Thin, Rich, Pretty

by Harbison, Beth

  It would have been a nice dramatic touch to pull off an engagement ring and throw it into the street so he could go scrambling for it in traffic, but she didn’t have a ring. There was no such thing as a pre-engagement ring. Instead, she just walked away.

  He said nothing. He didn’t follow her. For all she knew, he went on to Maggie’s and ate pizza, perfectly content with the disintegration of their relationship.

  God, she had been such a fool. She had settled for so much less than she deserved.

  The fact that Thin was equaling Miserable in her personal lexicon made it all that much worse. Where was the confidence she was supposed to have miraculously gained?

  The relaxed attitude?

  The fun?

  She walked the two blocks back to the gallery, but the idea of going in and being alone with her heartache and humiliation was just too much. So she kept walking. She couldn’t think; she could only move.

  So she kept moving.

  Lacey and her friends were at the Zebra Room. It was only about half a mile from where Holly was now. And she did like Lacey, though she’d always found her friends to be a bit odd. Randy had referred to them as “bull dykes” once, though Holly wasn’t really sure that was the case. She’d never actually asked Lacey if she was a lesbian, but it seemed possible.

  Not that it mattered.

  In fact, in the state Holly was in, a night out with a bunch of people who were so different from anyone she ever hung out with might do her some good.

  It beat the hell out of the alternative, which would be a night alone with wine, ice cream, TV, and a predictable meltdown around 11 P.M.

  So she went to the Zebra Room.

  It was crowded when she walked in, and she heard Lacey before she actually saw her. She was at a table with a bunch of women who looked like grown versions of Tuesday Addams.

  “Yo! Holly!” Lacey had spotted her before she had the chance to think better of this. “Over here!”

  Holly put on a fake smile and went to the table. There were two pitchers of beer and several plates of appetizers between them.

  “Sit!” Lacey commanded, then introduced everyone so quickly that Holly didn’t even catch their names, much less remember them.

  “Hi.” Holly gave a weak wave, then tried to compensate with a smile that was so strained, it probably looked demonic. “Nice to meet you all.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” one of them asked.

  “Wendy!” another said. “That’s rude.”

  “She looks like someone just ran over her dog,” Wendy said, then said to Holly, “Sorry, but you do. Are you okay, honey?”

  “I’ve had a bad night.” Holly felt Lacey’s eyes on her and deliberately avoided meeting them. “I’d love a beer.” Or two. Or three.

  “Of course!” The girl who had chastised Wendy poured from the pitcher into a glass and handed it to Holly. “Maybe we should get some Jäger to chase that with. It’s a little backwards, but it should do the trick.”

  “That might be a huge mistake.” Holly downed about half the mug, hoping it would work quickly to numb her. “Or a good idea. I’m not sure which.”

  “Probably a mistake,” Lacey said. There was still a question in her eyes. She’d probably already guessed what had happened and only wanted to know the details now. “Because you’re opening in the morning, remember?”

  She hadn’t remembered, but it was a good thing, she thought. Because she might take her relationship woes out on her diet, her pillow, the person who cut her off in traffic, or a telemarketer, but one thing she’d never do was let the business she’d worked so hard to build falter because of her emotional life.

  That was probably the thing that kept her from being an actual artist—the ability to separate her left and right brains and let the left rule—but it kept her financially afloat. “You’re right, no Jäger.” It wouldn’t have tasted good anyway, though it would have felt good . . . for a while.

  She needn’t have worried. The conversation at the table took off right away and meandered from local bands to Wendy’s upcoming trip to the Dominican Republic, to Lacey’s new kitten (something Holly hadn’t known about and, frankly, couldn’t picture) and back to the parking in Eileen’s neighborhood.

  “I mean, it’s ridiculous! I have the permit on my car, but they booted it anyway, so I have to take time off work to go to court to point out that they made a mistake.” She took a slug of her beer. “It’s not like they’re going to compensate me for my time, or for the gas it takes to go down there. But if I didn’t show, they’d totally have my ass in a sling.”

  “You should countersue,” Holly said.

  “Can I do that?” Eileen asked.

  Holly had been kidding. “I don’t know. But there are all sorts of legal loopholes. Citizen’s arrests and things like that are legal sometimes, so why not counter an egregious parking violation with legal action? Get the paper to cover it! You’d become a local hero!”

  “Penny, didn’t your sister sue her ex for breach of promise after he broke their engagement?”

  “Yes!” The woman next to Lacey nodded and reached for the pitcher of beer. “But that was civil court. And she caught him cheating on her. I don’t think the D.C. government has been cheating on Eileen.”

  “Like hell! They’ve been distributing tickets and booting cars all over the place.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “But your sister won her suit, right?” Lacey said, looking pointedly at Holly.

  Holly hated that it was so obvious what had happened.

  “Yup. Not that she got anything for it. Except his embarrassment.”

  The conversation was mercifully interrupted by the club DJ coming on over the microphone and announcing his first set.

  It was a perfect time to escape.

  Holly finished her beer and took a ten out of her purse. “I hate to drink and run, but I have to go.”

  There were objections at the table.

