by Reiss, CD
—Maybe I’ll see you there—
Friday night, I was making a quick dinner in what I still considered Grandpa’s kitchen. Behind the things he used most was a level of filth I couldn’t leave alone. He had a garlic press he must have thrown back in the drawer without cleaning sometime in 2005. I was getting the impression he’d had a mental decline none of us had known about, and it made me sad for him.
The phone rang as I cleaned the grime off a coffee mug. I held the phone in my palm, recognizing the caller as someone I’d gotten a new number to avoid.
But he was irresistible, and that was always the problem.
“Hello,” I said.
“Kayla baby,” Zack answered. His voice, so smooth and melodic, used to lull me into a sense of well-being.
Now it was just annoying.
“Hi.”
“You changed your number.”
“Yeah, I was going to call you, but it’s been busy.”
Lying was easier if I focused on the truth. It had been busy, and I was going to call him eventually.
“That’s all right. Talia gave it to me.”
Talia obviously found him irresistible as well. I hadn’t explicitly told her not to give him my contact information, so I couldn’t blame her.
“I’m just checking in on you,” he said. “How’s LA?”
“Fine. The weather’s everything they say.”
“I miss you.”
Sure. Now he missed me. The guy who’d spent three years treating me like a piece of furniture suddenly missed me. Some days, I’d wished he’d just cheat on me so I’d know why I was an afterthought.
“Yeah,” I said, putting the last mug on the rack. “So, how’s Buster?”
“He misses you, too, don’t you, boy? He’s wagging his tail.”
“He must want a treat.” Zack’s Chihuahua liked me well enough, and maybe he missed jumping on my lap for a stroke or eating my shoes, but I wasn’t giving his owner the satisfaction of admitting it.
“I think he does.” I heard him pop the box open. “So, Friday night and you’re home.”
Did I want to tell him I just hadn’t gone out yet? I didn’t owe him an explanation, and I didn’t want to deal with twenty passive-aggressive questions.
“So are you.”
“It’s midnight here. I just got back. Laura and Jeremy say hi.”
“Hi.”
My phone rattled in my hand. Another call. I looked at the screen, and sure enough it was from Nevada. Not Las Vegas. Just Nevada.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Yeah. Hey. You know Laura said Sartorial X Jeans is looking for someone.”
“And?”
“You should call her about it.”
“Did she tell you to ask me?”
“I’m just putting it out there.”
The phone vibrated again.
“Why?”
“You could come home.”
Pure Zack. It had taken years for me to realize he didn’t hear a word I said. He just batted those thick black lashes over his sapphire-blue eyes, and I mistook that for attention. Even when I left New York and was crystal clear that meant I was leaving him, too, he didn’t hear me.
“I have to go.”
“I’ll text you Laura’s number.”
I switched lines without responding, but I’d missed the Nevada call.
I’d promised Justin I’d let him know if something came in. So I did.
As soon as he picked up, a blast of loud music and voices hit my ear.
“Did you get a call?” he shouted.
“Yes, but I didn’t answer.” I was shouting as if I were the one in a nightclub.
“You coming to NV later?”
“Yes!”
“Come around the back entrance. I’ll put you on the list.”
“But—”
He hung up.
Hector, Evelyn, and half a dozen people I recognized from set were almost in front of the shorter line at the club. I hopped out of the cab and rushed to them, passing a line that went around the corner.
“How are you running in those shoes!” Evelyn exclaimed. My neon-yellow Vivienne Westwood shoes had a front platform as high as a textbook and a thick heel in back.
“They’re really comfortable,” I lied. The bouncer sent the group in front of us to the line on the other side of the door.
“Not good,” Hector muttered.
“What’s not good?” I asked.
“They’re picky tonight.” He glanced at Evelyn’s shirt, and I understood the problem right away. Her hair was falling out of her ponytail, and she was wearing a brightly printed cowboy blouse over the same jeans she’d worn to work.
“How many in your party?” a redheaded whip of a guy in a white satin shirt asked.
“Nine,” Hector said.
The redhead looked us over.
“We’ll take eight.” He pointed to Evelyn. “You can wait on that line.”
We looked at each other. Evelyn looked like she wanted to die. This posed a conundrum for everyone. I’d seen it before. Some things were the same no matter which coast you were on. We’d all wait in the long line to support Evelyn, and at three a.m. we’d go to a twenty-four-hour diner and complain about stupid bouncers and hot clubs. It wasn’t fair, but nothing really was.
“I’m tired anyway,” Evelyn said. “I’ll just—”
“Seven,” I said, then turned to Hector. “I got it. Go on.”
“We’ll all go,” he objected.
I pulled Evelyn back.
“We’re good. See you later.”
“But—” Evelyn started.
“Come on,” I interrupted, looping my arm in hers and pulling her down the block. “Trust me.”
“Where are we going?”
A guy with a camera blew past us and whipped around a corner, behind the building.
“Follow him.”
We walked fast to catch up. Another guy with a camera and bag came from the other direction and turned the same corner.
“Are you sure you’re okay in those shoes?”
“I’m fine.”
