by Knight, JJ
I whisper, “We thought you died.”
She blinks, and the tears spill out. She smiles through the tears. “But you didn’t know for sure,” she says. “That’s what I gave you when I left. The gift of hope.”
I turn to Amanda. “This is crazy. All of this. It isn’t happening.”
“Take a deep breath,” Amanda says. “Now tell us what happened with Dylan. Start at the beginning, and take your time.”
“The beginning?”
I sniff.
The girls wait patiently.
So, I start at the beginning. I tell them everything.
All the insane corporate stuff at Morris.
The spycams in the loft.
The scar on Dylan’s back and the awful truth of how he got it.
Our beautiful weekend together in the hotel, celebrating his deal.
The way he comforted me, his voice in the darkness like my safety line.
Both of us swimming naked in his glimmering new pool. How he made me see stars in the murky LA night sky.
Laughing, I tell them how he tore down curtains for us to use as towels.
Crying, I tell them how perfect everything felt that night when we drove home after the concert.
Numb, I relay what happened today with Mr. Morris.
And, of course, the chilling message from Q.
I pull out my phone and show them the text on my cracked screen.
This part is hard to talk about.
We’re at the emotional devastation of Dylan breaking up with me, and dumping me like trash on a street full of hookers.
I sob, my body shaking like it might break.
They pat my back and wait. The details come out in bursts, between sobs.
Once it’s all out, I feel serene. Like that glimmering pool behind Dylan’s new house. Not even a ripple
We sit in silence together. The sound on the TV is off, but the picture flickers on the walls around us.
After a while, Riley says, “We’re going to sue Morris Music. I can’t even count all the things they’ve done wrong. If they aren’t bankrupt yet, they will be.”
Amanda is crammed onto the couch on my other side. She pats my knee. “Don’t worry, Jess. You’ll meet someone better. Caleb has some nice friends. And I can get you some shifts at the bar, no problem.”
I rub my face with my hands. I expect my cheeks to be wet, but I’m not crying anymore. I feel numb again, but in a fuzzy way, from the Percocet.
“No, guys. I’m going to use my plane ticket and go home.”
“This is your home now,” Amanda says.
I rub my numb face again, enjoying the sensation of not feeling.
“LA is like Dylan Wolf. It makes a lot of promises, but deep down, it’s bad for me. I’m going.”
“What would Nan say?” Riley asks.
Nan’s voice comes into my head as clear as if she was standing in front of us. Jessica, don’t be a bonehead. That’s what she’d say.
It doesn’t matter, though.
I still want to go home.
Chapter 14
Morning comes.
After a long night, the sun comes up again.
I wake up to the sound of my alarm clock.
It’s tomorrow. It’s Tuesday.
I sit up, turn the buzzer off, and climb out of bed.
Like a robot, I take a shower and get dressed for work.
I keep my mind blank, but I still see Dylan’s face every time I turn my head. I remember how his lip curled up in disgust. How his voice was full of hurt and anger.
The words we said last night will be the last things we ever say to each other.
And those words will keep replaying in my mind, over and over again, until I stop breathing.
“Tell me it was worth two grand to use me,” he said.
Then we fought. I said terrible things.
I told him I cared about him. I didn’t say I loved him.
Then he pulled onto that street.
I shouldn’t have gotten out of the car. I should have held my ground.
But then he said, “This is where you belong.”
In that moment, I believed him. I agreed with him. So I got out of the car, and that was the end of us.
Jess and Dylan are no more.
Blue shoes for your blue heart.
I can’t even get out the front door without breaking down crying.
I fill my pockets with tissues and stumble out to catch the bus to work.
On the bus, I cradle my cracked phone in my hand like it’s a bird’s egg.
I send Dylan three messages, all saying:
I’m sorry.
He doesn’t reply.
I get to the Morris building at the regular time, and go through security. I’m in a daze.
I step into an empty elevator. I’m surprised when it goes down to the basement. I’m not even thinking straight. I honestly expected to get summoned up to the tenth floor.
The lights are off, and Nick isn’t here.
I turn the lights on and sit at my desk.
Three hours later, he hasn’t shown up.
I pick up the phone and dial reception. It goes to the automated system. I listen to the company directory. I don’t know many people here at all.
When I hear Stephanie’s name, I press her number.
The phone rings and rings, then goes to voicemail.
I press zero to go back to the main directory. There’s an extension number for Mr. Morris.
I pause for two heartbeats, then press it.
He picks up after one ring. “Hello, Jessica Rivera.”
“What happened?” I ask.
He chuckles. “No small talk? Just straight to business? I like you, Jessica. Some people would hold it against you that you didn’t tell me your secret. But do you know what I admire in an employee?”
He pauses, waiting for a response from me.
Softly, I answer, “Being on time.”
He laughs. “Yes. Punctuality. And also loyalty. It doesn’t matter that you were loyal to the wrong team. You didn’t know they were the wrong team.”
