Chore Play

by Piper Rayne

  She bites her lip. “Some. The way you were my first time. I didn’t lie, Jagger. It might have been written though my eyes, but I didn’t lie in that book.”

  I tip my head back, drawing in a deep breath. I’m unsure where to move from here. “I need to read it.”

  “Please, don’t.” She stands up, rounding the desk and coming to stand directly in front of me. “Don’t. It’s best that we start fresh.”

  “I can’t start fresh when this is out there.”

  She chews on her bottom lip for a second before responding. “Okay. Putting everything out on the table now, I’m writing a second book in the series. It’s the couple’s happily ever after.”

  I blow out a stream of air. “Fucking great. So, just to be clear, you’re not a freelance writer and you’ve already published one book.” I stare down at the book. “USA Today Bestseller?”

  She shrugs, her eyes seconds away from releasing the tears pooling there. I don’t want to see her cry, but I’ve never felt so betrayed.

  “Yeah. It did well,” she says in a small voice.

  “So, this is why your office door is always shut? And why you close up your laptop whenever I’m over your shoulder?”

  She nods.

  “You deliberately deceived me?”

  She nods again, slower this time. “When we first came back into each other’s lives I didn’t think you deserved to know. We were nothing. But Jagger, please know I was going to tell you, it’s just we were doing great and…”

  I stand, and she falters back, catching herself on the edge of my desk. “We were doing good because I didn’t know the truth.” I slam the book down on my desk. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for me to be honest with you about the things that I regret? I haven’t lied once to you.” I hold my finger up. “Because you were that important to me. I wanted us to have a clean slate and put the bullshit behind us, but you?” My eyes zoom in on the book. “You kept this from me. You published a book about our love story, painting me as the fucking prick. I loved you, Quinn. I loved you so fucking much back then. Do you have any idea how bad it killed me to let you go? Do you know that I ran off to Europe to be by myself for two weeks before I started at Stanford? That I locked myself in a hotel room, only going out for food? How many times I picked up the phone to call you…”

  She rounds the desk, tears streaming down her face, reaching out for me. “I didn’t know any of that when I wrote this book. I’m sorry—”

  I backstep before she can reach me, folding my arms over my chest. “Me, too. I’m sorry because here I thought you were the one person who saw me as different, who saw under that layer I armor myself with, but I guess you didn’t. You couldn’t even be honest with me.”

  She stands there, her mouth agape. She should turn around, grab her purse and leave my office. She should, but she stays facing me, and her tears stop, her small hands balling into fists.

  “Fuck you, Jagger Kale!” she screams, and I catch Victoria turning around on the other side of the glass. “I loved you, too. I was willing to leave my life in Ohio and move to California for you. You crushed me. You laid me down in your bed, promising me you’d never leave me. Whispering how much you loved me and how lucky you were to find the one. Maybe you forget, but I whispered those things, too. And I’ve accepted your apology for the past.” She inhales a breath, but she’s armed with more. Her hands land on my desk and she leans over toward me. “You let me walk into that party with all of your friends as you had your tongue down that slut’s throat. You destroyed and belittled me in front of everyone until I ran out crying and you never followed. So, excuse me for being bitter. Excuse me for portraying you like the asshole you acted like.” She swipes at her eyes. “Go to hell, Jagger Kale. I never want to see you again.”

  She turns around, grabs her purse from the chair by the door and walks out past the line of employees who stopped to watch my heart breaking.

  I pick up the book and throw it at the window.

  25

  Quinn

  I’m spoon-deep in my Ben & Jerry’s with Casablanca on when there’s a knock on my door.

  “Go away, Jagger!” I yell. He’s the only person besides my father who’s been to my house and my father is in Florida with his girlfriend.

  “It’s not Jagger,” a woman’s voice says, and I shrug the blanket off my lap to answer the door.

  I look through the peephole but don’t open the door.

  “If he’s sent you because he wants you to butter me up, it’s not going to work. He’s dead to me.”

