by Penny Reid
It seemed like the more versatile of the two—easy to dress up or down—and therefore, the more sensible investment. Even though she knew black was boring, Melody liked the way the dress made her feel—like an adult instead of a kid playing dress-up.
“Girl, you look goood,” Jasmine said as Melody spun in front of the mirror. “You’re gonna fit right in.”
God, she hoped so.
Despite some low-key feelings of dread about meeting Jeremy’s girlfriend and the potential awkwardness that might entail, she was jazzed about the dinner. It was her first time going out in LA with other people.
Maybe she and Jeremy’s girlfriend would hit it off. Maybe they’d even end up being friends. It was hard to imagine she could have much in common with the girlfriend of someone like Jeremy Sauer, but it was worth a shot.
As hard as Melody had been trying to pretend like everything was going great, the loneliness was starting to get to her. She still hadn’t gotten to know any of her coworkers, and her neighbors were like ghosts she could hear but only caught rare glimpses of. From Friday afternoon to Monday morning, she barely talked to a single living soul, except maybe the check-out clerk at the grocery store or the pizza delivery guy. She’d started giving serious thought to getting a cat—even though she was allergic—just so she’d have someone to talk to besides herself.
She really needed to make a friend. Things were getting dire.
Melody got to the restaurant ten minutes early, because she was so worried about the traffic she ended up overcompensating. She didn’t want to seem anxious and uncool—even if she definitely was anxious and uncool—so she parked a few blocks away, sat in her car, and waited until she was a good two minutes late before driving up to the valet stand.
After all that, she was still the first one there, but at least she wasn’t early. A glamorous hostess with a tight ballerina bun and a judgy expression showed Melody to an empty table, and another ten minutes passed before Jeremy finally showed up with a gorgeous Latina woman in a curve-hugging pink dress.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Jeremy said.
“Nope, just got here,” Melody lied. For some reason, she seemed to lie a lot around Jeremy. Little white ones. Reflexive lies. She wasn’t sure why. Nerves, maybe.
He introduced his girlfriend, Lacey Lopez, who offered Melody a tight smile and a perfunctory, “Hey.” She was exactly as beautiful as Melody had feared a woman dating Jeremy Sauer would be. Big brown eyes, silky black hair, glowing skin, and an ass that could give Serena Williams a run for her money. Between Lacey and the hostess, Melody was already feeling like the nerdy, plain Jane outsider. Things were off to a super start.
“Our fourth texted that he’s running late,” Jeremy said.
“Shocking.” Lacey rolled her eyes as she reached for the cocktail menu.
“Fourth?” Melody asked, her smile frozen in place.
“Yeah, I invited my buddy Drew to join us. I hope it’s okay.”
She forced herself to unclench her teeth before she ground them into tiny stress nubs. “Sure,” she lied again. It was just a surprise blind date. No big deal, right? Who wouldn’t be okay with that?
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to set you two up,” Jeremy said. “Four’s just a better number for dinner than three, and you both went to school in Boston, so I figured you’d hit it off.”
“Drew’s hung up on my sister anyway,” Lacey volunteered, snagging a tiny biscuit from the bread basket.
The look Jeremy cut her in response made it seem like there was more to that story, but it was quickly replaced by a smile as the waiter arrived to take their drink orders.
They made strained small talk over cocktails. Jeremy and Melody did, anyway. Lacey barely spoke at all. Jeremy tried to draw her into the conversation a few times, but she remained persistently disinterested in anything other than her vodka martini and the bread basket. Surprisingly, the frowning looks he kept throwing her way didn’t seem to do much to warm her up.
Melody couldn’t tell whether Lacey was unhappy because of her—and her history with Jeremy—or if this was how Lacey always was. Maybe both. Either way, it was uncomfortable. They hadn’t even ordered, and Melody was already itching for this dinner to be over.
When Drew showed up a full thirty minutes later, Melody almost wept in relief. Jeremy was so right about four being a better number. Maybe he’d known going in Lacey would be antisocial, but if so, why bother setting this up in the first place?
Jeremy’s friend Drew Fulton was polished and handsome, just like Jeremy, but with brown eyes and thick, dark hair. He leaned over to give Lacey a peck on the cheek, which she tolerated with neither objection nor enthusiasm, and flagged down a passing waiter to order a drink before regarding Melody with a lopsided grin. “It’s nice to meet you, finally,” he said with a wink.
Melody had no idea how to take that. Did that mean Jeremy had told Drew about her? What had he told him about her? She stared down at her hands, which were twisted in her lap.
“Drew works in the movie business,” Jeremy said. Despite his insistence that this wasn’t a setup, it sounded like he was trying to sell Melody on Drew. Maybe it was just second nature to him—a part of that whole making connections thing he’d mentioned at lunch.
She offered Drew a polite smile. “Oh yeah? What do you do?”
“Development,” he said, flipping through the menu. “Mostly, it’s reading a lot of scripts, identifying the ones that are right for the studio, then shepherding them into production. Or trying to, anyway.”
Melody was a pop culture junkie, so she knew what development was, but she nodded like this was completely new information to her. Then hated herself for playing dumb to flatter a guy’s ego.
