I Married a Master

by Melanie Marchande

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  I MARRIED A MASTER

  Melanie Marchande

  © 2014 Melanie Marchande

  The cover art for this book makes use of licensed stock photography. All photography is for illustrative purposes only and all persons depicted are models.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is intended for adult audiences only. All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ***

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  Chapter One

  Jenna

  This had to be a nightmare.

  I simply couldn't explain it otherwise. The yawning chasm of silence, except for the thump, thump, thump of my own heart - I was sure everyone in the room could hear it. The stares. The growing sense of panic. The fact that all the words on the paper in front of me looked like ancient cuneiform.

  Help? Anyone? Can a girl get a Rosetta stone over here?

  I opened my mouth, but my throat had closed up.

  Any minute now, my grandmother would show up, except she'd look like Beetlejuice, and then I'd be in my underwear in front of my whole high school assembly and I'd be late for my college finals and I'd be missing some flight I was taking because my feet felt like they were stuck in molasses. Then, I'd know.

  This had to be a nightmare. There was no other explanation.

  Four sets of eyes staring at me. One of them was clearing his throat impatiently, shifting in his chair. One of the others seemed more compassionate.

  "I'm sorry," she said, gently. "But we really need to move on."

  I worked my mouth open and shut a few times.

  "Please," said the throat-clearing one, more firmly. "You've used up all of your allotted time. Thank you, please come again."

  When I didn't move, he stood up, with a massive sigh and roll of his eyes. He walked over, grabbed my arm, and began steering me towards the door. My feet shuffled obediently, though the rest of my body refused to move.

  I was sitting at a bus stop, and I had no idea how I got there.

  Internally, I let out a sigh of relief. The surest hallmark of a dream. Any minute now, I'd wake up in my own bed to the sound of my chirping alarm, waking me up just in time to get ready for my audition.

  "Wow, you really choked in there, huh?"

  I turned around, slowly.

  The girl sitting next to me on the bench - I recognized her. She'd been in the waiting room next to me. She'd've been called up right after me.

  Uh oh. This made a little too much sense, for dream logic.

  Her eyes were sympathetic, not mocking. "They're never as discreet as they want you to think. I heard them talking about you when I was headed in. Don't worry. It gets better." She offered me a smile. "This your first time?"

  I nodded mechanically.

  "Oh, don't even sweat it. There'll be other auditions." She waved her hand dismissively.

  "No, there won't," I heard myself say. "I'm pretty sure my career is over."

  She laughed. "You know how often shit like this happens? They won't even remember you, let alone think it's notable enough to spread the word to all their secret Hollywood society friends to put you on the blacklist."

  "No," I said, shaking my head miserably. "It's not that. It's me. I can't do it. All these years, this was my dream - I've been defending it to everybody who said it was stupid, I've been planning, I've been researching, all for nothing. Because I can't do it. I thought a couple of school plays and some wins at debate club were enough to qualify me for this."

  Normally I was more guarded than this. A lot more guarded. But I couldn't stop the torrent of fear and regret - and besides, I was still clinging to that hope.

  This was all a nightmare.

  "Everybody goes through this," the girl said, patting my arm. "Trust me."

  "Not everyone locks up at their first audition," I pointed out. "Okay, so maybe you could name some great actors who did, but that's not the point. What about all the people who choked like I did, and went on to be nothing? The odds were never in my favor to begin with. This is just the final shovelful of dirt on my grave."

  "Hey man," she said, standing up and extending her arm as her bus approached. "All I can say is - if you go out there expecting to fail, you're gonna fail one hundred percent of the time."

  "Thanks," I called after her, bitterly.

  I'd gotten better advice from the side of a Chipotle cup.

  The surreality of the situation had started to fade, leaving me more alert, less muzzy around the edges. I was awake. I was more awake than I'd ever been in my life.

  Look, I wasn't stupid. When I came to New York for acting, I knew it was a pipe dream that way too many people share, and not enough people pursue. I knew the work was harder than people image it to be. I knew there'd be a lot of hoofing it, spending all day, every day in auditions, doing infomercials until I worked my way up to name-brand products. And maybe, just maybe, if I was really lucky - becoming one of those "hey, it's that chick from the Swiffer ad!" people.

  It was just like any other job. Starting out as a fry cook, you don't go into your first day of work counting on being "discovered" by the CEO of McDonald's and pulled to run the company. That was how I treated this. I was going to have to work hard, and scrape by, for a long time. But I had faith in my ability to do it.

  And I also had my dream.

