Hilariously Ever After

by Penny Reid

  Jeremy came around and got behind the wheel while Melody sank into the passenger seat and fastened her seatbelt.

  “For your information, I learned to drive in a nineteen eighty-nine Ford pickup,” he said, starting the engine.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  He put the car into reverse, eased his foot off the clutch, and smoothly backed out of the parking space. “It was the gardener’s truck,” he admitted, shifting into first. “I may have sort of stolen it and gone joyriding.”

  “I knew it,” Melody said, smiling despite herself. “Spoiled brat.”

  Jeremy grinned and let out the clutch.

  “Do you want to try some of my rocky road?” Jeremy offered. “It’s really good.”

  “No thanks.” Melody wasn’t a fan of nuts. And she was thoroughly enjoying her cookie dough ice cream with hot fudge sauce.

  They were the only customers, and the place had technically closed five minutes ago, but after the enormous tip Jeremy gave the guy behind the counter, he didn’t seem to mind them hanging around.

  “Look, Melody,” Jeremy said, frowning, “I’m not trying to pry, but if something happened to you at work, I really wish you’d tell me. Or at least tell human resources.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with work.”

  “Okay.” He went back to eating his ice cream and didn’t ask any more questions, just like he promised. The only sound was the heavy thrum of the freezers and the occasional buzz of a fluorescent bulb loose in its fixture.

  Melody stabbed at a congealing chunk of hot fudge with her spoon. “It’s today’s date,” she said, feeling like she owed him some kind of explanation. “Something—” She grimaced with the effort of getting the words out. “Someone died. A year ago today.”

  Jeremy nodded. He didn’t ask who, just waited to see if she wanted to tell him anything else.

  She didn’t. She hadn’t even wanted to tell him that much. She hated talking about it. She hated anyone even knowing about it.

  “The first couple years after my dad died,” he said when it was clear she wasn’t going to volunteer any more details, “it was hard whenever the anniversary rolled around. For all of us. My sister—” He stopped and pressed his lips together. “She got into some trouble. Always around that time of year.”

  “I’m fine,” Melody insisted, which she realized was a ridiculous thing to say to someone who had found her bawling her eyes out.

  “It gets easier,” Jeremy said without bothering to contradict her. “It doesn’t go away, but you learn how to live with it. It just becomes another part of you. Like scar tissue.”

  She blew out an unsteady breath. “I don’t want it to be a part of me.” Her voice wavered a little and she winced, hating how weak she sounded.

  “I know,” he said gently. “But it’ll always be there. That’s what’s so hard. You have to figure out how to live with what’s left behind.”

  Melody nodded. “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.”

  “Exactly. I like that.”

  “It’s from a book. Kafka on the Shore.”

  “I’ll have to check it out.” He pulled out his phone. “K-A-F-K-A?”

  “Yeah, it’s by Haruki Murakami. It’s one of my favorite books.”

  He nodded, smiling to himself as he typed. “Then I’ll definitely check it out.”

  She swallowed a big chunk of cookie dough. “It’s about running away.”

  He looked up at her. “Is that why you moved out here? Were you running away?”

  She shrugged, stirring her melting ice cream around with her spoon. “Kind of. Maybe. Probably.” She thought about it. “Mostly, I just wanted a fresh start. But I guess that’s sort of the same thing.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No. Wherever you go, you always take yourself with you.”

  The look he gave her was soft and sympathetic. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know.”

  It was difficult to reconcile this side of him with the other things she knew about him. She genuinely liked this Jeremy—the one who was a good listener, and who took her for ice cream because she was sad. The Jeremy who was kind and compassionate and genuine was who she remembered spending the night with in Boston three years ago. It was who she’d hoped to get to know again when she moved to Los Angeles.

  He pushed his empty cup away. “I tried running away from everything after my dad died,” he said without looking at her. “Took his favorite car out of the garage and went on a bender. I thought I could drink the pain away. Instead, I ended up totaling the car and giving myself a concussion.” His mouth twisted at the memory. “I was lucky that’s all the damage I did. It was stupid and selfish, and it didn’t even help.”

  “It was my boyfriend,” Melody found herself saying, so softly, it was almost a whisper. “The person who died was my boyfriend.” She had to brace herself to get the next words out. “He killed himself.”

  Jeremy cringed. “Jesus…” He looked at her helplessly. What else could he say to something that awful? It was the ultimate conversation stopper.

  She let out a breath that was half laugh and half sob. “I don’t know why I told you that. I never talk about Kieran. With anyone. For some reason, I keep wanting to trust you even though you haven’t given me any reason to.” She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and shook her head.

  “I have a trustworthy face,” Jeremy said, flashing his charming smile—the one he used on hostesses and girls in bars.

  Melody frowned and looked away. She detested that slick playboy act of his.

  “Sorry,” he said, dropping the smile. “You can trust me, Melody. But I understand if you don’t.”

  The guy working at the shop was off in the back somewhere, whistling a tune she couldn’t make out. We should go, she thought. He’s waiting for us to leave so he can lock up. I should tell Jeremy to drive me back to the garage so he can get his car.