  “I’ve got to work in the morning, like Lacey pointed out. But I—” She was interrupted by something pulling at her hips and turning her around to face him.

  She had no idea who he was.

  But he was cute, in a blond-blue-eyed-twenty-one-year-old-drunk sort of way. “Dance with me,” he said. “C’mon.”

  The music was pounding. She didn’t recognize the song but thought she would have if she were his age.

  “Go!” Lacey said. Then Eileen, Penny, and Wendy joined in, “Go! Go!”

  Holly had had just enough beer to go out on the floor and dance, so she gave a nod and started to move.

  And soon, to her utter amazement, she started to have fun.

  “Where are you from?” the kid asked her, trying to yell over the music.

  “Here!” She shrugged. She was tipsy but not foolish. “Near here. How about you?”

  “There.” He laughed. “But I go to school here. At GW.”

  He didn’t ask any more questions or try to make more conversation, and Holly was glad. It was enough that he’d asked her to dance. Completely unwittingly, he had broken a long cycle in her life of being the big fat wallflower.

  The song ended, and he squeezed her hand. “I’ll catch you again.”

  “Sure!” She was sure she’d never see the guy again, and she didn’t mind either way.

  “Here.” Lacey was at her side, thrusting a mug of beer into her hand. “Have another one. Stay. Have some fun. Obviously your date with Randy wasn’t so hot.”

  “No.” Holly drank, in part because it gave her a minute not to talk.

  “What happened?” Lacey pressed.

  “He dumped me at a crosswalk on the way to Maggie’s.”

  Lacey’s face registered surprise, but her voice was as blasé as ever. “In public.”

  Holly nodded.

  “Were there people around?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Lacey narrowed her eyes and shook her head. She looked disgusted. “Creep.”

 
“I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “No, you’re right.”

  “And you’re too sober.” Lacey grabbed Holly’s upper arms and looked into her eyes. “Holly, you need to feel this and realize what a jackass that guy is. And he’s not even the first one. He’s hardly any different from that jerk who wanted you to be blond.”

  Derek. Yes, he’d been a jerk. And she’d been a fool because she had bleached her hair until it was brittle and so broken she had to have most of it cut off.

  “You could do so much better.”

  Holly was loosening up, but she still couldn’t let go of the angst of being dumped. “I haven’t had a lot of offers, Lace,” she said honestly.

  Then, for a brief moment, she was afraid Lacey might make her one.

  It must have shown on her face because Lacey burst out laughing. “Um, don’t look at me. I’m into boys, too.”

  “You are?” Holly couldn’t hide her surprise.

  Lacey looked at her for a moment, then said simply, “Oh my God. You need to get out more.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means . . .” Lacey sputtered for a moment, then threw her hands up. “Well, basically it means I’m not a lesbo, and you’re not a beached whale. And losing weight isn’t going to change your life in the way you want it to, because what needs to change is the fact that you’re sheltered.”

  “I am not!” Was she?

  “Yes, you are! Jesus, Holly, you need to get out of that box you’re existing in and live a little! You’re so stuck in a rut, it’s not even funny. But the worst part is, it’s not a routine rut—it’s a mental one. You need to let go”—she tapped her temple—“up here!”

  “That’s not true,” Holly objected, but it was such a weak objection that she would have been better off remaining silent.

  Lacey rolled her eyes some more.

  “Okay, if you’re right—and I’m definitely not saying you are—what the hell are you proposing I do?”

  Lacey was quick with an answer: “There’s a guy at the bar who’s been eyeing you for the past fifteen minutes, and another guy on his way over here now, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to hit on you.”

  “Who?”

  “Right on the end. Red shirt. So, if you’ll excuse me—” She started to back away.

  Holly grabbed her arm. “No! Wait!”

  “Oops! There goes my phone.” Lacey gave a devilish smile and left Holly to deal with the extremely tall, less-attractive-than-the-last-guy man who was now trying to get her out onto the dance floor.

  It was great.

  By the end of the night, Holly’s ego wasn’t exactly fixed, but it sure had a lot of Band-Aids on it.

  And when she left the bar at 2:15 A.M., she didn’t care that she was going to get about four and a half hours of sleep that night, because she’d gotten something way more important.

  Confidence.

  Not a lot of it, of course. This was still Holly. But she was beginning to realize she’d rather be lonely than live with someone who made her feel uncomfortable and self-conscious every minute of every day.

  Lonely was far, far easier.

  14

  The world seemed to be of two opinions of Patrick Naylor Jr.: Half thought he was a brilliant though troubled actor with charisma and talent in spades; the other half thought he was a self-indulgent drug addict with no common sense and even less respect for himself than for the casts and crews of his movies.

  Nicola fell into the former group, and she figured most other people did, too, given the fact that his movies did, and had, done pretty well for two decades now.

  He’d had the lead in her first movie a thousand years ago. She’d gazed at him from a distance of several yards for two months during filming, but apart from a moment in which he’d asked her for a light for his cigarette and she’d actually gone looking for one (by the time she got back with it, he was, of course, long gone), they’d had little contact.

