“You brought a contract?”
I shrugged. “My boyfriend’s a lawyer. Or he will be, once he gets his bar exam results on Friday.”
Ex-boyfriend, my traitorous brain piped up. I couldn’t believe things might be over, not when we’d been on the brink of getting engaged. We had to work things out, right? Except, after what I saw this morning and Justin’s “we need to talk” text, I didn’t see how making up could be possible. I’d never felt so alone.
“What’s wrong?”
If she’d responded with derision or continued talking about how stupid it was to go into business with a friend, I probably could’ve pulled myself together. But she tilted her head at me, her blue eyes searching mine. Tears prickled my eyelids, and I looked away, blinking furiously. Tammy Rae couldn’t see me cry. She seemed more the type to accuse me of emotional blackmail than to say anything helpful. I’d lose all the ground I’d gained with her, and I could kiss my chances of getting the recipe good-bye. Just like the man I loved. Oh, no.
When I didn’t respond to Tammy Rae’s question, she leaned forward and put one hand on my shoulder, like my mom used to do when I was in high school. “Jen? Is everything all right?”
Her sympathy undid my composure. I let out a wail and buried my head in her shoulder. “I think we broke up!”
She signaled a waiter over my head, and a second later, two drinks appeared as if by magic. “Oh, honey. Tell me everything.”
The entire story spilled out: Ariana’s original quest for Justin, which Tammy Rae had watched on the show; bringing my ex as her “date” purely to drive a wedge between us; getting stranded with Dom in Jamaica; finding Ariana in Justin’s room when I got back, and the worst part: that stupid, horrible, fraction of a second kiss I hadn’t initiated or responded to.
When I finished, Tammy Rae leaned back and shut her eyes, saying nothing. Great. On top of everything else, now she thought I was some whiny lunatic.
“I’m sorry to hear you and Justin are having problems,” Tammy Rae said. “Do you remember what I said to you the other day?”
“I know, I know, I’m an idiot for going into business with my boyfriend’s sister. Especially without a ring on my finger. But we have a contract. And once I give Sarah your recipe, I’m hoping she’ll forgive me. She still needs my help. For one thing, she can’t afford to buy me out yet. But also, she doesn’t know anything about marketing or bringing in customers or branding. She needs me for marketing.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Tammy Rae said.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. “You want to throw in an autographed picture for my mom? Or should I buy your CD?”
She reached over and whacked the side of my head with one hand. “Are you drunk? I’m talking about our conversation on Tuesday, while zip-lining.”
I wracked my brain through the haze of rum and sadness. Finally, a lightbulb went on. “Oh! You said we were an inspiration.”
“Right. Jen and Justin were an inspiration. Not Jen and Justin’s twin sister I’ve never met. Not Jen, all alone. You and Justin, together, are what warmed the cockles of my blackened heart. But you’re not some fairy tale romance after all. You’re nothing but a showmance, after all. Worse, you’re such a poorly executed one you couldn’t carry out the farce for another three days.”
My mouth dropped open. “You think we faked our whole relationship to get your stupid secret ingredient?”
“No. I think you faked it to win The Fishbowl. When that didn’t work, you used your popularity to fake it again to try to steal my cupcake recipe. Which wasn’t so stupid when you offered me a thousand dollars not two minutes ago.” She spit the words at me, growing angrier by the second. “But you fucked up by running away to make out with someone else. Then Justin couldn’t keep it in his pants until the end of the week, and now you’re going home with nothing.”
Her words hit home so hard, I flinched. I bit my tongue, because nothing I could possibly say in response could fix this moment. Every time I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. All I wanted was to rewind the last two days and start over.
Before I figured out what to do, someone on the other side of the room said my name. A moan followed. I turned to find Rachel doubled over, heaving. As much as I wanted to convince Tammy Rae she was wrong about us, this wasn’t the time.
“Are you okay?” I asked Rachel, hurrying to her side. “Where’s Ed?”
“I wandered away while he was talking to Connor,” she said. “I think I need to go. I’m so sorry. I don’t know where we left the ship. And the world is moving so fast. Can I lie down?”
The poor thing swayed on her feet. A couple of inches in one direction or the other, and the dozen or so bottles she carried from the gift shop would hit the ground. Rachel needed me. And my conversation with Tammy Rae was clearly over, possibly forever. “Yeah, honey. We’ll go lie down. Come on.”
Taking the cardboard containers carrying the rum from her, I wrapped one of Rachel’s arms around my shoulder, and put my right arm around her waist. Luckily, she was only a couple of inches taller than me, and The Fishbowl’s three-legged race challenges taught me how to walk awkwardly with someone else. I handed her one of the boxes to carry in her free hand, lifted the other with a grunt, and the two of us staggered away.
“I’m sorry I ruined your day,” Rachel moaned. “Did you get the recipe?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. She didn’t need details right then. “But it’s okay. I’ll come up a backup plan. Let’s get you to bed, okay?”
“That’s what she said!” She giggled. “The door’s behind us!”
