“Where are you getting your information, Dad? Google?” Brooke laughed.

“Brooke, please! Don’t insult me by suggesting—”

“Wikipedia?”

A pause. “Maybe.”

They chatted for a few more minutes while Brooke watched the gorgeous thing in the pool shriek like a child when her boyfriend jumped in and tried to splash her. Her father wanted to tell her all about the non-surprise surprise birthday party Cynthia was planning for him in a few months, how determined she was to celebrate his sixty-fifth since it was also his retirement year, but Brooke had a hard time focusing. After all, the woman-child had just climbed out of the water, and Brooke clearly wasn’t the only one who noticed that her white bikini was entirely transparent when wet. She glanced down at her own terry-cloth sweats and wondered what she would do to look that good in a bikini, even if just for an hour. She sucked in her stomach and continued to watch.

The second Bloody Mary went down just as smoothly as the first, and she was soon so happily tipsy that she almost didn’t recognize Benicio Del Toro when he emerged from a poolside bungalow and collapsed into a lounger directly opposite her. Unfortunately he didn’t remove either his jeans or his T-shirt, but Brooke was content to stare at him through her sunglasses. The pool area itself wasn’t anything special—she’d seen many grander pools in ordinary suburban homes—but it had a discreet, quiet sexiness that was hard to pinpoint. Despite being only a few hundred feet above Sunset Boulevard, everything felt hidden, like it was carved out of a jungly tangle of towering trees, hemmed in on all sides by plants in huge terra-cotta pots and black-and-white striped umbrellas.

She could’ve sat by that pool downing Bloodys all afternoon, but as the sun got lower in the sky and the air grew chillier, she packed up her book and iPod and headed to the room. A quick spin through the lobby on her way to the elevator revealed a jeans-clad LeAnn Rimes having a drink with an older, well-dressed woman, and it was all Brooke could do not to whip out her BlackBerry and send a picture to Nola.

When she got back to their room—a one-bedroom suite in the main building, with gorgeous hillside views—she was delighted to discover a massive gift basket with a note that read, “Welcome, Julian! From your friends at Sony.” Inside was a bottle each of Veuve Clicquot and Patrón; a box of those tiny, funkily painted chocolate truffles; an assortment of energy bars and snacks; enough Vitaminwaters to stock a grocery; and a dozen Sprinkles cupcakes. She took a picture of the whole thing splayed out on the coffee table and sent it to Julian with the caption, “They love you,” and then she tore into it, demolishing a red velvet cupcake in under ten seconds.

It was the room’s landline that eventually woke her.

“Brooke? You alive?” Julian’s voice rang through the cordless handset.

“I’m alive,” she managed to say, looking around to get her bearings, surprised to discover that she was under the covers, wearing only her underwear, and the entire room was dark. Cupcake crumbs were scattered around her pillow.

“I’ve been calling your cell phone for the last half hour. Where are you? Is everything okay?”

She bolted upright and looked at the clock. Seven thirty. She’d been asleep for nearly three hours. “Must’ve been that second Bloody Mary,” she mumbled to herself, but Julian began to laugh.

“I leave you alone for one afternoon and you get yourself drunk?”

“It wasn’t like that! But whatever, how was the taping? How did it go?”

In the brief pause that followed, Brooke had a mental flash of all the potential things that could’ve gone wrong, but once again, Julian laughed. It was more than a laugh—he sounded downright giddy.

“Rook, it was incredible! I nailed it, just absolutely nailed it, and the backup band was way better than I expected with so little practice.” Brooke could hear other voices in the car and Julian lowered his to a whisper. “Jay came over to me as the song ended, put his arm around me, pointed me to the camera, and said how that was awesome, and he’d like for me to come back every night.”

“No!”

“He did! The audience was clapping like crazy, and then when the whole taping was over and we were hanging out backstage, Jay even thanked me, said he couldn’t wait to hear the whole album!”

“Julian, that’s incredible. Congratulations! This is huge!”

“I know, I’m just so relieved. Listen, we’ll be back at the hotel in twenty minutes or so. Meet me on the patio for a drink?”

The mere thought of alcohol made her head throb a bit more—when was the last time she was hungover at dinnertime?—but she sat straight up. “I’ve got to change. I’ll meet you down there as soon as I’m ready,” she said, but the line had already been disconnected.

Climbing out of the warm, soft sheets wasn’t easy, but three Advils and a stint under the rainfall shower helped. She quickly pulled on a pair of legging-style skinny jeans, a silky tank top, and a blazer, but a closer inspection revealed that the jeans were doing hideous things to her butt. As hard as it was to pull the damn things on, it was hell trying to get them off, and Brooke nearly kneed herself in the face trying to yank them down her legs, inch by painful inch. Her stomach rolled and her legs flailed and still, they barely budged. Did White Bikini Girl ever have to suffer such indignity? She flung the jeans across the room in disgust. The only thing left in her suitcase was a sundress. It was too cold for it, but paired with the blazer, a cotton scarf, and a pair of flat boots, she’d have to suck it up.

Not terrible, she thought as she checked herself one last time. Her hair was mostly air-dried and—even Brooke had to admit—looked pretty damn good for requiring zero effort. She’d slicked on some mascara and a few dots of this glimmering liquid blush Nola had pressed into her palm a few weeks earlier and politely insisted she use. She grabbed her phone and her bag and ran. The lip gloss went on in the elevator. The blazer sleeves got rolled while walking across the lobby. She gave her hair a final shake and tousle and actually felt fresh and pretty by the time she saw Julian holding court at a prime patio table.

“Brooke!” He stood up and waved.

She could see his smile from fifty feet, and every inch of self-consciousness vanished as she ran toward him. “Congratulations!” she said, throwing her arms around his neck.