“Alright then Stacy,” I announce as soon as she’s inside, closing the door myself and leaning on it so she can’t go anywhere.
“What’s really going on?” I ask her, surprising myself at how angry I actually sound. How powerful I sound.
Her brow arches, and she smiles gently. A sinister glow in her eyes reminds me how much of a cow she can actually be when she wants.
“Oh, you may as well know,” she says trying to sound distant, cryptic.
“Your boyfriend back there? He tried to pull the same stunt on me.”
I feel my jaw drop.
No. Never. Tony would never.
“It was over twenty years ago darling, long before you were even thought of, before you were left at that orphanage,” she adds, never wanting to let me forget that if it wasn’t for her nobody would have taken me in.
“I was trying to break into the acting world,” she continues dreamily, addressing an audience that isn’t there and ignoring me while she delivers her part.
“Tony Fontana… He wasn’t a nobody then either. Best damned looking man on the small and big screen, probably still is,” she muses before her eyes narrow again.
“But! He didn’t get away with it, no sir. I thought if I could ease my way into his arms and then his bed, he might help me on my path as an actress,” she continues.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. There’s no way Tony would go along with any of this, even all those years ago, I’m certain of it.
I just know he wouldn’t.
And he didn’t.
“But long story short, sugar. I threw myself at Tony Fontana, tore my clothes off and literally threw myself at him.”
It’s not a mental image I like. I feel my own anger bubbling up again, but Stacy has this way of dragging out even the simplest story into a huge dramatic sequence, always adding in stupid phrases like ‘long story short’ when she has no intention of shortening the story.
“What happened?” I ask, needing to know now, not wanting to hear anything else apart from Tony threw her out.
“He threw me out,” she says solemnly, looking past me, back to the past. A tremor in her lip showing she still feels the sting of his rejection.
“So I got even, not mad,” she tells me.
“I called every shitty tattle rag in Hollywood, this was before the internet was a thing you understand, and I told them what Tony Fontana really was. A monster, luring young women into his house and-”
“But that’s just not true!” I shout, feeling my fingers curling into fists.
“It doesn’t have to be true dear,” she answers dryly, her eyes resting on mine lazily. “As long as it’s a good story.”
My eyes are slits and I’m fighting back tears. I want to throw a punch but I’ve never done that either.
A strange, hollow sound is the only thing I can manage, but Stacy’s not worried about what I think.
“But it all backfired. He hired his lawyers and they snooped around, put two and two together and I was the one who was humiliated, not him. Not Tony Fontana… But I decided to get my own back. I vowed to get even.”
My throat crackles as I swallow hard, feeling the dryness inside me. A horrible dry emptiness that’s my new life without Tony in it.
“The job at the cleaning agency?” I ask, half expecting it to have nothing to do with anything, but Stacy’s thought of everything.
“Oh, it took a while, years of cleaning shitty bathrooms and working my way to the point I could be even considered for working for the big name clients… but I made sure I was on the payroll of Tony Fontana’s cleaners, mark my words,” she says with an air of arrogant pride.
“And me? Was I just bait for you to set him up?” I ask her.
“Not initially, but when I saw how he had a hard on for you, literally, I saw my big chance. I was planning something far more elaborate, but with you there, I couldn’t refuse the opportunity.”
I feel sick, realizing it was my own attraction to Tony that led to all of this.
“I have no idea what he sees in you, Ashlee,” she remarks coldly.
“It does explain how he refused me all those years ago though, some men just go for… well. Some men have no real taste in women at all.” She smiles, looking me up and down, making me feel two inches tall.
“When he threw me out for the second time in his sorry ass life, all I had to do was call my good friends at those shitty magazines all over again. They’ve been waiting for my call. Waiting to bring down Mr. Fontana, the man who can do no wrong. But I’ll show him, I’ll show them all!”
For the first time in my life, it’s like I’m seeing the real Stacy, the real foster mom who’s actually just a crazy messed up bitch with a huge chip on her shoulder.
A part of me wants to ask if she took me in as part of her plan, but I’m too scared the answer will be yes, so I don’t ask.
“I’m leaving now,” I tell her flatly, not even mad anymore, just wanting out and to get back to Tony.
He’ll take me back, won’t he?
What if he doesn’t? What if…
Mine.
Beautiful.
I hear his voice in my mind again, remember his mouth on me.
All at once, I know where I belong, and it’s not in Stacy’s house, or anywhere near her anymore.
“You can’t leave!” she says loudly. “Where will you go, who’ll have you? You’ve got no job either. I already said, give it a few days, maybe a week tops and we’ll have more money than we’ve ever seen. My plan is already working. Trust me Ashlee, you’re far better off here than anywhere else.”
Glancing around, I almost feel she’s right. There’s the door to my room, the hall I
