Free She's a Star (a Hollywood Hotwife story) by Max Sebastian Page A

she’d make it someday, even while she’d been merely waiting tables at a coffee shop in the East Village.
    She deserved recognition for her hard work, her considerable acting talent—and, yes, for her beauty too.
    I took a few deep breaths, calming myself, though strangely happy about the prospect of other people recognizing what a beauty my wife was—how that might build her confidence, add to that sexy little glint in her eye. Oh, I felt the jealousy, like acid in my stomach. I felt the cold fear that any moment, Hayley might become a bona fide celebrity, and therefore subject to the rules of celebrity, namely that marriages involving famous people always failed.
    Yet the thought that someone as high and mighty as Aaron Simpson might envy me my wife made me feel curiously satisfied. The idea that Hayley could drive a man like that wild on set, and then come home to me, made me feel immense pleasure.
    A couple of guys I didn’t recognize filled the space at the bar next to me, and I hardly gave them a second look. I couldn’t fail to hear their conversation, though.
    “The critics won’t like it, but when has Aaron Simpson ever bothered with pleasing the critics?”
    “He gets the box office, that’s the important thing.”
    The tuxedo-clad guys seemed oblivious to who might be able to overhear their conversation just then. I just sipped my iced water and pretended I was off in my own world.
    “It’s a happy coincidence that when he chooses a movie just so he gets the chance to bang another hot little starlet in front of the cameras, the audiences like it, too.”
    I caught my breath, my heart rate suddenly picking up.
    “Happy coincidence indeed. Well, apparently he’s stretched the boundaries to the full this time. It’ll be interesting to see how the audiences react.”
    Sitting there listening to the conversation, I found myself recalling Hayley’s continued mantra: It’s only a movie. She’d said it so many times before they’d finally come out for this screening. But I was anxious about what the movie would finally be like—and how people would treat Hayley after seeing it.
    “The money men have already signed up for a sequel, even before seeing the finished cut.”
    “Jesus. He’s doing a sequel?”
    “Supposedly. I heard he commissioned a script the moment he first laid eyes on his new leading lady.”
    “Seriously? What’s her name? She’s nobody, right?”
    “Hayley something. Marvin or Martin or Urchin or something like that. Supposed to be quite a looker. She was in GQ apparently, but I never saw it. Really got into the physical side of the love scenes, know what I mean.”
    Drinks in hand, the two guys drifted back away from the bar, lost in the crowd, leaving me quivering there at the bar.
    It’s only a movie, she had said.
    She hadn’t mentioned anything about a sequel. Exactly how intimate had her sex scenes been with Aaron Simpson? What if he really did steal her from me, not least with the promise of making another movie?
    I stood clutching my empty glass, and for a moment had to keep my stomach from evacuating its contents. Maybe I would need to find a restroom after all, if I was going to sit through three hours in which I would not be able to take a bathroom break, since I was the husband of one of the stars. Yet I was rock hard at the thought of Hayley being taken by someone else, and no amount of calm breathing was going to make that flag pole go down sufficient to use the bathroom.
    I waited a few moments and decided just to head back downstairs to find my feet. Returning down to the front lobby, I found a dwindling number of people flocking into the main theater. The screening was about to start.
    For a gut-wrenching few moments, I couldn’t see any sign of Hayley. My paranoia started creating scenarios in which she had slipped out the back of the theater with Aaron Simpson, to jump into a private limo for a quick ride to his hotel room.
    I drifted into the auditorium,