Chapter Text
Staring at a space beyond the permanent counter stain, Louise lazily rubbed circles with a rag that had seen better days. She swiped again for what must have been the thirtieth go around, but the stain stayed put, an unchanging dark spot sunken in beyond the surface.
A dinging bell alerted her to someone’s entrance, and she pointed towards the booth without looking up at the door.
“Mom put the juicer there.”
“How did you know it was me?” Tina asked, letting the door fall to a close behind her.
“Dunno, guess I’m just good like that,” Louise said, neglecting to point out how absolutely dead the place was. Or how Linda specifically told her Tina would swing by to borrow the juicer. “Is Jimmy Jr. really doing a cleanse?”
“Yessss,” her older sister groaned, feet suddenly too heavy to pick up. “It’s all fiber this and vitamin C that. I think he’ll get bored after a while, but until then I’m eating whole pizzas by myself.”
“No one said you had to.”
“No, I have to,” she disagreed solemnly. “What about you? What’s going down in Louisville?” Tina paused then added, “St. Louise? Louisiana?”
Humming at the nicknames, Louise turned back to her stain and threw a little more elbow grease into her wiping.
“You know me,” she grunted. The stain didn’t budge. “Same old, same old.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Just hanging around here?”
“Just hanging around here.”
“No secret meetings that you won’t elaborate on after getting back from?”
Abruptly halting her cleaning, the two sisters looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Mom.”
Sighing so hard she hoped that their mother heard them from all the way upstairs, Louise rolled her eyes. She abandoned her rag and leaned over the counter to face Tina. Under her straight bangs and blank stare, she looked curious. Not judgemental. But that could flip at a moment’s notice if Tina caught wind of how sketchy everything seemed.
“Alright, I went to check out a job. But it didn’t pan out, so no big deal.”
“What kind of job?”
“Something insane. Probably the most insane thing anyone has ever pitched me.” Squinting into the distance, Louise wondered if she was allowed to talk about it. She never signed the NDA, so maybe? Not that it was a conversation she wanted to have anyway. “But yeah, I said no.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
With another hum, she returned to her rag, content to let Tina soak in the news in silence.
Well, almost content.
“Oh, but you know that guy?” Louise asked, using her thumb nail to scratch at the stain. “The actor from that Degrassi turned Friends drama show you used to be obsessed with? You had a poster of him I think.”
“Yes?”
“I met him today.”
Huffing at the failed stain removal, Louise once again forfeited her rag to do something else productive, like reorganize the cups in a way she knew annoyed Bob.
She turned and nearly screamed.
Her mouth zipped shut, but her hair stood on end as though electrocuted.
Not even two whole inches away, Tina stared down at her with an intensity that burned.
“You met Blake Whitworth?”
“GOD!” Louise flinched and jerked back. “When did you get behind the counter?! Did your feet even touch the ground?”
“Answer. The question.”
“Yes! Jeez. I mean, I met the guy that played him.” Louise shouldered away to regain some breathing room, but the second she had any territory Tina reappeared. The hands clamping down onto her arms denied her any escape.
“Did you do the thing we talked about? Did. You. Do. The. List?” Shaking her back and forth, Tina demanded, “Did you??”
“No! I didn’t spit in his face or read out the letter you wrote a hundred years ago,” Louise said when the shaking died down. After a moment, she blinked and added, “I did gut punch him though.”
“Oh good,” Tina sighed with relief. Then, a second later, resumed yelling and pressing fingerprint bruises into Louise’s shoulders. “Louise, you punched someone today?!”
“He deserved it!”
“Obviously, it’s Blake Whitworth, but I mean… you can’t just go around punching people. There are laws about that kind of thing.”
Breathing heavy, the smell of Tina’s mouthwash puffed out like dragon smoke.
Louise bucked backwards but failed to shake off her captor. Negotiation for her freedom seemed the only option now.
Mumbling, she looked away and admitted, “They wanted me to pretend to date him.”
“… What?”
