by Julia Kent
Forget what I just said.
I want what Shannon has. Bad.
“So,” Carol says, sipping her coffee, “the bottom line is that Andrew McCormick sniped you from a guy who fondles dog butts for fun and you’re not happy?”
I frown. “When you put it that way...”
“Honey, when I put it any way, you’re not making sense. He has spent most of the past two years sending you mixed signals and you keep picking up what he’s putting down, but the two of you are maddening.”
“Maddening?” I ask, genuinely confused.
Shannon and Carol move closer to me. It’s like having slightly changed, younger versions of Marie and Jason love bombing me.
“He wouldn’t kiss you if he didn’t like you,” Shannon says under her breath.
“I’m still heee—eeerrrre,” Josh sings. “I haven’t left the room. You don’t get to do the chick thing.”
“Chick thing?”
“Where you discriminate against me because of my penis.”
“When did we start talking about your penis?” I squeak.
“Can we go back to dog butts? I’m less grossed out by that topic,” Shannon whispers.
“You are crowding me out of this girl talk because I don’t have the right equipment, and I don’t appreciate the exclusion.” Josh is serious. Oh, boy. He doesn’t get like this very often. Normally, the only time he draws this line is when we steal all the massage mystery shops.
“No one’s excluding you because of what you have in your pants,” Carols says with an eye roll. “We’re excluding you because it’s really obvious you have a thing for Andrew, too.”
That thought never, ever occurred to me.
“I do not!” Josh argues. But his scalp turns red. It’s bad enough to be a blusher when all that can turn red are your cheeks and neck, but the poor man is balding. He looks like Hellboy when he’s worked up.
A nerdy Hipster Hellboy.
“You came to the mall when Declan was playing Santa last year just so you could sit on his lap!” Shannon’s accusation has more bite than I would have expected.
“I did not...okay, I did,” Josh admits. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t gossip about Amanda’s sex life!”
“Is that what we’re doing?” I ask, incredulous.
“Duh,” they all say in unison.
“The only one of us with a sex life is Shannon, and she’s all settled and happy with her perfect billionaire and her wedding planning, so it’s not like there’s anything juicy there,” Josh explains.
“Other than what they did last night with a stick of butter,” I joke.
Oh. Looks like Shannon can blush and look just like Hellboy, too.
“I’m not having sex with anything that doesn’t have a battery tech support line,” Carol adds. “We have to talk about someone’s sex life. And Josh is a hopeless cause since his last boyfriend dumped him.”
Josh is nodding along to everything Carol says until that last bit.
“Hopeless?” He looks like he’s about to cry. “You really think I’m hopeless?”
“You use a car that advertises erectile dysfunction meds to find dates.”
“Better than dog asses.”
“Touché.”
Something in the back of my mind won’t let go. I feel a thin string unravel, as if a thread were caught from the hem of my skirt, except instead of a skirt, it’s my mind. I’ve forgotten something. It’s important.
“What time is it?” Carol finally asks.
“Time for Amanda to come with me to Anterdec for a meeting.” Shannon declares. “Eleven-thirty.”
Meeting. What is she talking about—
“Oh, my God! Andrew’s text. I have a meeting with him,” I gasp.
“You do?” All three of them raise their eyebrows.
“Yes. Eleven.”
Shannon frowns. “He told me to meet him at eleven-thirty. With Declan. Why would he want to meet with you earlier?”
This is one of those moments where I have to decide what kind of person I am. Do I lie to my best friend to save face for the man who won’t stop turning me into his own little county fair kissing booth, or does loyalty prevail?
“Oh, you know,” I say, trying to appear casual. “Maid of honor and best man stuff.”
I, apparently, am the kind of person who throws my best friend under a bus.
Shannon smiles, but the grin doesn’t meet her eyes. “That’s cute. Will you talk about that kiss, too?”
“That’s up to him,” I huff. “He’s never talked to me before about the other kisses.”
“Because he’s an asshole,” Carol says flatly.
“A hot asshole,” Josh says.
“You struggling with that, too?” Greg says from the hall as he walks by. “Just lay off the spicy curry. Takes a day or so to go away.”
We all wince.
“Is Anterdec hiring?” all three of us ask Shannon at the same time.
She just shakes her head slowly, like she knows something she can’t say.
Funny.
Same here.
Chapter Six
“I’ll drive,” Shannon says as I grab my purse and pointedly ignore Greg. Josh or Carol will tell him I have a meeting at Anterdec. He won’t care that it’s really about Andrew becoming CEO. He’ll think I’m drumming up more business for Consolidated Evalu-Shop.
We get outside and walk down the crumbling concrete steps. There is a limo in front of us.
“Is Declan here?” I ask. He and Andrew travel in the city by limo. The only time I’ve ever seen Declan drive a car is his SUV, and that almost seems like it’s for show. The guy claims he gets more work done when someone else is driving, but then why not let Shannon drive?
As Shannon looks embarrassed but determined, she opens the door and I look in.
No wonder she likes this limo thing. It’s the size of her entire old apartment in there.
“Why does it smell like chocolate?” I ask as I bend and settle in.
I look to my left.
