by Penny Reid
Mrs. Sauer nodded slowly. “I looked into you, you know, Ms. Gage. That’s an impressive resume you’ve built for yourself at such a young age. You’ve clearly worked hard to get where you are.”
Melody couldn’t figure out whether she was being complimented or threatened. Everything that came out of the woman’s mouth seemed to carry an undertone of menace.
“My son doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to affairs of the heart,” Mrs. Sauer continued without waiting for a response. “But you—you’re a different breed from the other women he’s been involved with. You’re intelligent, focused, self-sufficient. Ambitious.” She paused, long enough for a ball of dread to form in the pit of Melody’s stomach. “I wanted you to know you have my approval.”
Wait—what?
“You—your approval?” Melody stammered.
“I think you make a good match for Jeremy. And I wish you two every happiness together.”
“Oh.” Now would probably be an excellent time to tell Jeremy’s mother she was not, in fact, dating her son, but Melody hadn’t even had the nerve to correct Charlotte, so there was no way she was going to correct Angelica Sauer. “Um…thank you?”
“Well,” Mrs. Sauer said with a dismissive nod, clearly considering the conversation closed. “I’m sure Jeremy’s waiting for you.”
“Right. Yeah. Good talk,” Melody mumbled before making her escape.
Jeremy was waiting for her at a table on the far side of the dance floor. She sank down onto the chair next to his and snatched the wineglass he slid her way.
“Something happen?” he asked, eyebrows raising as she downed a large gulp of rosé.
She swallowed and shook her head. “Nothing, just—your mother…”
His jaw clenched preemptively. “What did she do?”
“She gave us her blessing.” Which officially brought the tally of people who had offered her and Jeremy their blessing to two. What was even going on?
Jeremy burst out laughing.
Melody smacked him on the arm. “It’s not funny! She thinks we’re dating, and I was too scared to tell her we weren’t. She said we make a nice couple!”
He rubbed his hand over his jaw, still chuckling. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not funny.”
“Then why are you still laughing?”
“It’s just…” he shook his head, his expression turning wry, “you’re the first girlfriend she’s ever approved of.”
“But I’m not your girlfriend.”
He took a swig of his scotch. “That’s why it’s funny.”
Melody didn’t find it amusing. She looked away, fixing her gaze on the dance floor. The band was playing “Embraceable You,” and Drew and Charlotte were clinging to one another like they were the only two people in the whole world. Something about the sight of them made Melody unaccountably sad.
Jeremy bumped his shoulder against hers. “I told you my mother liked you.”
Her head was spinning, and it wasn’t from the wine. She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat and nodded, her eyes still fixed on Drew and Charlotte.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” She forced herself to smile.
“You know, we’ve probably been here long enough. We can go anytime you want.”
“Whatever you want to do. I’m here for you tonight.”
His eyes wandered to the dance floor, to Drew and Charlotte wrapped in each other’s arms. “I think I’m ready to get out of here.”
They were both quiet on the ride home. Jeremy spent a lot of time flipping through the satellite radio channels, and Melody turned away from him and stared out the window.
The Dodgers must have won tonight, because there were fireworks in the distance, little bursts of colored lights peeking out from beyond the downtown skyline. It reminded her of the fireworks the night of the company picnic, and how happy she’d felt.
She didn’t feel happy tonight. She felt…empty.
When they got to her apartment building, Jeremy walked her to her door and pulled her into a warm hug. “Thank you for tonight.”
“You’re welcome,” she said into his shoulder.
He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to let go, and neither was she. His arms felt comfortably solid around her, and she let her eyes drift shut as she relaxed into him, resting her cheek against the rough fabric of his jacket.
When he let go, the night air hit her like a splash of cold water. He took a half-step back, then halted, gazing at her.
His bottom lip was slightly chapped, and she couldn’t stop staring at it—couldn’t stop thinking about what it would feel like if he kissed her right now.
She wanted him to kiss her.
The realization hit her like a whack in the forehead from a low-hanging tree limb. It had been right there in front of her, plain as day, yet still managed to take her by surprise.
The hollowness she’d been feeling in the pit of her stomach all night was because she wanted what Drew and Charlotte had—and what Lacey and Tessa had. That closeness. That connection with another person. That knowledge that there was someone in the world who was on your side no matter what.
And she wanted it with Jeremy.
The sudden intensity of her feelings terrified her. She’d spent so long telling herself she’d rather be alone—that she absolutely, positively did not want to be in a relationship—the sudden sea change was disorienting. It was like the ground had shifted 180 degrees beneath her feet when she wasn’t looking.
Melody stared into Jeremy’s stupidly gorgeous face, frozen. If there was ever going to be an opportunity to say something—to do something—it was now. But she was far too shaken to move, much less form coherent words.
He reached for her shoulder, and his hand skimmed down her arm. Her eyes fluttered closed as she suppressed a shiver.
