Not Second Best

by Christa Maurice

  She turned, pulling out of his grasp, and remembered why she didn’t want to face him. His pained, bewildered expression twisted the knife in her chest. She had to push him away for his own good, but why did it have to hurt so much? For both their sakes, she needed to forge ahead. “There’s nothing to fix, Brett. It was a purely carnal relationship. I’m sorry if you thought there was more. And if that was the case, that’s exactly why we need to just stop before it gets harder for you.” Maybe there was hope for her to be a trial lawyer yet.

  “You know what? You’re one of the hottest women I’ve ever been with, but you’re like the Grinch. You have no heart.”

  “The Grinch’s heart was two sizes too small.”

  “Whatever. If I walk out that door, you’ll never see me again.”

  “Okay.” She shrugged, trying to communicate that she didn’t care. Screw trial lawyer, she should go into acting.

  Brett was never going to be an actor. He looked like she’d just rattled him to his soul. He straightened. “Okay. See ya.” He walked out.

  Tessa kept her feet until she heard him say a cheery goodbye to Jody at the desk. Maybe he could be an actor after all.

  Or maybe he’d just realized what a gift she’d given him, sending him away before things got really sticky. Before she ended up like Bonnie, only older and without the kids.

  Dear God, she wasn’t feeling sorry for Bonnie, was she?

  She sank onto the couch and stared out the window. Still, there were far too many reasons not to get involved with him. His youth and immaturity. Her age and ticking biological clock. The fact he was going to leave anyway. The only men in her life who stuck around were Jason and Sandy. Her father, her boyfriends, her brothers-in-law...they’d all left. What she needed was a sperm donor so she could have a baby without the inconvenience of a man hanging around. Or do what Candy had done and adopt a couple of Chinese orphans. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about a man turning up years from now to see how well his boys could swim.

  Through the window, Brett stalked out the front door of the building, kicked the front passenger-side tire of his car on the way past, climbed in, and peeled out. At almost the same moment, Sandy appeared in her doorway.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello. Did you need something?” Her voice sounded remarkably normal for someone who felt as if she’d been ripped to shreds.

  Sandy stepped in and closed the door behind him before he crossed the room to sit down on the couch across from her. That was it. Monday morning she was having the fucking thing taken off the hinges. “Brian looks good.”

  “Great.”

  “He had some questions for you?”

  “Just wanted my thoughts about his custody agreement.”

  Sandy nodded. “I thought something like that might happen. She’s a natural mom, Suzi. Very mature for her age.”

  “Yes, very. How come you never had kids, Sandy?”

  Sandy shook his head. “We wanted to wait and then Ellen got sick and died and I took early retirement to manage the boys. Kinda feels like I do have kids most days with the boys. And you.”

  She wanted to protest, but couldn’t. It was too true.

  “Brett was here too,” Sandy said.

  The force and intensity of her tears shocked her. One moment she’d been thinking about calling Candy for tips on adopting from overseas and the next she’d dissolved into a hail of misery.

  “There, there, sweetheart. These things have a way of working out for the best.” He pulled her head into his lap and stroked her hair. “It’ll be alright. I promise.”

  All Tessa could feel was the hollow space between her arms and in her chest. If she had no heart, how did she know it was missing?

  * * * *

  Brett slammed through his front door and kicked his carry-on down the hall. From the minute Jason had said he wasn’t needed for the next week, all he had thought about was coming home, grabbing Tessa, and stealing her away to the hotel for the weekend. She’d been working hard since before he left town. He could give her a nice break and a nice surprise at the same time.

  Instead of pining away for him, he’d found her behind closed doors with Brian, and almost as soon as she’d laid eyes on him, she’d told him to get lost.

  He’d thought things were getting better. Sure, she sounded distracted when he called, but she was a busy person. That’s what he’d convinced himself of, anyway.

  Tessa didn’t want him? Fine. There were a thousand women in LA who did. He fished through the mess in the hall table drawer until he found his little black book. A nameless body or three would be good, but this ache required special treatment. Leafing through the book, he searched for just the right name and found page after page of too hot, too cold, too soft, and too hard.

  Until he got to the Ss. In the middle of the second page, Suzi. Suzi who was married to Brian now. The one who’d never been. He smiled, remembering meeting her on that last tour. All of them drunk with success, surrounded by women. She’d shown up backstage in jeans and a T-shirt, smiling and laughing, and had been the hottest woman for miles. Logan had been a total asshole about her, snarling at anybody he thought looked at her too long. That approach had worked out beautifully when she’d dumped him for Brian.

  Seeing her name didn’t make him ache the way it used to. Brian was a good guy. Whatever he’d been talking about with Tessa, it hadn’t been about cheating on Suzi. Sleeping with Tessa to get over Suzi hadn’t turned out great, but maybe talking to Suzi would help him get over Tessa. Dialing her number, he hoped she had the phone on her. It rang a couple of times before voicemail picked it up.

  “Hey, Suzi, it’s Brett,” he said. “I heard you were back in town, and I’m around, too. I wondered if you wanted to get together for lunch or something. If you have time.” Brett winced. Because he wanted to sound stupid and pathetic. “Anyway, give me a call. Bye.”