“I don’t know. I heard it was a weird gig, so I bailed. Can you please let me go now?”
“What do you mean ‘date him’?”
Forcefully tearing Tina’s hands from her shoulders, she took a step back. She held up a warning finger when her sister went to follow again. Until she gave up pursuit, Louise stood straight and tense.
Hands in the air, Tina surrendered, and Louise finally relaxed.
“It’s something about his career. He needs a better image.”
“Well, that’s for sure,” Tina snorted. “Have you seen that one clip of him?”
Met with a blank stare, she tsked, took out her phone, and started punching keys on the screen. “You make me feel like I’m the younger sister. Gene and I talk about it. We call you Nana Louise.”
“Just because I’m not a slave to social media like you doesn’t mean I don’t have a youthful glow,” Louise said with her nose in the air, mildly affronted.
“Shush, watch this.”
For a second time that day, she locked eyes with Logan. This angle felt less personal, but still real, as he stared down the camera lens, gaze fuzzy and unfocused, laughing with his friends.
Maybe not his friends, Louise reconsidered as the shot swiveled and showed off the carnage of whatever party they were at. Broken furniture, a fire no one seemed particularly concerned with, and a sea of red solo cups that made the actual pool look like a joke greeted the camera. Those details told her the truth. Real friends wouldn’t implicate him like that.
The narrator condemned the chaos—pointing out how reckless and immature it was for someone in their thirties to be carrying on that way—just as Logan fell into the pool and floated there, too stoned to move or care.
Logan told her so much more in that shot than he did in the ten second interview clip after, apologizing for his behavior to an unnamed reporter. Cagey and blunt, Logan’s eyes promised to do it again until it killed him, even as he mouthed the words “unacceptable” and “bad decision.”
“He’s a disaster.” Tina carried on, not interpreting the same signs she saw from the video. “He let the fame get to him, and now he’s coping with not being a teen heartthrob anymore.”
“He hasn’t been a teen heartthrob in a long time,” Louise countered. Crassroom reruns would air until the end of the next century, but the actual show stopped recording years ago.
“Which makes it more sad.” Something warred on Tina’s face until she sighed, her bleeding heart taking over. Groaning, she finally verbalized the conflict. “If he didn’t cheat on Samantha, it’d be so much easier to feel sorry for him.”
“And, again, Blake did that.”
“Same thing.”
The video looped in Tina’s hands, and those blue-gray eyes stared out at Louise.
How could he be so clear and withheld at the same time?
Why did he care to have an agent that locked him in rooms?
What kind of lost cause burned this bright?
“Louise.”
“Hm.”
“Louise, you have puzzle face.”
“No, I don’t,” she denied but continued to stare transfixed at the screen, wondering.
“Louise, please don’t.”
“It was a lot of money.”
“No amount of money can be worth that.”
Another “Hm,” and she tapped at the counter. Thinking.
“You’d waste time trying to fix a sad man. You’ll set back feminism. Don’t be a hero, Louise.”
“Hmm…”
“LOUISE.”
Later, she pulled out her own phone and aimed to clear up the one doubt she still had rattling around in her brain.
“You have no idea how much this means to my career,” Regan rambled as she adjusted her mirrors.
“So you keep telling me,” Louise said with a nod, scanning the streets from the passenger seat.
Too conspicuous for people who supposedly met several weeks ago, her bike sat in the garage, lonely, probably missing her, while Regan drove them to Logan’s.
Apparently, she needed to drive a rental car up to the estate before the permitted reunion with her baby. That way, no one could say they hadn’t noticed the roar of an engine tearing through the neighborhood the month prior.
The estate. Fucking rich people.
And yet, completely accurate, Louise thought as a sudden awestruck realization hit her that the mansion in the distance slowly creeping up on them wasn’t just some pit stop for full-sized bars on Halloween. This was the whole destination.
Unbidden to Louise’s shock, Regan continued to rattle on.