I ask him a second time, “What happened?”
Something creaks over the phone line. I imagine him leaning back in that tall-backed burgundy leather chair, behind the big wooden desk.
“I had two options, and I chose the one that keeps Morris Music in the family. But why am I telling you this over the phone, Miss Rivera? You were on the inside. You know as much about this as anyone. Now, why don’t you take a ride up, so I can offer you an executive position in person?”
“An executive position?”
“Yes. I’m just looking over your personnel file. I have the results of your drug test, and I’m very pleased to see it’s clean. You don’t know how rare that is these days. I can tell you’re the sort of employee who cares about her career.”
“You’re promoting me because my drug test came up clean? But why? I don’t understand.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum, Miss Rivera. Yesterday, I lost a vice president, and at least five executives. Nick had to go, of course. And there were a few more I wasn’t sure about. To be safe, I cleaned house.”
“Nick’s gone?”
“Jessica, you don’t seem like your usual whip-smart self today. Weren’t you the top of your class? Don’t tell me that was all an act.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Morris. I’m a bit off today, because… Dylan Wolf broke up with me last night.”
His voice becomes thick and sweet like molasses. “Oh, sweetie. Chin up. I have three daughters, you know. I can practically see your little face, all scrunched up.”
His sudden sweetness makes me feel disgusted at myself for telling him. I take a sharp inhale, and my situation comes into focus.
If everyone thinks I’m going to mope around over Dylan endlessly, they’re underestimating me.
I put on a big, confident smile.
People shouldn’t underestimate me.
“Th
ank you, Mr. Morris,” I reply with equal sweetness. “I did have a difficult night, but it’s a new day today.”
“There’s my girl!”
“I have to ask you something, Mr. Morris. Did you already know about everything, or did I give it away?”
“Did I know David Ambler was running around pretending to be some mysterious talent scout named Q? Yes, I knew about that. The part that surprised me was that he found actual talent. He was never so motivated when he was working for me.”
“You were playing him?”
“Everyone’s playing someone.”
“But… it was Q who broke up me and Dylan. He told Dylan that I took money to get closer to him. Why would he do that?”
“When did he do that?”
“Yesterday. In the afternoon.”
There’s a pause, and then Mr. Morris answers slowly, “They say revenge is a dish best served cold.”
“Revenge?”
He sighs. “I suppose you should be thankful it’s over. Perhaps your Dylan will come back to you, in months or years. There’s that expression about loving something and setting it free. I probably know a dozen cliches I could tell you right now, about love and life. None of them will help, Jessica. The only thing you can do is keep moving forward. Now, come up to my office and we can talk about your promotion.”
“Give me… ten minutes,” I say softly.
“Take fifteen.” He hangs up the phone.
My whole body is numb again. I reach for my purse and start digging through it for makeup.
Q destroyed my and Dylan’s relationship as an act of revenge. And because he could.
If I’d just told Dylan the truth in the first place, we could have laughed at Q’s efforts. We could have survived this.
I was wrong to worry that his success would be the thing to tear us apart.
It wasn’t success, or even revenge.
It was me.
Chapter 15
Time has passed, and softened the pain.
For a while, every song I heard was about my heartbreak. Everywhere I looked, people were paired in couples.
Time is good.
Time doesn’t heal, but it softens.
As of now, months later, my time with Dylan feels like a collection of photos.
I see him in one photo, playing that beat-up old guitar.
He didn’t even buy the guitar, or play it until it got worn. He found it, left behind in the cabin he retreated to for a year. He never told me the whole story, but I’ve seen him tell it on talk shows.
Sometimes he talks about me. He never says my name. It’s always “this one girl.”
He acts like the handful of stories he tells about me are about different girls. But he and I both know I’m “this one girl” he broke into an abandoned house with. I’m “this one girl” who gave him a hard time about his driving. And I’m “this really fun girl” who christened his new swimming pool.
Most importantly, I’m the girl who inspired his big hit song.
His new song made Blue Shoes look like a throat-clearing cough, by comparison.
We broke up in the spring. He wrote the song and Morris Music released it within a week.
The song was picked up instantly, and went viral before Morris Music even had a video up. For the next four months, Dylan’s song blasted from every car stereo in this city, and across America. It was the anthem of summer.
The hit song, Where You Belong, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Dylan. He grinned out at me from magazine covers. I couldn’t escape him, so I had to get over him.
People love the contradiction of the song. Or maybe they don’t even notice. The lyrics are about being used, getting played, and then dropping your lover off on the street where they belong.
But the melody.
The melody is genius, like a roller coaster that keeps you in constant suspension. Despite the devastating lyrics, the song sounds like how a day at a summer carnival feels.
I’ve caught Riley and Amanda singing it.
I don’t like the song, but I still love his voice.
I still love him.
He branded himself into me, just like he said he would.
Loving Dylan Wolf, and feeling heartbroken over losing him, is just a part of me now. Like breathing.
I’m trying to move on, but you can’t stop breathing.
