Wrapped Around My Finger

by Kristen Strassel

  I’d invite her to the opening. It was the perfect way to bring her back into my life. The gallery wouldn’t be complete without her.

  The only exhibits in the gallery so far were the giant painting I’d originally bought for the place that I’d had in my living room, and the pictures I took of Leah at the amphitheater. The front door was open and everyone was welcome. Steamy, sultry, late spring air floated in, and it added to the atmosphere. It made me think of sangrias, salsa music, and Leah’s curls tickling my damp skin as she kissed me.

  “Looking good, man.” The problem with having the door open was anyone could come in. Including Zach. “Didn’t think you’d go through with it after you and Miss America broke up.”

  His eyes were red, glassy saucers that threatened to pop out of his head any minute. If they did, I’d put them on a pedestal and label his exhibit This Is Your Brain On Drugs. “It’s barely noon.”

  I didn’t have to specify, he knew exactly what I was talking about. He stumbled back, spreading his arms wide. “So what. I’m starting a new venture.”

  This ought to be good. “What’s that?”

  “Me and the guys got in touch with some of the regulars. Not the famous ones, they won’t come anywhere near us. For a while anyway, until everything blows over. We’re doing our own thing. Rebuilding. We don’t need Barry. They’re asking about you, Jag. I don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve got the magic touch. Even more so after your thing with Miss America. Maybe they see you as an easy target. I don’t know. But if you want a job—”

  “No fucking way.” I cut him off before he launched into his sales pitch. He was good at this. We’d both learned from the best. “People have their eye on that kind of stuff now. And it’s Leah. Cut the shit with the Miss America.”

  Zach scoffed. “Whatever. This won’t make the kind of money you’re used to pulling in. I know you’re still hung up on....Leah, but how’s it going to go when your condo gets foreclosed on? Or your car gets repoed? Let me tell you something. She doesn’t want a starving artist. That’s not her scene. You think you’re doing all this so she won’t hate you. But if you fail, you’ll make yourself resent her.”

  For once, Zach made too much sense.

  “Go out with one of the girls,” he continued. “Get this whole relationship thing out of your system.”

  “Bring one of them to the opening.” I went back to my laptop, hoping Zach would get the hint that I was done with this conversation.

  His face brightened, thinking I was considering his offer. Not for the reason he thought. I’d just meant to shut him up, but I hated how tempting it actually was. This empty space scared the hell out of me. Escorting was easy, and I was good at it. The gallery could be a massive failure, and he’d laugh his ass at me when I came to him begging for a job.

  “I’ll do that. Wanna go for a beer?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “Okay. I’m proud of you.” Zach stopped before he got the door. “Miss America did you some good.”

  That she did.

  Zach gave me all the motivation I needed to get this going. I got in touch with an artist who was interested in showing her work in the gallery, and she suggested a friend who might have some work that was a good fit. I was looking for industrial, postmodern, and any sort of metal work for the first round. I wanted to tell a cohesive story at the opening.

  My heart stopped when the phone rang. As much as I gave Leah shit for not getting multiple ring tones, I hadn’t done it, either. So when it was my agent, or her agent—I still wasn’t comfortable thinking of her as mine—called, I groaned and considered letting it go to voicemail.

  She’d called a lot lately with offers of everything from in-person events to walk on roles on sitcoms. The photo shoots excited me when I thought I’d be the one behind the camera. No, they wanted to take pictures of me. I turned them all down. I’d gone from her easiest client to the one she probably couldn’t wait to get rid of in the space of one lawsuit.

  I answered the call. It was easier to get it over with.

  “You can’t say no to this one, Jagger.” She already knew my MO. She hadn’t even pitched the idea yet. “It’s the network, so you’re contractually obligated to do it. They’re still paying you.”

  Already it didn’t sound appealing. “What is it?”

  “A Night in the Life wants to interview you on Friday night's show. I made sure you’ll have a list of questions ahead of time, so there will be no surprises. Some of the questions will be a little uncomfortable. There’s no avoiding that. But we can go over them together, and you’ll know what you want to say.”

  “It’s Wednesday.” There was no way they could pull this off.

  “They want to do it live.” She gave that a second to settle. “You’ll fly up on Friday morning, and be back home Saturday morning. Quick and painless.”

  Maybe for her. Once she got my ass on the plane, her work was done. I didn’t have much room to negotiate. The show was happening in less than forty-eight hours.

  “Will Leah be there?” My heart pounded at the thought of seeing here there, knowing this was the last thing she’d want to do. If our agent knew we weren’t together anymore, she didn’t hear it from me. I didn’t know how Leah handled being in the public eye for so long. It had been only a couple weeks for me and it felt like years of my life.

  “Yes.”

  And that was the only fucking reason to go through with this. “I’ll be there.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Leah

  Nothing was working.

