by Peak, Renna
2
“Wait, what? He just told you that you couldn’t take the job? Seriously?” Melissa pulled a slinky red dress from the rack in front of her, looked at the price tag and put it back. “I don’t get it, Jenna.”
I pulled the same dress back off the rack, draping it over the stack of dresses already on her arm. “I don’t know what to say about it.”
“It’s too expensive, Jenna.” She picked up the dress again.
I caught her arm and laid the dress back in the growing pile. “Just try it on.”
She shook her head. “I can’t let you do this. It was your birthday present.”
I shrugged. “I want to. Shouldn’t I get to do what I want with my birthday present?” I grinned. “Besides, Marian just bought me a ton of clothes I didn’t need a few months ago. I still don’t need any. And you do, so let me do this.”
She let out a loud sigh. “It’s too much.” She looked down at the red dress. “That thing costs more than I make in a week. I can’t let you…”
I stopped her arm before she took the whole pile of dresses off. “You can.”
Another sigh left her lips. “After all the crap I said a few weeks ago about your trust fund…”
“Don’t even worry about it. I want to do this. I’ve put you through hell for the last few months and it’s the least I can do.” I pulled another dress from the rack and draped it over the red one.
“Yeah, okay, your dead fiancée did try to strangle me. I can still feel his hands closing around my throat…”
“Christ, drama queen much?” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I don’t remember him even touching you.”
“Well, he could have. And it’s bad enough that he showed up. Since he’s been dead for a year and a half and all…”
I forced my hands to relax after I felt them balling up into fists. “Can we drop it now? Please?”
“Sorry, sorry.” She pulled a black dress from the rack. “Here, you should try this one on. It would look great on you.” She shoved the dress toward me.
“I told you, I don’t need any more clothes.” I glanced down at the black cocktail dress, relenting. It was a cute dress, not really my usual style, but cute all the same. “Maybe I’ll just try it on…”
“It’s cute, right? You should wear more sleeveless stuff. You have great shoulders.” She pulled another dress from the rack and draped it over the others in her arms. “I think this is enough to put a serious dent in that gift card.”
I shrugged and rolled my eyes. “Probably not as big of a dent as you think.” My mother had given me an obscene amount of money on that gift card. Obscene, even for a woman that had a habit of giving me gifts that cost a small fortune.
“She’s feeling guilty. Who could blame her?” Melissa shrugged and picked up another dress. “One last one to try on…”
I grinned. I was happy I could spoil my best friend like this. I really had put her through a lot over the last few months, including dumping all my myriad problems on her. It wasn’t like the thing with my mother wasn’t enough to fill up a tabloid on its own. Judging by the covers of the rags in the checkout lines at the grocery store, the scandal between her and my father actually was filling up the tabloids. But Brandon had been trying to keep me from it, hiding me away in my apartment. He tried to make sure I wasn’t seeing any of it, not that I could honestly hide from a situation that had been parodied and talked about on every television channel and internet website known to mankind. He was trying to take care of me—until this morning, anyway. I felt my cheeks begin to burn as the memory of his walking out returned.
“Is it your mom or Brandon?” Melissa cocked an eyebrow.
I just shook my head again.
“That seems like a Brandon thing. So you want to tell me what happened?” We walked to the dressing room and each took a stall next to the other.
“Nothing to talk about. He told me he would make sure the job offer was rescinded then he walked out. The governor’s office called not even ten minutes later, you know, to rescind the offer.” I pulled the dress over my head and straightened it out. I opened the door of my dressing room stall and walked out to look at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.
Melissa pulled open her door and walked out in the red dress she had tried to put back because of the price. “You’re sure it wasn’t just a coincidence? Maybe there really were cutbacks. You know, the budget crisis and everything…” She turned and looked at herself in the mirror next to me. “God, we’re gorgeous, aren’t we?”
I couldn’t help but grin. “You look amazing in that dress. You have to get it.” I turned and looked at myself from the side. “I already have two black cocktail dresses. I really don’t need another one.”
She shook her head. “You have to get it. You get that one and I’ll get this one and we’re going out tonight. My treat.”
“I need another dress like I need a hole in my head.” Still, I had to admit that the dress looked pretty good on me, and I was hard to please when it came to clothes. Brandon would have died to see me wearing something like this. Stop it with the Brandon crap. He’s gone. Not coming back. Tears stung at the back of my eyes at that thought. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment that I might not see him again. I’d thrown the ring at him and he hadn’t come back that morning. Why would he come back now?
“You didn’t answer my question. Are you sure it wasn’t a coincidence? Maybe they couldn’t give you the job? Maybe something else happened…”
“Sure. Right after he told me he was making the call, it just happened that the governor’s office called and said the job was no longer available.” I walked back into my dressing room to change back into my own clothes. “That would be some coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
“You don’t know for sure, Jenna. He’s been pretty good lately, right? No weird stuff.”
