“Oh my God, is it true you begged Adrian not to break up with you in front of Ansel Elgort?”
It was worse than she thought. How many people had already tipped off TMZ? Tomorrow night at six thirty, they would be tossing her name around the newsroom while Harvey sipped from his reusable cup. “I didn’t beg Adrian to keep me. Come on, Kirby, you know me better than that.”
“Bitch, I do. But I’m not everyone else. You need to do damage control. Do you have a publicist on retainer?”
“Not anymore. Daniel said me going shopping doesn’t need a press release.”
Kirby snorted. “Okay, boomer.”
“But you’re right. I do need damage control.” The elevator doors opened, and Piper stepped off, clicking through the lobby in her red-soled pumps, eventually stepping out onto Wilshire, the warm July air drying the dampness in her eyes. The tall buildings of downtown Los Angeles reached up into the smoggy summer night sky, and she craned her neck to find the tops. “How late is the rooftop pool open at the Mondrian?”
“You’re asking about hours of operation at a time like this?” Kirby griped, followed by the sound of her vape crackling in the background. “I don’t know, but it’s past midnight. If it’s not already closed, it will be soon.”
A black Lincoln pulled up along the curb. After double-checking the license plate number, Piper climbed inside and shut the door. “Wouldn’t breaking into the pool and having the time of our lives be, like, the best way to fight fire with fire? Adrian would be the guy who broke up with a legend.”
“Oh shit,” Kirby breathed. “You’re resurrecting Piper twenty fourteen.”
This was the answer, wasn’t it? There was no better time in her life than the year she turned twenty-one and ran absolutely buck wild through Los Angeles, making herself famous for being famous in the process. She was just in a rut, that was all. Maybe it was time to reclaim her crown. Maybe then she wouldn’t hear Adrian’s words looping over and over again in the back of her head, forcing her to consider that he might be right.
Am I just one of thousands?
Or am I the girl who breaks into a pool for a swim at one o’clock in the morning?
Piper nodded resolutely and leaned forward. “Can you take me to the Mondrian, instead, please?”
Kirby hooted down the line. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” Piper crossed her legs and fell back in the leather seat. “How about we have everyone meet us there?”
Chapter Two
Jail was a cold, dark place.
Piper stood in the very center of the cell shivering and hugging her elbows so she wouldn’t accidentally touch anything that might require a tetanus shot. Until this moment, the word “torture” had only been a vague description of something she’d never understand. But trying to not pee in the moldy toilet after roughly six mixed drinks was a torment no woman should ever know. The late-night Coachella bathroom situation had nothing on this grimy metal throne that mocked her from the corner of the cell.
“Excuse me?” Piper called, wobbling to the bars in her heels. There were no guards in sight, but she could hear the distinctive sounds of Candy Crush coming from nearby. “Hi, it’s me, Piper. Is there another bathroom I could use?”
“No, princess,” a woman’s voice called back, sounding very bored. “There isn’t.”
She bounced side to side, her bladder demanding to be evacuated. “Where do you go to the bathroom?”
A snort. “Where the other non-criminals go.”
Piper whined in her throat, although the lady guard went up a notch in her book for delivering such a savage response without hesitation. “I’m not a criminal,” Piper tried again. “This is all a misunderstanding.”
A trill of laughter echoed down the drab hallway of the police station. How many times had she passed the station on North Wilcox? Now she was an inmate.
But seriously, it had been one hell of a party.
The guard slowly appeared in front of Piper’s cell, fingers tucked into her beige uniform pants. Beige. Whoever was at the helm of law enforcement fashion should be sentenced for cruel and unusual punishment. “You call two hundred people breaking into a hotel pool after hours a misunderstanding?”
Piper crossed her legs and sucked in a breath through her nose. If she peed herself in Valentino, she would voluntarily remain in jail. “Would you believe the pool hours weren’t prominently posted?”