Chapter 16
Chet Morris walks into my office and plunks himself down on the visitor chair.
“It’s going to rain today,” he says. “Big storm. Maybe an inch or two of rain.”
I laugh and look over my shoulder out the window. It’s a typical sunny LA day.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” I tell him. Even as I answer, though, I notice the stormy clouds on the horizon.
An ominous feeling washes over me. I think I know why Chet is in my office.
He leans forward and picks up all the things on my desk, one at a time, to examine them. His bright green eyes miss nothing. He picks up a wooden puzzle box and solves it in seconds.
Chet Morris was appointed the new President of Morris Music four months ago. His uncle, Carter Morris, sold part of the company to a silent investor overseas. I haven’t seen Mr. Morris Senior since Chet took over.
I’m not sure how I feel about Chet Morris. He’s young—under thirty. His hair isn’t white, like his uncle’s, but it is light blonde. When you look at him, all you see are those emerald eyes. He’s charming and charismatic.
For a while, I thought Chet might be interested in dating me. He was always asking if I was seeing someone. But then he never made a move.
I suppose it’s better to keep things professional, because we work so closely.
He hasn’t appointed a vice president yet, and I don’t know if he ever will. The company had a contractor come in and split Maggie Clark’s former office into six smaller executive offices. I’m in one of the new offices, and the six of us on the tenth floor are his team.
Half the company probably thinks Chet and I are dating, or at least sleeping together. It’s pretty hard for people to believe I started at the absolute bottom and worked my way up to the tenth floor in half a year.
But I didn’t sleep with Chet, or anyone else, except for that mistake with the rock star.
The day I went up to his office, Mr. Morris Senior promoted me to Marketing, on the eighth floor. I had a few good ideas, and worked hard. It definitely helped that, unlike the other people my age, I wasn’t dating or partying. I put everything into my career, and soon I was in charge of a handful of people.
I’m still part of the marketing department, but Chet says it’s better for me to be up here, two floors away. This way they don’t all come running to me with small problems. The team figures things out, and I supervise.
Some days I feel a twinge of guilt for doing so well, and still being so young. But then I see what some of the successful artists make, and I laugh at my modesty.
Chet reaches across my desk for my coffee mug. I pretend to slap his wrist, but don’t. He sniffs my coffee and wrinkles his nose.
“How can you drink this stuff?” he asks.
“Is there something you wanted, Mr. Morris? Or are you really that worried about my caffeine and sugar intake? If you didn’t work us all so hard, I wouldn’t have to drink my breakfast at my desk.” I laugh to let him know I’m teasing.
“You can’t avoid him forever,” he says.
The ominous feeling washes over me again. He’s talking about Dylan Wolf. We haven’t spoken since he kicked me out of his car that night. All his dealings with Morris have been through other people.
I do what I can to avoid him.
When I see his face, it hurts to even breathe.
“I don’t have to be in today’s meeting,” I say.
“The meeting concerns your department. I’ve given you some leeway so far. I’m not heartless, like my uncle.” He laughs at his joke.
I can’t even manage a smile.
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“If you insist, I’ll go.”
“Three o’clock,” he says. “I won’t insist. I trust you’ll do what’s best for the company.”
He gets up and walks out.
I drop my professional facade and make a face at his back.
I turn back to my computer and try to work. There are a dozen things waiting for my input. I usually love the challenge, but I’m distracted. I’ve got Dylan’s gritty voice bouncing around in my head.
Turning on other music helps, but now it’s not his voice. Now I’m feeling his lips on mine. His hands running down my body. His hot breath on my throat.
After several hours of self-torture, I push my chair back and grab my purse.
It’s two-thirty now. If I’m out of the building, nobody can haul me into the meeting.
I duck into the elevator and call Riley for a late lunch. When she’s not traveling for work, her schedule is pretty flexible.
She says she was just about to call me, so this is perfect timing.
I leave the building and walk down to our favorite lunch place. I’m making enough money to buy a car, but I want to save up a little more first. Morris has a few cars I can use when meetings take me elsewhere, anyway.
I’m not waiting long before Riley comes in.
“Look at the two of us,” she says, grinning. “You look gorgeous, sis. Are we drinking?”
“Maybe we should. You-know-who is probably heading to Morris right now, for a meeting. Chet wanted me in the meeting, but I told him to screw himself.”
“Sure, you did,” she says, nodding. “You like Chet. You want to kiss him.”
I shake my head, laughing. When we lived together before, as kids, all we did was fight. It’s taken this long for us to get to the fun part of being sisters.
As soon as I understood that she ran away from home to protect me, it changed everything.
The waiter comes by, and we order our lunch. We like to get two different things, and then share.
After a moment, Riley looks straight at me, her brown eyes serious. “You should at least talk to him. It would be good to get closure.”
“Yeah, right,” I snort. “He can stab the knife into my chest a little deeper. Then I’ll go through your whole Percocet supply.”