“Don’t forget the part where you’re constantly wined and dined by agents,” Jeremy said. “It’s a real hardship.”
“Well, you know me,” Drew said, flashing his lopsided grin. “Always with my nose to the grindstone.”
The waiter came by to drop off Drew’s drink and take their dinner orders—thank god. Melody was starving, and Lacey had cleaned out most of the bread basket.
“How’d you break into film development?” Melody asked Drew when the waiter left.
“My dad got me the gig. He’s the president of the studio.”
Right. Of course. More nepotism—the one trend that never went out of style among the rich and powerful.
Drew leaned back, swirling the ice around in his scotch. “I’ve got this great script I’ve been trying like hell to push through. It’s an action thriller about this ex-marine SWAT rescue specialist who has to save his daughter when she gets kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel.”
“Wow,” Melody said, nodding with phony enthusiasm. “That sounds great.” Or, you know, like the exact same action movie Hollywood had already made a hundred times. It would probably make gobs of money, though, which was why they kept churning them out.
“It’s gonna be huge if we can get the right actor. We were this close to signing The Rock before he went with another project.”
“That’s too bad.” She liked The Rock; she might almost be willing to see it if he were in it.
“Now we’re in talks with Ben Stiller. It’s looking pretty good so far. We’ll see.”
“I’m sorry, did you say Ben Stiller?” Melody couldn’t quite manage to hide her disbelief. “As an ex-marine?”
Drew nodded, looking pleased with himself. “It’s unexpected, right? No one would have pegged Liam Neeson as an action hero either, before the Taken movies.”
No one except everybody who’d seen him in Rob Roy, or Darkman, or The Phantom Menace, but okay. Sure. Melody clamped down on her tongue and reached for her wine glass.
“Casting against type gives us an edge in the marketing. Now we just have to find our female lead. I’m thinking someone like Victoria Justice or Kate Upton.”
“As the daughter?” Melody had assumed the daughter would be a teenager
.
“No, the love interest. The daughter’s barely in the movie. We’ll probably cast an unknown to save money.”
Of course they’d cast a love interest half the age of the male lead. This was exactly why she rarely went to movies unless they were based on a comic book or novel she liked.
“What happened to Ashley Decker?” Jeremy asked. “I thought you were trying to woo her.”
Drew shook his head. “She’s out—rehab. And not just drug rehab, either—that we could work around. Psychiatric.” He lowered his voice on the last word, like saying it too loud might bring bad luck. It was the same way Melody’s mother always said words like cancer or divorce—as if they were something you could catch from speaking them at full volume.
“Too bad,” Jeremy said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, her dad and her manager were basically pawning her out around town to the highest bidder. Really messed her up.”
“That’s horrible,” Melody said.
Drew shrugged. “You wouldn’t even believe how common that sort of thing is. I could name a dozen others just like her. Disney Channel stars, pop singers, that cute kid who won the Oscar three years ago. This town chews people up and spits them out.” He said it like it was something that happened on its own, as if it had nothing to do with him or the people he worked with every day, and the things they tolerated and even encouraged in their quest to make money.
After the waiter dropped off their entrees, Melody changed the subject by asking Drew about his college days at BU. They got to reminiscing about Boston and eventually wound up in a debate over the relative merits of Dodger Stadium versus Fenway—which was patently ridiculous, there was no comparison with Fenway—but it kept the conversation going until the waiter came back to clear away their plates.
Which was when Lacey, who hadn’t uttered a word for almost fifteen full minutes, turned to Melody and said, “Wait, how do you know Jeremy again?”
“I told you,” Jeremy said, shooting Lacey a pointed look, “we met when I was visiting Drew in Boston a few years ago.”
“Yeah, he picked her up at a bar and totally bailed on me,” Drew said. “Dick move, by the way, bro.”
Jeremy looked uncomfortable, but Lacey just nodded. “Ah, so you’re one of the girls he cheated on my sister with.” She raised her glass to Melody in a mock salute. “Welcome to the club.”
Wait—what?
“Lacey,” Jeremy said through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Melody said slowly, turning to look at Jeremy. “What?”
She had no idea what Lacey was talking about, or what Lacey’s sister had to do with anything, but Melody was not a cheater. Or a cheatee. She didn’t do that kind of thing. Ever.
“Jeremy dated my sister, Charlotte, all through college,” Lacey said with a careless shrug. “And while they were together, he sometimes slept with other girls.” Her whole body was one big shrug. Her tone, her posture—everything about her expressed her indifference to the bomb she’d dropped.
Drew snorted into his drink. “Sometimes.”
Melody stared at Lacey, trying to process all this new information. Jeremy used to date Lacey’s sister? While he was away at college? Like, when he and Melody met? When they—oh god.
“It’s not a big deal,” Lacey said. “He cheated on her with me, too.” This was just another thing she was apathetic about. She’d slept with her sister’s boyfriend, but so what? Why would that be a big deal?
“Oh,” Melody said, feeling numb. “Wow.” She reached for her wineglass with a shaking hand and gulped down the last of her zinfandel.