“I’m pretty good, so it’s probably my own fault that when- Troy came around and I thought sure, no big deal. How hard can it be to get a household name booked? God. I really had no idea. But you? You’re my ticket out. And if it looks like I could get someone like Logan Bush work? Then I’m the household name.”
“How would people know?” Louise questioned. Her fingers twitched, and she wished she’d put her foot down about driving them here. “With the… situation, won’t it look like I’m the one doing all the work or whatever?”
“Sure,” Regan said, playing bongos on her steering wheel, just as gleeful as when Louise sent the signed contract and NDA, with Tina’s copy too. “To the people. But us behind the scenes guys? Oh, we know. We pull back the curtain and see the naked truth in all its unwaxed glory. Networking, baby.”
With a grimace, she asked no follow ups.
The closer they got to the house, the more obscure it became, blocked by rows of bushes and a large stone gate. Ironic maybe, but it kept on brand, and for that, she gave the Bush estate credit.
Regan pushed a button on some key clipped to her dashboard, and the massive doors swung open slowly, menacingly.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you one of these.”
Not even in the top three of her concerns, the rebuttal hung on her lips.
Beyond the towering pale stone of the gates laid even more showboating. Every part of the exterior screamed manufactured, from the thousands upon thousands of square footage that spanned the mansion down to the tailored blades of the front lawn. Throw open any design magazine, and Louise bet this made the front page.
For all its extraordinary columns and architectural symmetry, she couldn’t find a single feature that made it unique. Nothing, save for the size, set it apart from any of the homes they passed on the way in. She guessed they all kept the same magazines on their coffee tables.
“A lot, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to be intimidated,” Regan reassured her before speeding through the nearly open gates. “If you just stick to one wing, it won’t get overwhelming.”
Again, Regan missed the mark, and, again, Louise failed to correct her.
Parking in the circular driveway right out front, the two exited Regan’s regular gray Subaru and entered another world. In the distance, Louise heard running water, a fountain or a pool maybe. The sound echoed over a vast and empty lawn, and she frowned at it.
She made it to the door first and waited for her companion, but Regan typed while walking, tablet never far from her hands.
“So, quick tour, then we get down to business.”
Jiggling the handle then shifting her weight, Regan stopped short when the door refused to budge. With a slow blink, she tried again, more measured, but still expecting the door to move. It did not.
“Logan!” She beat on the door with an open palm. “Open the fuck up!”
“Ask nicely,” a voice leaked from inside, likely standing directly in the entryway.
“I swear to god, I’ll call your mom.”
Nothing changed.
Not until Regan was elbow deep in her purse with a fistful of too many keys did the deadbolt shift.
“See, Ronald,” Logan said in singsong as he swung into view, shirtless and hanging onto the frame. “It’s rude to lock doors on people, isn’t it?”
“I’m here to show Louise around, not entertain you.”
“Oh you’re right,” he called after her as she muscled her way into the house. Vaguely gesturing to the woman still near him, he raised his voice. “That’s this one’s job now.”
Regan didn’t respond, so he turned an eye towards Louise.
“Changed your mind, huh?” With a cocked eyebrow, he jutted a chin towards her. “Realized what an awesome opportunity you turned down?”
“Yeah I hit the jackpot alright,” Louise responded, flat. “A guy wearing nothing but sweats and Cheeto dust in broad daylight.”
His eyes darted to his pants then back up to glare. She smirked.
“Made you look,” she imitated his singsong then brushed past him into his home.
Whereas Regan already strode down one of the long hallways, pointing at rooms and naming them parlor, study, and living room—which Louise felt pretty confident were all just synonyms—she kept near Logan. They orbited each other, just out of reach but not moving on. If the earth ever bared its teeth at the sun, it mirrored the two wandering stars.
“I don’t know what Ronald told you, but rule number one: this is my home,” Logan started and thumbed his chest. Peering down his nose, he said, “So don’t get ideas about touching anything.”
“She told me you live with your parents, so I think technically that makes it their home,” Louise countered.
