I giggled. “I don’t think there’s a rule against it.”
She turned and hugged me back. I settled my face between her boobs—Ellen was a lot taller than me.
That’s when her lady walked in.
“Hi,” I said muffledly.
“Where’s your idiot?”
I pointed toward the living room, and she stalked away. Ellen and I shared a look. She turned off the bacon-cooking burner, and we followed Nicolette.
We joined Sam on the couch and the three of us faced Nicolette, who stood like a teacher about to give us detention. She wore a bulletproof vest now, which lent her an air of gravitas. People will listen to you when you’re in freaking SWAT gear.
Nicolette began, “We’re moving in on Taylor as soon as we can get a warrant. I told my superiors what you found, but not how it was found or by whom. I’m calling you an informant. They’re gonna try one of the more paranoid judges, label it terrorism, and convince him to issue the search order. That word holds a lot of weight.”
“That’s shady,” I said.
“Yup,” she replied. “But we all know Taylor is, at the least, committing treason, so I don’t feel too guilty.”
Ellen sighed. “Please don’t get shot right before our wedding.”
Holy shit—their wedding was this weekend! My guilt must have spilled onto my face, for Ellen gave me a knee squeeze. I set my head on her shoulder. Jesus, I was the worst matron of honor ever. Neither of them had wanted a shower, as they owned everything they needed. But this Thursday night, I was throwing a bachelorette party for Ellen that I’d sent invitations for, but hadn’t actually planned. Shit. Two days to make an awesome party.
This was what money was for.
While Nicolette got her stuff together, and Ellen followed her around worrying, I texted my agent for the name of the coolest event planner in New York. His reply was nearly immediate, and I sent the lady a quick email telling her what I wanted and when. Fancy dinner at a pop-up speakeasy, a classy strip club, probably, then bars, bars, bars. The words ‘money is no object’ have a magical effect.
That underway, I turned to Sam, who was staring past his phone and into space, thinking.
“Sam?”
He started and jerked his head up. “Hi.”
“Hi. You don’t have to stay here. Ellen can babysit me. You can go home, or do whatever you want. Maybe stay out of sight, though.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go home and… I have to go to the brain bender, anyhow.”
Oh, yeah—the hypnotist. “I’ll call when we’ve heard something. Good luck brain bending.”
“Thanks.”
His hesitation told me he wanted to say something, but he wouldn’t utter another word. A quick kiss on my cheek, then he left. Nicolette followed soon thereafter, leaving me with Ellen.
She swooped me into another hug, and we hugged it out for a minute or two before she said, “Food?”
“Only thing to do.”
We resumed our feast preparations, although our recipients had been cut in half. No matter—twice the food for us.
“I do have one good piece of news,” Ellen said.
“Besides your upcoming nuptials?”
“Aw, you kinda remembered!”
I hung my head, like a dog who knew it had misbehaved. “I’m so sorry. I’m the worst.”
“No, you’re just overcome by bizarre drama, per the usual. I reserve the right to take over your life with my own weird shit at some point in the future. It might involve an alpaca farm.”
“Weird shit at the alpaca farm? You mean actual shit, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
I deserved no less. “So, what’s your news?”
She flipped the bacon burner on again and smiled. “HBO wants to turn Were-Lesbians from the Planet Awesome into a TV show!”
I screamed and squealed and did all the things that one must do when told news of this amazing nature. We jumped up and down together until the bacon splatted us with hot grease. “Holy crap!”
“I know! Don’t tell anyone until it’s set in stone, but yeah, it’s totally gonna be the next True Blood.”
It was her new adult series about sexy lady werewolves and the trouble they got into in space. Campy, sexy and totally addictive.
“We’ll toast double extra for you at the bachelorette party.”
“Is that still happening?”
“Of course!”
“Where?”
Of course, I didn’t know that. “It’s going to be a surprise.” I mixed the already-mixed batter and ignored the ‘you’re full of bull hockey’ glare Ellen was slathering on me like syrup on a pancake.
