His dates made for great drinking games. Every time the woman sitting across from him mentioned his stepsister, he'd throw one back.

"How magical it must be to be a part of Goldie's world."

Drink.

"What was Goldie like before she became famous?"

Drink.

"You'll introduce me to Goldie, won't you?"

Drink.

"Does Goldie know you drink this much?"

He waved at the bartender to bring him another.

Tonight marked the fourth date in a row like this, Jasper swiping right on his stepsister's sycophants to torture himself for messing everything up so badly, for fixating on what he had no right to spend brain cells on.

"It's not your fault," he told tonight's Goldie Girl, Daisy.

Daisy swirled the straw around the ice cubes in her Mai Tai. "What's not?"

"That I'm getting drunk."

"Damn right it's not."

The bartender brought over another bourbon. A shimmer of amber liquid rose like a tidal wave as he placed it on the table, and then settled into the bottom third of the glass. Jasper slid it closer to himself. "To answer your questions, it's not magical, Goldie was a normal kid, no, and yes. Oh hey, I said her name this time."

He picked up his glass.

Drink.

Slammed it back on the table.

Daisy glared. "Excuse me for trying to act interested in you."

"So, you admit you're acting. Thanks for your honesty. Very refreshing." He leaned against the booth's plush leather divider.

"You're a lot nicer in Goldie's videos."

Drink.

"You're not the only one who can act." Jasper spent his life surrounded by actors, most with no ambition for the screen but plenty of interest in getting what they wanted. The only difference between them was his sense of self-awareness. Everyone else seemed to believe they were the person who they were pretending to be.

Almost everyone else. She realized it, but she hid from herself anyways. His stomach twitched like it was trying to spare his liver what was to come. Bile built up deep in his throat.

"No wonder that Tam chick cheated on you." Daisy scowled at him from the opposite side of the booth. Might as well be the opposite side of a football field, or a continent. "Are you like this with Goldie too?"

He reached for his glass but stopped when his phone buzzed from the pocket of his jacket.

A text from Paul. Normally he ignored his father's communications when they came mid-date but this time it was a welcome excuse to ignore Daisy's last question. He opened the text.

Just saw Tam running from Goldie's apartment. Something wrong with her?

Jasper stared at the words on the screen. Something was always wrong with Tam, sure, but fuck if he could guess what sent her into panic mode this time.

Did you ask her?

No. She rushed by. I'm worried about her.

Fuck you are. You don't even like Tam.

Either do you.

Jasper typed like each letter was a little ball of spite. Did I say I was worried about her? I don't care.

His stomach flipped; his chest constricted. He regretted eating that half of a turkey sandwich with an expired sell-by date he'd found in the back of his fridge.

Daisy made a comment about how rude it was to be on the phone during a date.

She was right, for once. He slipped his phone back into his pocket. "Sorry, that was my father."

"Paul DeAngelis?" She clasped her hands together like a child who had been gifted a new bike. "He's attractive for an older man. You two have the same eyes, you know."

He did know. People had been mentioning it to him his whole life. His phone buzzed again, this time with an incoming call. Jasper ignored Daisy's heavy sigh as he retrieved it. His finger hovered over the reject call option but finally he answered it. "First texts, then a phone call. What's going on, dad?"

His father said something that was drowned into incomprehensibility by the wail of a siren. The sound struck Jasper like a buzzing alarm clock. Muscles tensing, he sat up in the booth. "Dad?"

"I'm not sure what's happened, Jasper."

"What do you mean you're not sure? He pushed the remnants of his drink to the side of the table. Looking at it made him queasy now. "Are the police there? Did Tam—"

"I'm almost there." His father breathed heavily as he spoke.

"Almost where? Paul, what the fuck is going on?" He waited for a response. Nothing.

The call had dropped, or maybe his father had ended it. Jasper glanced at Daisy and then shuffled himself out of the booth. "Gotta go. Sorry I've been such a shit. I'll keep my tab open for you."

As he punched in his destination to Uber and selected a ride, Daisy called after him, a bunch of words strung together that he didn't bother remembering. Waiting out on the curb, he called his dad back. Straight to voicemail. "Damn it."

He tried several more times on the way there. Called Tam, his mother, Goldie. It was like they'd all ghosted him.

Twenty minutes later, Jasper peered into the cavernous mouth of the alley behind Goldie's building. He'd been in that alley once or twice to smoke a joint before heading up to work in Goldie's smoke-free apartment. The alley dead ended at her high-rise apartment, with two more buildings lining the path leading to it. It was barely wide enough for a service vehicle to fit down. Now, no one was getting in, not unless they had a badge to flash at the police officers flanking the entrance, a strip of yellow police tape stretched between them.

Three LAPD vehicles and an ambulance perched on the lip of the road surrounding the alleyway, lights still flashing. A growing crowd of gawkers, faces lit up in blue and red, drew their hands up to cover their mouths. They all realized what had happened more than he did.

"What happened?" He asked a woman about his stepmother's age wearing a floppy yellow hat.

The woman frowned. "They say she fell."

She. "Who? Who fell?"

"No one knows."

That was wrong. He wanted to shake her the way people did in movies when trying to get a liar to be straight with them.

Someone knew. The police must. His father... he'd been near here almost a half hour ago. He knew. Stepping away from the woman, he searched the crowd for a familiar face. Paul's, his stepmother's. Goldie would probably stay inside so as not to draw attention away from what had happened. He searched for Tam. None were in the crowd.