Shit. I hadn’t told her about the phone call. My stomach dropped to my toes and I picked at my thumb nail. “He got a call this morning.”
“What?” Her voice turned into almost a screech.
I pulled on my shorts and t-shirt and took a seat by the mirror. I breathed out a long sigh, then closed my eyes and took a long breath. “There was a weird call this morning.”
“Define weird.” She walked out of her stall wearing a different, more work-appropriate dress.
“That one’s cute.” I nodded my approval and she walked back into the stall.
“Stop dodging the questions, Jenna. Definition of weird call?”
I thought about how to phrase it without freaking her out. Better to just tell her, probably. “There was another phone in the closet. One I haven’t seen or heard before. It rang and he answered. I think he only said three words, then he told me he had to go.”
“Okay, that is weird. What did the person on the other end say?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t hear.”
“How could you not hear? You can always hear…”
“Not this time. I couldn’t hear anything. He’s doing something again. I know he is.”
She came out of her room in another dress and looked into the mirror. “I hate this one.” She looked over at me. “And of course he is. You really thought he’d give up his business? Seems like it would be pretty lucrative if he’s already this invested. Blackmail is a big game. I’m sure he’s in pretty deep.” She walked back into the stall.
I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed my temples. She was right. I had always known it on some level—that Brandon would never leave his political business. He knew too much and he would never leave. My stomach twisted at the thought of his having used me. It still didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t have any political power of my own. My mother had just proved on national television that she wasn’t genetically related to me. She was the one with the name, the Hennessey legacy, the daughter of the assassinated president. Now that I wasn’t related to her, I only had my father’s name. And while the Davis last nam
e had meant something once upon a time, and the family had made plenty of money in oil and coal in the past few centuries, my father had pretty much dragged it through the mud with his latest scandal. There was no end game in Brandon manipulating me, none that I could see anyway. He had said that he fell in love with me when he didn’t know who I was, never caring who my parents were. What could he have possibly gained by lying about that?
“Yoo hoo, sleepy head. What do you think about this one?” Melissa had already changed into another dress.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s okay. Not the greatest color.” It was orange and awful. I didn’t know how to put it kindly.
She scrunched up her nose. “It makes me look a little like a pumpkin, I think. Amanda would go nuts with that.”
“Amanda, right.” I had fixed her up with her crazy job, and her boss was utterly insane. “How is she?”
“Same. She had me call Mountain View the other day to ask if they would annex her office building.”
I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head, confused. “Her office is in Palo Alto. Why would they annex her building?”
“That’s what I said. She was pissed at the electric bill, so she had me call them to see if her building could be annexed to be in the city of Mountain View.”
My head swung from side to side. “She’s crazy, Mel. You actually did that?”
“She pays me pretty well to live in her fantasy world. She really thinks she’s that important.” She snickered a little. “She’s worse than a cartoon character. I think her parents must have dropped her on her head or something when she was a baby.”
My mouth dropped open and I shook my head again. “Something, definitely.”
She walked back into her little room. “So what were you so lost in thought about?”
“Nothing.” I pressed my lips together, knowing full well that my answer wouldn’t be sufficient for her.
“He’ll be back. Give him a day or two to cool off.”
“Would you take him back? Would you want to take someone back who treated you that way? Who just told you no and didn’t give you an explanation? He was worse than my mother…”
She walked out to look at herself in the mirror again. “Well, she isn’t technically your mother, so that’s not a good comparison.”
I let out a long sigh. “Her name is still on my birth certificate. She’s still the one who raised me…”
She snorted. “I wouldn’t call what she did raising. You should be relieved she’s not…”
I interrupted her tirade against my mother. “Would you take him back?”
She turned to face me. “I’ve never had what you have, Jenna. I’ve never felt that way about a person before.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and flicked my head to flip my hair over my shoulder. “I don’t know what I feel.”
Mel’s head shook and she smiled. “Of course you do. You’re in love. And he adores you. It’s sickening, really…”
“If someone treated you the way he treated me this morning, you’d take them back? If he infantilized you? Took away something you wanted…”
“You didn’t want that job.” She shook her head, her mouth curling into another smile. “You don’t want anything to do with politics anymore.”
My head tilted to the side, my voice hardening. “That’s not the point.”
“I know, I know. He treated you like a child and you hate that. Everyone on God’s green earth knows you hate that. Should he have told you why? Yes, of course. But maybe he had a good reason not to. Maybe there’s something…”
“If there’s a reason, why can’t he tell me? I can handle the truth. If there’s some reason…”
“Can you, though? I think maybe that’s what he’s thinking. I mean, maybe it is. You haven’t had the greatest history of mental stability…”
I narrowed my eyes at her, and I swallowed at the dry lump in my throat. “Seriously? You’re going to throw that at me, too? I thought Daniel killed himself after I told him I was moving to San Francisco to go to school. I’m not going to apologize for blaming myself…”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. That was low.” She turned to face me again. “People worry about you, you know? We all worry about you.”