  Part of me - the part that never wanted to accept anything less than one hundred percent perfection, one hundred percent of the time - had a tiny glimmer of hope that I'd be one of the special ones. A casting director would just happen to be in line behind me at the bank, and he'd see me yelling at the teller (not that I ever yelled at tellers - but shhh, this was my fantasy) and he'd just love my passion. I'd find myself cast in a non-speaking role in the next Resident Evil or something, and the director would become besotted, and the rest would be history...

  I didn't talk about this dream, of course. Because I knew it was almost offensively ridiculous. It was a childish. It was nothing to hang a career on.

  And I didn't. But part of me still wanted it. Part of me felt like if that didn't happen, I'd be a failure.

  No part of me was prepared for what actually happened.

  Stage fright. I'd never experienced stage fright. Not once in my life had
I looked at a group of people in front of me, with cards or a script or notes in my hand, or merely lines in my head, and just frozen up like that. Even the most stringent doubters in my life had always acknowledged that I was good with performance, public speaking, whatever. They doubted the industry, the amount of work - they doubted my understanding of the gritty realities of the job. They doubted by commitment.

  But they didn't doubt me.

  And until now, I never had, either.

  Walking down the street, hurried pedestrians pushing past me, I'd never felt more lost. My phone was buzzing in my pocket and I didn't dare answer it. Especially not when I checked the screen and saw it was my mom.

  I wouldn't be able to talk to her without bursting into tears. And the last thing she needed to do was worry about me.

  I let it go to voicemail, then fired off a quick text implying I was just so busy I couldn't possibly pick up the phone.

  She answered a few minutes later.

  That's my girl! Next stop, Oscars! xoxoxo

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  My mom thought I couldn't see the worry behind her eyes, whenever I talked about my ambitions. She wasn't much for useful critique or hard-hitting advice, but she was always ridiculously enthusiastic. Sometimes, that was exactly what I needed.

  But not now. Right now, I needed to wallow.

  I had enough money saved up that I'd be okay for a little while. But the definition of "a little while" was slightly unclear. I knew I'd have to find some other kind of work when I got here, but that nagging, improbable hope in the back of my mind had convinced me to put off my job search for the first few days. After all, wouldn't want to get tied down bagging groceries, only to leave them in the lurch when Robert Rodriguez almost hit me with his car and became captivated by the fire in my eyes.

  I would've laughed at myself, if it wasn't so fucking sad.

  I found myself in the grocery store. It was so crowded, with such low ceilings, the noise of the traffic outside echoing through the wine racks. I wasn't used to this. Even though I didn't exactly grow up in the boonies, city living was relatively foreign to me. I forgot about how little space everything has, how much everything costs.

  But you don't get discovered in the suburbs.

  With a sigh of self-disgust, I jostled my way to the ice cream freezer. Ben and Jerry's was on sale - it was almost as if they knew I was coming.

  As I reached for the door, tunnel vision honing in on Karamel Sutra, my shoulder collided with something. Large. Solid. Warm.

  Shit, it had to be a human being.

  I whirled around to face them, and sure enough, I was inches away from a guy who looked like he belonged on the cover of GQ. Great.

  Well, it could've been worse - maybe this was about to become my own personal Nora Ephron style meet-cute.

  "Do you mind?" he snapped at me.

  Okay, maybe not.

  "Sorry," I replied, fully aware of the lack of remorse in my voice. "You were in my blind spot."

  "Oh, I was in your blind spot?" he shot back. His stormy blue eyes were staring me down, like I'd kicked his grandmother or something. "Maybe you should get some mirrors installed."

  Running a hand through his short-cropped brown hair, he blindly grabbed a container from the shelf and disappeared down another aisle.

  Well.

  Obviously I'd heard the old chestnut about New Yorkers being rude, but this really took the cake. I had bumped into him pretty hard, and maybe I should have been more careful, but it had to be at least fifty percent his fault. Besides, whatever he was going through right now could not be as bad as all of my hopes, dreams, and career aspirations dying a slow and painful death.

  Probably.

  I finally picked up my Karamel Sutra and headed for the checkout. Picking a line more or less at random, I settled in behind a woman with a full cart of groceries and started scanning the tabloid headlines. Who are these people? What the fuck is Real Housewives of Buena Vista?

  "Excuse me, ma'am?"

  I looked up, to see one of the cashiers waving me over to another register.

  "I can take you right over here," she said, flipping on her light. I wasn't in any particular hurry, but I figured it would be rude to decline.

  As I approached the lane, something pushed past me. Something big, and warm, and solid.

  Oh, hell no.

  "Excuse me," he said, loudly, in a way that suggested it was not so much a request as a notification. "I've been waiting for ten minutes in that line over there, and now the register's broken. This is ridiculous. You have to take me first."

  My jaw dropped. He couldn't have been lying more blatantly if he tried.