  He tossed the phone and the book on the table. Idiot. Next week, when she finally found her phone and listened to the message, she’d call and feel terrible she hadn’t gotten back to him in time. Maybe he should email. That would catch her attention faster. If he had any other friends to hang out with, he’d try them, but they all thought he’d lost his mind when he’d abruptly lost interest in horndogging around.

  The phone rang before he got motivated enough to walk to the computer, so he grabbed it. “Yeah.”

  “Brett! Hi, you just called, and by the time I found the phone, it had sent you to voicemail. Then it started playing that awful you-have-voicemail song. Bleh. So, you wanted to get together for lunch?”

  He smiled. Being friend-zoned by Suzi was not the hardship it should have been. “If you have time. I just happened to be in town.”

  “Brian said he bumped into you at the Touchstone offices.”

  Oh, great. Brian had run right home to spread the word, and Suzi was right now putting the pieces together. On the other hand, Tessa had mentioned something about Suzi trying to fix Brian’s first marriage. She was pretty smart and knew Tessa better than him. Maybe, just maybe… “Yeah, I kinda wanted to talk to you about that. On the QT.”

  “Anything for you. I’m expecting a ton of work to hit me in about three days, so it’s got to be before then.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Hang on. Let me make sure Brian doesn’t have plans for us.” The phone was muffled for a second, and he could hear her talking to Brian. They sounded so comfortable together. “Not a problem. I’m yours for the day, but Brian says you have to bring me back in the condition in which you borrowed me.”

  “I will. I’ll pick you up at noon.”

  “You’re gonna get up early for me? I’m honored. You know where the house is?”

  “Sure. Wear something pretty for me,” he told her.

  “Always. See ya tomorrow.” Laughing, she hung up.

  Good. Tomorrow he’d have some answers.

  Chapter 6

&
nbsp; “Geez Brett, I don’t know what to tell you.” Suzi twisted her water glass on the table. “I don’t really know Tessa that well.”

  It had taken since he’d picked her up to after their salads were delivered to tell her the whole shitty story—leaving off the detail of why he and Tessa had ended up together in the first place—and that was her answer? Most of last night he’d been up pouring all his misery into a song, certain that Suzi would be able to give him a three-point action plan before their drinks were delivered. Damn.

  “Tessa’s a very private person. Brian said you were ‘not dating.’” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “But I didn’t realize it was that complicated.”

  The restaurant had deep booths with high screens. Nobody would see them here. Not that he wanted privacy with her, but he didn’t want the whole world to know what a sap he was. She did look nice. Her face was full and tan. She wore a loose pink blouse, navy pants, and leopard print Crocs. The maitre d’ had wrinkled his nose when he’d seen her shoes, but that guy didn’t know how lucky he was that she had shoes on at all. For the first time since he’d known Suzi, Brett didn’t get that sick coulda-shoulda feeling in his gut from being with her. “Just be honest with me. I’m a pussy, right?”

  “No, I don’t think that. I have been crazy in love twice in my life, and both times it was like being skinned alive.”

  “Does Brian know this?”

  Suzi rolled her eyes. “He’d agree. It sounds to me like you’re in love, really in love, for the first time in your life.”

  “And I’m a pussy.”

  “No, you’re in love, and we can’t be sure Tessa doesn’t return the feeling.”

  “What do you mean?” Brett leaned forward.

  She shrugged. “This isn’t the first time Tessa has snubbed a pretty heavy relationship.”

  “Like with Brian.”

  “Yeah. Brian told me he was crazy about her. He even asked her to marry him once.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, she told him to grow up and started sleeping with Marc.”

  “Ow.”

  “Tell me about it. If Brian was a different kind of guy, she could have broken up the band with that stunt.”

  “And that’s not the only time?”

  “According to Brian, she’s been in a couple of very serious relationships that she ended for no good reason that anybody could see.”

  “You two spend all night talking about Tessa and me?”

  Suzi smirked. “Yes, Brett, Brian and I sat up all night talking about you.”

  “Well, you know a lot for someone who doesn’t know anything.”

  “The Brian-Tessa-Marc triangle is mildly legendary. Maureen, Cassie, and I speculate about what happened when we’re together, but none of us has the guts to ask any of the players what did happen, and we can’t ask Alex in case she doesn’t know. I wouldn’t want to let that cat out of the bag to Marc’s wife, would you? I mean, it’s one thing to know they have history without knowing they have history.”

  “What happened?”

  Suzi leaned across the table. “Brian had a crush on Tessa forever. Dating all the way back to elementary school. After Touchstone’s first album, Brian turned up the heat so Tessa jumped into bed with Marc who didn’t realize there was tension there. Brian may or may not have responded by sleeping with Candy who was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Ty.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Before I got together with Brian, I was just the innocent bystander girlfriend of one of the guys in another band.” She took a sip from her water glass.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a Coke? You always have Coke.”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  Brett surveyed her face. She looked a little fuller in the cheeks than he remembered, and she had worn baggy clothes, but his best memories of her were when she lived in his house after leaving Logan and could go whole days without eating if he didn’t monitor her. “Why? Brian tell you you were fat?”

