by Cynthia Dane
Zack could already see Parvati bounding out of Opal’s, ready to clobber Zack over the head for daring to walk by her café. Indeed, though, Judith would probably be the first one to pop up at his place and slap him across the face for being terrible to someone as sweet as Rachel.
Assuming Zack hadn’t berated himself enough by then.
“Like you knew that things were going to be great with Judith if you worked for it, I know things will be awesome with Rachel. And I’m not gonna lie, I have to work at it more.”
“I’m sure you do. I can only imagine all the gaffes you’ve made in the past day alone.”
Zack cringed. “I did say I love you for the first time when my dick was in her mouth.”
“TMI, Feldman.” Seth was still shaking his head. “But yeah, that’s bad. Sounds exactly like something you would do, though.”
The rest of the afternoon was a sweet escape from the hectic lives most of them belonged to back on shore. This was what Zack sought whenever he undocked from the marina and spent the better part of a summer’s day out at sea with his closest friends and family. I hope Rachel can come to like it, too. Zack would be fine with having her at his side every time he went out or having her only come out once in a while. There was something to be said about having some peace and quiet to himself. He wasn’t quite an Uncle Roy, but he definitely valued his alone time outside of the studio.
That reminded him of the sketch he drew during the midnight hour.
“Check this out.” Zack passed his phone to Seth. On the screen was the snapshot he took of his finished sketch. “What do you think? Should I do something more with it?”
Normally, he didn’t fish for Seth’s praise or other opinions, even when it came to art. Sometimes Seth made a positive comment about Zack’s projects, and other times he kept his criticisms simple or unvoiced. This was the first time in many months Zack handed his friend a rough draft and asked for his honest opinion.
It didn’t help that Seth took his time studying the phone screen, beer growing warm in his hand.
“I would be the last man on Earth to tell you to cut the sappy shit out.” He handed the phone back to Zack. “I did a whole series of paintings about Judith being naked.”
And it will probably be the best thing you’ll ever do. There was a reason for that, and it wasn’t because Judith was jaw-dropping gorgeous – especially with her clothes off. Seth had real skills, and the emotions he felt for his subject screamed across the canvas. Zack could only hope to reach that level if he ever got around to making art about Rachel.
“Clearly the only suggestion to make here is that we get both of our women naked and collaborate on the greatest piece of art to ever hit mankind.”
“Ah, there he is. The crass, stupid Feldman I’ve always known.”
“Admit it. You thought about it just now.”
Seth scoffed. “Like I would ever admit to something like that.”
Zack took everything he said into consideration. When he glanced at Rachel again, laughing at one of Uncle Roy’s jokes, he decided it was a sign that he was on the right track.
***
The Priss & Moan pulled into port around four in the afternoon. Nothing had gone wrong. Rachel didn’t have any panic attacks, although she made it clear that if any water touched her, the day was over.
Everyone made plans for dinner. Seth and Judith had reservations for two at one of the nearby marina-side restaurants. Aunt Lorelei offered to cook her brother dinner, because she apparently made chili that had won blue ribbons in three different counties.
She invited Rachel and Zack as well, but Rachel expressed a desire for a quiet evening at home. Zack was inclined to make those dreams come true.
He lowered the ladder onto the dock. A man stood a few feet away, coat over his arm and sunglasses coming off his face.
Zack froze, blocking the only exit off his boat. “Dad?”
Isaiah waved up at him. “Was wondering when you would get back into town.” He smiled, as if that was supposed to make Zack feel better. “Is your uncle with you?”
Roy poked his head over the edge. “Can I help you?”
“If it’s fine with you, I’d like to take you out for dinner, Roy.”
Roy chewed on a response until Lorelei joined him by the ladder. “Hello, Isaiah,” she said with a soft smile.
“I’ll come if she can come with us.”
“Of course.” Isaiah exhaled a sigh of relief. “I was hoping we could go with her as well. We have some catching up to do, don’t we?”
Zack cocked an eyebrow between his uncles. Last time the gang was together was at that ill-fated family dinner. Eloise had done everything in her power to make everyone miserable that night, and Roy had borne the brunt of it.
This was seriously the least Zack’s dad could do.
Rachel wrapped her arms around Zack and looked down at his father. “What’s going on? We’re having dinner with your dad?”
“Oh, yes!” Lorelei said. “It would be wonderful if Zack and his girlfriend could join us!”
“Girlfriend?”
“Yeah, so, uh…” Zack whipped Rachel around and planted a large kiss on her forehead. “It’s official. You can tell mom and make her piss herself at any moment.”
“I’d rather not talk about your mom tonight, if it’s all the same to you.” Isaiah gestured to his driver waiting on the dock behind him. “I brought the big car!”
Zack and Roy managed to convince Isaiah that dinner was best served under a string of Christmas lights behind the best barbecue place on that side of town. Isaiah was woefully overdressed in his tailored suit, but Uncle Roy was woefully underdressed in his scuffed tennis shoes and stained T-shirt.
It was perfect.
Chapter 30
“Oh my God, tell me everything.” Parvati plopped down at Rachel’s table. The apron in her lap signaled that it was her break time, and she was not going to let it go by until Rachel had clarified her texts from the past twenty-four hours. “Are you guys going out for real now?”