  "Excuse me," I echoed. He didn't look at me, but I figured it was worth a shot anyway. "That's not true. I just saw you at the freezer."

  He glared at me. "All right, I'm so sorry I violated grocery store protocol by jumping the line. How can I possibly make it up to you? Bear in mind that every moment I spend defending myself to you, is a moment I'm not using to get the fuck out of here so we can both go home."

  It was in that moment that I glanced at what he was holding, and recognized the label.

  Karamel Sutra.

  Ugh. I already had way, way more in common with this guy than I wanted.

  "Excuse me," I said again, pushing past him, and sliding my pint of ice cream towards the cashier. I wasn't going to cave to this asshole, no matter how effective his death glare was.

  The poor cashier was like a deer in the headlights. I felt terrible for her, but I could not let this guy win. Finally, after a moment's hesitation and glancing between us like she expected an all-out brawl to start, she rang up my ice cream and took my card. I could feel my opponent looming over me from behind, practically breathing down my neck, but I'd won.

  "I'm...I'm sorry." The cashier's voice came, very softly and tentatively. "It says your card is..."

  I looked down at the screen. DECLINED.

  For fuck's sake.

  "You have got to be kidding me." The man snarled, reaching into his wallet and pulling out a wad of bills. He threw them at the register belt. "That should cover both of us, shouldn't it?" He glared at the cashier, who nodded quickly.

  "Good." The man picked up his pint and jostled past me, and I absolutely did not notice the scent of his cologne. "Next time, maybe dig under the sofa cushions before you come out grocery shopping. Some of us have jobs to get back to."

  Tears stung in my eyes as I stood there, stunned. It was the last straw. Every doubt and hesitation about this city, all those whispering fears that it really would end up eating me alive - it all came crashing down. How dare he? The contempt in his voice was unmistakable. From the looks of him, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Of course he thought the rest of the world was beneath him.

  I was still clutching the ice cream in my lap as I sat on the train, riding until the end of the line. Waiting for my stop so I could get out and catch a bus. Too late, I realized that my Karamel Sutra would be half-melted by the time I got home. After growing up in the suburbs, I wasn't used to grocery store trips that took an hour one-way.

  A simple enough solution: I'd have to invest in some of those insulated grocery bags. And maybe a few ice packs. But in that moment, irrationally, it felt like just another in a long list of failures that proved I never should have come here in the first place.

  As I sat in the plastic seat that was far too narrow for any normal human, my eyes drifted down to an abandoned newspaper on the seat beside me. It was folded open to the middle, one of the pages adorned with blurry pictures of D-list celebrities who'd been unlucky enough to encounter a TMZ photographer while they walked their dogs.

  Damn, I was out of touch. Not a single one of these names or faces looked familiar to me, except...

  Daniel Thorne out walking with his wife and baby daughter -

  Of course I'd heard the name before, although I never saw a picture of the guy. It was his wife who
caught my attention.

  My jaw dropped as I stared at her.

  Maddy?

  Chapter Two

  Ben

  I had a hangover.

  Not in the traditional sense of the word. I hadn't been drinking. Much. I'd certainly had more ice cream than I'd had booze. But I felt bleary and exhausted, my stomach tied in knots and a faint taste of regret and failure in the back of my mouth.

  It took me a while to remember much of anything.

  The wall calendar was the first reminder of why I'd run off the rails last night.

  God damn it.

  Daria always kept a wall calendar. God only knows why. I kept telling her to use the stupid app on her phone, and she wouldn't need a wall calendar with a Sharpie tied up next to it, because this was the fucking future and she was being insane. I hated the grimy string that held the thing in place, just like I hated the little valance curtain that hung above the kitchen window.

  But it was still there.

  I rolled over, violently punching the accent pillow on the sofa. Sometimes I still slept on it, for old time's sake.

  Certainly not because I fell asleep after watching some Lifetime movie about sadness and death and cancer.

  Certainly not that.

  Daria's mother was the kind of person who kept fluffy seat covers on toilets. That should have been my first clue. Nothing made of fabric belongs in the bathroom or the kitchen - the two dirtiest rooms in the house. Unless it's a floor mat or an oven mitt, I want it out of my sight.

  And Daria was gone.

  Every once in a while, it hit me fresh. Like it had just happened. There was no escaping these days, although they came less and less frequently with time. I just had to get through them. Weather them somehow, with the help of my good friends Ben and Jerry.

  I didn't even care about her anymore. The Daria I loved as a concept was long gone, and I knew that. I was finished mourning her. It led nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Why bother? Why waste my energy? It was like loving a ghost. Except more pointless, because my concept of Daria couldn't even make pottery with me while the Righteous Brothers played in the background. She was beyond ethereal. She was completely nonexistent, in every possible iteration of every universe.