The Seat Filler: A Novel

by Sariah Wilson

  I couldn’t believe she hadn’t said anything. She told me everything. Like, sometimes an uncomfortable amount of information. There was one time I couldn’t look Allan in the face for a week because of her oversharing. How could Shelby keep this from me?

  Because you’ve never kept anything from her? my guilty conscience asked me. I told it to shut up.

  “That’s good,” I said. I knew how excited she must have been. And I’d bet she’d told Allan. While I understood that was how things were supposed to be, it felt a little like I was being replaced.

  “Well,” I said, realizing that I’d been sitting in his parked car for what was an unusual amount of time, and I could only imagine what poor Ray thought about what might be happening in his back seat, “I should go.”

  “Do you want me to walk with you?”

  I most definitely did not. I needed to escape his appeal, not prolong it even further. “I’m good, but thanks.”

  I opened the car door and got out. I turned to shut it behind me, but he poked his face out of the opening. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone else?”

  “There’s more?” I asked, again trying to be jokey and failing. I wasn’t sure my nervous system could take it.

  “I like you. Buddy.”

  His face was like an open book, and I could see what he meant without him speaking the words. Even with his qualifier, he wasn’t saying he liked me as a friend.

  “I bet you say that to all the seat fillers. Good night, pal.” I smiled at him and then walked away, letting him close his own door. This was the problem with being friends with an actor who had hinted that he wanted something more. He had the ability to show every emotion he was feeling or to hide them all from me because it was his literal job. Which meant I could either be overwhelmed by what was on his face or left wondering what he was thinking.

  Get out, get out now, that worried voice inside me whispered. Stop this before it starts.

  I couldn’t. There was this feeling of inevitability. Now that we had crossed paths—and had done so over and over again—it almost felt like I was destined to have him in my life in some way. I shook my head. So many women would have killed for this chance. And maybe I was being naive in thinking that I could dictate how this was going to go.

  Because it felt a little like being on a runaway freight train heading toward the side of a mountain. I couldn’t stop it or slow it down or jump off. I was on board for the full ride, wherever that was going to take me.

  I woke up the next morning on the couch. My neck was stiff, and I groaned as I came to. I’d been waiting up for Shelby because we had so many Very Important Things to discuss. But I must have passed out, and instead of waking me up like I had wanted her to, she’d put a throw blanket over me and had gone to bed.

  “Good morning!” She was in the kitchen turning on the coffee maker, way too cheery.

  “How could you not tell me about the remodeling thing?”

  She rushed over to the couch and sat next to me. “You have no idea how hard it was to not tell you. But isn’t it the best news ever?”

  I still couldn’t believe that Shelby had sat on a secret that big. It was so unlike her. Not unlike me, but I wasn’t the one being questioned here.

  “The best,” I echoed.

  “This is going to be everything. His publicist put in a call to California Architectural, and they fell all over themselves to offer us the cover. The cover! I’m going to be launched into a different stratosphere.”

  “That is going to be so great,” I said. I was happy for her, and it was selfish of me to be worried about how all this was going to affect me. Maybe it wouldn’t affect my life at all. I’d already told the guy we could be friends. What that was going to look like I wasn’t sure, but why would it be a bad thing if my best friend was fixing his atrocious house?

  “And he is paying me so well. So. Well. He offered to double all of my fees and costs for doing rush work, and unlike you, I didn’t talk him out of it because I’ve found that I like making money instead of throwing it away.” She was teasing me, but it wasn’t the same thing. Him paying her versus him paying me. Although if I’d been pressed about it, I couldn’t have explained why.

  I also hoped he’d pay her in actual dollars.

  “And you know,” she continued, “you’re such an awesome person that he’s basically hiring me based on the fact that I’m your friend. I mean, he went to my website and looked at my other projects, and I got a floor plan of his house from that friend of mine who works in the records office and I pitched him my ideas in that program I have that renders 3D schematics—”

  “So, for more reasons than just being my friend,” I interjected with a smile. “It’s because you’re talented and you’re going to do an amazing job.” But I didn’t really want to talk about Noah Douglas. “How was your night?”

  Shelby rolled her eyes and went into the kitchen. I followed her and sat on the barstool at our peninsula counter while she rummaged around for coffee mugs. “The less I say about that, the better.”

  “What do you mean?” I needed to go get changed. I had to return this dress, and it was feeling really uncomfortable. Formal wear was not meant to be slept in.

  “Harmony pretty much ignored me for the entire evening. I was this close to getting up on her dining room table and doing my old tap-dance routine from junior high, just to force her to make eye contact with me. It’s a good thing I love Allan,” she said as she placed the mugs on the counter. “And I don’t have to ask how your night was because . . . BAM!”

  She reached for her laptop and flipped it up. “I wanted to slam it on the counter for the full effect but I don’t want to break it and I need it for work, so . . .” She slid it across the counter toward me.

  And there was a picture of me and Noah Douglas. He looked amazing, all self-assured and sexy with the barest hint of a smile. They’d published a picture of me gazing at him instead of at the camera, and it made me uncomfortable. Mostly because I resembled . . . the girl his mother had forced him to take out.

