Chapter 12 – The Beans

The troupe raided the table with all the food, filling their plates as they circled it. Ash and Porsha watched from a distance, with the porcupine suddenly commenting, "There was something odd about that little reunion between Moon and this Aiden guy."

Porsha glanced at her friend. "Really? Just seemed like old friends to me."

"Eddie knows something and I'm gonna squeeze it out of him." Ash grabbed a plate and stayed close to Eddie as he piled the food onto his own plate, waiting for him to acknowledge her with a curious glance. "What's the deal with this Aiden guy?" she asked.

Eddie looked down at Ash with wariness. "What do you mean?"

"Go on. Spill the beans. We saw that face you made when he came out of the bushes."

"Face? I didn't make a face," Eddie said.

"You definitely looked like a guy that was trying not to make a face but ended up making a different one in the process."

"Jah, you totally made a face," Gunter added on from out of nowhere.

Eddie abandoned the conversation, making his way to the other side of the table. He noticed Ash following in his wake, not even pretending to load up her plate anymore. "You're not gonna leave this alone, are you?"

"The lemur dude's sticking around for a while," Ryan said. "We're going to find out what's going on here sooner or later. Just spill the beans."

Eddie sighed and, devoid of emotion, said, "He's a bad fit for this."

Ash looked him over with visible disappointment. "That's it?"

"What were you looking for? What did you think I was going to say?"

Ash snorted, watching as Eddie went over to the dining table and sat down with some of the other members of the troupe. Her eyes glimmered with the determination of a girl accepting her latest challenge, and she pulled Porsha along as she gave chase.

"I see what's going on here," Ash said, suddenly sitting next to Eddie. "You and Moon are thick as thieves, but this third guy comes in that knows him just as well, maybe even better since they have more in common. They're both theater kids and you're the odd man out. It makes sense that you'd be jealous."

Eddie let out a quick, tinny laugh. "Me? Jealous?"

"Girl, what are you doing?" Porsha whispered. "You're horrible."

"Follow my lead," Ash said, and Porsha nodded.

"Maybe he's just a hater," Porsha announced. "First he dumped on Suki and now it's the new guy."

"I didn't dump on Suki, I was just looking out for Buster," Eddie pushed back. "I don't even know how that spread around. Anyway, I am the chillest guy you know. I'm the last person on the planet to be a hater."

"Prove it," Ash dared him. "There's something you're not telling us."

This time, Eddie undeniably made a face as he caved under pressure. "Aiden and Buster have always been really competitive, and Aiden can get insanely jealous. They were always neck and neck when it came to getting shows off the ground, but once Buster got the Moon Theater, things were never the same. It took years for Aiden to get over that. You want my honest opinion? I don't think he ever did."

"He seemed cool to me for someone that's allegedly holding a grudge against Moon."

"It's hard to really explain his vibes when you don't know him. It just feels likes the perfect storm of bad shit."

"I don't like this," Clay grumbled. "Feels like a smear campaign against the competition."

"Look what you did!" Eddie hissed at Ash. "Now Clay Calloway thinks I'm some kind of judgmental jerkass."

Ash snatched a grape from Eddie's plate and popped it into her mouth. "Should've fessed up sooner," she said with a shrug.

Roxy, who watched the entire exchange with morbid fascination, murmured to Ryan, "Remind me to never get on her bad side."

Aiden collapsed next to Buster on the bench, letting out an exaggerated sigh of content. "This is it, huh? Living your best life in the lap of luxury. Grand hotels with more amenities than you can shake a stick at. No wonder you never came back to Calatonia."

They got drinks together—Buster with a soda and Aiden a cocktail—before finding a free seat in the crystalline park at the hotel's lobby.

"Actually, I'm renting a villa out in the suburbs with part of my troupe," Buster said. "All this luxury is nice, but you eventually get tired of waking up every day in a hotel, living out of your suitcase. I wanted us to have a place that felt like a home. You should think about getting your own place. Or maybe we could make some room for you at the villa."

"Nah, I'm gonna take full advantage of all the perks that come from staging a show here. Room service, lazy rivers, and that spa! It's calling my name. Can you hear it?" He cupped his hands around his mouth and simulated an echo, "Aiden... Aiden... Aiden."

They shared a laugh, but afterward, Aiden's face became so serious that Buster started to worry.

"I wasn't sure how you felt talking about the... Crystal incident," the lemur said. "That's why I didn't want to bring it up in front of everybody."

"No, it's... it's fine," Buster said. "It affected all of us. We're all part of the healing process."

"I figured you either worked out a truce or found some serious dirt on the guy for him to give you your show back and leave his company out of the blue."

"I can't take the credit. Some people very close to him managed to get through his anger and pain. We're starting over a bit and learning to trust each other, especially since I promised I'd get Porsha performing again. She's a big part of the fence mending process."

"You promised his daughter a role? I don't have to worry about him trying to do something to me so I'll lose the competition, do I?"

Buster hesitated a moment, the thought having never crossed his mind. "He's mellowed out a bit now since I guess he doesn't have the pressure of running a billion-dollar company anymore. You should be fine as long as you make a good impression next time he comes here."

Aiden's ringtail twitched. "He just swings by here sometimes? The guy that tried to kill you? You don't think that's weird?"

"Of course it's weird! But you know me, I make the best of any situation."

Finishing the last of his drink, Aiden decided he had enough liquid courage to rip the band-aid off. "So, from everything I heard in the interviews and all the blanks filled in for me since I got here... let me see if I got the story straight. You broke into his place of business and impersonated the janitorial staff so you could crash his auditions and ended up selling him a show with Clay Calloway that you didn't actually have. Then after he gave you a second chance for whatever reason, you humiliated his daughter in a way that turned into a viral news story, illegally seized his theater to put on an unsanctioned show behind his back, used kids to wreck his hotel, got ex-cons to attack his staff, locked him under his own stage, and after all that... you told him there was nothing he could do about it?"