  “It was my fault Kieran killed himself,” she said instead.

  Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t even know what happened. If you knew the whole story…” She shuddered.

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you think you did, there’s no way it was your fault.”

  “We had a fight. I found out he’d been selling prescription drugs on campus and threatened to break up with him if he didn’t stop. He stormed out, then a few days later, they found him. He’d taken a whole bottle of tranquilizers.”

  She never should have let him leave that night. She should have followed him. At the very least, she should have checked on him instead of leaving him on his own for days. She knew he was bipolar; she just hadn’t realized how serious it was. She hadn’t ever thought he was a suicide risk. He’d been on medication to manage it, and most of the time, it worked pretty well. It had kept him more or less level—until suddenly it hadn’t.

  Jeremy laid his hand over hers. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She blew out a shaky breath. “That’s not what his mother told me.”

  “That was her grief talking. It wasn’t fair of her to put that on you.”

  Melody jerked her hand away from his and dried her face with a napkin. She didn’t want absolution, and she certainly didn’t want it from him.

  “Anyway,” she said, sniffling, “now you know what an awful person I actually am.”

  He winced. “Melody—”

  “It’s fine,” she said, waving her hand. “I mean, it’s not fine, clearly. It’s awful. But I’ll get through it.”

  Jeremy smiled at her—not the smug grin he used for flirting, but a softer, more sincere smile. “I know you will.”

  “We should probably go,” she said, pushing her chair back and standing up. It was too hard to look at him when he was being this nice to her.

  Jeremy chucked his ice cream cup in the trash, then drove her back to the Sauer Hewson garage. Before he got
into his own car, he gave her a hug.

  It was the first hug she’d had in months. Even though it was brief and sort of awkward, it felt good in a way she was afraid to let herself think about too much.

  Chapter 9

  After the Night of Embarrassing Crying and Ice Cream, Melody was even more apprehensive about running into Jeremy at work. She was afraid things would be weird between them—or weirder, she supposed. It wasn’t like they weren’t plenty weird before.

  Just her luck, it happened only a few days later.

  “Afternoon,” Jeremy said, coming up behind her as she waited for the elevator in the lobby.

  Melody started at the sound of his voice, but schooled her expression before turning to greet him. “Afternoon!” she chirped with more enthusiasm than necessary. Great. She sounded like a deranged talking Barbie. Way to be cool.

  If he thought she was acting weird, he didn’t show it. He simply offered a benign smile, like everything was perfectly normal between them—like he hadn’t watched her cry into a scoop of cookie dough ice cream the other night. He didn’t look at her like she was broken or sad or deserving of his pity, and she was so grateful for that.

  She wanted to tell him how grateful she was, but that would mean acknowledging the other night had happened in the first place, which she preferred to avoid at all costs.

  The elevator doors opened, and he gestured for her to precede him.

  “What floor?” she asked as she punched in the number for hers.

  “Twenty.”

  Of course. The executive level.

  They passed the short ride to the fifth floor in silence. But it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was more…companionable. Normal. Just two coworkers, riding the elevator together. It wasn’t weird at all…weirdly.

  “Enjoy the rest of your day,” Jeremy said when the doors opened.

  “You too.” Melody exited the elevator. Just before the doors closed, she snuck a look back at him. He lifted his hand, smiling as the elevator slid shut.

  Lacey didn’t show up at yoga that week, but the following Saturday when she did, Melody couldn’t help but wonder if Jeremy had said anything to her. He must have, right? Lacey was his girlfriend. He probably told her everything.

  Lacey didn’t say anything about it when she greeted Melody before class, though, and she didn’t seem to treat her any differently. At coffee afterward, Melody was fidgety, waiting for her to bring it up, but Lacey just talked about work and the contemporary dance company she and Tessa had gone to see during the week.

  Maybe Jeremy hadn’t told her after all? Or maybe he’d asked her not to say anything?

  Melody couldn’t decide whether she should raise the subject with Lacey herself. She didn’t want it to seem like she was keeping it from her, or that she was spending time with Jeremy behind Lacey’s back.

  The problem was, she couldn’t figure out how to bring it up. “Oh, by the way, your boyfriend found me blubbering in my car over my dead ex and took me out for ice cream,” didn’t exactly slip into casual conversation.

  But the biggest thing holding Melody back was that she really, really didn’t want to talk about Kieran anymore. If she brought it up to Lacey, they’d have to talk about it.

  “You okay?” Lacey asked Melody as they were walking out.

  “Why?” Melody braced herself.

  Lacey tossed her empty coffee cup in the trash and pushed the door open with her hip. “I dunno. You seem distracted.”

  “I’m fine,” Melody said, squeezing her to-go cup as she followed her outside.

  “All right.” Lacey shrugged and dug in her bag for her keys. “I’ll see you next week,” she said, waving as she headed for her car.

  Apparently, they weren’t talking about it.