  “We look like a set of Goth twins going to an emo prom,” I told her.

  “You’re crazy,” she assured me. “You look like a matched set with your dark hair and dark eyes. Like you were meant to be together.”

  I sighed. “You need to hurry up and get married so that you can get out of this isn’t-love-so-wonderful phase.”

  The picture was listed with Noah’s name on it. No mention of me. Which made sense. Then I scrolled down a little farther, and that’s where the comments started.

  Who is this fat ugly skank ho?

  I would murder someone to stand next to him like that.

  Ick. He could do so much better.

  Call me instead, Noah Douglas.

  I only ship Noah and Lily and I don’t accept cheap substitutes.

  I wish it was me!

  And those were the comments that weren’t riddled with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, and I tried to ignore the ones with inventive swear words.

  My stomach turned over, and I felt like I was going to vomit all over Shelby’s laptop. Having gone through a bad round of bullying when I was fourteen, I’d pretty much steered clear of all social media since then, and this was reminding me why.

  This was proof I’d made the right call last night when I’d told him I only wanted to be friends. I already knew what it was like to have to endure this type of venom on a daily basis. No way did I want to sign up for that mess again.

  Gossip really hit differently when it was about you.

  Shelby realized too late what I was doing. “Don’t read the comments!” She shut her laptop screen and pulled it back. “It doesn’t matter what a bunch of tweens and frustrated housewives think. It only matters what he thinks.”

  “To be fair, it doesn’t really matter what Noah thinks, either. I told him I only wanted to be friends.”

  She stared at me, her mouth open. Then she reached for the most
recent issue of American Weekly, rolled it up, and hit me on my arm with it like I was a bad dog.

  “What? Why would you do that?” she demanded.

  “Ow! Stop!” I grabbed the magazine from her and threw it onto the coffee table behind me. “I don’t like him that way.”

  “You are my best friend and I love you, but that is quite possibly the stupidest thing you have ever said to me. You look at him like you’ve been starving for a month and he’s a man-size vat of ice cream.”

  “Whatever” was my masterful reply. My phone buzzed, and I reached for my clutch. I had thrown it onto the counter last night when I got home. I emptied out the contents and noted that my phone was about to die. My heart had a moment of hope that maybe it was Noah. But . . . what if he’d seen the picture? That could be a bad thing.

  It wasn’t him. It was a text message from . . . my bank. Thrilling. I wondered what credit card I was currently eligible for or what their current low, low rate would be for refinancing my mortgage. The fact that I didn’t have a mortgage never seemed to bother them.

  “An uneaten Snickers bar?” Shelby asked. “Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?”

  I reached for the candy bar and put it back inside my purse. “Noah gave it to me.” There’s no way I could ever eat it. I would let it get moldy and stale, or whatever it was candy bars did when they went bad. (Having never let a candy bar go bad, I had no idea what happened to them.) I was going to put it in a box somewhere and pull it out to look at it when I wanted to reminisce.

  Shelby’s eyes danced. “So he gave you something and you’re keeping it. For sentimental reasons. Nothing about that says, ‘I want to be just friends.’”

  “I keep stuff you’ve given me,” I scoffed.

  “Name one thing.”

  My mind went blank. I had nothing. “I’m not playing this game with you.”

  “Good plan. Because you’d lose.” She poured coffee into one of the mugs before handing it to me. “You should have jumped all over that man. You’re in the world’s worst dry spell.”

  “It’s only a dry spell if you’re thirsty,” I said, opting to drink without adding in massive amounts of sugar because I needed the caffeine kick. I grimaced after my first sip. I always forgot how much better coffee tasted after it had been sweetened.

  She had both of her hands wrapped around her own mug. “How can you think you’re not thirsty? You’re like a dehydrated man who’s been crawling through the Sahara on his hands and knees for two days with no help in sight.”

  “Why am I not a woman in this scenario?”

  After she took a sip, she said, “Because only a man would do something stupid enough to get himself stranded in the Sahara.” She set her mug on the counter. “You’ve got to give me something. Because I can tell that he likes you, whether or not you agree with me. There had to be a moment. I’m an old engaged woman. Tell me about the butterflies so that they may live on in my memory.”

  At that I laughed and said, “Fine. There was this moment last night where he looked at me like . . .”

  “Like?” she prompted, urging me to go on.

  “Like how Malec looked at Aliana after their first fight.”

  She reached across the countertop to grab my forearm while squealing in delight. “Are you kidding me? I would have died if he ever looked at me that way!”

  “Hi, recently resurrected person here.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I got out of the car.”

  “You didn’t kiss him?” she asked in utter disbelief.

  “We’re just friends. I can’t.”

  “You most certainly can! Often, and with a crap ton of passion.”

  I went to my old standby. “I’m not dating anyone. You know that. I’m focusing on my business. And kissing leads to dating.”

  “I really want to respect your choices and be supportive of you, but as your friend, please know that everything you’re saying is still dumb. You should totally be making out with him.”