He bent down and brushed a light kiss against her forehead. “Goodnight,” he said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. Then he headed back to his car.
As soon as she was safely inside her apartment, Melody sank back against the door and squeezed her eyes shut.
Well, shit, she thought miserably, I’m in love with Jeremy Sauer.
Chapter 19
It’s not love, Melody told herself, over and over again. She was not in love with Jeremy Sauer.
It was a crush. A temporary infatuation. A passing fancy. Key word: passing. Meaning she’d get over it. Sooner rather than later, she hoped.
When she was thirteen, Melody had been obsessed with Adam Brody from The O.C. She’d bought every single magazine he appeared in, cut the pictures out, and pinned them into a giant collage on the wall next to her bed. Every night, she’d lay in bed listening to Fall Out Boy, stare at fifty different versions of Adam Brody’s face, and pine.
Her crush on Jeremy was kind of like that, only instead of making a creepy murder collage, she sat in front of her computer and stared at old paparazzi photos of him. Yes, okay, fine, she had a Google Alert set for his name. But she would deny all knowledge if asked about the custom-coded spidering software she had running on one of her servers at home, extracting every photo he was tagged in on the internet.
But, hey, she didn’t listen to Fall Out Boy anymore, so she’d grown as a person, all right?
The biggest difference between her crush on Adam Brody and her crush on Jeremy Sauer was Adam Brody had not routinely made flesh-and-blood appearances in her life. Unlike Jeremy, who continued his habit of dropping by her office whenever he was bored at work—which seemed to occur with increasing regularity. Like, seriously, did he not have any actual work to do?
Every minute at the office was spent in a perpetual state of dread and anticipation, wondering when she was going to see him again. Her stomach did flip-flops every time she heard footsteps in the hall outside her office, because she never knew when it was going to be Jeremy stopping by for a chat. She walked around the building with nervous butterflies, hoping she’d run into
him at the coffee cart in the lobby, or on her way to the parking garage at the end of the day.
When she didn’t, she’d swipe through the pictures on her phone her mom had taken of the two of them together and try to imagine what it would be like to be his girlfriend for real. Going out to dinner with him, just the two of them, or snuggling up on her couch watching Netflix—or, better yet, not watching Netflix.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt to kiss him, and how much she wanted to do it again. How much she wanted to be around him, doing pretty much anything, even just talking. She really liked talking to him, almost as much as she liked kissing him.
So, yeah. It was nerve-racking and exhausting, spending her days on a dopamine roller coaster and trying to act normal whenever she did see him.
God, she hoped she was acting normal around him. There was this latent energy buzzing in the back of her mind whenever she was around him that made it hard to focus. Sometimes she’d catch herself staring at his mouth when he was talking, watching his lips move—his beautiful, perfectly-formed lips—and thinking about how they’d feel on hers. Then she’d realize she hadn’t been listening to a word he’d said.
He didn’t seem to treat her any differently than before, so she guessed maybe she was pulling it off? This was probably the one time her social awkwardness worked in her favor, since he was already used to her nervous babbling.
But the thing that made it especially difficult to act normal, something she’d never noticed until recently, was how much casual touching Jeremy did. He bumped his shoulder against hers to punctuate a joke when they were walking side by side, squeezed her arm or shoulder to say hello and goodbye, and rested his hand at the small of her back whenever she preceded him through a doorway.
That goddamn hand at the small of her back was the worst of all. It was going to be the death of her.
Then there was that thing he did with his eyes. The way he looked at you when he was listening to you. Like he genuinely cared. Like you were important to him. Like he liked you better than anyone else.
And even though Melody knew it wasn’t true, that it was how he was with everyone, it still made her all warm and squishy inside.
She felt like she’d lost control of her life. She couldn’t control when or how often she saw him around the office, and she couldn’t control how she felt when she was with him. How her eyes watered and her knees went wobbly. How much she thought about kissing him—and doing other things with him. How, when he touched her, it left a tingly spot on her skin she still felt hours later.
She couldn’t make herself stop obsessing over him. But even worse, she couldn’t make herself do anything about it.
She did consider telling Jeremy how she felt. She considered it a lot, but couldn’t figure out how to start a conversation like that. She certainly couldn’t do it at the office, or even on one of their occasional treks to the Coffee Bean in the middle of the workday. It wasn’t the right time or place. Sure, she could theoretically ask him out for drinks one night after work, or suggest they hang out on the weekend, but the thought of it made her break out in hives.
Not metaphorical hives, either. Real, actual hives that made her chest red and itchy and didn’t go away for a week.
The problem was, if she admitted how she felt about him and he didn’t feel the same, it would all be over. No more popping into her office, no more inviting her to go for coffee, no more talking.
No more being friends.
The only thing that scared her more than the prospect of telling him how she felt was the prospect of losing his friendship.
So, Melody did nothing.