Rachel folded her hands before her face and pretended to be oh so totally bothered by her friend’s interruption. “Apparently. I told the fool that I love him and was okay with having him as my boyfriend. So… guess it’s official.”
Parvati shrieked in her seat, which startled both herself and the other diners in Opal’s café. After a quick apology to the old woman slowly hunting and pecking an email beside them, Parvati turned back to Rachel and squealed through her sealed lips. “Girl, you bagged yourself one of the hottest guys ever!”
“Don’t know about that…”
“Shut up! Have you seen your boyfriend lately? He’s rich and hot! Remember me when you’re married to a multimillionaire and I’m over here struggling to pay rent.”
“You live with your parents.”
“Whatever!”
Rachel allowed one smile to creep onto her face. “I’m trying not to jinx it, okay? It’s only been a day.” What a day, though! From waking up in Zack’s arms to having dinner with half his family – and enjoying it! When his mother wasn’t around, Rachel was actually somewhat fond of her boyfriend’s family. Isaiah was on another planet, but so was Uncle Roy and Aunt Lorelei. Watching the three of them interact like old siblings who had known each other since forever had put a smile on Zack’s face as well. They had been too exhausted to make love last night, but he had gone to bed saying he felt like the luckiest man in the world. Rachel couldn’t blame him.
“I want details, though. Give me all of them. The nastier, the better. I’m in a dry spell.”
“I highly doubt that... what about that guy you were dating a week ago?”
“You mean the guy my parents set me up with? Do I have to tell you how that went?”
“Point taken.” Parvati’s parents were anxious to get her married off now that her sister was set. The fact that Sita had married a nice Indian boy only emboldened their parents more. “But I’m not going to tell yo
u every dirty detail…”
“C’mon!”
“…But I’ll tell you most of them.”
“Yesss!”
Rachel leaned forward. God only knew how the old woman typing her email would respond to what Rachel wanted to say next. “It was… ugh. I have no words. Amazing. There was no way I could have anticipated a night like that!”
“Going all the way, you mean?”
“Blah, blah, blah, wait ‘til I tell you about what happened yesterday.” Rachel gave the Cliff Notes version of the day out on the yacht and having dinner with the best parts of Zack’s family. Parvati didn’t really care about that. She cared about when everyone was getting married.
Rachel could only roll her eyes.
“One thing at a time, okay? We’re monogamous now, but that doesn’t mean we’re rushing down the aisle. I’d like to wait a couple of years and make sure it’s what I really want.”
“You are so unromantic. I’m going to help you pick out a dress, anyway.”
Rachel laughed, but something bugged her. I’m not in a hurry to get married. Even if I found the perfect man – and who knows, maybe I have – I don’t want to rush into anything that would take forever to undo. Marrying a man with that much money sounded like a lot of hassle. Sure, the alimony might be great, but at what cost to her emotional state?
Ah, there she went, already thinking about the divorce.
“Have you had any issues with the public or the press?”
Rachel stopped laughing. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, guess those tabloid journalists haven’t figure out who you are yet.”
Rachel couldn’t help but sit back in her seat, eyes wide.
“You haven’t been following the news these past few weeks?”
“No! What news!”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything. It’s nothing big, anyway.”
“No, no, I wanna know.”
Parvati pulled out her phone. “Like I said, it’s nothing serious. But some tabloid has been snagging shots of you and Zack all summer, trying to guess who you are and how involved you two really are. So far they don’t know who you are…”
“They got pictures from yesterday?”
“Yeah.” Parvati handed her phone over. “From that dinner you were talking about.”
Rachel scrolled through three fuzzy pictures of the casual outdoor dinner she shared with the Feldmans. Her face was barely visible in most of them, but Zack was definitely recognizable with his head of black hair and the stubble covering her face. Every picture showed him with his arm either wrapped around his “mysterious lady friend” or with Rachel leaning in toward him, giggles on her lips.
“Whoa.” Rachel glanced up at her friend. “I had no idea. Nobody had said anything to me until now.”
“Like I said, it’s not big news, per se.”
Sure. That’s what Parvati said. The article on her phone said otherwise.
“Who IS this woman we’ve been spotting with Zack Feldman all summer? Has the hardened playboy finally found his full-time match? We have to say, we’re not surprised he’s decided that this one is a keeper! Remember their tryst at the lake house? Wowza! Click HERE to see the pics again!”
Rachel did it. She clicked.
After all, she had no idea that there were pics of the lake house.
What was it? Her straddling Zack and making out with him on the dock?
Or…
Or….
“Oh my God.” Rachel clasped her hand over her heart. “They… they got a pick of me giving him head?”
Parvati pleaded the Fifth.
“Did you know about this? Parvati!”
“I thought you knew! What? It’s not a big deal! I only knew it was you because you told me about it!”
“Oh my God!” Now that Rachel had gone down the worst rabbit hole to ever smack her in the face, she kept scrolling until she found related articles. “A History of Regional Playboys: Zack Feldman.”
She clicked.