  When I just shook my head as my response, she came over to sit on the other barstool. “You know I only want the best for you, right? Instead of drawing boundaries, I think you should go with the flow. See where the universe takes you.”

  “That’s not really my thing. I’m more of a violently-struggle-against-the-flow type of person.” Sometimes I did make things harder than they needed to be.

  We sat in silence for a moment until she said, “So, just friends, huh? Does that mean you’d be good with him dating someone else?”

  “Is he?” The words rushed out of my mouth without my approval. “I mean, if he is, that’s fine. Good for him.” My reaction was totally unwarranted considering he’d told me himself that he wasn’t dating anyone. “As his friend, I would want him to be happy.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said in a singsong voice.

  Yeah, neither did I.

  But even if I wanted to date him and wasn’t desperately afraid of getting close to him, there still wouldn’t be any way. I couldn’t compete with the kind of women he could date. What did I have in common with the world’s most beautiful actresses and models?

  I mean other than the fact that we were all hungry all the time?

  “Well, I have to get ready for work.” She put an emphasis on the last word, clearly pleased to have a client again. She took her coffee mug to the sink. “Is there a message you want me to pass along to your newly acquired friend?”

  “Nope, I’m good.”

  “Maybe I’ll give him a good, rousing speech about how faint heart never won fair maiden,” she mused, rinsing her cup out and putting it into the dishwasher.

  “It won’t do you any good. He accepted his defeat and retreated like a good soldier.”

  She seemed to consider this. “Or . . . he didn’t retreat. Maybe he’s biding his time and planning to attack from another position.”

  Shaking my head, I gathered up my stuff and then went into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. I dropped my purse on my bed and plugged the charger into my phone. I peeled off my dress. I needed a shower, but Shelby would need to use it first.

  For her new job.

  My phone buzzed again, and I let myself have that moment of hope again before checking. My bank again. They must really want me to go into debt. But this time I bothered to read the first line.

  It said SECURITY ALERT.

  I opened the message, and it said something about fraudulent activity and to call them as soon as possible to resolve it. My pulse began to beat frantically. I logged on to my banking app to see what was going on.

  Zero.

  My checking account had been cleared out.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I called the phone number in the text and pushed the numbers in the menu to report fraudulent activity. A woman named Karen answered and asked for my account number. I didn’t know it off the top of my head, although I probably could have gotten it from my banking app.

  She asked, “Do you have your debit card? You could read that number to me.”

  The last place I’d had my card was in my clutch. I dived for my purse, pulling out the candy bar, my driver’s license, my lipstick, mints, and a thing of tissues.

  No debit card.

  “It’s gone,” I told her.

  “Do you know when you lost it?”

  “I had it yesterday.” I specifically remembered putting it in my purse when I was getting ready for the Oscars, just in case I needed it for some reason. And now it was gone. I hadn’t used it in days.

  It was then that I remembered the party, how my purse had fallen on the ground when I was trying to read that text from Morgan. “I think I lost it last night at the Vanity Fair party.”

  There was a pause. “Did you say the Vanity Fair party? The one after the Academy Awards?”

  “Yeah. I was there with Noah Douglas. It was kind of a date.”

  Another pause. “Like . . . in your dreams?”

&nbs
p; “What? No. I was there.” I realized too late how far-fetched and stupid it sounded, but it was the actual truth.

  “Right. And Chase Covington and I were in his villa in Italy.”

  Were customer service reps supposed to be this snarky? “He was actually there at the party with his wife. I hung out with them.”

  She didn’t respond.

  I was completely aware of how crazy this all sounded. “I can send you proof. I have a picture of Noah and me together.”

  “Please hold.” She was probably off to have a good laugh with her fellow customer service colleagues.

  Dumb elevator music came on, and I wanted to raise my fists and shake them at the world. I’d spent a fantastic evening with one of the world’s biggest movie stars at one of the biggest Hollywood parties, so of course the universe had to balance it back out by letting someone steal all my money.

  I thought of the person who had taken my debit card at a party full of celebrities and wealthy people and how mad they must have been when they found out that there was so little in my account.

  Shelby called out “Bye!” just before she slammed the front door shut, but I wasn’t able to respond, as Karen came back on the line.

  “Juliet?”

  “Yes?”

  She had me verify some of my personal information to locate my account. Once she had, she read off the suspicious charges to me. There were small purchases at two drugstores first, the criminal probably not realizing they’d spent a good percentage of my “fortune” on ChapStick and Slim Jims. Their next stop was at a gas station and a liquor store, where they’d bought enough alcohol to make an entire frat house blackout drunk. Then once they saw that there was no alert on the card, that I hadn’t reported it as stolen, they went online to a jewelry store website and tried to purchase a six-thousand-dollar pair of earrings.

  Which my bank’s algorithms noticed, because I was so broke that they probably would have sent me an alert if I’d ever tried to buy two-ply toilet paper.

  When I denied all the charges, Karen told me she had canceled my debit card and would mail me a new one. She then told me that the bank had up to ten days to investigate the fraudulent charges and that once they’d determined they were in fact fraudulent, they had another business day to replace the missing funds.