  “We’re here because we know you have no friends in this city and when break-ups happen us girls have to stick together.”

  I roll my eyes, but my five-hour conversation on the phone with my friend, Shannon, back in Ohio wasn’t as therapeutic as if she was right here.

  I twist the doorknob and I open it, finding Layla holding two bottles of wine, Teegan with a brown paper bag filled with chips, and a blonde with an ice cream cake.

  “We weren’t sure which one was your ritual,” Layla says.

  The blonde holds up her ice cream cake. “I win.” And she points to my Ben & Jerry’s.

  “This is Sophie. She’s my friend,” Teegan says, nodding to the blonde.

  “I’ve only met Jagger a few times, but I think you may have dodged a bullet,” Sophie says.

  Layla and Teegan walk through my living room right into my kitchen, Layla opening cabinets, Teegan unpacking her salty snacks.

  “Um, thanks for the gesture, but…”

  “Jagger’s at Layla’s right now commiserating with Vance. She got wind of what happened, and we may have stolen his car,” Teegan says with a grin.

  “You what?” I ask.

  Teegan smiles at Layla. “Borrowed,” Layla says. “We needed to know where you lived, and he wasn’t going to tell us, so I figured it would show in his GPS. Plus, he’s drinking so much, he’ll probably crash in my spare room and won’t be the wiser anyway.” She shrugs, but I guess when you’re an A-list actress maybe you don’t need to worry about something like grand theft auto.

  “Do you want a piece, or the whole thing, or are you full from that?” Sophie stares at my carton of ice cream and I place it on the counter.

  “I’m good.”

  She opens my freezer and shoves the cake in.

  “FYI, she’s watching Casablanca,” Teegan calls out from the living room and I hear her surf through a few channels before a sporting game of some kind comes on. “No romantic movies after break-up.”

  “I’m really good, ladies, you can go.”

  The two still in the kitchen stop what they’re doing and stare blankly.

  “Do you not want us?” Layla asks, her voice that of a small child.

  “Layla is kind of clingy. She has no real friends because of that whole actress staring opposite Chris Pratt thing,” Teegan says from the doorway to the living room.

  “Uh…” Layla’s mouth opens.

  “That true?” Sophie asks and Layla rolls her eyes, but nods reluctantly.

  “It’s hard, you know. I mean some of the actresses are hard to get to know well, but forget going out in public. Real people are so funny about talking to me.”

  “Us ‘real people.’” Sophie puts her phrase in air quotes, her head on my shoulder.

  Seriously, who are these women, the Welcome Wagon edition of break-up brigade?

  “That’s not what I meant.” Layla finishes opening the bottle of wine, pouring out four glasses. “We all know Jagger’s an ass, but you two seemed like you were hitting it off,” Layla says, passing me a glass.

  “Not at dinner.” Teegan’s eyes narrow on me. “He’s controlling, right?”

  “Um.”

  “Do you even have to ask? I mean the guy thinks the sun rises and sets for him.” Sophie shakes her head. Clearly not a fan of the man I love.

  And I do love him. As big a jerk and as difficult as he can be sometimes, I still love him beca
use it always comes from a good place.

  “He didn’t want me to donate a kidney,” I say, not really feeling like getting into it.

  “See!” Sophie points her finger at Layla and Teegan, although they never denied her accusations against Jagger. “How can he argue with you wanting to do something so selfless?”

  Each woman has their wine glass now, leaning in closer as though I’m going to reveal some secret they don’t know about.

  “Yeah, um, he said that he just got me back and he didn’t want to lose me again,” I say in a quiet voice.

  “What?” Sophie asks, a crease between her eyes. “He said that?”

  My gaze veers to the chair where I stripteased for him only days ago right after he told me.

  “Man, what a line,” Teegan says. “Leo’s got lines, too.”

  “Same with Vance,” Layla says.

  “The man in my imagination does, too,” Sophie chimes in and we all laugh.