  When I was a kid, I broke one of my mom’s vases. At the time, I didn’t understand her attachment to it, but even at the tender age of twelve, I knew the vase was important. My sister Lisa and I spent the afternoon frantically gluing it back together, sweeping up all traces of dirt from the rug, and arranging the plant to make it look like it had suffered no major trauma before our parents got back. Twelve-year-olds shouldn’t be put in charge of anything. We were pretty damn proud of ourselves for pulling it off. Just when we started to relax, sometime after dinner, the thing exploded all over the living room. We had to fess up to the crime.

  I felt exactly like that again. Everything I dove into felt great at first, until it didn’t. I’d started and abandoned about a half dozen projects in the last couple of weeks. They were little things around the house—I wanted to refresh my portfolio with things that weren’t associated with Great Start Today. Reno’s house was the only recent project I felt good about. I questioned every decision I made, and if it was even worth it.

  I could run to the end of the Earth, but I couldn’t get away from the pariah that was hell-bent on destroying everything. I’d thought I’d gotten far enough from it that it could no longer pollute my spirit. But unemployed, alone, and completely dehydrated of my creative juices, it was obvious I couldn’t escape it.

  Kari would arrive any minute to bring me to the airport. My suitcase lay open on my bed, swimming in a sea of crumpled clothing. I hadn’t taken a shower. I may not have admitted it to myself, but I knew how this night would end.

  “Good news!” Kari called out when she came into my bedroom. I hadn’t seen her smile like this at anyone but Reno in a long time. “Someone with a law degree finally exercised a little common sense and tossed that garbage lawsuit out of court. It’s over.”

  “Is it?” Any other night I would’ve been ecstatic. I held up a dress, but it was all wrong. I couldn’t wear it on TV. “What about all those lawsuits you threatened me with the other night? I want to countersue, by the way. For slander and defamation of character.”

  “Absolutely. But you’re safe. The precedent has been set. Nobody can prove you willfully did anything harmful.” Kari frowned, picked up a discarded jacket, folded it and put it in the suitcase. “Leah, you’re going to miss your flight. Let me help you.”

  “I can’t do it.” I sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly light-heade
d.

  She took the dress from me. “This one’s never been my favorite. What about the blue wrap dress? Do you want to bother with a dress? You’ll have to sit with your legs crossed the entire time or the camera will see right up your skirt.”

  That actually got a laugh out of me. “I meant I’m not going to New York.”

  Kari pushed aside a pile of clothes and sat next to me. She squeezed my hand tight. “Sweetie, you have to go.” She was never this understanding. “You’ll lose your job if you don’t.”

  I shook my head. “My job doesn’t exist anymore. And this is an interview. On live TV.” My heart kicked against my ribcage so hard I thought it would land in my suitcase. “I can’t face him with all of America watching.”

  Waiting for us to fuck something else up. To fall flat on our faces. All those people who loved me so much changed their minds as soon as they found out I had to hire my boyfriend.

  “I wish I could tell you it won’t be hard. I can’t. But they’re expecting you there in a couple hours. You approved the questions you can be asked—“

  “It’s live TV. They can slip in anything. And they will, for ratings. But it’s not that. This can’t be the first time I see Jagger again, in a TV studio with people waving powder brushes in our faces and asking us to check our microphones. That’s not for everyone else. It’s for us.”

  “What will you tell Jagger if you don’t go?”

  I had to think about my answer. I hadn’t gotten past the debilitating anxiety over getting on the plane to get that far in the plan. “That I value whatever scrap of our relationship that’s left too much to turn it into a publicity stunt.”

  He had to understand. And even more than that, I hoped he felt the same way.

  Kari nodded. “I support whatever you decide to do. But as your friend, I have to also say that I think you’ll do far more damage by not going.”

  “Yeah, right. I’ll get fired.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Well, yeah, that’s pretty important. It’s your only source of income. Take it from me, it goes fast when there’s nothing coming in to replenish it. I was actually talking about Jagger. This can’t be any easier on him than it is on you. And he might think you don’t want to see him. That he was right about you being better off without him.”

  I glanced at my alarm clock. I had minutes to decide if I could go through with it. Kari made a lot of sense. I hated to think of anything as a loss. I liked to think that something could be gained from every experience, but all this interview would do would kick the dust back up. Put us back in the public eye. It didn’t matter how rehearsed our answers were, they could still be twisted and taken out of context. Just because we approved the questions gave us no control over each other’s answers. If this was the last time I would see Jagger, I refused to let it end like this.

  “I can fix the rest of it if I don’t go. But if I go and it’s bad, I can’t fix that,” I finally said. My decision had already been made, and not even the best unemployed attorney in the country could change my mind.

  “Okay.” Kari stood up, surveying the room. Just because she couldn’t fix one mess didn’t mean she’d give up on the rest of it. She grabbed my phone. “Who am I sharing the good news with?”

  “My agent. She can handle the rest of it.” I was so glad Kari offered to make the call. That’s what best friends were for. There was absolutely no way I could face Diane or anyone I used to work with. Not even on the phone. “You’ll watch it with me, right?”

  “You want to do that?” she asked. I nodded. Kari’s mouth dropped. “I was already planning on having the wine flu tomorrow. Do you think they’ll still do the interview? Have him go on by himself?”