“First of all, it’s separate wings which basically makes it like two houses smushed together. Also, they’re at the villa this year, which is in Europe, so the American houses are mine.”
Should she punch him again for that?
Probably not, but a girl could dream.
“The villa,” she said with a snort of disbelief.
“Do you not know what a villa is?”
“Oh, I know what a villa is.”
“Dunno, kind of sounds like you don’t.”
“Yeah, it’s a giant waste of money.”
“It’s okay if you don’t know,” Logan said with faux sympathy and a hand over his heart. “Not everyone has been so blessed.”
“I’ll show you blessed-”
“So, I think we’re good,” Regan said upon her return to the foyer, apparently oblivious to Louise’s absence for the entirety of her blasé tour of the south wing. “I mean, if you get lost, Logan’s here. He’s not good for much, but he does live here so… there’s that.”
Logan’s protests went ignored as she tapped at her tablet, raised her eyebrows, nodded, and tapped again.
“Oookay! We’ll do something lowkey for your first public outing, maybe like you’re caught shopping together? No jewelry stores, we’re not aiming for anyone jumping that far to conclusions, but Mall Into Place closes at eleven tonight, so if we-”
“Hold on,” Louise interrupted. “What do you mean tonight?”
Barely a step into the foyer, and this lady planned the next six months of Louise’s life in an instant, apparently starting from day one. The urge to argue clenched her fists, the need to fight the powerlessness roiling inside her.
Still tapping away, Regan shrugged, “No time like the present.”
“Yes, yes time like the present.” Her lips pursed, she seriously considered throwing the tablet. “I don’t know him.”
“You keep saying that,” Logan huffed. “Guaranteed you had at least one magazine clip out of me.”
“Nope, never,” she said and crossed her arms. Looking away after a beat, she mumbled, “My sister did have a poster.”
“Ah ha!”
“That’s literally nothing.”
“I was in your home, it counts.”
“It doesn’t- actually,” Louise held up a finger in warning. “I’ll get back to you. You-” she pointed at Regan, “-I’m just getting started.”
Groaning, Regan finally pried herself away from the tablet to stare at the heavens and plead with god before levelling an exhausted stare at Louise.
“What’s the point of waiting? It’s not real, so it’ll be as fake today as it would be in a week.”
“I’m not the actor,” she argued. “If you don’t want it to be believable that we’ve been…” Louise cringed but soldiered on, “secretly dating, that’s fine. But if your so-called ‘master plan’ needs me to act like I’ve been out with him before, then I need to adjust.”
As though physically rolling the idea around in her head, Regan considered the argument while swaying. The thought took one more trip in her mind then settled with a defeated stomp of her foot.
She looked a little like Tina’s kid throwing a tantrum.
“Fiiine, but we’re not dragging this out. You have two days.”
Two days sounded a lot better than kicking them out of the front door and the lock clicking into place behind them.
One problem taken care of, Louise trailed back to the original blond nightmare. Icebreakers hardly seemed like the move, not that she would willingly participate in one, but she left all ideas on the table while considering what to do with him.
Logan stared down at her, unblinking.
He shifted his weight between each foot, bouncing just enough to draw the eye. He emanated confidence, so she wondered if this was prep before a fight like how a boxer danced on their feet or if he couldn’t sit still.
Someone who needed to stay active hardly sat still long enough to listen. Louise hardly had the patience. But maybe they could… bond over that? The rage room over on Vine might be too public too soon, but the one in Bog Harbor knew her well enough to be discreet. Maybe he could be a Maximum Rage kinda guy.
“Call if you need anything, but try not to need anything!” Regan shouted, already through the door and down the front steps.
Causing whiplash must be some kind of hobby for her.
“You’re leaving?” Louise yelled, pacing to the exit and grabbing the handle to ground herself.
“I’ll call you a Lyft, don’t worry about it.” Her body disappeared into her car, hand popping out for a final wave. “Have fun, kiddos!”
While unsure of how exactly Regan kicked up dust on a concrete driveway, Louise watched her manage it in a hasty retreat.
