by Penny Reid
“I’ve got a guy. I had him pick it up this morning and bring it over here.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, like everyone had a guy they could call at six in the morning to pick up your car and drop it off somewhere.
“Thank you,” she said, blinking away the prickling in her eyes. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
Jeremy pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and started counting out twenty-dollar bills. “This is to get you by until you get your credit cards replaced.”
“No! I can’t accept that. You’ve done too much already.”
He gave her the scary eyebrows again. “You don’t have any credit cards, you can’t get money out of an ATM, and you don’t have your driver’s license, so you can’t even cash a check. Take the money.”
He had a point. She couldn’t even buy food. And she’d been so swamped at work, she hadn’t made it to the store in two weeks. Her fridge was pretty much bare.
“I’m paying you back,” she said, grudgingly accepting the bills he held out to her.
“Whatever,” he said, shrugging.
She stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his torso. “Thank you. Seriously. I don’t know what I would have done without you last night.”
Jeremy’s arms tightened around her. “I’m always here for you, Melody. If you need anything at all, I want you to call me. Promise?”
She nodded against his chest. “Promise.”
That night, Melody called her mom to tell her what had happened. Predictably, she freaked out and threatened to fly to LA immediately.
“Mom, I’m fine, I promise. I don’t need you to come here.”
“I just can’t stand to think of you going through something like this all alone, baby.”
“I’m not alone. I’ve got friends. Lacey came over this afternoon…” she’d insisted on it, in fact, after Jeremy had called her and told her what had happened, “and Jeremy drove me home from the police station last night.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Melody winced, realizing her mistake.
“Jeremy, hmmm? I thought you two broke up.”
“We did. We’re just friends now.”
“Is that so?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Melody said, trying to believe that was true.
“I still don’t understand what happened. You two were perfect together.”
Melody sighed and lay back on her bed, gazing at the ceiling. “We weren’t perfect, believe me. It’s just one of those things. We’re much better as friends.”
“Sweetie, I saw the way you and that boy looked at each other. The moment he walked into your apartment, I knew he was The One. Trust your mother on this.”
Melody wished she could believe her. Desperately. But it was hard to trust the judgment of a woman with two failed marriages and a string of terrible boyfriends under her belt. Recognizing true love wasn’t exactly her mother’s gift.
If anything, her mother’s blessing was confirmation of what Melody already knew: there was no future for her with Jeremy.
She needed to move on.
Chapter 21
Everyone went out of their way to be nice to Melody when she went back to work the next day. There was a card waiting on her desk signed by the whole project team, and her dev manager came by to ask how she was doing.
Jeremy checked in on her halfway through the morning, then again in the afternoon, and insisted on walking her to her car when she left that night. And the next night. And the night after that.
It was sweet of him to be so concerned, but she didn’t need mother-henning. And she was getting tired of seeing that crease in his forehead every time he looked at her, like he was afraid she was something fragile in danger of breaking.
She wasn’t. Okay, she’d had some nightmares, but nothing she couldn’t survive. After a few days, she was even able to sleep through the night without the assistance of Xanax. It would probably be a while before she was ready to go back to that particular burger place, but she felt like she was doing an admirable job of moving past the whole unpleasant experience. She didn’t need Jeremy constantly reminding her of it with all his concerned looks.
It took a full week before he seemed to believe her when she said she was fine and the crease in his forehead smoothed out. He stopped asking her if she was okay all the time, but he kept dropping by her office at least once day, even if it was just to say hi on his way to somewhere else.
Melody was always happy to see him—truly, she was—but it was painful, seeing so much of him and wanting so much more. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him, but she couldn’t seem to make herself look away. Sometimes when he smiled at her, it felt like she was suffocating—like there was a weight sitting on her chest, crushing her, and she couldn’t get out from under it.
She wished she could work up the courage to tell him how she felt. But realistically? That was never going to happen.
“So, there’s this guy,” Lacey said one morning after yoga class.
Melody rolled her eyes. She knew exactly where this was going. Lacey had been trying to set her up on a date for weeks. What was it with people who were happily coupled wanting the rest of the world to be coupled too? She’d gotten almost as bad as Melody’s mother with the nagging.
“There are lots of guys. The world is full of guys.” Melody sipped her flat white, grimaced, and reached for a sugar packet. She was trying to break out of her vanilla latte rut. Try new things. So far, she wasn’t impressed with the results.
“Yeah, but I think you’d hit it off with this one in particular.”
“I told you, I’m not interested in going on any blind dates.”
“Christ, what are you so afraid of?”
“That we won’t like each other and I’ll be stuck making small talk with someone I can’t stand for two hours.”
No way was she telling Lacey the real reason: that she had a stupid, life-consuming crush on Jeremy. Even though Lacey had said she didn’t mind, it would be too weird. Jeremy was Lacey’s ex, and he was always going to be her ex. It was awkward enough being friends with them both.