“No one needs to worry about me. I’m fine.” I turned away from her. I was tired of hearing how everyone worried for my fragile psyche. I had to wonder how long it was going to take for me to prove that I had no intention of throwing myself off the Golden Gate because first Daniel and now Brandon had walked out of my life. I was fine, truly, and not suicidal in the least.
“You’re just so good. And so…” She shook her head. “You’re so not what people expect.” She dropped down into a chair across from me. “When I saw who my roommate at Georgetown was going to be, I thought no way it was that Jenna Davis. That Jenna Davis would have some fancy-shmancy private room in the dorms where the really rich kids stayed. And then when I got there and it was you, I was sure you’d be some total bitch who would make my life a living hell. I wanted to hate you so much. But then you were the nicest person I’d ever met. And not just nice.” She cocked her head to the side. “Nice and good. Like no one I have ever known. You’re like the prom queen, the valedictorian and some Disney princess all rolled into one. I don’t know anyone like you, and you shouldn’t wonder why people want to protect you.”
“Stop.” I shook my head, holding my palms up to her. “I’m not good. I’m just as snarky as you, just as…”
Her hand reached out and took mine. “No, you’re not. You think you are, but you’re not. You curse like a sailor, and that’s about the only thing about you that isn’t perfect. But it makes you human. And it makes me love you.”
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. “You’re so full of shit.”
She nodded. “See what I mean?” She let out a throaty laugh. “And do you think I’d share my birthday present with you? Not a snowball’s chance…”
“Whatever.” I shook my head again and grinned. “I’m only sharing because you almost crapped your pants when Daniel showed up at dinner that night.”
“See, that is something else I don’t love about you.” She tried to hide her smile. “I don’t need the drama of zombie boyfriends returning from the dead. That is definitely something you can keep to yourself.”
I raised my palms to her again. “I’m all about the sharing, Mel.”
Her eyes crinkled when she grinned again. “I know, and I love you for that.”
I motioned to her with my head. “Pick out your dresses and let’s get out of here. I’m starving and there’s no food in my apartment.”
She stood up to go back into her stall. “That’s what happens when you spend two weeks blissed out with your not-fiancée.”
I gritted my teeth. “Whatever.”
“He’ll be back. And he’ll apologize and you’ll live happily ever after. Just like the princess you know you are.”
My eyes rolled up to the ceiling again. “Fuck that bullshit.”
Her laugh floated out over the dressing room. “That sweet little sailor’s mouth.”
I groaned under my breath and rolled my eyes again.
“Get that sexy black dress. I’m taking you out dancing tonight. You’re going to flirt so hard, maybe you’ll forget about Prince Charming. Amanda just opened a new club off Pacific and I’ve been dying to go to it. You’re in, right?”
“Right.” I stood up when she came out of the dressing room, her chosen garments in hand.
“I’m serious. We’re going.” Her phone beeped and she pulled it out of her purse with a sigh. “That’ll be the evil queen.”
My mouth eased into a wry grin. I had felt a little bad about getting Melissa the job with crazy Amanda, but she seemed to be enjoying herself more than I ever would have expected. It was nice to see.
She groaned. “Ugh, I have to get down there to check out a nail polish emergency.”
I lifted an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Nail polish?”
A loud sigh escaped her lips. “She might have to go to L.A. to get it fixed, according to the text.”
I shook my head. “You’re joking.”
“I wish.”
3
I glared down at my phone when I saw Brandon’s name on the caller ID. I thought about not even answering it; Mel was going to be there to meet me any second and there wasn’t enough time to have the conversation we really needed to have.
I decided to answer anyway and he spoke before I could even get the word “hello” out.
“What are you wearing?”
I felt my cheeks burn and my nostrils flare. “Are you kidding me?” I squeezed the phone in my hand and tried to control the rage I felt coursing through me.
“Jen, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
“You’re damned right, you shouldn’t have. So you have friends in the governor’s office. Why am I not surprised?” I tightened my jaw, forcing myself not to spew out the string of obscenities that came to my mind.
“It’s not like that. I don’t have time to explain right now…”
I spoke through my clenched teeth. “Then what do you want?”
“I want to know what you’re wearing.”
“Brandon, you cannot call me and expect me to play your little games after what happened. I’m not doing this.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and almost got my finger to the button to hang up.
“Jen, don’t hang up.” He sounded out of breath. There was something about his voice that sounded almost… pained. It didn’t sound like him.
I put the phone back to my ear, softening the edge from my voice just a bit. “What do you want?”
“I promise I’ll tell you everything the next time I see you. Right now, I just need a little favor. A little distraction. Please?”
A little pang of guilt rang in my stomach. He didn’t ask me for things. I needed to stay angry with him, though. I couldn’t let him think it was alright for him to treat me the way he did this morning. But maybe there was more to his behavior than just being possessive. I let out a small sigh of frustration. “What’s the favor?”