  “Do you think they practice them? Like they all get together and say, ‘I told Layla this,’ ‘I told Tee this.’” Layla’s moving her head back and forth and beatboxing like she’s a rapper.

  We laugh again. “They’re not that smart,” I say, and they nod in agreement.

  “So, is that what the fight was over?” Teegan asks.

  I walk through the kitchen into the living room and to one of my bookshelves, plucking my own novel out from all the other romance books I’ve read. Maybe I secretly hoped he’d find it one day. I hand it over as Teegan reaches for it.

  “Who is Alisha Quinn?”

  “Me.”

  They all look up and stare at me with wide eyes. “You wrote this book?” Layla asks.

  “I thought you said she was a blogger or something?” Sophie asks Tee. “Not that there’s anything wrong with blogging. I had a blog once—”

  “Sophie, stay on topic.” Teegan nudges her with her elbow, flipping through the pages.

  “Why would this make you guys break up? Is he like one of those guys who wants a woman who doesn’t have a career, so he can keep her chained to the stove?” Sophie asks, judgment clear in her voice.

  “No.” I laugh. “That book is our story.” Like every other time I’ve thought about this, my eyes well up with tears.

  “Your story?” Layla asks. “Like you guys knew each other before?”

  I nod. “When we were teenagers.”

  “Leo told me. You used to live next door to him, right?” Teegan asks.

  I nod.

  “Way to miss the boat, Vance,” Layla murmurs.

  “My dad lived next to his parents and from the time I was thirteen to seventeen, I got shipped out there each summer.”

  I see it in their faces. That wistful look as though we were destined to be. I believed that once upon a time too—twice now.

  “You were together for that long?” Sophie asks, looking at me like I just sprouted another head.

  “Just during the summer, but that last summer…” I shrug. “It changed. We were more serious.”

  “You probably grew tits,” Sophie adds in, giving a nice break from the awed looks Teegan and Layla are wearing.

  “Maybe. He had grown more too, but it was just…”

  “Oh. My. God. Do not say magical.” Teegan elbows Sophie. “Ouch.” She grabs her side.

  “In a way it was.”

  Layla has now taken the book and found her way over to my chair, flipping to page one. “If only I was younger, I could play this part if they ever made it into a movie.”

  Teegan shoots me a sympathetic look. “Why is he mad though?”

  “‘He was as selfish as a two-year-old with a pack of cookies.’” Layla reads a sentence. “Is that why? There must’ve been a reason why you guys broke up back then. Maybe Jagger isn’t portrayed as the swoonworthy hero romance books are known for?”

  I smile at her, not having to answer the question. “I lied.” Again, the tears surface. “I kept the topic of my first book from him when this whole time I’ve been working on book two.”

  “Your happily ever after?” Teegan asks, her arm around my shoulders.

  I nod, swiping at the tears rolling down my cheeks. Sophie grabs a tissue and hands it over to me.

  “This is a bump in the road.” Layla shuts the book. “He loves you. He’ll get over it.”

  “That’s the thing, I don’t know if I want him to. The way he reacted. The things he said…”

  They all nod, having no defense for him. Each of them has probably seen his unfavorable side at some point.

  “Do you love him?” Teegan asks me.

  “My entire life. God, how pathetic am I?” I fall down onto my couch, bringing my legs up to my chest. “Only a moron falls in love with a guy like Jagger.”

  “I can’t really argue that point.” Sophie looks between Layla and Teegan.

  Layla slides up from the couch, positioning herself on the table in front of me, her hands easing my legs down.

  “I think the problem is, neither one of you have really healed from what happened. You guys started this new relationship without closing the book, so to speak, on what happened back then.”

  “When he stuck his tongue down another girl’s throat and told me I was his summer fuck toy in front of all his friends?”

  “That sounds like him,” Sophie says.

  Layla shoots Sophie a ‘stop it’ look and then her sympathetic gaze lands on me once again. “You have to forgive him for that and I’m not sure you have.”