The article was as recent as a month ago, apparently inspired by Rachel’s constant reappearances in photos. The writer went into great detail highlighting the “best and prettiest” dates Zack had over the past few years.
It was a long article full of photos.
Zack was largely the same in every picture, whether he was caught on his yacht or walking down the street. T-shirt. Jeans. Sandals. Sunglasses that covered his tanned face.
But the women were vastly different. Beautiful, but so different in their beauty that Rachel couldn’t even compare herself to them.
Zack hadn’t been kidding when he said he had dated supermodels before. “Our personal favorite,” the writer said, “is it-girl plus-size supermodel Kalypso Pointe. Check out these luscious curves in a bikini crafted by God himself!”
Rachel saw Kalypso’s face everywhere. Saw her body everywhere, since she was the biggest lingerie model for plus-sized underwear. Her long brown hair was richer and fuller than Rachel’s thin and stringy strands. While the camera generously showed off Kalypso’s cellulite and stretch marks, there wasn’t a single unflattering photo of the woman sunbathing on the Priss & Moan.
Skinny blondes. Svelte redheads. Curvy blondes. Foreign brunettes. Foreign and curvy redheads. Rachel gasped when she saw one of the biggest Hollywood actresses to shake things up in recent years. The article writer went out of his way to cite the actress’s Nigerian roots.
There was no denying that Zack was sleeping with – or at least trying to sleep with – these women. They held hands, posed half naked, shared kisses, and hung all over each other whether they were dining outside in Italy or sitting on a private balcony in Australia. The article also included women who had openly modeled for his artwork. Most of them were semi-nude.
He told me he couldn’t hang out today because he really needed to work. So had Rachel. Now, she wondered what he was really up to.
“Rachel, I… I’ve gotta get back to work.”
She handed Parvati back her phone and stared at her work materials, none of them making sense anymore. Parvati patted her on the head and said she would only be a shout away. That didn’t make Rachel feel better.
Her own phone came out of her pocket. There were no messages from Zack, who had claimed to be working in his private studio all day.
“Where are you??? We need to talk.”
It was an excruciating ten minutes before he answered.
“What’s up?”
“WHERE are you? In your studio? I’m coming over.”
“Whoa what now? What’s going on? I’m not in my studio. I took a break for lunch.”
“Where the fuck are you???”
“Calm down! I’m in that bar on 3rd Street. The one we went to a few times.”
Rachel packed up her stuff. That didn’t stop Zack from texting her more questions, however. When they finally stopped, Rachel was out the door, marching the four blocks between Opal’s and 3rd Street.
She needed to see her boyfriend. She needed to hear him reassure her that they were definitely solid, that they were going to be together a long time, and they were going to take PR classes together to learn how to deal with nosy paps that Rachel didn’t even know had been following them around! Did he know? He had to know!
Most of all, Rachel needed him to give her a big kiss before she could get back to work.
She entered the bar, currently busy and bustling with the lunch rush. For all Rachel knew, there was a photographer in their midst.
It was difficult to find Zack at first, and Rachel began to wonder if she had picked the wrong bar out of God knew how many they had been to. With her heavy bag weighing her down, she pushed between groups of friends and business meetings taken out of the office. Finally, she heard the familiar sound of Zack guffawing at someone’s joke.
Because he wasn’t alone.
Rachel didn’t recognize the other woman at first. Not until she turned her bubbly blond head and flashed her pear
ly white veneers in Rachel’s direction.
I’ve seen her here before. That night she and Zack came here to get drunk and pick out dates for each other.
The woman reached out and placed a flirtatious hand on Zack’s leg, her giggles worth all the fake gold on her fingers and around her neck.
Zack took way, way too long to shake her off. About five seconds too long.
“I would love to model for you sometime, Zack.” She crossed one leg over the other and did nothing when her skirt continued to ride up her thighs. “I bet it’s an exciting experience.”
Hell. No.
“The fuck is going on here?”
Both Zack and his blond bimbo stopped laughing. I can’t believe it. He actually told me where he was so I would see this? Rachel scoffed in disgust.
Zack was the only one not panicking. “Rachel! There you are! What’s going on?”
“I should be asking you the same thing!”
“Who’s this?” Another thing Rachel should be asking first! “Do you know her, Zack?”
“I’m his girlfriend!”
Rachel blurted that out before Zack had the chance to answer on his own behalf. The blonde looked to Zack for confirmation.
“Bailey, meet Rachel. Rachel, meet Bailey. It’s because of you we know each other.”
“I can see that.” Rachel’s throat was dry. Who did this drop-dead gorgeous woman think she was, feeding into Rachel’s insecurities and making her want to fling herself out the window?
And making her have flashbacks to one of the worst days of her life?
“Oh my God…” she couldn’t believe this. What if that bastard she once dated was right?
“Men are dogs, Rach. All of us. Don’t trust any of us. Stick with women, if you’ve got the choice. Don’t ever date another man again. We’re not worth it.”
“You okay, hon?”
Hon? Hon? “No.” Rachel looked between this woman, already laying her claim on playboy Zack, and the man himself, who looked so blissfully ignorant that she would either kiss him or slap him.