It only added to the discombobulation swirling in her mind.
“She does that,” Logan offered a halfhearted explanation. “Just gets an idea in her head and goes. Doesn’t really care about how it affects others.”
“Well, I’m not going to put up with it.” Eyeing the man beside her, still shirtless, still looming, Louise asked what had been bothering her from their first meeting. “Why do you?”
But the answer wouldn’t come that easily, and he only shrugged.
With Logan refusing to elaborate, Louise took in her surroundings.
Just as ornate as the outside, the foyer meant to intimidate. Its high ceilings and grand staircase were picturesque, and she considered how many interviews this glorified hallway played the role of a backdrop for.
The open hall Regan had travelled down must have been Logan’s wing, but Louise turned her head to the heavy mahogany doors to her left. His parents’ wing, she assumed from the layout. Sealed closed by two long, gold-plated handles, she wondered if they were locked or just shut.
She inched towards them, curious.
“Don’t.”
Her hand stalled by her side.
“Hedda sleeps on that side.”
“Who’s Hedda?” Louise didn’t turn away from the doors and let Logan talk to her back.
“She cleans at night.”
“Like a vampire.”
“Yeah.” Logan’s hands clasped onto her upper arms, and she didn’t have a chance to protest as he bodily shuffled her to face his completely open side of the mansion. “And like a vampire, if you wake her up during the day, she’ll drain your blood.”
“So I’ll get to find out how their fangs work.”
“No, like she’ll stab you.”
For a moment, Louise forgot to try to escape his grasp, instead tilting her head to look up at him behind her.
“Really?”
“That’s why Caleb doesn’t come around anymore.”
Humming, Louise didn’t bother asking who Caleb was, knocking Logan off her with an elbow. He stepped back but kept up with his instructions.
“My side only. Everything else is off limits.”
“Calm down, I’m not going to sneak around,” she lied. She went to elbow him again, more of a gentle nudge this time, but he dodged. Coward. “Are you going to show me where I can go?”
“Fine, whatever.”
As he sidestepped her wingspan, Logan gestured for her to follow him for a make up tour.
Through the double doors to his wing of the house, Louise strained to keep a neutral face. The main function of the wing seemed to act as one long hallway, branching out into rooms that all had similar purposes.
She guessed the pattern of planter, sconce, wall art, sconce, then planter again about two feet down, and felt like a rat stuck in a maze with no turns.
After the three separate living rooms, Logan gestured to a kitchen space. God, Bob would have drooled over himself at the state of the art appliances that shone with a fresh out of the box sparkle. Upon further inspection, she cocked her head, checking the walls for some secret door then back the way they came.
“Your parents have to come over here to use the kitchen?”
“No? They have their own.”
“TWO kitchens?”
“Three, there’s one upstairs connected to the ballroom.”
“Three kitchens,” she replied flatly, body shutting down at the news and completely rejecting the idea of an upstairs ballroom. “Three kitchens for three people.”
“We host a lot,” Logan defended but his eyes slid over to what had to have been a completely unused kitchen. She saw him regard it with some acknowledgement of its waste, and that would need to be enough.
Her last thought of needing to find a way to get her dad up here echoed in her mind, and they moved on.
They passed a guest bedroom, a bathroom, a theater, a storage closet, and another guest bedroom before finally nearing the end of the mouse trap.
“This one is my room, but don’t expect an invitation.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said and rolled her eyes. He left the door open, same as he had with the rest of the rooms, but she refused to stare in and give him any hint of interest like he so desperately wanted.
From her cursory glance, it seemed like a normal bedroom. Window, drawers, bed, all normal stuff, though a foreboding aura tickled the edge of her senses. Something wasn’t right.
But digging meant interest, so she peered around Logan to the one other door at the end of the hall. Through the glass, she spied an outdoor patio and a hot tub. She prayed there was only one of those, her spirit couldn’t take a primary and secondary water feature.
She sniffed.
“Neat. I’m going back to living room number two.”