Of course it was. With some effort, I turned the cheerleader around and headed for the door. Tammy Rae stood a couple of feet from where I originally left her, leaning against the bar.
“I’m sorry Justin and I couldn’t be your perfect ‘fairy tale couple, ’ ” I said to her back. “We’re human people, not celebrities, and we’ve made some mistakes. But our relationship is real. At least it was, before Ariana ruined it.”
Tammy Rae didn’t move or respond. I had no idea if she heard me. But it didn’t matter. Getting Rachel to the ship safely where she could sleep it off mattered. Once we got there, maybe, just maybe, I could sleep away days of frustration and heartache.
Chapter 17
Still more from the Guppy Gabber, Thursday:
Justin: I wanted to tour the Tortuga Rum Factory with the group, but Ari wasn’t feeling well, so we left. She’s taking the news about Jen and Dominic hard. So am I, I guess. I can’t believe she’d cheat on me, after everything we’ve been through.
Ed: Can Rachel and I squeeze in together? Fabulous, thanks. When my friend did this cruise years ago, they bought thirteen bottles of alcohol. Amateurs. We doubled that.
Rachel: “Reality TV.” Is that a misnomer? Is any of this real? Should we believe everything we see? Or are other forces at work?
Ed: Don’t mind her.
Rachel: Rum makes me so deep, y’all. I like rum. Don’t tell, America, but I think Ed may have gotten me drunk. I slept for two hours, and I’m still feeling it.
Tammy Rae: Dude, the factory tour rocked. That blonde girl got totally hammered! I guess reality TV contestants can’t hold their liquor like a former rock star. Of course, I’ve got a good twenty years of drinking on her. *hiccup*
Rachel promptly passed out once I got her to our room, before I finished tucking her into bed. Not knowing what else to do after a crappy morning followed by a worse afternoon, I climbed into the other bunk without undressing and pulled the covers over my head.
Approximately nine minutes later, I realized that wasn’t going to help. Rachel’s snores made it impossible to get a good mope in, and even if they didn’t, moping for more than a few minutes wasn’t my style. I was a plotter, a planner. The cure to my heartbreak lay in getting up and doing things, not lying here and staring at the bottom of the upper bunk, bored out of my mind.
The ship still sat in the port, so much of the onboard entertainment remained closed, but the running track on the top deck could be accessed any time. Once I admitted to myself that sleep would be impossible, I changed, grabbed my iPod, and headed for the stairs.
In the lobby, I spotted Ed waiting for the elevator. “How’s Rachel? I looked up halfway through the tour, and she’d vanished.”
“She got hammered. She’s sleeping it off.”
“And you?”
I started to say something upbeat, but my face crumpled. Ed wrapped his arms around me. I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Justin loves you. You love him. He has to know you’d never willingly kiss your ex.”
“What about Ariana? He called her Ari!”
“There has to be a reasonable explanation.”
“He regrets picking me?”
“I said reasonable, not ridiculous. He never wanted her, and you know it.”
That didn’t help. Sleeping with someone he didn’t like was worse than someone he did. Instead of answering, I pressed my lips together and held my breath, burying my face in his shoulder. Ed rubbed my back until I got control of my breathing.
“Thanks,” I said several minutes later. “Sorry to mess up your shirt.”
“No problem,” he said. “I’ll send you the dry cleaning bill.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened behind us. I’d planned to take the stairs, but since the elevator was here, and so was Ed, I might as well talk to him on the way up. Then I spotted Ariana exiting the open doors, with Justin a few steps behind her. She walked by me, nose in the air, as if I wasn’t there at all.
Something slammed into my shoulders. I stumbled forward, through the doors. It took me a moment to realize that Ed must have pushed me. I put my arms out, to catch myself, colliding with Justin’s chest. Momentum carried us into the far wall with a thud. In the tight space, our bodies reacted with familiarity, forgetting the events of the past two days. Justin’s arms wrapped around me reflexively, and my lips skimmed his ear. He sighed, pulling me closer.
I leaned into him without thinking, feeling every line of his body with mine, taking in his scent. Mmmmmm.
When we were on The Fishbowl together, everyone smelled like suntan oil and Dreft detergent. Being on the cruise, breathing in the coconut scent overpowering his usual musk and hair gel, reminded me of the days when we first met. How my fingers always itched to touch him, but the cameras and the uncertainty held me back. With a sigh I let myself relax against him before Ariana’s outraged shriek penetrated my brain, reminding me of everything we’d been through.
Right. Ariana. Not in the Fishbowl. Not at home, either, where we belonged. On the cruise. Ariana in a bathrobe. In Justin’s room, early in the morning. Where she had no business being.
Justin’s green eyes gazed at me from the floor where we’d both landed. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I struggled to my feet and turned toward the front of the elevator. A long brown arm pushed the top floor button before vanishing through the closing doors. “Ed pushed me into you. I’m so sorry.”
I reached down to help him up, his warm palm sending tingles up my spine. I gasped and pulled away, hoping he didn’t see the effect he had on me. But of course he knew. He’d always known. Ever since our eyes first met at the audition, and my stomach filled with butterflies that had nothing to do with getting onto the show, he’d known exactly how he affected me because he felt the same way.
