by Leach, Kiki
She hesitated for a few seconds, then dropped the money inside her front pocket and reached for a small book located on the shelf beneath the register. She placed it on the counter in front of him and started flipping through pages, but stopped. “If I get screwed because of this,” she said.
“You won’t. I can promise you that much.”
She looked up at him for a long time before flipping to the last page in the book, which had a detailed list of various phone numbers. She dropped her finger to the bottom of the page and pointed. “That’s the direct number for Melanie’s cell phone,” she said. “She doesn’t answer right away, especially if she doesn’t know who’s calling her.”
Nathan pulled out his cell and quickly programmed her number. “Great, thanks.” He dropped it back into the pocket of his jacket and stepped back. “I’ll get right on to making sure that you’re in that party on Friday.” He made his way to the door.
“And what about meeting Vanessa?” she asked.
He spun back around to her and narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“I want to meet Vanessa too. Just to say hi and tell her what a big fan I am of her work.”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah, sure, I can try to make that happen too.” He placed his hand on the door and pushed it out.
“And I want to bring Gina with me,” she said.
He lowered his head and turned back to her one last time. “I’ll talk to Vanessa about it, okay?”
She shrugged. “Fair enough.” She slammed the book shut and stuffed it back beneath the counter.
Nathan gave her a quick salute before mumbling what a pain in the ass she must be to her friends, and headed out the door for good.
Part Thirty-Two
“That was an amazing meal,” Melanie said to Jill upon exit from the B&G.
Jill tossed her bright red hair over her slim shoulder and handed valet the ticket to retrieve her car. “It sure as hell was,” she said with a laugh. “And it was so good to finally hang out with you again! We need to do this more than just a few times every other week or so.”
“Especially since, aside from work, it won’t be long before I have more and more free time on my hands.”
Jill rested a hand against her arm. “Mel--”
“No,” she said, waving her hand. “We’re just still working out the issues of custody and he’s been pushing since this entire mess started for joint.”
“Even after his mistress slapped you across the face in public? I don’t see how any court in the world would allow that to happen.”
“You’d be surprised--”
“And I am never eating here again,” a voice screeched from behind. “That’s the last time I take advice from my mother on ‘healthy living’.”
Melanie and Jill turned just as Vanessa exited the restaurant with Nikki trailing behind her.
“It wasn’t all that bad, V. And I kind of liked their cocktails.”
“That was the only redeeming quality, Nik! The food itself tastes like shit my sister used to make me eat when we were kids, and even now, which is probably why my mother recommended it.” She reached into her purse for her sunglasses and placed them on top of her head. “Thank God Alexander is cooking her dinner tonight, or we’d be--”
“Hi.”
Vanessa turned in the direction of the voice to the right of her and stood back.
It was Melanie standing in front of the giant red headed woman.
Vanessa eyed her up and down, then turned back to Melanie and gave her a quick once over.
“Hi,” she said. Vanessa felt Nikki moving in behind her and frowned. “What the hell are you doing?” she whispered, trying not to move her lips.
Nikki quickly rattled her head and kept her eyes toward the ground.
Melanie peeked at her over Vanessa’s shoulder. “Nicole.”
Nikki looked up, but stared straight into the eyes of Jill instead. She tucked her hair behind her ear and moved around Vanessa to stand at her side.
“Hi.”
“My face is doing much better today,” Melanie informed her, “just in case you were wondering.”
Vanessa peeked at Nikki and puckered her brows. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“You don’t know that your friend got slap happy with me in the park yesterday?”
“What?”
“My hands just went flying,” said Nikki. “I couldn’t control them.”
“I wonder if my attorney will feel the same way.”
“Oh my God.” Vanessa dragged Nikki off to the side.
As they began waving their hands at one another, Jill leaned into Melanie and quieted her voice. “This is the woman who’s been having an affair with your husband?”
Melanie nodded. “This is her.”
She stood straight and placed a hand on her chest. “Oh my.”
Melanie looked up at her and glowered. “Why do you say it like that? Do you know her?”
Jill turned to her friend, her eyes somber, her face damn near expressionless. “Doctor/patient confidentiality,” she said.
Melanie stared at her for a long time, soaking in every word.
“Doctor/patient,” she repeated. Jill nodded. “Oh. My. God.” And then she stopped to smile. “Better than pressing charges, you’ve just given me enough ammo to load one kickass smoking gun.”
“What the hell were you thinking slapping her in public, Nik?!” Vanessa shouted. “There’s a lot of things I’d like to do that bitch, slapping only being one of very few, and even I wouldn’t try to take her out in public.”
“You just save that shit for Sheila, right?” Nikki retorted.
“Right. Because at the end of the day, I know that she won’t try to SUE my ass for laying a hand on her and she’ll have deserved ever lick given. I know that shit is complicated with you and Oscar and William thrown into the mix. But you can’t go around slapping the wife of a man you’re sleeping with. That’s just sluttin’ 101!”