Jasper wove his way through the masses towards the first responders conversing in a semi-circle fifteen feet from the alley. One of the cops postured as he approached. He studied Jasper. A moment of recognition and his shoulders softened, but he kept a hand on his holster. "Mr. DeAngelis, we were about to track you down."

"My father called me, but he didn't say what happened. So," he gestured towards the alley. Refusing to appear anything but calm, he clenched his fists. The bourbon he'd downed earlier continued its threat to make a return trip. He needed answers. "What happened?"

The cop nodded. Jasper stiffened as he placed a hand on his shoulder. "Come with me, please."

He led Jasper to another vehicle where more police officers stood. These two weren't uniformed. One man and one woman, they each wore dark blazers with badges attached to their lapels. The cop introduced him. "This is Jasper DeAngelis. The stepbrother."

He bit the side of his lip to keep his scowl internal. Always the stepbrother, never the bride. As long as his identity hinged on Goldie's, he'd remain an actor performing his life, never living it.

The woman spoke first. "I'm Detective Garcia. This is my partner, Detective Ryan. Have you been told what's happened?"

"No one seems to want to do that."

Her lip trembled. She opened her mouth then closed it, darting her eyes to the alleyway and then back towards him. "We've met before. You don't remember."

Mid-thirties, no-nonsense. Attractive if you liked a by the rules, professor vibe. He preferred someone a bit messier. More complicated. He scanned his brain, cycling through the women he'd dated over the past year, but he didn't really care if he remembered this woman or not. "Maybe." He turned to the crowd again. These cops didn't realize how close he was to vomiting all over their shiny shoes. His heart sped like a coked-up hummingbird's. Something wasn't right. Someone had fallen. Someone had fallen into the alley and he was guessing she hadn't landed on her feet. "Where's my family? Where's...?" He pictured her thick hair soggy with blood. The image stuck like he'd glued it to his eyeballs.

He sagged against the hood of the detectives' SUV. He'd messed everything up. No one would ever forgive him.

Detective Ryan took a step forward. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, sir."

Not as sorry as he was, having to hear it. Placing his palms onto the SUV's surface to keep himself upright, he braced himself for what was coming.

Black hair, silhouette in blue, red, blue, appeared from behind the detective. She walked towards him, a police officer on her left. Someone had wrapped her in one of those foil blankets given to people in emergencies when they were about to go into shock. She kept her eyes cast towards the street.

Tam.

Tam who wasn't smashed onto the concrete alley. Tam, who wasn't dead. His father had mentioned her, though, so whatever happened, she was part of this.

Detective Ryan nodded to the officer accompanying Tam, then turned back to Jasper. "The person who died..."

Tam raised her face as Ryan spoke, reddened eyes staring into Jasper's. She nodded and kept nodding. Her body shook like she was manifesting an earthquake. She didn't break eye contact.

"No," he slid along the side of the hood and staggered back. Detective Ryan kept talking. Jasper didn't want to hear him now, didn't want to be told what he'd just demanded he be told. His words persisted, penetrated, struggling through layers of denial and an alcoholic haze.

"Can I get you something? A blanket? Water?" He sniffed. "Coffee?"

Jasper stared up at Detective Ryan's well-tended beard. He didn't remember crumpling to the ground.

As he pulled himself to his feet, his stomach heaved, and the world heaved with it. The only thing he wanted was to find out who did this and why. Ignoring Ryan, he lunged forward, towards the alley. The cops guarding it like it was Buckingham Palace strutted out in front of him, barring his path.

A hand on his shoulder. Tam. "You think you want to see her, but you don't."

He focused on the weight of her fingers, warmth spreading out from her fingertips them like roots searching for water.

He swallowed. Acid all the way down. "Where are my parents."

"Upstairs. The police are with them."

"What happened?"

Warmth slid away; roots plucked unceremoniously from the earth. She took a step back. "I don't know."

Paul saw her. She ran from Goldie's apartment and then Goldie was dead. Or, Goldie was dead and so she ran. "Are you sure?"

She paused. Walked to his side. "I should have listened to you. I should never have stayed working for Goldie, and now..." She turned to him. "You can hate me all you want. I had my reasons for staying, just like Goldie had her reasons for keeping me on and doing...doing what she did. I'm so sorry this happened, but I don't know any more about it than you do. Maybe less."

"I wasn't here; you were. How would I know more than you?"

"You tell me, Jasper."

"Tell you what?" Fuck, even she had to be cryptic tonight.

The police officer who'd escorted her earlier approached. Tam dipped her head and followed him to his vehicle. Jasper turned his attention back to the alley, waiting for the detectives and forensics specialists to complete their tasks.

The body lay covered with a sheet, strapped onto a stretcher as two people dressed in blue scrubs carried her towards the LA County Coroner's van. By now, word had spread of who lay beneath that sheet. The audience gave a collective moan, their phones like lightening bugs floating in a midnight field as they recorded Goldie's final performance in front of a live audience. Jasper, standing at the group's periphery, would be the star of several viral videos that night. Not Jasper the actor, trying to appease Goldie and keep his rank as her trusted advisor, but the self-aware Jasper, the hidden Jasper exposed for what he was. That Jasper stood like a weeping monolith, head raised in the direction of Goldie's balcony. As the crowd dispersed, he worked out his next move.

----

What is Jasper's next move going to be? Does he want vengeance, justice, an understanding... all three? Or does he just want to numb the pain for a while...

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