  “No! I’m just trying to stay away from pop for a while. It’s bad for my teeth.” She stared into her water. “Back to Tessa. You know their father abandoned them when they were kids.”

  “Whose father?” The whole baggy-clothes-wearing-not-drinking-Coke issue bothered him.

  “Jason and Tessa’s.”

  “I thought he died.”

  “He didn’t. He walked out when they were little kids and remarried twice. Eva, Jason’s live-in house sitter, is his half sister.

  “I didn’t know they had a live-in house sitter.”

  “Oh. Well, they do. She’s Jason’s half-sister. Cass is very excited about the whole family being together.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I ask questions.”

  “So what does that have to do with me and Tessa?”

  “It’s going to make her very wary about men. My guess is she thinks you’re going to leave her before you’ve even gotten there.”

  The waiter arrived with their lunches. Suzi’s diet apparently included cheeseburgers and fries.

  Baggy clothes plus full face and cheeseburgers and fries, minus Coke with a secretive, glowy expression. “You knocked up again?”

  “Shh! No!” She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye, smiling.

  He caught his breath at how beautiful she was. He’d never have her, but he could appreciate her. It made for a nice change. Pure, like the appreciation of a gorgeous sunset or an amazing landscape.

  Then the pain came. He’d wandered into what Tessa would look like, telling a friend she was having a baby. Having his baby.

  Which would never happen.

  Suzi grabbed his hand. “You can’t tell anybody.”

  “It’s a secret? People are going to find out.”

  “Just for a little while. Just until I’m sure I’m—”

  Not going to lose it again. He squeezed her hand. “Sure, Suzi. I’ve kept your secrets before. I can do it again. Did you tell Brian?”

  “Yes, he knows.” She blushed and held up her wrist. Brett had noticed the diamond and ruby bracelet but hadn’t thought anything of it. Lots of rock wives and girlfriends dripped with jewelry, but Suzi never had. “I can’t believe I’ve managed to keep track of it this long.”

  From the woman who managed to lose her cell phone daily, she probably would, and Brian probably wouldn’t mind. Those guys had been around for a long time and had sold a ton of records. Their whole back office, Sandy, Tessa, Helen, even Jody, had been around from the beginning, too. The band would not be paying their office peanuts. Tessa’s house in the hills, modest as it was, couldn’t have been cheap. So much for getting her flashy gifts to impress her.

  “What? You look like the cat just ate your canary.”

  “I was just thinking Tessa probably has more money than I do.”

  “Probably. Those guys have been very careful with their money. Have you seen Bear’s itty bitty house?” Suzi shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think Tessa wants you for your money.”

  “You think she wants me?”

  “At least in one way. Probably others. What do you have to offer her?”

  “Nothing.” Brett poked the chicken he’d ordered with his fork. “She’s rich. She’s powerful. I know guys who would kill for fifteen minutes alone with her cell phone contact list. She’s been around fame most of her life. You should see some of the pictures on her walls.”

  “I have.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” He sank into his chair. Abandoning his fork, he picked up his drink. “I don’t have anything to offer her except sex.”

  “You have more than that. You’re creative, talented, ambitious, intelligent.”

  “I never finished high school.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not intelligent. You’re young.”

  “She treats me like a kid.”

  “Why?”

 
“What do you mean why?”

  “She doesn’t treat me like a kid, and you and I are close to the same age.” Suzi stuck a French fry in her mouth. “Are you doing something that’s making her think you’re immature? Or are you perceiving that she is when she really isn’t?”

  “She doesn’t like me to go to her office.”

  “Brian mentioned she seemed annoyed that you were there. What does she say to you?”

  “What are you doing here? I told you not to come to my office.” Even repeating the words stung. “But it’s always good when I’m there. She’s always hot for me. Except last time.”

  “You’re having sex with her in her office?”

  “Trying.”

  “That might be the problem. She works there.”

  “But she wants it. And besides, I stopped us the one time.”

  “Do you think she might be embarrassed?”

  “I’m pretty sure she is.”

  “I don’t mean by you exactly. More like embarrassed because she’s a cougar. Chasing after a guy as young as you. It looks funny and maybe kind of pathetic.”

  “I’m chasing her.”

  Suzi shrugged. “We don’t know enough. We could toss around theories all afternoon and never get the right one. I could try to talk to her for you. I have a good excuse.”

  “Would you? You can plead my case so much better than me. That would be great.” Brett cut into his chicken. He didn’t want to consider the weirdness of sending Suzi to talk to Tessa about him. Whatever got the job done.

  * * * *

  Cassie sat down next to Tessa on the deck behind Brian and Suzi’s house. They were having a party to announce Suzi was pregnant even though almost everyone knew. “I thought BroRide was supposed to be a bunch of party animals,” she announced.

  “Why are you asking me?” Tessa asked. For a month now, she’d been trying to pretend she’d never heard of the band or their lead singer, but everyone kept asking her questions about them. Even the radio had turned against her. Every time she turned it on, it was playing one of their songs. She and Brett were probably the second most well-known secret in this circle after Suzi’s pregnancy.