Her feelings for Jeremy were like Schrodinger’s Crush. As long as she didn’t open the box, their relationship existed in a state of quantum superposition: both possible and impossible at the same time. She was too much of a wimp to find out whether the cat was alive or dead.
Days passed. Weeks. Her crush didn’t fade, and her courage didn’t miraculously manifest. She started to resign herself to the idea that things would go on like this forever.
Then the day came when her web crawler turned up a paparazzi shot of Jeremy ducking into a restaurant, hand-in-hand with a former America’s Next Top Model contestant. And the very next weekend, there were a bunch of Facebook photos of the two of them cozying up to each other at a club in West Hollywood.
So, that was that.
She’d probably had a better chance with Adam Brody.
“How are things with Jeremy?” her mother asked the next time she called.
Melody was officially a terrible person. She had let her mom go on thinking she and Jeremy were still dating. She wasn’t proud, but she’d done it out of self-preservation. As long as her mom thought she was happily coupled up, she wasn’t nagging Melody about being single. Yes, it had required lying to her mom every time she asked about Jeremy, but Melody had gotten good at being vague and drawing from the truth to embellish the lies.
Yeah, no, there was no defending herself. It was wrong, and it was time to put a stop to it. Past time.
“Um, about that,” Melody said.
Her mom made a concerned noise. “That sounds like bad news. Is it bad news?”
“Kind of.”
“Are you pregnant?” As far as her mother was concerned, the only thing worse than being single was accidentally getting pregnant. Melody had had to listen to a lecture on safe sex every single time she went out with a boy in high school. Every. Single. Time.
She sighed. “No, Mom.”
Her mother exhaled loudly. “Thank god.”
“Jeremy and I broke up.”
“What? No!”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Did he cheat on you?”
Melody grimaced. “No, nothing like that.”
“Did you cheat on him?”
“No! There was no cheating of any kind.” She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“Well, then I don’t understand what could have happened. You two seemed so happy.” She could practically hear her mom shaking her head sadly.
“It just wasn’t working. We weren’t right for each other.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re too different. We come from different worlds.”
Her mother was quiet for a moment. “You mean because he’s rich?”
Sometimes her mom could be too perceptive. “Yeah.”
“Oh, honey.”
Melody closed her eyes. Even though it was a fake breakup of a fake relationship, the conversation was cutting too close to the bone. “It wasn’t just that. There was other stuff, too.” Her voice broke on the last word.
“Are you okay, baby?”
“Uh huh.” Melody reached under her glasses and wiped her eyes. “I’m fine.” She didn’t want to worry her mom. It was just a stupid crush. She’d get over it eventually.
Her mother clucked in sympathy. “You know you’re just as good him, right? You’re better. He didn’t get a scholarship to MIT, did he? Or build a computer from scratch when he was fifteen? Or win first place in the Academic Decathlon? You’re the one who did all those things, and you never needed money to help you get there. You did it all on your own.”
Melody sniffled. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Here’s what you need to do,” her mother said. “First, give yourself a week to wallow. I know it hurts right now, and it’s important to give yourself time to honor that pain. Then you dust yourself off, you go out and get a new haircut and fresh manicure, and you put yourself out there again, straightaway. A little hair of the dog is always the best cure for what ails you.”
“I just—I don’t think I’m very good at this dating thing,” Melody admitted.
“Don’t be silly, baby. It’s not like it’s rocket surgery.”
Melody took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “Rocket science, Mom. And if it were, I’d
be better at it.”
“You’ve just had a little setback. You’ll shake it off.”
Melody had never been as optimistic as her mother. No matter how many boyfriends she went through, or how many jobs she lost, her mother always believed with unshakable certainty the next one was going to be The One—despite all prior evidence to the contrary.
“You don’t need him,” her mother said. “There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.”
Melody didn’t want any of the other fish in the sea. She wanted Jeremy.
“Can I close this?” Jeremy said the next time he showed up at Melody’s office.
She exited out of the browser window with his Town & Country photoshoot before looking up at him. “Uh—what?”
He tilted his head. “The door. Can I close it?”
“Um…sure?” He’d never wanted to talk to her with the door closed before. So…that was new. And a little daunting.
“I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to tell another soul.” He looked dead serious, and now she was even more daunted.
“Okay.” Her mind raced ahead to imagine the worst. A re-org, some kind of merger, layoffs—oh god, what if they were offshoring the IT department?
Jeremy sat down, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees. The creases in his forehead were deep enough to hold a pencil. “My mother and Geoffrey are getting married.”
“Oh.” Melody let out a huge breath. The relief over not losing her job was quickly supplanted by concern. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “I guess? I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.”
“When did you find out?”
“Last night. They told us over dinner. ‘Pass the salt, dear—oh, and by the way, Geoffrey and I are getting married.’” Jeremy’s impression of his mother was spot on. Melody had no doubt that was more or less exactly how it had gone.
“How did Hannah take it?”