"When you put it that way..." Buster gave a guilty grin.

"Buster, you are insane!" Aiden screamed, showering the koala in spittle. Several hotel guests briefly stopped to scope out the commotion. "That's a crazy thing to do to anyone, but you picked Jimmy Crystal? No wonder he tried to kill you!"

"You're sounding a little bit like Eddie right now." Buster turned and waved the onlookers away. "Nothing to see here, folks! He just heard an exciting story."

"I'm probably sounding like anybody with common sense. Mending fences? I'm surprised he's not trying to kill you right now! He could rip you limb from limb!"

"I understand that."

"He could bite your head off. Literally, he could chomp down right now, and you'd be a headless corpse sitting here."

"That's really unpleasant to think about." Buster reached up to squeeze his neck as if checking to see if his head was still attached. "Look, he knows he messed up. He's working on himself and got another therapist."

Aiden blinked rapidly. "Another?"

"He needs to grow and change. He can't go down that road again."

"That's it? He knows he did a bad thing so hopefully he won't do it again?" Aiden reached over and plucked one of Buster's ears.

"Ow!"

"Another impulsive Buster Moon no-plan plan! You need some kind of actual contingency plan if he blows up again. You know, something he can't ignore, something to calm him down. Next time he goes off on you, tell him you don't have a gag reflex or something."

"But I do have a gag reflex! Why would I tell him that I..." Buster recoiled so hard he almost fell off the bench. "Oh my god! No!"

"All I'm saying is not a lot of guys can resist a velvet throat, and Crystal looks like a guy that knows a good time when he sees one."

"That is never going to happen!"

"Okay, but next time he's dangling you off a rooftop or whatever and your life is flashing before your eyes, it's not going to seem like such a terrible option anymore."

"This conversation is over." Buster stormed off but didn't make it far before he stopped in his tracks, turned to pointed at Aiden with a glare, and stormed back, his outstretched finger so close he almost touched the lemur's nose. "You know what? I've never... I don't really know how... my point is, I'd be so bad at it that it'd just piss him off all over again and he'd kill me over that."

Aiden pushed Buster's hand away. "You... may have a point," he conceded. "I guess it'd really suck to do that and then get killed anyway, no pun intended."

It was Buster's turn to collapse on the bench. He let the outrage evaporate from his system before saying, "You never change."

"Hey, you said you make the best out of any situation." Aiden's sarcastic grin was fleeting. "But seriously, I'm worried about you. I always admired Jimmy Crystal on some level because of his crazy success, but let's be real. People like that don't just change overnight."

"It's not overnight. He's been at this for months; I've seen the changes in him."

"But still, all it'll take is one meltdown and the next news story I see about you two won't be about attempted murder."

"I get it," Buster said. To think, at one point he used to get so annoyed with everyone worrying about him after almost getting killed, until he had a startling realization: it was better to have too many people fretting over you than to have no one there to worry at all.

"Well, I'm here now," Aiden said. "Maybe we can figure out a plan or a safe word or something for the next time Crystal goes off the deep end. And then you can use that same safe word after I beat you into submission and win this competition by impressing the hell out of Celeste Cassidy."

"... You never change."

The more the merrier.

After Buster and Aiden returned and the troupe had their fill, Celeste lured Porsha away to a quiet corner of the Crystarium suite. As they sat down on the posh couch, a staff member arrived with a tray filled with French toast.

Porsha's eyes lit up. "Is all that for me?"

"It's a peace offering," Celeste said. "I don't like how we left things after our last conversation. Everything I do here is to protect and grow the company, and the people that work there."

"I understand," Porsha said, a hollow echo on her voice. "I know why you did what you did."

"Moon is determined to get you a spot in his next show. I want you to know that you have more power here than you realize, and that includes the responsibility to go with it. You have to start behaving like someone in control of their own future."

Porsha nodded along but suddenly felt like a bot following orders. All of her encounters with Celeste basically boiled down to the cougar saying something while she just went along with it. Celeste didn't have the same clout as her father, but she was seasoned in the industry and the current CEO of Crystal Entertainment. Not everyone got a chance to pick her brain.

"Could you be more specific?" Porsha asked.

"That incident where you lost your role in Out of This World? That wasn't Moon's fault. As much as it pains me to say this, it wasn't your father's fault either. You inserted yourself into a role you didn't have the chops for. Had you pulled it off, things would have gone much differently, don't you think?"

"I know I was wrong, and I shouldn't have been so dramatic. I won't do something like that again."

"Don't get me wrong, I don't want you to stop trying. You have to keep that audacity. Men are entitled, women are audacious. Men get to lie, cheat, sabotage and destroy, and still get the benefit of the doubt. They feel like the world is owed to them. Women get thrashed just for taking a seat at the table. Your father doesn't have the power he used to; your career is in your hands now. If you want to get ahead, you'll need to be audacious. I just hope you back it up with the talent I know you have."

Porsha could barely restrain her smile. "You think I'm talented?"

"Always have. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do something."

"You're not mad about me being an intern, are you?"

"I already had that discussion with Mr. Moon, and I'm letting it slide for now. Go on back to your friends, and don't forget your French toast."

Porsha happily obliged, taking the tray of French toast with her as she rejoined her friends. Celeste held a faint smile when she heard Porsha shout, "Hey everybody! She said I'm talented!"