“Is that a cake bar?”
She pinkens. “Declan just had a new customer come by.” She names a celebrity chef you’d gasp to hear mentioned. I do.
“She brought an assortment of desserts from her new line that Anterdec will be using in all their properties in North America. Elite member guests will come in to their hotel rooms with a tray of these, a bottle of sparkling water and chocolate-covered strawberries.”
“Any tiramisu?” I joke.
“Only in petit fours form, and no rings attached.” She taps on the glass between us and the driver and off we go, headed for the Financial District. As I look back at my office building, it feels like walking out of a Brazilian favela.
“Seriously. Any job openings at Anterdec? Because I would jump ship like the rat that I am,” I say, then stuff a little square of cake perfection in my mouth.
She smiles, serene and composed. She’s like a Shannonbot.
“Oh, my God, is that pistachio mint?” I groan.
“With a touch of amaretto.”
“I think I just orgasmed.”
“Wouldn’t be the first one in this limo,” she sighs.
My mouth goes dry. “Um, thanks? Didn’t need that visual.”
“Speaking of orgasms,” she says, ignoring my comment, “what is going on with you and Andrew?”
My mouth turns into the Sahara.
“Did you have to ruin a perfectly good moment of stress eating by bringing up Andrew?” I whimper.
“Sorry. But yes, I do. What are you hiding about him?”
She’s so good.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
Rage. An unexpected wave of red fury fills me, wiping away the taste of the divine in my mouth and replacing it with a stark bitterness that fills me with despair.
And anger.
I don’t get angry. It’s not what I do. Not, at least, with my friends and family. All my life I’ve been the pe
rson who rationalizes and organizes and thinks and plans and plots her way out of emotional messes. I sob quietly in the shower or slink off to let my angry tears come out in vents, but this?
This kind of rage comes after the pressure cooker can’t contain it. My inner world is about to become spaghetti stains on the ceiling.
I’ve never, ever directed it at Shannon. We’ve known each other since elementary school and I can count on one hand the number of fights we’ve had. And by “fight” I mean terse words that end with tearful crying and two spoons and a pint of ice cream.
Okay...two pints.
“Isn’t your perfect life enough for you?” I hiss, regretting the words instantly even as they come out of me. I sit back and straighten my spine, knowing the inevitability of the moment makes whatever I say all the more odious. I can’t stop this. It’s an avalanche that has been triggered by her gunshot—the word liar—and now here it comes.
Watch out below.
“What—what do you mean?” she stammers. “I was just—”
“You have everything,” I whisper through my clenched teeth. “You have it all. And I’m happy for you.” My mouth is set in a way that makes the muscles in my face that run along my temple feel like flat pieces of tense wood that can move.
“I really am. This isn’t about that. It’s about...me.” I realize how true that last word is as Shannon looks at me with open, caring eyes and a wary expression. Making eye contact goes against everything in me. I’m a live wire. There is no one in the world I can say this to.
Except my bestie.
“Is it about dumping the Turdmobile off on you? Because I’m so sorry.”
I give her a hard look. “Ha ha. No.”
“This is really about Andrew and your mom,” she says with a sigh.
“Now that’s a sentence I never expected to have directed at me,” I reply, completely stumped. The wind’s out of my sails. Only Shannon can do that. “What do Andrew and my mother have to do with each other?”
“You always call yourself a fixer,” she says, reaching out to touch my shoulder. Her eyes are so warm, so calm. The Shannon I’ve known for years has her edges smoothed off. She’s coiffed and possessed, and I love her for not yelling at me or rejecting me. Being able to tell her how I really feel means so much more than I think I even understand.
“I am a fixer.”
“But who fixes problems for you?”
“Me.”
“Exactly.”
I frown. “What’s your point?”
“That is my point.”
“And...”
“You fix your mom’s problems. You fix client problems. You came to the rescue and fixed my problem with Declan nearly two years ago. Andrew isn’t a problem you can fix.”
“I’m not following you.”
“He’s maddening.”
“Okay, that I can follow.”
“He’s unpredictable. He keeps kissing you but never calling. Declan says you confuse his brother.”
“I confuse him? Talk about projecting.” A thrill runs up my back, spreading warmth and some salacious throbbing to places that really need more of a pulse. “Wait. Andrew talked to Declan about me?”
“Yes.”
I feel like a breathless eighth grader. Ah, hell. I am a breathless eighth grader.
“And?”
“You’re not Andrew’s type.”
“You mean because I don’t charge by the hour?”
She lets go of my shoulder and gives me a glare. “He’s my future brother-in-law. Don’t talk about him like that.”
“You were the one who told me his assistant hires prostitutes for him!”
“No, I didn’t!”
“You told me Declan told you that he schedules ‘business meetings’ with various women and after he’s bedded them, they go away. What do you call that?”
“Modern dating?” She smiles.
“Minus the anal glands,” I whisper under my breath.
“You’re starting to worry me,” Shannon says as she squeezes my hand. The limo pulls up to Anterdec’s office garage and begins the slow, winding way down to the executive level. Shannon knows how to live now.