  Jagger would hate that. I almost changed my mind. No, I would not contribute to this disaster.

  I shrugged. “They have no time to come up with anything else. If they do have him on, I get to see him.”

  And find out what he really had to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Jagger

  “She’s not coming.” Diane charged into the room, frantic as her headset slipped down to her shoulders.

  What the...? They couldn’t be talking about Leah. If they were, something was wrong. Very wrong. She’d never flake out on something like this. They had to have railroaded her into this like they did to me.

  Someone I’d never seen before stepped in front of Diane. “What do you mean she’s not coming? We’re live in two hours.”

  “Ms. Godfrey did not make her flight. That’s all the agent said.” Diane opened her laptop and violently banged on the keys like she had a code to make Leah appear.

  Red hot rage coursed through me, followed by an overwhelming finality that hit me in the gut. She wasn’t coming. I slammed my fist against the pillow. A fucking whirlwind of finger pointing and name calling swirled around me, and I sunk further into the black hole I opened when I left Leah’s house. As many times as I thought about blowing this off, I made the trip to New York to see her. No matter if we were together or not, we had a promise to each other. Or so I thought.

  I’d always expected her to say it to my face.

  We should’ve talked to each other before this, but the way the network sprung it on us, there hadn’t been time. If she’d planned to stage a coup all along, I could’ve been in on it. Changed my flight to DC. Watched them scramble for our replacements from her bed. It could’ve been the thing that brought us back together. But apparently that wasn’t what she wanted.

  “Jagger,” someone called to me from the chaos. “Will you still go on? Do the interview by yourself?”

  It was the easiest decision I’d ever made. “Yeah. I will.”

  The producers talked at me, thanking me repeatedly for saving the night. Insisting I’d be great. Their words echoed inside me. I nodded, I wanted this to be over. To go back to Miami, and get on with my fucking life.

  “Can you approve these new questions?” A familiar voice jolted me back into the room. I looked up to see Shannon smiling sadly at me. “I know it’s nothing to compared to what you’re feeling, but I’m really disappointed that she’s not here.”

  “She liked you.” Didn’t mean much, since she’d liked me, too. “Always gushed about what a good job you did.”

  Shannon’s face lit up. “Leah was honestly the best boss I ever had. I miss her, a lot. I wish I could call her and ask her advice on things because it’s not the same without her.”

  That made two of us. Fuck, we were talking about her like she was dead. We were both in mourning.

  I looked over the papers Shannon gave me and nodded.

  “I’ll send them over to your agent for approval.”

  “Fuck that. Don’t bother.” Playing by the rules got me absolutely nowhere.

  Shannon’s eyes bugged out. “Are you sure?” I nodded, and she looked over her shoulder, checking if we were alone. “Jagger, they’ll do everything they can to get ratings. If you don’t have someone else sign off on these, they can—and will—ask whatever they want. It’s your word against theirs.”

  Sounded familiar. And it hadn’t worked for me yet. “I have absolutely nothing to hide.”

  One more eyebrow raise. “Okay. But don’t mind me if I just accidently send them over. You know, because I forgot.” Shannon laughed, but it died quickly when I didn’t join in. She took a deep breath before she closed the door behind her.

  Shannon still had hope.

  Finally, I had a minute to myself. To figure out what the fuck I was going to say. We’d spent so much time on the questions, but hardly any on the answers. Everything I’d approved was contingent on Leah being there. Without her...I could fuck it up royally or fix everything.

  Although, after the no-show, I wasn’t sure if anything was at stake anymore.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Ready in five?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  I picked up my phone out of habit. Her face was still on my screen. No matter what, she�
�d always be the most beautiful woman I’d ever met.

  A text bar covered her eyes.

  I’m sorry.

  Chapter Thirty

  Leah

  Jagger took my breath away. It always happened when I hadn’t seen him for a while. In person was always different than Skype, which we did every night. Or we used to, anyway. But I’d never seen him like this, on the flat screen TV in my living room.

  His brow was furrowed, his jaw set in a hard line. There was no hiding the emptiness that radiated from the screen. Totally shut down. It hurt me to see him that way because I knew whatever it was that ached inside him still hadn’t been fixed. I’d done it to him. A little piece of me thought he deserved it for walking out. For getting in the car that morning and driving away while I cried.

  They only showed him for a moment, then he was gone. They cut to a package that they’d put together that featured me prominently, no doubt made with the expectation that I’d actually show up. I left the producers with no time to change that. Plus, whatever the network’s motive was putting together the interview, they didn’t have any real dirt to dig up on us. The worst was already on full display, unless Jagger dropped a bombshell. I braced myself for impact.

  Kari squeezed my hand. Raven snuggled against me on the other side. I grasped both of them tightly to keep myself from reaching out for the screen, throwing myself at it, or throwing it out the window. I never should’ve abandoned Jagger. And he hadn’t answered my text. I tried to tell him why I didn’t come, but I erased everything that I wrote. I’m sorry said it all.