Nick shook his head. “She’s incredible. I can tell you, if that had happened to me, I wouldn’t have been able to do all the things she’s done since then. Starting with giving birth.”
AJ let out a low whistle. “Dude, you couldn’t get me to push a fricking six pound thing out of any part of my body.” He snubbed out the cigarette and studied Nick’s face in the fading sunlight. “So, what’s the kid like?”
“Beautiful.” Nick squinted at the dying sun he could see from AJ’s patio. “She’s a Xerox copy of her mom, that’s for sure. All these dark curls and big green eyes.” He grinned remembering her babbling. “She can say Nick real well.”
AJ smacked his shoulder. “Man, you’ve got the little ones falling for you, too. Do we have to lock you up? You’re a menace to womankind.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But he grew silent, thinking of the two days it had been, since news of Autumn’s past had leaked into the headlines.
He’d barely managed to sneak out of her house. Though he’d gone out through the backyard, he’d noticed a few lurking reporters on the street one over from hers. They seemed to be looking for any way to get to Autumn. It seemed that they would do anything to get the inside scoop, to have the story from Autumn first. It made him sad to see someone as genuinely sweet as she was get shoved through such an emotional wringer.
When he’d left her home, she’d been rocking her daughter in her arms, as though she were afraid to let her go. He hadn’t known what more he could do to help her and had been running late for his own meetings. Liz, being the voice of common sense, had told him to go. If the media had discovered he was in the house, too, they’d have more fuel to run on.
His name had been in the press more times in the last two days than it had in the two and a half years since the Paris drama had gone down. Unfortunately, like he had then, he wasn’t exactly excited to be reaping such glory in the media. They were sympathizing with him, claiming that he was off somewhere nursing his broken heart. The broken heart he’d apparently received after discovering exactly how malicious Autumn Evans really was.
Suddenly, in seventy two hours, the woman who’d been nominated for the Oscar for Best Leading Actress in her one and only film was now being dragged through the mud. Summer Evans had done just one interview for People, but other “sources” had come out and claimed that they, too, knew of the terrible things that had transpired between the twins and how truly evil Autumn was to her twin.
Nick wondered how anyone, who knew Autumn, could say such things about her.
For her part, her camp had remained suspiciously silent, and he had to wonder at how much worse their silence looked to the public. He wanted her to deny the tale at the very least, but there had been not one peep in three days.
“What are they doing?” he wondered aloud and had AJ turning a questioning gaze on him.
“What are who doing?”
Nick frowned at the bottle of water he held before answering. “Autumn’s twin has all these interviews lined up, right? Hell, I heard she’s supposed to do some Barbara Walters interview all of a sudden, too. But, the weird part is, Autumn’s people haven’t said a single thing about it. What are they thinking?”
“Aren’t you dating one of ‘Autumn’s people’?” AJ asked. “Why don’t you call Liz up and find out what’s going on?”
Nick lifted a shoulder. “I think Liz and I are at a weird place right now. I mean, I was mad as hell that she hadn’t told me about Lily, either, and I think she thinks that I’m still angry with her.”
“Are you?”
“No.” He sighed. “How could I be mad at her for protecting her best friend? Didn’t we protect you from the public, too, when you were doing your crazy shit? I can’t be mad at her for doing what I’ve done before. I guess, when everything’s more calm, we’ll talk about it.”
“Okay.” AJ nodded. “But, in the meantime, are you really going to let everyone believe that you’re sulking over a broken heart in seclusion? Or are you going to do something?”
“Huh?” He was puzzled. “What am I supposed to do? It’s not my fault that she’s going through all this.”
“You’re right, it’s not. But don’t you think it looks worse that her supposed boyfriend isn’t sticking by her side in all of this?”
Nick found he was at a loss for words. What, exactly, was AJ hinting at? He wasn’t dating Autumn, hadn’t been dating her in the past, either. He’d just used her to be able to be with Liz, and she’d willingly played along. He couldn’t just keep pretending when the press was slamming her, could he? It wasn’t his problem, and he’d be better off staying out of it.
He told AJ just that, and the older man just shook his head and sighed. “Oh, Nick. You’re such a pal.”
AJ stood and sympathetically patted Nick’s shoulder before going back into his home, leaving Nick to sit and brood on his own.
Autumn paced the length and width of the room. And then she paced it some more. She was going crazy, she had to admit. And it wasn’t just because of everything that was happening to her public image, either. She’d been stuck inside her home for the last three days because the reporters hadn’t backed off. She wanted fresh air and was desperate for the sunshine. Her tiny backyard was not much help, especially when she’d found a telephoto lens blinking down at her from a helicopter that had hovered high above her home the day before. It also didn’t help that Summer had, apparently, released dozens of statements in the past three days. With every new accusation, the press had grown hungrier.
For better or worse, she was trapped in her house.