Also? She was pretty sure Lacey would push Melody to tell him how she felt if she knew. She might even decide—heaven forbid—to tell him herself. And that would be disastrous. It was easier if Lacey didn’t know, so Melody could be miserable and obsessed and completely unhinged in private, without anyone bothering her about it.
“But what if you end up liking him?” Lacey persisted. “What if you actually had fun? Wouldn’t it be worth taking a chance?”
Melody pretended to think about it. “No.”
Lacey nudged her under the table with her foot. “I’m telling you, I’ve got a good feeling about this guy.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never gone out with any of them, so for all you know, I’m right every time.”
“Why break your streak now?”
“Come on. One date, that’s all I’m asking. Then I promise I’ll never ask again.”
“Never?” Melody lifted her eyebrows. Getting Lacey off her back was a persuasive case for doing it. “If I go out on this one stupid date, you promise you’ll never ever try to fix me up again? Ever?”
Lacey crossed her heart with her finger. “You have to give him a real chance, though. No making up your mind in the first five minutes.”
“Fine,” Melody said. “One date.”
Hey, there was always a chance—a slim chance, but a chance—Lacey was right. Maybe Melody and this guy would hit it off.
Maybe she could finally get past this fruitless fixation on Jeremy.
“It’s gonna be great,” Lacey said. “You’ll see.”
He was cute, Melody had to give Lacey that much credit. Cute in a vintage-framed glasses and knit beanie kind of way, which happened to be one of Melody’s favorite flavors of cute.
His name was Jonathan, and he was a screenwriter. Well, an aspiring screenwr
iter. He’d never actually sold a script, but that didn’t stop him from constantly referring to himself as a screenwriter. It was impressive how often he managed to work it into the conversation.
They met for beers and burgers at a place in Santa Monica. It was decent, but overpriced, like most of LA. Jonathan said a lot of screenwriters ate there.
“What are you working on right now?” she asked him.
“It’s called American Dreamers. It transcends genre, but I like to think of it as an anti-rom-com.” He had nicotine stains on his fingers, and he kept tapping them on the table like he was itching for a cigarette.
“You mean like a drama about a couple breaking up? Or like a parody?”
“No, no, no, nothing like that.” He shook his head, and his heavy black eyebrows drew together in a line. “See, on the surface, it’s about this guy and girl who meet totally by chance at a train station. And over the course of this one night together, they have all these unexpected adventures that force them to confront their fears of intimacy. But on another level, it’s really about the ways modern society and technology are making it harder for people to connect in a meaningful way, you know what I mean?”
“Mmmhmm,” Melody said. “But…how’s that anti-romance?”
“It’s anti-conventional romance. Anti-cliché. Anti-everything in your typical, run-of-the-mill Hollywood rom-com. Like I said, it transcends genre.”
“Right.” Melody resisted the urge to tell him the whole thing sounded like one giant cliché. It was basically the exact same script every guy who ever went to film school seemed to write a variation of, like they all had to get it out of their system. It was Before Sunrise and Garden State and 500 Days of Summer all over again. Although, it still sounded better than that Ben Stiller action movie Drew was trying to get made.
“See, the main character, he’s a poet, right—a real sensitive, soulful type. He’s making his money as a busker, playing guitar at the train station for money. Although, I’m thinking about changing it to the violin. Or maybe the accordion.” He looked up at her. “What do you think is the more erotic instrument?”
“Um…”
“The violin, right? That’s what I’m gonna change it to. Anyway, the girl, she’s traveling home for her father’s funeral, so she’s, like, teeming with daddy issues, and her boyfriend just broke up with her, and she’s in this really vulnerable place. But she’s edgy and unconventional, you know? Like, she’s got a pink streak in her hair and drives a vintage VW. That sort of thing.”
So, basically, it was your standard thinly-veiled author-insert protagonist meets your typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Melody refrained from telling him that, though. Instead, she picked at her French fries while Jonathan rambled on about life, love, and people for the next hour.
He had a profound reverence for women, he said. All the most important people in his life had been women—his mother, his sisters, a string of female friends and girlfriends who littered his past. He didn’t consider himself a feminist because he didn’t believe people should limit themselves with labels. But he identified as a post-structuralist—whatever that meant. He loved David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Safran Foer, and the films of the Coen Brothers. He liked the platonic ideal of people more than he actually liked most people. Like, he loved that everyone had secrets hidden beneath the surface, but he hated the masks they all wore to hide their insecurities. Or something. Honestly, Melody wasn’t paying much attention by that point.
Eventually, he got around to asking her what she did for a living. As soon as she started describing her job, his eyes glazed over. It wasn’t his fault. Everyone always got the same look when she tried to explain IT, which was why she usually didn’t bother.
He got more interested when she told him about some of the things the space division was working on. It turned out they both had an affinity for stories set in space, and they talked about their favorite sci-fi films until the check came.