Ellen put the bacon in the oven to keep warm, and I took over the cooking duties by starting the pancakes. She chopped more fruit and said, “Saw a picture of you on the floor of the subway on Twitter this morning. Not a fortunate pic, I’m afraid. I track your hashtag.”
“Aw, thanks. I follow yours, too!” I tried to flip some batter too early and broke the deliciousness in half. “Not the first uggo picture of me, won’t be the last. Like we said, after we left the hotel, someone tailed us, and we had to bolt.”
“Mmmmmm hotel sex,” said she. Just like Ellen to cut to the most important part of a story.
“Uh, no. I got my period and felt like a Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon. And we’ve agreed to no humping for thirty days, just dating, and then we’ll decide if we’re going to stay married.”
She put down her knife. “Whose stupid idea was that? Don’t tell me—I already know. Dumbass.”
I flipped—the pancake halves were now a lovely golden brown. “Just—I can’t—this is really hard, okay? I needed a direction, is all.”
“Why define it?”
“Because I love him, and he doesn’t love me!”
Her hands squeezed my shoulders from behind. “Of course he does. How can he not?” She petted my head. “It’s just that he’s stupid,” she sing-songed like one might to an infant. “Sooner or later, his bitty Sam brain will understand. You have to work your way down past the bad life choices and testosterone.”
I pushed back with my butt and bonked her off me. “That’s my husband you’re talking about. At least for now. I don’t poop on Nicolette.”
“That’s because she’s a perfect angel from the planet Awesome.”
I hadn’t realized she was an alien, but that explained my sense of inferiority around her. “Oh—period! I almost forgot about the Taylor foursome!”
She backed away from me like I was a conservative legislator. “If you are not referring to a golf foursome, then I’m going to need you to stop touching my food.”
I told her the whole story and, at the end, she agreed to eat my pancakes amid the hoots of laughter. “How did you not throw up on those people?” she asked me with all sincerity.
“Sorcery, I think.”
“And you didn’t cry or anything?”
“No!” I beamed with pride. We sat down to eat, and I begrudgingly relived the night in my head. “Billie got naked shockingly fast.”
Ellen winked. “Usually, that’s a thing I like in a woman.”
I laughed and popped a blueberry into my hungry jaws.
Her fork hesitated on the way to her mouth, then she put it down. “You can stay here, if you want. During your thirty days. You can help me with wedding crap, and after the ceremony, we’re getting a swanky hotel and then off to Australia. Think of this as your swanky bachelorette pad.”
My nose burned, and I fought those tears I hadn’t shed last night. But it was a good solution, really. Sam probably needed time alone to think. I needed to concentrate on my job, although who knew what would happen to the film if they actually managed to put Taylor in jail. But I did have charity work, interviews, scripts to read, and crap like that to accomplish. Sam would either choose me or not—hanging around in his face like an anxious puppy for the next month sounded like torture. Especially if I wasn�
��t even getting laid.
For the next few hours, I helped Ellen make cute place cards for the tables. “The wedding planner wanted me to send these to a printer,” she said mid-glue, “but the back of each one has a handwritten sentence from a wedding-themed story of mine. They’re numbered, and, if they want to, the guests can collect them all together into a narrative.”
My BFF was the most amazingest.
We played with her hair, twisting it into wedding styles, and she tried on her gorgeous dress again. We discussed strategies I would use to make Sam love me. Ellen joked that I obviously needed to steal something and present it to him to become a member of his cabal.
Basically, we yakked about anything but the dangerous work Nicolette was doing.
“How can you stand what she does?” I asked, breaking the rules.
Ellen shrugged while her lip trembled, just a bit. “She loves being a cop. She likes writing wrongs and protecting the weak and helping victims. And so I love her—she’s a freaking heroine! If it makes her happy, then how can I object? But then again, I fucking hate it.”