“I am the one who is being kissed out of the blue by your future brother-in-law while creating the mystery shopper survey for a dog owners’ dating site. I should worry you.”
Her laughter fills the car. “He has never hired a prostitute. Put that one out of your mind. Plus, Andrew doesn’t have a dog.”
A pang of guilt hits me. “About that...”
“About doggy dates? You want to dig through the dating database and see if he’s in there? Because he’s not.”
I shudder. “You don’t want to know what that database looks like. Trust me.”
“Can’t be worse than that dating site for married people who want to have affairs.”
“There are people in the DoggieDate database who have a sexual fetish for dressing up in dog costumes that match their actual dog’s breed and pretending to be a dog.”
“Oh. Weird.”
“Or the human-dog relationships.”
“Oh, gross.”
“No, no,” I say, hands up in protest. “Not actual human-dog sex. But one person is the human and the other one pretends to be the dog. Wears the costume, eats out of the dog bowl—”
“STOP! I cannot unhear what has been heard.”
“The weird part is that there are all these accessories for relationships like that. The merchandising opportunities are amazing.”
Shannon sticks her fingers in her ears as we climb out of the limo. The driver holds the door open, his face neutral and stoic as I say, “And the human can buy special leashes, and the fetish involves—”
His face is not so stoic now.
“Work. We’re talking about a client, Jose,” Shannon hastily explains.
“I’m sure you are, ma’am,” he says tightly.
“Bet you’ve heard worse in your line of work,” I joke.
He makes eye contact. “No ma’am. That one’s in the top three.”
Oh, great.
“Let me explain,” I say, suddenly deeply humiliated. “I’m a mystery shopping manager and I have to go out on twenty dates with dogs for this new dating service I’m evaluating.”
That didn’t come out right.
“Not with the dogs,” I say, giggling. “With their owners.”
“And some of the owners want to pretend to be dogs,” Shannon adds, trying to help. “It’s a fetish.”
Not helpful.
“What you do in your line of....work, ma’am, is your business.”
“I’m not a pervert!” I call back as Shannon pulls me away to the elevator, which opens at that exact moment to reveal—you guessed it.
Andrew McCormick.
His eyes light up.
“Shame,” is all he says.
“Shame what?” I retort.
“Shame you’re not a pervert. See you at eleven.” And with that, he moves so smoothly it’s like he’s on wheels, disappearing into the same limo we just got out of, Jose avoiding eye contact with us.
As he pulls away I look at my watch. 10:33 a.m.
“Where is he going?” I ask Shannon, who enters the open elevator and pulls me in. She presses the floor for the main Anterdec offices with a practiced hand. “We have an appointment!”
“Who knows? To grab a cup of coffee?”
Living with a billionaire hasn’t rubbed off on her, has it? “He has people who fetch him coffee,” I say, as if explaining religion to an alien. “Hell, he has people who test whether it’s too hot for him. He probably owns a sugar cane plantation where they hand harvest his personal sweetener. How can you live with the richie riches and not know that?”
“I—”
“And I am not a pervert!” I hiss again.
She starts to laugh. It’s a sound of absurdity. There is no mocking in her tone, and I join in, realizing my own over-the-topness.
“You’re really not,” she gasps. “You’re about as vanilla as they come.”
“How can I be vanilla when I’m not having sex with anyone?”
The words come out of my mouth just as the elevator slows and the doors open, revealing James McCormick.
Who just heard every word I said.
Chapter Seven
“That’s the difference between men and women,” he declares in a voice that’s just a notch louder than it needs to be. He’s cultivating an audience. James McCormick is a man who is accustomed to instant attention.
Just like Andrew.
“Men pretend to be sleeping with more women than they really are. Women complain endlessly about all the men they’re not sleeping with. Both are always lying,” James declares with a smug little smile.
“But I’m really not sleeping with anyone!”
I can’t believe I just said that in public.
James startles slightly. “You and Andrew aren’t....” He makes a series of suggestive sounds from the back of his throat like he’s trying out for a sound effects specialist on a porn set.
“What? No! Whatever gave you that idea?”
All he does is wink and walk onto the elevator as Shannon drags me off it, the door closing on the grey fox as he whistles to himself.
Panic blooms in my chest like a field of sunflowers all turning toward the light in synchronicity too perfect to be coincidence.
“What did he mean? Is Andrew talking about me? Does he talk about me with his father? Did Declan say something to James about the kiss last night? Is there more going on than I thought?”
“Amanda—”
“Does Andrew like perverts? Because I can be a pervert if that’s more his speed. Vanilla is boring. I don’t have to be boring. I can be kinky like the best of them.”
“AMANDA!”
A firm yank on my wrist and Shannon has me down the hall, inside her office, sitting on a small loveseat, head between my knees, a lavender-filled eye pillow shoved under my nose. She’s holding a spritz bottle of water and I’m a little scared.
“What is wrong with you?” she demands. “Who stole my level-headed best friend and replaced her with, with...this?” Shannon’s wrists flick my way like twin whips.
See? I’m not so vanilla.
“I don’t know!” I wail, looking up. “Andrew McCormick has taken every rational brain cell in my head and shaken me like I’m a snow globe.”