He wasn’t so bad, really. She could see why Lacey had thought they’d hit it off. It wasn’t her fault they hadn’t.
At the end of the night, he walked Melody to her car and told her she looked beautiful under the sodium lights in the parking lot, so she let him kiss her.
It was fine, and he was fine. But she felt nothing.
It wasn’t anything like kissing Jeremy. Talking to Jonathan wasn’t like talking to Jeremy, either. When she was with Jeremy, she felt really listened to. Appreciated. More alive.
She was never getting over him, was she?
“I don’t even know why I’m surprised,” Melody told Jeremy while they were waiting for their coffee in the lobby a week later. “They always do this. It’s the thing with the Rey dolls all over again.” She was ranting at him about the merchandising for the latest Marvel movie, and he was humoring her.
His brow wrinkled adorably. “The what dolls?”
She picked up her coffee and thanked the barista before turning back to Jeremy. “You know, Rey, from the new Star Wars movies?”
He nodded. “Right.”
“When The Force Awakens came out, there was hardly any merchandise for her in the stores. She was the main character in the movie, and you could barely find a doll or action figure anywhere. I mean, can you even imagine if there hadn’t been any Luke Skywalker toys when the original Star Wars came out?”
He frowned. “Um…”
“You can’t, because it’d never happen. And they did the exact same thing with Black Widow after Age of Ultron. She has this big stunt where she drops out of the quinjet on her motorcycle, and when they released the motorcycle toy, it was Captain America riding it!”
Jeremy pressed his lips together like he was trying not to laugh.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re passionate about things.”
“Everyone’s passionate about things,” she said, feeling defensive.
The barista set Jeremy’s coffee down, and he beamed his flirty smile at her the way he always did.
“Not like you,” he said, turning back to Melody. “At least, I’m not. I can’t think of a single thing I get half as worked up about as you with action figures.”
They wandered away from the coffee cart and paused by one of the weird abstract sculptures decorating the lobby. Neither of them were in a particular hurry to get back to work.
“It’s not about the action figures,” Melody said. “It’s about how the people making decisions at these companies view women, and it’s about little girls who grow up thinking only boys can be heroes because that’s all they ever see. People say, ‘Oh, it’s only movies,’ or ‘It’s only TV, it doesn’t matter,’ but stories matter. They’re our cultural mythology. They shape the lens through which we see the world.”
Jeremy was smiling at her again. “See? You’re passionate.”
She felt her cheeks flush and looked down at her coffee.
“Hey.” He nudged her with his elbow. “It’s not a criticism. I think it’s cool.”
“There must be something you’re passionate about. What about sports?”
He shrugged. “I like sports, sure, but I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about it. Not like you are about…everything.”
“Politics?” She didn’t even know what his political affiliation was. She was afraid to ask, frankly.
“Nooo,” he said, shaking his head. “Hate talking about politics. Avoid at all costs.”
“Okay,” she said. “Work?”
He huffed out a laugh. “Right. Yeah, no.”
She poked him in the arm. “You get excited about some of the stuff R&D’s doing. I’ve heard you.”
“Nah. I mean, yeah, I’m interested in some of the advanced technology projects we’re developing because it’s basically the only thing about this whole damn job that’s not boring. But mostly, I like talking about it with you because I like how exc
ited you get. Your cheeks get all rosy and your whole face lights up.” He grinned at her. “Like right now.”
Whenever he said something like that, Melody could almost convince herself he was flirting with her on purpose. It was easy to believe she was special to him when he was looking at her in that way he had—the way he was looking at her right now.
But then, someone else would come along, he’d beam his light at them, and Melody would remember she wasn’t special after all—that was just the way he was with everyone. Which was exactly what happened.
“Jeremy,” called out a tall blonde walking across the lobby toward them in high heels and a pencil skirt.
He looked over and his face lit up. “Chelsea! Hi!”
“Do you have a minute?” The woman’s eyes narrowed as they flicked to Melody, evaluating how much of a threat she posed and quickly dismissing her as insignificant. She turned her attention back to Jeremy and smiled sweetly. “I wanted to talk to you about those operating metrics you sent out this morning.”
“Yeah, of course.” He glanced back at Melody. “You coming?” he asked, cocking his head toward the elevator.
The woman was scrutinizing Melody again. Probably wondering what Jeremy was even doing talking to a lowly IT girl.
Melody shook her head. “Go ahead. I’m going back for a cookie.”
“Okay. See you later,” he said over his shoulder, already walking away with Chelsea.
It was Friday afternoon, which meant Melody probably wouldn’t see him later. She wouldn’t see him again until Monday.
He’d go back upstairs with Chelsea and flirt with her over operating metrics for a while before leaving to go do whatever it was he did on the weekends. Hang out at some trendy club with a model, probably, and smile at her like she was the one who was special to him.
Jeremy was like the sun. It was warm when he was shining on you, but when he was shining somewhere else, he cast a cold shadow.