“Excuse me.” Melanie walked over to them with the corners of her mouth reaching ear to ear. “I hate to interrupt but since you’re being so loud, I can’t help but overhear.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“I don’t actually plan on suing anybody,” Melanie went on. “In fact, I think this is something that we can just forget about. Chalk it up to a big misunderstanding.”
“Yeah, misunderstanding, that’s all it was, right Nik?”
Nikki kept her eyes on Jill as she paid the valet. Before getting into her car, she looked Nikki straight in the face.
“Nik?” asked Vanessa again, this time bumping her elbow.
“Right,” she said, keeping her eyes on Jill as she finally got into her car and sped away. “It was just all a big misunderstanding – How long have you known Jill Schaffer?”
Vanessa’s mouth fell open. “I thought you said when we were inside that you didn’t know that woman?”
“I was wrong. I know her pretty well, actually.” A lump formed in her throat. She tried like hell to swallow it back, but it remained in place.
“I’ve known her for years,” said Melanie. “Socially. Not much else outside of that.”
Nikki thought she should’ve felt relieved in hearing that.
She didn’t.
“What does she do?” asked Vanessa.
“She’s a doctor,” replied Melanie. “Obstetrics, I think.”
“I still don’t know why the hell she looks so familiar to me. But how the hell would you have ever come into contact with somebody like that, Nik?”
Before she could answer, Melanie’s phone distracted all of them. She dug around for a bit inside her purse. When she pulled out the phone and looked down at the number, she made a face as she didn’t recognize a single digit.
“We need to get going anyway,” said Vanessa. “I have to get back to the magazine and Nik’s got rehearsal the rest of the evening. I’d say it was good to see you, but, I don’t wanna bullshitcha.” She slip
ped her arm inside of Nikki’s and spun on her heel. “Let’s go.”
Nikki stared at Melanie until she was forced to turn away.
Melanie kept her eyes on the both of them until they finally crossed the street.
When her phone finally stopped ringing, she planned to throw it back inside her purse.
And then it began ringing again.
Annoyed, she finally pushed the green button.
“Hello?” she asked. “Who is this?”
On the other end of that phone was Nathan, who stood in front of The Palace and pulled his watch from his pocket to check the time.
“Is this a, uh, Melanie Bruchesque-Malone?”
She yanked her head back and stared at the number on her phone again. It had been a long time since someone had used her full name, especially when she didn’t know who the hell they were.
“That depends,” she told him. “Who the hell are you and how did you get this number?”
“All you need to know is when and where to meet me --”
She laughed, nervous. “I’m not meeting you anywhere, I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
“Meet me at The Palace in an hour and find out.”
She contemplated. “What kind of game is this?” she asked him.
“It’s not a game. I just know that um, you’re interested in making things official with Maurice Livingston. I can make that happen for you if you choose to meet me.”
“Maurice? How do you know Maurice?”
“Meet me at The Palace in an hour and I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll be sitting in the corner booth of the restaurant drinking a cognac and wearing a dark suit jacket.”
“That’s pretty distinguishable.” She rolled her eyes. “How about giving me something more to work with.”
“Look, you go to the bar and the bartender will send you straight back to me, alright?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and tapped her foot on the ground. The voices in her head telling her to hang up NOW! were being drowned out by significant amounts of ‘what ifs?’.
“Meet me in an hour,” he said. “Or lose your chance to be with Maurice for good.”
He hung up on her and dropped his phone into his pocket. He looked up and down both directions of the sidewalk and smirked before heading inside the building and straight to the lobby and bar.
Melanie continued to be skeptical as hell. What if this was a prank? Some kind of joke that Vanessa had set up for her as a way to knock her down thanks to all the time she had been spending with Maurice in her absence?
But then again, if there was an honest chance that she could finally get him to herself for good, she couldn’t pass it up.
Part Thirty-Three
An hour later, Melanie breezed into The Palace restaurant and went straight to the bartender as directed. When he pointed to the back of the room, she gave him a quick thanks and headed over. Taking her time as she moved forward, she stopped just before reaching the booth and squint.
She chuckled to herself and felt stupid for having even bothered to show up.
“Vanessa put you up to this, didn’t she?”
Nathan stood up and spun around to face her. She winced at the bruises on his face.
“No,” he told her. “She doesn’t know anything about me being here, aside from living upstairs. Please.” He showed his hand toward the booth in front of him.
Melanie looked all around her, at the few people sitting at the bar, at the rest enjoying their meals in other booths and around tables. If she were afraid, she’d have made a scene. What she hated to admit was that she was a little bit more than intrigued.
“Please sit,” he said while reclaiming his own chair.
She threw her purse on the table and slid around inside the booth.
“Thank you for meeting me.”
“You’re not exactly welcome,” she began, “until I find out what this is all about.”