She laughed then, and I patted her knee and glued another place card. The sun had begun to send long shadows through the windows, and Sam hadn’t contacted me once. And I missed my cat monster. I looked at my phone for the three thousandth time to check that I was being ignored. Yup. Just then, the chirp of a new call came through. Ellen squawked and said “Nicolette!” into her own phone. At least one of us was getting booty called. Ellen said, “Uh-huh. Ah, okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Really? Okay.”
This over the space of several minutes, and I nearly ripped my hair out.
Ellen flashed me the thumbs up, and the fear in my tummy flew upward to become a hopeful gas bubble in my chest. Not a pretty feeling, no. Finally, she hung up and said, “Holy shit, they arrested him!”
I nearly fell onto the floor.
She elaborated. “When they got there, a limo was waiting out front, and Taylor and Billie were getting ready to leave. They had trunks full of cash and were going to fly by private jet somewhere. But they hadn’t finished the clean-out of the apartment yet, and the cops have seized over fifty paintings, at least five of which contained flash drives. They’re also searching their house in the Hamptons, and their LA pad.”
“Oh, my God.” I put my hand over my thumping heart. “So they arrested them both?”
“No, just Taylor. He swore he was being framed. Billie made a Greek tragedy out of it, all shock and innocence. They’re interviewing Billie, but all the art dealings and bank stuff are under Taylor’s name and control.”
“Ha! Framed. Because it’s art.”
“Yeah, I got it—I just didn’t laugh.” She sank down beside me and said, “Nicolette is going to be hot shit after this. She says they’ll probably have to turn the whole thing over to the FBI, as Sam is their man, technically, and they’ll need him to explain the tip-off. In a closed court, I’m sure. Oh, and they’re going to put officers on both you and Sam, to protect you.”
“That’s courteous. Anastos and Hertz are going to be pissed.” I told Ellen about the asshole FBI officers. I did it in stereo so she’d get the full effect.
She got up on her knees. “So you screwed the Feds to give my Nicolette the collar?”
I grinned most innocently.
“I think that officially makes it champagne o’clock!” Just like all sensible people—me—Ellen has her own dedicated champagne refrigerator. These are the lifestyles of the rich and famous—gluing a zombie wedding story onto namecards on a random Tuesday and swilling champagne from coffee cups. Mine said, ‘I carried a watermelon’. I took a too-long pull of the excellent champagne, and hoped that my baby wouldn’t put me in a corner.
I retreated to Ellen’s bedroom to call Sam. I told him Taylor was behind bars for now, and that we were getting cop tails. “Oh, yeah. I spotted them when I went out for brain bending, but I ditched them pretty fast.”
“That is the opposite of what you should do!”
“Yeah, that’s kinda my MO.”
There were a few moments of silence while I drank my liquid courage and summoned the will to ask him about the hypnotist. “So…did the bending go well?”
“I remember everything now.”
“Or at least how to be sarcastic.”
“Yes.” The ambient noise around him dimmed—it sounded like he’d turned down the TV. “I don’t know, Sam. She told me it went well, and I kinda remembered things…you…while I was under, but it’s not like watching a film. I don’t know what the images I saw mean. It comes to random moments with no context.”
I lifted more bubbly to my frowning mouth, but I drank air. Ugh. I set the mug down. “What did you see?”
“I was trying to remember you. That’s—that’s what I told her I wanted.”
My heart surged with love feelings. Feelings that I wisely did not express, but swallowed with too-quick breaths.
“I kept seeing a balcony. I think it was in Europe—it had to be. Morning, bright. And I was angry and sad. That’s what I kept running into…me, sitting on a balcony in the morning.”
His voice trailed off into a whispery nothing, so I filled in the details with quiet tones of my own. “You dumped me on a balcony in Bruges. In the morning. You broke up with me because you were in the midst of exiting your former profession, and things were getting violent.”
“What a dumbass.”
I crumpled into laughter. “I thought so. I was very mean to you about it, and then we had angry break-up sex.”
“I see. Perhaps if we had the angry sex again, it might jog my memory.”
I fell back onto the coverlet, my body warming all over. “Nice try.”