When the back door opened and closed, Autumn flew down the stairs and pounced on Liz and Sherrie as they moved into her kitchen.
“Well, what’s happening out there?” she asked, eager for news of any coming respite from her current situation.
Sherrie gestured towards a chair at the table. “Let’s sit down, and we’ll go over a few options we have. As it is, we’ve waited three days too long in silence because we were unsure of how to react or counteract this situation. The damage may be irreparable.”
She felt the color drain from her face and blindly felt her way into a chair. “What do you mean by ‘irreparable’? How bad is it? I mean, I haven’t turned on the television lately, but…”
“The Oscar’s practically out of sight,” Sherrie said quietly. “As it is, your chances were low at best because you are a new face on the screen, but you did have a solid performance. With this scandal, though, the Academy Awards’ committee is basically allowing you to keep the nomination out of sheer generosity. We should probably kiss their feet for doing so.”
Autumn nodded numbly. She remembered the sheer joy that she’d felt at receiving the nomination, along with two Golden Globe nominations, a few weeks ago, and she’d thrown a party for her friends. It had been a silly, tipsily fun time. Now, though, the joy was gone.
“Okay,” she said after several moments. “Okay. No Oscar is not the end of the world. I didn’t really think I’d get it anyway, but it was a nice pipe dream.” She bit her lip nervously. “What about my chances of getting other work? I was supposed to hear back this week from the producers of those two films I auditioned for in November. Do you think…Is that unlikely now?”
Liz squeezed her hand. “Let’s not be too quick to make assumptions, Autumn. It’s only Tuesday morning. You might still hear back from them. However, all that aside, we’ve done a lot of thinking about how to proceed. The first thing is a statement to the public that could help prevent Summer’s accusations and stories from making too big of an impact.”
“On that end, we think that it would be best if you did some sort of televised interview. Leah and I have been speaking with ABC about doing a Primetime interview,” Sherrie explained.
Autumn pressed her fingers to her pounding temples. “That kind of an interview made Britney look worse last year, remember?”
“Yeah, but you won’t show up in bad makeup and looking tattered,” Liz pointed out. “You haven’t had an extravagant media image in the last few months, since you showed up on the scene. You’ll be very demure and sober in the interview. All the details have been worked out with the network.”
“I see,” Autumn said slowly. “So, being quietly dressed and acting very politely, what, exactly, will I do in this interview?”
“Tell the truth,” Sherrie stated simply, her eyes sympathetic as they met Autumn’s. “Everything Summer’s said about you, you have the truth to dispel it. Plus, they’ll shoot plenty of candid shots of you and Lily, so everyone can see that you are a wonderful mother. Look at the way Angelina Jolie’s turned her motherhood into a prideful and well-respected role. If we can let people know that you are just like her, it’ll be one of the many steps in cleaning up the mud that’s been flung at you.”
It made sense, Autumn thought as she mulled it over in her head. She couldn’t really come up with any ideas on what to do, but she would do whatever necessary to make the media hounds leave her doorstep. If it meant baring her soul on national television, she’d do it. As long as it meant she and Lily would be left in peace.
“What else do I have to do?” she asked. “One interview couldn’t possibly fix all of this.”
Liz shook her head. “No, it won’t. We’ve lined up interviews with CBS’s Insider and a couple of magazines, including People. If you could use the same magazine Summer used in a way to rebut her accusations, it’ll be better in the long run. You’re going to go to the People’s Choice tomorrow night and Golden Globe Awards next week. If they ask about what’s been happening, put on a smiling face and tap-dance around the topic by saying something along the lines of what’s in the past should stay in the past and move quickly into how excited you are to be there. It should work.” She paused. “Oh, and Oprah called, too.”
“What?!” Autumn stared, shocked, at her friends. “Oprah? As in, Oprah Winfrey, Oprah? Why on earth would she call me?”
Sherrie smiled grimly. “She’s convinced that there is something behind Summer’s story. That there’s more to it than just you luring your twin’s fiancé into a lurid love triangle. Anyway, she’s interested, and we gave her the go ahead. You’re booked for a taping next week.”
“Oh.” She tried to digest it all and found it a little difficult to do so. “And when is the Primetime taping?”
“Thursday night. Here.” Liz sighed. “Everything’s going to go really fast now, Autumn. Starting tomorrow, you will make your entire life open to the public. Everything you’ve done in the past, every heartbreak and joy, every guy you’ve dated, every job you’ve held—they’ll all be up for public digestion. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have no choice but to go through with it.”
Though her heart was already pounding nervously, she steadied herself and nodded. “Just tell me where to be, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything it takes to fix this. But, I have one request.”
“What is it?” Sherrie asked, glancing up from the thick schedule that she’d been writing on. “What can we do for you?”
Autumn took a deep breath. Then another one. “I want a meeting with Summer. Just the two of us.”