I loved him so much. And he’d slept with Ariana while I’d been trapped on a boat with my ex-boyfriend. I couldn’t begin to think what to say to him. All rational thought left me.
The elevator lurched upward, headed from floor eight to eighteen. Crap. I couldn’t stay here. I needed to escape, get out of this elevator before he registered my red eyes. Before he realized I wasn’t out of breath because of the fall. When I reached to press any other button to stop us earlier, my fingertips brushed the cool metal wall. We were in the express elevator straight to the pool. No escape until the top deck.
Fine. Maybe I couldn’t leave this enclosed space with Justin, but I didn’t have to talk to him. Not until he apologized profusely and possibly denounced Ariana as the true devil on national television.
“So you’re not speaking to me at all? Is that it?”
I lifted my chin into the air, hoping he couldn’t hear my pounding heart. “I’m not sure what there is for either of us to say after last night.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I feel like more than a year of history shouldn’t be thrown away without so much as a conversation.”
He was right. I turned to face him, leaving my arms crossed over my chest like they protected my heart from being shattered by whatever he said next. “We definitely should talk. I’d love to know why Ariana spent the night in your room when I’d gone missing, and you didn’t have any way of knowing if I was alive or dead.”
“I knew you were alive, Jen. I’d have felt it if you weren’t.” Disbelief filled his eyes. “I meant, I was going to give you a chance to explain why you were making out with your ex-boyfriend in front of the tabloids.”
The words and his tone lit a fire in me. I wanted to slap the smug look off his face. How dare he look at me like this was all my fault?
“Me? You’ll let me explain? The ship left without me. I spent a miserable night abandoned in a foreign country with my ex-boyfriend, the first hours of which I spent wondering how or if I’d manage to return to America. When I finally make it to the ship, you’ve got another woman in your room!” Fury made me spit the words at him. “So, thanks for the opportunity to ‘explain,’ but I’m not the one who needs to account for their behavior.”
“You’re not? Well, let’s see. You dawdled over breakfast, leaving us to take the last boat to shore. You sent me to your cabin, causing me to miss the catamaran. Instead of turning around and returning to the ship or waiting for me on the dock, you spent the day with your ex, who’s been panting after you since the minute we got onboard.”
“You offered to get my sunblock! I would’ve done it myself. Don’t put that on me. I had no idea you’d stop to chat with Ariana on your way to join me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you, Justin. On the floating dock. She appeared in the doorway right behind you. What happened? Did she ask you to untangle something else? A knot in her bikini?”
He flinched at the reminder of the first time we almost kissed, on the show. Ariana had appeared out of nowhere, naked, to go for a midnight swim. I stormed away after she asked Justin to help get her necklace unstuck from her hair.
“What are you talking about? I went to your cabin, like I said I would. Rachel gave me your sunblock, and I headed down to the floating dock. Halfway there, the staircase was closed. Apparently, the front of the ship is roped off in the mornings for cleaning. I had to go up three flights, run across the eighth level, and head back down to get to you in time.” He shook his head. “I didn’t see Ari until after the boat pulled away from the floating dock. She got locked out of the stairs, too.”
Jealousy stabbed me in the gut every time he said her name like that. “What’s up with that? Ari? You two have nicknames now?”
“We spent almost twenty-four hours together after our dates floated away to spend the day together—and never came back. So, yeah, we’re friends now. You’ve always thought the worst of her, but she’s actually nice when she’s not trying too hard to impress people.”
At those words, I saw red. “That’s the point. Dominic and I didn’t ditch you guys. Or I didn’t. I tried to make the catamaran wait, and I asked if I could come straight back instead of going on the excursion. Ask the captain. Or ask the PA, Janine. She saw everything.”
“Janine never returned to the ship after Jamaica.”
The blood drained from my face. I pondered the implications of his words. “You mean . . .
? Oh, hell. Someone set us up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I used those stairs to get to the floating dock. All the doors were open and unlocked. Janine appeared right behind me. She saw me try to talk the captain of the catamaran into waiting for you or letting me off the boat. She got stung by a jelly fish, allegedly, setting off the string of events that led to me missing the boat to the ship.” Realization dawned on his face. “So, it’s very convenient that the only person who could tell you what really happened has mysteriously vanished.”
“You think the Network set us up?”
“The Network, or more likely, Ariana set us up. Again. She’s been trying to get between us since Day One. Dominic must’ve closed the stairway behind him on the way to the floating dock. And someone sent Janine away. It’s all too perfect.”
“Do you have any proof? How is any of this Ariana’s fault and not Dominic’s or the Network’s?”
Darn lawyers and their love of hard evidence. Of course I didn’t have proof, and he knew it. “Once upon a time, you’d have taken my word over hers. I know she’s behind this. She has to be.”
“Ariana didn’t do this. I know she didn’t. We spent the whole day together.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Would you believe her over me, after everything we’ve been through?”
Sweet Reality Page 17