  Over the next few weeks, Melody bumped into Jeremy a handful more times at work, and he was always pleasant and professional and didn’t treat her any differently than anyone else. By then, Melody’s coworkers had begun to notice the CEO’s son knew her by name, and a few had responded by acting friendlier toward her, while others had grown even colder than before. She honestly had more respect for the ones who were chillier—at least they weren’t pretending to kiss her ass.

  “Good morning,” Melody said, getting in line behind Jeremy at the coffee cart in the lobby.

  “Good morning,” he replied, directing a smile her way before giving the barista his order: a soy cinnamon latte, just like he’d ordered the last two times she’d seen him at the coffee cart.

  “It’s funny,” Melody mused while he was waiting for his latte, “the first couple months I worked here, I never saw you at all, but now I seem to run into you all the time.”

  He reached across her to stuff a few bills in the tip jar and lowered his voice. “That’s because I was avoiding you.”

  The admission took her by surprise. “You were?”

  He glanced around to make sure no one else was close enough to overhear. “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want anything to do with me, and the last thing I wanted was to make you uncomfortable at work. So, whenever I saw you around the building, I just…went somewhere else.”

  Melody winced at the memory of how harshly she’d spoken to him outside the restaurant. “I feel bad. You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

  “It did cut my latte habit back,” he said, patting his stomach as though it had ever been anything other than washboard flat. “Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m glad you’re not doing it anymore. It’s much easier this way, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Oh, how was the concert?” At yoga on Saturday, Lacey had mentioned they had tickets to see Passenger at the Wiltern.

  “What?” His face scrunched in confusion.

  “Passenger? Lacey said you guys were going to see them last night?”

  “Oh, right. Yeah.” His expression had gone flat. “We didn’t end up going. Well, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged and lowered his eyes. “I had to work. She took one of her friends instead.”

  “Work on a Sunday night? Wow. Must have been something important.”

  He blew out a puff of air that might have been a laugh. “Yeah.”

  It seemed like there was more going on, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, so Melody dropped it. Maybe they’d had another fight. Whatever. It wasn’t any of her business.

  The barista dropped off Jeremy’s latte. “Here you are, Mr. Sauer.”

  “Thank you,” he said, flashing his killer smile as he picked up his order. He gave Melody a nod. “I’ll see you later,” he said, hurrying off.

  It was eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night, and Melody was curled up around her laptop, watching Netflix in bed. It was what she did most nights to fall asleep. Cueing up one of her favorite shows lulled her brain into stillness as she listened to the dialogue she knew by heart and watched the characters as familiar as old friends.

  After a few episodes, the judgmental dialogue box popped up, inquiring if she was still watching. Mind your own business, Netflix, she thought as she reached out from beneath the covers and tapped the trackpad to dismiss it. As the next episode started up, she burrowed deeper into her pillows and tucked her favorite fuzzy blanket under her chin.

  The thing they didn’t tell you about LA was that it could get cold at night, even in the summer. Not Boston cold, but colder than Melody’s thin Florida blood had expected to encounter in sunny Southern California. She’d grown up in a swamp, but Los Angeles was a desert, and deserts got cold at night. As soon as the sun went down, the temperature went down with it. It was a different kind of cold than she was used to—different than the damp, frigid winters in Boston. Something about the dryness and contrast to the glaring daytime sunlight left her with chills she couldn’t shake, like a fever or sunburn—hence the pile of blankets on her bed in July.

  Melody’s phone vibrated on the nightsta
nd, startling her out of her Parks and Recreation episode. She paused the playback on her computer and stretched out a reluctant hand for the phone, expecting to see her mom’s name on the screen.

  It wasn’t her mom. It was Jeremy.

  “I’m sorry to call so late,” he said when she answered. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Nope,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m in trouble. I need your help.”

  She sat up, kicking off her blankets. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my laptop. I did something really stupid to it, and I’ve got this big presentation tomorrow morning, and Geoffrey’s counting on me, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He was speaking so fast, the words all came out in a rush that was hard to follow.

  “Wait, slow down. What’s wrong with your laptop?”

  “I spilled a latte on it, and now I can’t get it to boot up, and my presentation is on there.”

  “Okaaay. But you have it backed up, right?”

  “No…which I realize now was stupid.”

  “Pretty stupid, yeah.”

  “Melody!” There was an edge of panic in his voice.

  “Well, it is!” she said, because seriously? People who didn’t back up their work deserved what they got.

  “I need your help. Please tell me there’s a way to salvage that presentation.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” It was probably a super simple fix, if you knew what you were doing. Which she totally did.

  “Really?”

  “Pffft, yeah. Do you have an extra laptop? One you can use tomorrow for the presentation?”

  “I can get one.”

  “Okay, bring it and your broken one over to my place—I’ll text you the address.”

  He blew out a long breath. “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

  A half hour later, Jeremy showed up on her doorstep clutching both laptops like they were the tablets of the covenant brought down from Mount Sinai. “I really appreciate you doing this,” he said, gray-faced.