  Still, she had pined for him like a teenager with a crush. Granted, she didn’t have teen magazine pinups of him on her walls—with his reputation, teen magazines probably didn’t feature him much—but she thought about the brief moments she’d spent with him fifteen years ago a lot.

  So when she went to Mike’s office and saw him leaving, it was like a ninth-grade girl’s dream.

  Especially when he’d looked at her, and his face had broken into a smile.

  “Hi,” she said, hating how hot her face felt.

  “Hey, there.” He nodded and continued to look at her as if trying to figure out how he knew her. “How’re you doing?”

  “Great.” She splayed her arms. “Can’t complain.” Yes, she could. She could complain that she was being such a geek.

  He smiled—and, oh, she’d sighed over that smile so many times. In real life, it was even better than on screen. More personal. For a moment, he was silent, just looking at her; then he extended his hand. “I’m Trick,” he said, though it was obvious he needed no introduction.

  “Nicola.” She took his hand and he gave it a squeeze.

  She’d heard his friends called him Trick instead of Pat or, God forbid, Patty or anything like that.

  Trick. She liked it.

  “Are you with Varnet?” he asked, jerking a thumb back toward the door he’d just left.

  “Yes, for ages.”

  “Yeah? What have you done?”

  She didn’t want to confess that her first movie role had been as a bit player in one of his movies. That was just too . . . uncool. Particularly since he had no idea who she was.

  “Duet,” she said airily.

  “No kidding. What role?”

  That knocked her ego down a peg or two. “I had the lead.”

  “Really.” He turned the corners of his mouth down and nodded approvingly. “Impressive. I hate to say it, but I think I’m the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen it yet.”

  “Available on DVD,” she rang, then could have kicked herself. He had ten DVDs out for every one of hers.

  She couldn’t impress him with that.

  It was like bragging, I breathe air!

  “I’ll have to check that out now.” He gave her another brief smile and started to leave, while she stood there, frozen by feeling like a complete fool, but then he stopped and turned back to her. “What are you doing after this?”

  “After what?” Ugh! She was not playing this cool at all. She might look different, but she was still every bit as awkward as she’d ever been.

  She had to remember—maybe she had to remind herself every ten minutes or so—that she looked different now. People weren’t seeing the face that had shown all her fears and vulnerabilities.

  When he looked at her, he saw something closer to Angelina Jolie than to Phyllis Diller, even though she felt she was indoctrinated into the Phyllis club regardless.

  “Oh, you mean my meeting with Mike?” she asked, taking weird and turning it into really weird.

  He gave that laugh she’d heard so many times in surround sound. “You’re cute.”

  “Ditto.” It was another idiotic thing to say, but she knew enough to work her new face into a sexy look. She could still turn this exchange around to her advantage. “So what did you have in mind?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Dinner?”

  “Hm.”

  “Maybe come back to my place after?”

  “I don’t know, Trick. We barely know each other.”

  “True. But I’ve got a fucking amazing view.” He raked his gaze over her. “You’ll love it.” He met her eyes. “I promise.”

  She couldn’t pass this up. How many girls got a chance like this?

  Granted, Trick’s own personal record of how many girls got a chance like this was probably disproportionately high, but in the population at large, how many people got the opportunity to go out with someone they’d had a crush on for years?

  That number was disproportionately low.

&nb
sp; Nicola had to seize this opportunity.

  “Okay.” She gave what she hoped to hell looked like a casual shrug. “When and what time?”

  “Little Door, on West Third.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Eight thirty?”

  She’d been to Little Door. She tried to imagine kissing someone after eating the tuna, and decided—if she couldn’t get to a toothbrush first—the mint in the dish would make it okay. “Perfect,” she said. “See you there.” She walked past him.

  “Hey.”

  She stopped and glanced back.

  “Don’t you want me to pick you up?”

  And see the modest place where she was living? No way. Not yet. She made an effort to give a casual shake of the head. “Nope. I’ll meet you there. Eight thirty. Don’t be late, because I’m not waiting around.”

  Lie. She would have waited all night. They both knew it.

  The amount of preparation that went into getting ready for this date was not even worth documenting. It was way, way over the top.

  And for the first time since she’d had her nose done, Nicola kind of enjoyed making up a new face. When she was in high school, she’d had fun reading fashion magazines and following their beauty blueprints, with detailed instructions for “smoldering eyes,” “the perfect French pout,” “cheeks with a healthy bloom,” and so on.

  Tonight she pulled out all the stops.

  And when she was finished, she looked pretty damn good, if she did say so herself.

  She arrived at Little Door ten minutes early and drove around the block for fifteen minutes so, assuming Trick was there on time, she would be fashionably late, at least by a tiny margin.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t there yet when she arrived, so instead of waiting for her and thinking, even for a moment, that she might have gotten a better offer, he came in, saw her, and perhaps concluded that she’d been there since eight, kneading her hands and waiting and hoping for his arrival.

  Another fifteen minutes of circling, and she would have arrived after him.

  “Hey, Nicky.” He opened his arms as he approached her, then kissed both cheeks. “Good to see you again.”

  People at college who hadn’t known her very well called her Nicky. For some reason, the people closest to her had never gotten that informal.