  She’s probably right. I took his apology, but in all my life no one has ever hurt me that much. I would have published that book with his real name if it wasn’t for the whole defamation of character lawsuit he would’ve slapped me with. What I told him was true…it was a way to work him out of my system, but on a subconscious level maybe I used the book as a way to hurt him just like he hurt me.

  “Why don’t you call him?” Layla picks up my cell phone from the coffee table she’s sitting on and hands it to me.

  The metal is cold in my hands and I run my thumb over the screen.

  “No!” Sophie grabs it from me. “He has to come to her.” She smiles down at me.

  “Soph, no offence, but you’re the only one here without someone, so maybe you’re not the best one to come up with a plan.” Teegan raises her eyebrows.

  “I’m single by choice. There’s a line-up of men outside my apartment every Saturday night.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Teegan says, snatching the phone from her grasp and placing it back in my hands.

  “Don’t be too prideful,” Layla says. “If you still want him, fight.”

  “I want him to fight,” I say, admitting the truth.

  “Every girl does, but you have to be prepared for that not to happen, and let me tell you, when it comes to men like Jagger, most of the time they aren’t strong enough to fight. Fighting involves setting the ego aside and sometimes it’s easier to give up.” Layla gives me a dose of the truth.

  He didn’t fight the first time, what’s to make me think the second time would be any different?

  26

  Jagger

  An entire week.

  Without her.

  It’s been hell, but I’ll never admit it. I read the book and told Trina to try again. I’d have to be a masochist to make a movie that portrays me that way. I bought five hundred copies and had a bonfire.

  When I walk into Marisol’s hospital room, my footsteps stop. Quinn is lying down on the couch, watching some daytime television show.

  She hurries to her feet immediately. “Marisol just dozed off,” she says, her sunken eyes taking in my appearance.

  I’m wearing my usual three-piece suit with gelled hair and bronze skin. I show no evidence of how much she hurt me because that would be weakness and I’m not weak, no matter what her book says.

  “I’ll come back.” I circle around on my heel.

  “No. I’ll go. I’ve been here long enough.”

  I turn
back around, keeping my hands in my pockets as she reaches for her computer bag. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top, a sweater tucked under her purse strap. Other than her eyes, she looks good. Just like I envisioned her last night when I came to the beat of my own hands. Believe me, it irks me to have to admit that.

  She starts to leave the room, then stops next to me. I’m not ignorant to the fact that it would only take a brush of my hand to feel her silky, soft skin.

  “Her brother is due in tomorrow. Isa said you had a lot to do with that.” She touches my arm and I flex my jaw and swallow so I don’t react. “You’re…well, you’re not that guy in the story.”

  When I don’t speak or even glance her way, she continues walking out of the room.

  Once I don’t hear the squeak of her shoes on the linoleum floor, my head falls forward and I breathe for the first time. After a beat, I lift my head back up, to find Marisol’s eyes wide open. They’re bearing a yellowish tint and the fissure in my already fragile heart deepens a little. Her brother can’t come soon enough.

  “Sweetie,” she softly says, her fingers stretched out for mine.

  I go to her, taking her cold hand in both of mine, trying to warm it between them.

  “How are you doing? I heard your brother will be here soon.”

  She nods. “Thank you.”

  “Always. You’re my mom.”

  A small smile graces her lips. “Don’t do this.”

  “I’m good. Your boy is good.” I pat her hand. “Never better.”

  She slides up in the bed, and I help her position the pillow to make her more comfortable.

  “I’m a dying woman,” she says.

  “No, you’re not, because the transplant will work, and you’ll live a long, happy life of retirement after this.”

  She shakes her head. “Listen to me for a second. Get all that wax and ego clogging your ears out and really listen.” She eyes the edge of the bed and slides over.

  I take the hint, sitting down.

  “You’ve loved her your entire life. You just got her back and now you’re going to lose her? All over a book? You seem to forget your part in this.”