“I have to try. I’m jonesing for you. I’m Samanthaing.”
Stop it! Stop it, horrible man! I’d better put him to bed. This to bed. Oh, hell. “Ellen invited me to stay here with her, so that you could have some space. What do you think about that?”
Silence. More silence. I heard the cat meow. Finally, he said, “Okay. If— Yes, that’s…”
I never found out what that was. He clammed up faster than Taco when you shove food in his face. Or me, I suppose.
“When will I see you next?”
I tamped down on the nervous flutter in my stomach. There was a fine line between dangling oneself to make the heart grow fonder, and being absent so much that the bouncy blonde neighbor who’d been giving him the eye ended up in your marriage bed. “I’m throwing Ellen a bachelorette on Thursday, and the rehearsal dinner is Friday. You don’t have to go to that. But the wedding is on Saturday evening—still want to be my date? You’ll totally be escorting the matron of honor.”
“I do love a sexy matron. I’m in.”
He shouldn’t have thrown around words like ‘love’ if he didn’t mean them. “How is Taco?”
“I think he misses you. He pooped in the bathtub.”
Aw!
Sam continued, “When I miss you, I act out more responsibly, though.”
Double aw! “What do you do when you miss me?” I whispered not at all desperately. I held my breath, also not in a desperate manner.
He chuckled, and I could hear his smile. Gooey feelings flowed from my heart through my every vein.
“You…inspire me.”
“To do what?”
“Take matters into my own hands.”
My breath left me completely. “Tell me about it.”
“Dirty girl.”
“Damn right.”
“Come over, and I’ll show you.”
It took everything I had not to run down the stairs three at a time. I bunched the coverlet in my fist and made a pathetic, lusting sound, which made him laugh anew, low and deep and damn him.
“I keep getting hard in the apartment. When I see your bra hanging over a chair, or smell you on the pillow.”
I had quite the lady boner myself, at this point. No, I would not be taking matters into my own hands on my BFF’s bed
. But I would have to remember to pick up my vibrator when I stopped by to get stuff. “I guess you’ll be glad to see me on Saturday, then.”
“I don’t get even one date in between?”
Aaaaaah! Was this ‘dating’ an evaluation or a pursuit? I lived in a perpetual job interview for a position I’d already earned.
“A movie, at least?” His voice turned sweet. Sweet and irresistible. There was a reason he’d been able to talk himself into my pants the first time. “Two hours in the dark—you don’t even have to look at my bashed-up face. And you live for movie theater popcorn.”
“What?” My brain tripped, and I had to take a moment to reset. “Yes, I do love theater popcorn. How did you know that?”
The line went silent. “Have you mentioned it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then… I—” He let out a hesitant whoosh of air. “Did I remember?”
I put my hand over my eyes to physically hold the tears back. They were coming from somewhere in my tight, tight chest. “Maybe you did.”
“I have the urge to buy a giant size tub of it—you’ll eat about three-quarters, and I’ll have to fight for the rest.”
“Yes! Yes! I have punched you over popcorn before.”
“Awesome!”
We began laughing and whooping, and Ellen poked her head in the room to see what the fuss was about. “Popcorn!” I told her.
She nodded sagely and backed out.
The anvil on my lungs disappeared, and hope flared in its place. I had to keep positive about Sam. Lord knows if he were to leave me, I’d have plenty of time to cry and wail. “I’m really proud of you,” I told him.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you did!” I swiped at a tear. “You’ve been going to these scary doctors and hearing scary shit, you’ve been so traumatized, and yet you try to consider me, too. You haven’t given up on yourself, and I’m really proud of you. No matter what happens, no matter if the memories come back or not. I think you’re totally badass.”
“Really?” Shaken. His voice sounded shaken, deflated.
It renewed that eerie feeling in me, to hear such a strong man sound so broken.
“Really. You can call anytime, you know. I’ll probably grab some stuff from the apartment after our movie date. How about tomorrow night?”
The Wrath of Dimple Page 18