“Look, I know that you don’t know very much about me aside from what you’ve heard or read about me in the papers--”
“You’re right.” Melanie wrapped her arms around herself and rested her elbows on the edge of the table, glaring. “I don’t know much about you. But what I’ve heard not just from the papers or online, but from both Sheila and Vanessa themselves hasn’t been very good. So forgive me if I don’t have much of a desire to get to know more about whoever the hell you are, Nathaniel Taylor.”
He wagged a finger at her and grinned. “I thought you might say that,” he told her.
“Which is why you chose to use Maurice as a lead in to get me here?”
“He wasn’t a lead in. What I told you about him is the truth. If you want to be with him, to make it official, I can make that happen for you. But you’ve got to make something happen for me in return.”
She folded her arms and leaned back. “And what is that?”
“You’ve heard about Nikki’s party for that play she’s in right? The one being held at that Bar Nineteen or something?”
“I’ve heard about it and I have no desire to attend.”
“Wrong answer,” he said. “No doubt Maurice has been invited, much like Vanessa.”
“I’m sure they both have. But why the hell would I want to go someplace celebrating that woman’s successes after all the hell she’s put me through?”
“For a chance at Maurice, I’d almost think it might be worth it.”
“How do you even know anything about that?”
“The specifics behind all of this shouldn’t matter. What should is that I can get him to take you.”
She laughed again. “After what he did to your face, I don’t really put much faith into you making that happen.”
“It will if I can convince Vanessa to take me as her date. If Mo thinks he still has a chance in getting her back where he thinks she belongs with him, he’ll use this as an opportunity to take her to this thing as his date instead. But if I can convince her that he’s already asked you--”
“Then it’s a win-win.”
“Exactly.” He winked. “All you need to do is casually mention something about it and say you heard that I was going with her. He won’t want to believe it at first, but he will once he realizes that’s it’s coming from someone that he doesn’t think will be gaining anything from it by lying. I can take care of the rest as long as you do that.”
Melanie stared at him in awe. “Wow, you are some kind of manipulator.”
“I do what I can--”
“I can’t believe just how much Sheila was right about you and all of this,” she said.
“Right about what and all of what?”
“V, and how you feel about her, your obsession. This woman is clearly working with something between her legs that the rest of us couldn’t even dream to have, with men like you and Maurice fighting over her, literally tossing blows. Maybe some of it rubbed off on Nikki, but the rest of us were left in the dust without it.” She took a breath and dropped her head. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I don’t want Maurice, because I do. And I’m not going sit here and tell you that Vanessa and I are on the best of terms now, because we’re not. But with all of that being said, I don’t know if I feel all that great about her seeing me with him so publicly. We’ve already had an initial run-in not far from her office building that I’d like to forget. Not to mention, I know all about what happened at your high school reunion and I have no desire to be dragged across the floor of a bar like we’re two animals in a pigpen.”
“I can’t guarantee that it won’t go that far, but I can at least guarantee that I will get her to back off if she tries,” Nathan said. “And if I know Mo, he won’t let a damn thing happen to either one of you.”
“He’ll try to protect her first,” she said.
He bobbed his head side to side. “Maybe. But if you want to be in her place someday in his life, you’ll start by agreeing to be his date.”
She leaned forward on the table again.
“For a high school relationship, you two must have been intense as hell. What is it about her that still makes you tick like this, even after all this time?
He picked up his cognac and whispered. “Everything. She lights a fire underneath me like no other woman ever has and I intend to keep it burning for as long as possible.”
“She’s not going to just come running to you, even if we do this.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “It’ll take time and I’m willing to wait it out if it means having her.”
Melanie furrowed her brows, watching his face closely as he took a long sip of his drink. As handsome as he was, it didn’t hide that he could be more frightening than beautiful.
“Alright,” she agreed. “I’ll casually mention it to him.”
“Tomorrow. That’s when I plan to ask V.”
“You let me know when she agrees, and then I’ll mention it to Maurice?”
He nodded. “I’ll let you know.”
“Alright.”
She reached for her purse and he showed her his hand and smiled.
“It’s not official until it’s official,” he said.
She glimpsed his hand and gave it a quick shake before snatching her purse from the table and hurriedly exiting the restaurant. Nathan chuckled to himself as soon as she was gone and ordered himself another cognac.
If everything went according to this makeshift plan, he would get back the woman he truly wanted before all was said and done.
Though it wasn’t exactly the same woman Melanie had in mind.
Part Thirty-Four
After dinner with her family, all Vanessa wanted to do that Saturday morning was sleep off the booze she had downed the night before in order to keep from strangling both her mother and sister, who wouldn’t stop suggesting that she take Maurice as her date to Nikki’s party. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about it, the very idea had been on her mind since finally telling Alexis the truth of why they broke up. But she wasn’t certain if showing up someplace with him again in public when they were barely sure of what they were to one another anymore was the best idea.
As she rolled over in bed and turned to the ceiling while continuing to contemplate, she heard the doorbell blaring from downstairs.