We turned into the back alley and walked toward a pack of paparazzi behind a velvet rope, in the middle of a right-of-way between the building and the parking lot. They shouted questions at Brad Sinclair, the actor, who was getting out of a matte-black Ferrari. He waved, flipped them the bird, and was escorted through the back door.
I was the only one wearing black except the woman in a tuxedo and a wire over her ear.
“We don’t belong here,” Evelyn said.
“Yes, we do.”
“If they didn’t let me in the front, they won’t let me in the back.” She stopped. “Kayla, just quit it, okay.”
“Why?”
“It’s not going to work.”
“Trust me.”
“No. You don’t know what it’s like to be humiliated in front of everyone.”
“I do. Evelyn, I swear I do and—”
“When did it ever happen to you?” She crossed her arms, demanding I tell her things I hadn’t told anyone on this side of the country.
“In New York.”
“You were picked out of a group as the only one not cool enough to get into a club?”
“No. It was worse. No one would even wait on line with me.”
“Why?”
“Miss,” the woman in the tuxedo said. “Line’s out front.”
“I’m on the list.” I kept my chin up as if I was sure I belonged there. “Kayla Montgomery.”
Tuxedo checked her clipboard, flipping pages back and forth. A bearded paparazzo jostled me, trying to get a better spot.
“Whose list is it?” Tuxedo asked.
“Justin Beckett. And I have a plus-one.”
She flipped three pages back. The bearded guy leaned away, and when I looked at him, I caught him eyeballing me as if memorizing my face.
“Problem?” I said. I stopped myself from telling him t
o take a picture because it lasted longer. He just nodded as if he didn’t have a single problem I wasn’t the solution to. Great. Now I was associated with Justin Beckett.
“There’s no plus-one,” Tuxedo said.
I took out my phone. “I’ll call Justin and have him add one.”
I hoped the threat would be enough to get her to let us in, but apparently not.
“Oh my God.” Evelyn hid her face in her hands as I hit the green dot on my phone.
“Yo,” Justin said. “You here?”
“I need a plus-one.”
“One sec.”
He hung up, and we waited as Tuxedo went about the business of letting someone else in.
“What is happening?” Evelyn whispered with urgency.
“We’re going to have a good time,” I said. “We just have to wait a minute.”
“What if they let me in?” she said. “They’re going to realize it was a mistake and kick me out, and it’ll be worse.”
“They won’t because it’s not.”
Tuxedo opened the rope for us. When we were through, she closed it behind us, and the paparazzi took a few shots as if we were stars.
“Left hand, please.”
We held out our wrists, and she wrapped a hot-pink wristband around mine, then Evelyn’s.
“VIP room’s up the stairs.” She opened the door. “No pictures or video.”
“Thanks.” We went into the carpeted vestibule. The walls vibrated in a rhythm that seemed both far away and readily available. The door into the club and the stairway to the left were manned with bouncers. Right in front of me, as if they were even human, Brad Sinclair was chatting it up with Michael Greyson and a few others I didn’t recognize.
Maintaining the seen-it-all attitude was going to be hard. Once, while interning at Jeremy St. James, I’d done a fitting for Gwen March’s Emmy gown. I’d been competent and undaunted by her fame, yet I’d beamed with pride when she won. Her hem was straight because of me. I was background, but I’d touched something seen by millions.
Being in that lobby was the exact opposite experience. With nothing to do—no pins or tape measure and nothing to express my competence—I was background, and somehow ineffectual and awed.
Evelyn had frozen in place—that was something I could manage.
“Hey, so what’s that history you were doing?”
She snapped out of it.
“History?”
“Yeah. Tell me about your master’s.”
“I was studying the intersection of fashion and technology. Like why cotton is so cheap and how you have to analyze changes in supply chain so . . . oh my God, they’re coming this way.”
Michael and Brad were making their way to the stairs, and I snapped out of it. We had someplace to go. I turned to the VIP entrance, and the bouncer opened the rope to let us through.
“Nice shoes,” Brad Sinclair said from behind me.
“They clash with the wristband.” I ended the quip by nearly tripping on my long, drapey pants. I grabbed Evelyn so I wouldn’t tumble.
Brad chuckled at either my joke or the near pratfall.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
This is what you get for wearing long pants in July.
Head down, I opened the heavy curtain at the top of the stairs.
Though dark and well designed with dark woods and ambient light, tables and chairs were still fashioned for mere mortals.
“This is so cool,” Evelyn whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Eddie’s here.”
I followed her gaze to Eddie, who was standing at the bar with Thomasina Wente, the runway model. He was three inches shorter than her, but looking up while he spoke didn’t seem to bother him.
“Go say hello. I have to find Justin.”
“No way!” She clutched my arm.
I was about to ask why but would only hear the obvious. She had a thing for him but didn’t want to battle a German fashion model. Completely reasonable.
“We should go downstairs,” she said. “Everyone’s there.”
“Later. I’m going to get a drink.”
As we headed in that direction, Eddie turned and saw us. He was in a loose white shirt and tight tapestry vest. Evelyn clutched harder, even when he waved us over.
