The Beautiful Truth

// 45

Seth had, it seemed, liked his Sharpie mustache so much, that he replaced it with an actual fake mustache. We found him at Sidecar around eleven o'clock. The place was packed, but thankfully, Seth had put all our names on the guest list. Otherwise, given the line outside, there would have been little hope of getting in.

Hollywood was in town, and The Palisades was filming here tonight. People had shown up in droves. It was strange.

"This feels like an LA club," Alex grimaced as another bony girl elbowed his back while squeezing by on her way past the main bar.

No one else was paying much attention to the rest of the crowd. We were rather preoccupied with Seth's mustache.

"Why is no one else asking the obvious question?" Micki wondered out loud. "As in, where do you even get a fake mustache around here?"

I shook my head. "Yeah, no idea."

"Wait, does that still count?" Alex finally joined in. "What an idiot. Do I still get my five bucks?"

"I don't think anybody ever agreed to that wager," Barton reminded him.

"Oh wow, is he talking to who I think he's talking to?" Micki backhanded my arm suddenly.

"Ouch!"

"No, look!" she insisted.

Across the room, our faux-mustachioed friend was chatting up the reality star I loved to hate: Hadley Catalano. There was no denying it—it was definitely her.

"Oh jeez," I rolled my eyes.

"Ooh, I wonder if Colin Ferrell is here," Micki marveled. "I read someplace she was dating him now."

"Every other B-list actor is here," I grumbled. At least she had moved on from Talyn.

"Well, the good news is, with that thing on his face, they'll never put him on TV," Alex offered, handing us all one of the beers he'd finally managed to obtain.

"Ah." Maybe his 'hair' piece served a greater purpose.

Despite the fact that she was talking to a guy wearing a sad attempt at a disguise, Hadley seemed entertained. If she didn't come across as such a bitchy airhead on her show, I might have thought she looked kinda pretty...if drop dead gorgeous could ever be considered 'kinda pretty.'

It was apparent pretty quickly that the wait staff was more than a little overwhelmed at the moment as we couldn't get a drink to save our lives.

"Yeah, I'm gonna go tell Seth we're heading out," Barton sighed, pushing away from the table after trying unsuccessfully to hail a waitress for the better part of 45 minutes. Alex, who had been up at the bar for almost the same amount of time, finally returned with four beers...but the frustration wasn't worth the wait.

"This is insane," Micki groaned. "At this point, I think we should just stop down by the convenience store and pick up some more beer of our own, then go hang out in the hot tub."

I looked up at Alex for his reaction. He shrugged. "Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. This is bad, even by LA standards."

I laughed softly to myself. "That works for me."

We quickly pounded our second beers, anxious to get out of the mess that had overtaken Sidecar.

"We'll try again tomorrow night," Alex exhaled for what seemed like the first time in hours when we made it back to the sidewalk.

"Good call," Barton agreed, appearing suddenly at my side as he basically fell out the door. "That was brutal."

"No shit," Micki agreed. "Where's the beer store?"