages. That’s what I got for saving money. Once the phone worked, I found the number for Twisted’s favorite cab company in my contacts. “Los Angeles U-Pick-a-Ride. They’ll have someone here soon.”

  “No.” He moved closer. I got a whiff of bile and the acidic, undigested remains of whatever he’d eaten earlier. Yuck. “Don’t call them.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, and th
en he swayed, losing his balance. “Whoa!” I grabbed him on his arm and tried to prop him back up, but it didn’t work. His eyes rolled up into his head and his knees buckled underneath his body.

  An unconscious Tanner Vance hit the ground.

  “Shit,” I said to no on one in particular. “Shit, shit, shit.” Within half a second, my night had gone from bad to worse. Forget the failed auditions, the guy at Twisted who’d offered me money for sex, and the group of drunks that tipped me five dollars on a $500 check. Now, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars lay on the concrete in front of me, and his slow, irregular breaths sounded like the beginning stages of alcohol poisoning. We saw it occasionally at Twisted, the end result of a long night. I was not ready to deal with this. Not in a parking lot. And not at the end of a shit-tastic day.

  But I couldn’t leave him there. That wouldn’t be right. A tiny Good Samaritan lived somewhere underneath my jaded exterior, and I knew I should help him. No, I wanted to help him. This was Tanner Vance, after all.

  “Hey.” I kneeled down and shook his limp body. His chest rose and fell in labored breaths, so I shook him harder. And harder. “Come on. Tanner. Tanner Vance. Wake up. Wake up, will you?”

  After a minute or so, he groaned.

  “Wake up!” I slapped his cheek. “Are you all right?”

  His heavy lids opened halfway and he moaned something inaudible.

  “I can drive you home,” I said. “Where do you live?”

  He tried to speak, but the words didn’t make any sense.

  “Come on,” I said. “I’m not leaving you like this. You’re coming with me, okay?”

  “Hurmpghagh…”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. The small headache work had given me grew larger as I tried to figure out how to solve this problem with Tanner. We needed a plan. Fast.

  “Listen, I’m taking you to my apartment,” I told Tanner when I opened my eyes again. He’d closed his, and he still seemed only halfway lucid. “My car is a short walk from here.”

  “What’s the—”

  “We don’t have time to screw around, okay?” My watch read 2:55 a.m. Five minutes, maybe ten, and the parking lot would fill with people as the late-night crowd left Craving after last call. “Get up.” I grabbed the lapel of his shirt and held my nose with my other hand. He smelled like three-day-old salmon. I ignored it, and pulled on him. “Stand up. You can stand up.”