Thomasina Wente said something I couldn’t hear, and by the time we got to the bar, she’d moved on to something else.
“Kayla,” he said with a nod before moving to my companion. “Evelyn.”
He looked at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
“Hi,” she said.
“Can I get you guys something?”
Justin wasn’t visible right away, but I saw Carter standing against the wall with his hands in front of him. Then I caught sight of one of Justin’s entourage walking away from the bar with a drink in each hand and followed him to a bank of couches in the corner.
“I’ll have a beer,” Evelyn said.
From the back couch where Justin held court, he saw me. For a split second, I didn’t recognize him. Not by name. Not by reputation. Just a man whose presence radiated outward.
“Anything for you?” Eddie asked from a million miles away.
Justin Beckett, in a weird moment, wasn’t the fallen boy-band superstar or the entitled asshole who peeled three hundreds off the stack and dropped them in my lap to buy my secretarial services. He was immortal and he called.
“I’m good,” I said, walking toward him.
“Hey,” Evelyn said. “Where are you going?”
“Just over there.”
Eddie leaned over the bar in a deep drink-related discussion. I took the opportunity to give Evelyn the thumbs-up before the crowd parted so I could see Justin fully. His sweatpants hung low on his waist, and his gold chain flashed. The overcompensation of his outfit shut down my trance like a TV on static. Shoulders slouched, fingering an empty glass, he was unbearably human and startlingly beautiful, with a sore melancholy that was the core of every sad song ever written.
He was the kind of guy I could really fall for, which meant he was garbage.
“Kaylacakes,” he cried with his hand out, fingers curling back and forth in a hand-it-over gesture. The silly nickname broke the spell, erasing his approachable magnificence and turning it into the irritating injustice of genetic accidents. That was his talent. Being whatever you wanted to see in a man.
With two hands, he shoved the woman sitting next to him and patted the empty space she left behind as if I were a puppy dog.
I hated doing what I was told, so I sat on the table in the center of the U of couches and unlocked my phone.
“You look nice,” he said a little too appreciatively, flicking a fold in my pants. “All dressed up in black like a real New Yorker.”
“Here’s the call,” I said, opening my recent calls before handing the phone over. He looked at the number and the ones around it. His seductive appreciation of my outfit was gone. “You really should just take the phone. This is silly.”
“Who were you on the phone with when it came in?”
“None of your business.”
He leveled his gaze at me, and I met it without flinching. Both our jaws were set, but I was right, and when he looked down, it must have been because he realized he didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“Hold on,” he said, swiping to text messages. He replied to the call I’d missed with a text. “We got this. We got it.”
—Hey. Where u?—
“We don’t have anything, Justin. I didn’t sign up to be your secret receptionist or for twenty questions about who I’m talking to when a call comes in. I’m just trying to live and have a life, and you think you can take over. It’s not enough that I got dressed up to come halfway across town because I basically did your grandmother a favor. You act like I owe you something.”
He nodded, sucking his left cheek between his teeth.
“Let me get you a drin
k.” He looked over my shoulder. “Vic, get her a . . .” He turned back to me. “What do you drink?”
“I don’t want you to buy me a drink.”
He put his elbows on his knees and leaned into me. I still expected him to smell like Axe body spray, but he smelled like the ocean. “You’re gonna make me surprise you?”
“Nothing about you is surprising.”
He smirked, glanced at the phone to find no reply, and turned back up to me.
“You’re so tough. So, I’m guessing scotch or straight rye. Something that makes you want to punch kittens. Maybe on the rocks since it’s July.” His tongue flicked to lick his lower lip. “But you’re here. Dressed in black all up and down with big yellow shoes. Still talking to me when you despise me and every word out of my mouth. Like you want to be sweet but it’s so damn hard.”
“We’re back to hard?”
I tried to hook him away from an intimate come-on that was uncomfortably real and into something manageably shallow.
He didn’t take the bait, leaving me with the possibility that he was as attracted to me as I was to him. I suddenly felt like a balloon inflated to the point of breaking.
“Old fashioned,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have a guess.” He looked over my shoulder. “Get her the Star Slider. Another club soda for me.”
“I don’t have to drink it.”
“You should try it. It’s sticky and unsatisfying. Sour at the back.” He gave half a shrug. “Like my apology.”
“What apology?”
“The one I owe you for being a dick.”
That was it. No actual apology followed. He just waited for me to accept something he never offered. Maybe that was as good as it got with him. Too bad it wasn’t good enough.
“Pay up,” I said with extra pop on my p.
He nodded, sucked his cheek in some more, looked away, stalling like an old car.
“I’m—” He stopped as my phone lit the bottom of his face, vibrating in his hand. When we looked down at it, the tops of our heads touched.
—On the 15. Driving. Text later—
“Yes!” he cried. “Hell, yes!”
He grabbed my face and went to kiss me, but we both turned just enough to land his lips on my cheek.
“Yes!” he said again with a smile that could sell magazines off the rack faster than they could be stocked. “Thank you! Thank. You. Kay. La!”