After an about face, she marched her way back to the beginning.
No wonder Logan was fit despite his overindulgent lifestyle. He needed to run a marathon to get from one part of the house to another. She cursed rich people again, muttering loud enough for him to hear as his steps echoed over the hardwood floor, following her.
“Rich people are paying your salary,” he piped up.
Louise paused suddenly so that he could run into her back—and her elbow—one more time.
Satisfied, she clung to the trim of an archway and swung herself deeper into the room with the couches that looked most comfortable.
Plopping down, she waited.
“What?” Logan demanded from his perch at the entryway.
“What do you mean what?” Shrugging, she glanced around for an answer that wasn’t coming. “How are we gonna do this?”
“How should I know? You’re the one that wanted more time alone with me.” At that, he sauntered into the room, barely watching where he walked. “Not that I can blame you.”
“But you’re the one who has done this before. Regan mentioned a German?”
“Who posed as a housekeeper while Hedda did all the real work. All Jana did was get fed up and leave me when I wouldn’t let her off so easy. She had a cushy, inside the house title. I didn’t have to date her.”
“Pretend to date,” Louise stressed.
The couch may have looked comfortable, but the overstuffed pillows tilted her forward without her say so. She gave up her seat to pace instead, crossing paths with Logan but keeping some distance.
Psyching herself up, she mentally ran through icebreakers and picked something reasonable.
“Are- do you.. have any… allergies?” She forced the question through a grimace, hating herself for making the first effort. It made her look weak, giving up ground, but she needed to know what not to do.
“Besides you?”
“So funny, a real comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is in the building everybody!” With an exaggerated groan, she continued like the explanation dragged itself from her. “I’ll do a half-assed job if it gets me results, but even a half-assed job means I should know what might accidentally get you killed. When I murder you, I want it to be on purpose.”
It was quiet for a long time.
Louise paced but otherwise let him sit in the silence and waited.
“Pine nuts. I won’t die, my tongue just goes numb.” He pursed his lips and opened his palm towards her. When she didn’t follow it up, he asked, “And you?”
“No, no allergies.”
“Okay. Cool.”
“Yeah.”
Tapping her foot, she begged the floor for ideas, but it remained silent like most floors when asked to give a comment. Logan watched her, mostly still but inching nearer to the imaginary line she dug in the floor as she circled the rug.
“Are there things you just- you don’t like?”
This one made him thoughtful, and he stared at the ceiling before answering.
“I don’t like people being in my space.” She didn’t mention how he seemed just fine getting in other people’s. “Or coconut. Or cooking.”
“Obviously,” she said, thinking back to the unused kitchen.
The spotless countertops and a ringing message about her dad wanting to see it echoed again in her mind, but this time it stopped her in her tracks. Stupid icebreakers and teeth-pulling conversations faded from importance.
“What am I supposed to tell my parents,” she wondered aloud, horror creeping into her features as it finally dawned on her what she signed up for.
“Can’t they just sign NDAs too?”
His sincerity was the last thing she saw as her skills for observation clouded.
Genuine as he may have meant it, Louise burst into laughter.
“MY mom?? Linda Belcher? Keep a secret?? Ha!” The first laugh felt so good, she kept going though the amusement failed to mask the panic. “Hahaha! She’s gonna be relentless! Ahhh hahah!”
“Uuhh… okay?”
Tugging on her bandana from both sides usually grounded her enough to focus, but the grip instead worked to gain Logan’s attention over the maniacal laughter.
“Is that thing on too tight?”
He reached for her head, and she jerked away from his prying hand, snapping to attention and pointing a warning finger at him.
“Don’t.”
Hand frozen in midair, he stared down at her.
Then, he jolted forward again, a lightning speed attempt to snatch her hat. She clutched it to her head harder, tucking out of the way and sticking a foot out for him to trip over.
He unfortunately caught himself before the tumble down.
She added it to her to-do list to read over the contract, just to make sure she still gets paid if he dies before the end of six months.