“It was a long time ago,” Jeremy said, like that somehow made it okay. Like it didn’t matter that he was someone who’d habitually cheated on his girlfriend. That he’d cheated on her with Melody.
She was the other woman. He’d made her into the other woman and she hadn’t even known.
Jeremy was still talking, trying to explain himself—trying to make excuses. “You have to understand, Charlotte and I were having some problems at the time—”
“Understatement of the year,” Drew muttered.
“Drew. You’re not really helping.”
“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to be,” Drew replied with no trace of amusement.
Lacey pushed back her chair. “I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
Melody was frozen in place, paralyzed by complete and utter mortification. This whole night had been a disaster. She didn’t belong in this world with these people. They were all awful. It had been a mistake to think she could be friends with them. She should have known better.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Jeremy said. She felt his eyes on her, but refused to look at him. “I probably should have told you about Charlotte before now—”
“She didn’t know?” Drew’s voice dripped with disdain. “Nice, Jeremy.”
“Jesus Christ, Drew.”
Melody got to her feet. “I think I feel a migraine coming on.” Something inside her had finally snapped, and she couldn’t stand to be there another second. “Thank you for dinner, and please say goodnight to Lacey for me.” Grabbing her bag, she fled before anyone could say anything to stop her.
She made it all the way to the valet stand before Jeremy caught up with her. “Melody, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go this way.”
She handed her ticket to one of the valets and rounded on Jeremy. “How did you mean for it to go, exactly?”
He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know, better than this. I just wanted you to meet some of my friends. I thought it would be fun. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Obviously,” she repeated in a tone so bitter, it burned the back of her throat. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend back when we first met?”
Sighing, he pressed his lips together. “If I’d told you, you probably wouldn’t have slept with me, and I really wanted you to sleep with me. I was kind of a shit-heel back then, in case that wasn’t clear.”
“But why didn’t you tell me before now? How could you let me find out like this?” She was trying so hard not to cry. She hated crying when she was angry, and she didn’t want to cry in front of him. In front of all these people.
“I don’t know. It’s not exactly an easy thing to slip into conversation. And I was ashamed.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, deflating a little. “Maybe I was afraid you’d look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”
“I can’t believe you,” she said, unmoved by his kicked puppy face. “You looked me right in the eye and told me you don’t go around asking women out behind your girlfriend’s back.”
“I don’t.”
She crossed her arms, glaring at him. “But you used to—all the time, apparently.”
He ducked his head in guilt. “I told you, I’m not that guy anymore.”
“So you keep saying.”
“Because it’s the truth. Look, I’m sorry I deceived you, Melody, and I’m sorry I cheated on Charlotte. I’m not proud of my past. If I could go back and change it, I would, but I can’t.”
He seemed sincere, but then he would, wouldn’t he? That was probably a big part of his job, too: looking people in the eye and selling whatever story he needed them to believe. He probably didn’t even have to work hard at it. He was probably a natural born liar.
“This was such a mistake,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What am I even doing here?”
“I thought we could be friends,” Jeremy said. “I hope we still can be.”
He wasn’t the person she’d thought he was when she met him three years ago. He was a liar and a cheat, and the more time she spent with him, the more he made her into a liar and a cheat, too.
The valet pulled up with her Fiat and jumped out to hold the door for her.
“I’m sorry,” Melody said, backing away from Jeremy. “You’re not the kind of person I want to be friends with.”
She handed the valet his tip, got into her ca
r, and drove away without looking back.
Chapter 7
Melody spent all day Sunday dreading the inevitable call from Jeremy to offer some pathetic attempt at an apology, but it never came. Then she spent all day at work on Monday expecting him to show up at her desk to try to talk to her in person, but he didn’t.
Instead, Lacey called her on Wednesday. Which was…weird.
“So, there’s this yoga class I go to sometimes on Saturday mornings,” Lacey said, like they’d all had a perfectly nice time last weekend and were totally friends now. “I was wondering if you wanted to come with me.”
“Yoga?” Melody didn’t think Lacey even liked her. Why would she invite her to a yoga class out of the blue? Could she be planning some kind of Carrie-type prank? Were there going to be buckets of pig’s blood waiting for her at the yoga studio?
“I don’t know if you’re into yoga or not,” Lacey said, “but I’ve got a free guest pass if you want to try it out. Or not. Whatever.”
Melody chewed on her bottom lip. “Why are you asking me? Did Jeremy put you up to this?”
“No,” Lacey said. “And I wouldn’t have done it if he had, believe me.”
“Okaaay,” Melody said, not sure what to believe.
Lacey sighed. “Look, I feel bad about the other night, all right? There’s some stuff going on with me and Jeremy, and with Jeremy and Drew, that has nothing to do with you. We shouldn’t have dragged you into it like that. I could tell from your face you had no idea Jeremy was with my sister back when you—you know. Anyway, I thought you already knew about all that stuff. I honestly didn’t mean to ambush you.”
“It’s fine,” Melody said stiffly. “Like he said, it was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, well, he told me you were new in town and didn’t know anybody. A bunch of the women at yoga usually go out for coffee after class, so I thought it might be a way for you to meet some new people. It’s cool if you’re not interested, though.”
