In the Details

by H. Claire Taylor

  Oh right. I almost forgot he only did … what were those, parodies? Covers? Does most Christian music not sound like that?

  NO. IT DOES NOT. THOU SHALT LISTEN TO CHRISTIAN MUSIC AND THEN YOU’LL UNDERSTAND WHY I WOULD RATHER BE SUPERVISING THE CLEANUP OF OIL SPILLS.

  His unsaid words hit her like a flick to the forehead. Shut. Up. Do you cause an oil spill every time there’s a Christian music festival just so you can get out of going?

  When God’s presence evaporated, she thought she had her answer.

  “Are you already high?” Valerie asked, leaning close to Jessica.

  “Huh?”

  “Did you and Jameson already smoke before you got here?”

  “No. Why?” Did Valerie have some goods she wanted to share? It’d been a long time since Jessica had been high, and she was ready to jump right back on that horse.

  “You were just spacing out, is all. I was curious.”

  Damn. “No, no. I was just …” She wasn’t sure what exactly inspired her to say what she did next. Perhaps pushing past her social anxiety had given her a bit of momentum to try new things. Or perhaps there was something about Valerie that engendered trust. Or perhaps it was the vodka from the back of the Kia. “I was talking to God.”

  Valerie’s mouth popped open into a little o, and her eyes turned to slits, but to her credit, she didn’t laugh, and a moment later, she nodded her head. “Right. You can do that, huh?”

  Jessica let out the breath she was holding. “Yeah, although, when you say it like that, it sounds like I have a choice in the matter.”

  Now Valerie laughed, and Jessica was reminded not for the first time how important timing and context were when it came to people laughing at her. “You’re the real deal, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Jessica. “Yes, I’m the real deal.”

  Valerie nodded toward Jameson and said, “He told us that, but I wanted to meet you for myself before I believed it. Basically no one I ever meet anymore is the real deal. Drawback to being in show business. I hope you don’t mind that I had to see for myself.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I like you, Jessica McCloud.” Valerie slung an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, and when she did, Jessica wondered how in the hell she hadn’t smelled the deliciously overpowering scent of marijuana on the woman sooner and how generous of a person Valerie might be …

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jessica snaked through the crowds, tacos in hand, trying to relocate Jameson and the others.

  As it’d turned out, Valerie did have some weed to offer, leading Jessica to vape for the first time in her life. And now it was motherfucking taco time.

  She tried to wrangle a bite of one before all the ingredients fell out of the other end. It was clearly too much to manage while she was on the go, and she got all tortilla before the majority of fajita, onions, and peppers fell out the other end and into the paper boat. “Shitballs.” She should have grabbed a fork.

  When she turned around to head back to the taco stand and pick one up, her eyes were locked onto the mess she was creating rather than where she was going, and she stepped right into the path of an oncoming concertgoer.

  When he knocked right into her, she was only just able to keep from dumping out both tacos.

  “Oh, my bad. Wait, Jessica?”

  She looked up and decided she’d smoked way too much. “Quentin?”

  “Hey!” She held out the tacos away from her body just in time as he threw his arms around her. “You didn’t tell me you had tickets,” he said.

  “You didn’t tell me you had tickets either,” she replied.

  He pointed at her. “Fair point. In my defense, I didn’t know I had tickets until Callie told me.”

  Only then did Jessica notice that there was someone standing next to Quentin observing the conversation with a pleasant smile. “Oh, hi.” Jessica wiped her greasy hand on her shorts before offering it for a shake.

  “So nice to meet you, Jessica! Quentin’s told me all about you.”

  Jessica scrunched up her face. “Really?” She turned her gaze to Quentin, who shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  Right. Callie was just being nice. “And he’s, um, told me all about you,” Jessica lied halfheartedly.

  Callie turned a skeptical eye on Quentin as she said, “Yeah, I bet.”

  The skepticism looked good on this Callie chick, and it was only then that Jessica realized she generally thought skepticism looked good on women. It might even be her favorite look, and Callie wore it especially well. She had latte skin that could have been mistaken for a dark tan, were it not for the way she wore her hair, natural and free in an afro held back by a purple and orange bandana.

  “Who are you here with?” Quentin asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  Jessica hesitated, but why? Only later would she realize it was because mentioning who she was spending the day with might sound like a brag. “Jameson, Valerie, Bolt, and Jon.”

  Quentin grinned. “You’re really going for it with Jameson, aren’t you?”

  “Ooh!” said Callie, taking the opportunity to grab Quentin’s arm. “New boyfriend?”

  Jessica leaned forward. “Between us, no. But we’re trying to make it look that way.”

  Callie’s excitement died. “Oh.”

  “Jameson Fractal,” Quentin supplied, filling in the blanks.

  Callie dropped his arm. “Wait, what?” Blinking, she looked at Jessica as her mouth fell open into a giant grin. “Jameson Fractal is here?”

  Quentin threw his head back and groaned, and Jessica immediately felt bad for bringing it up. But not that bad. “Yeah, you want to meet him?”

  Callie nodded emphatically and grabbed onto Jessica’s arm. “Lead the way!”

  Jessica laughed and glanced over her shoulder at Quentin, casting him a look that she hoped clearly said, “You’re in trouble for not telling me about her.” And he gave her one back that she thought said, “Your boy better not steal my girl.”

  Callie fit in with the group better than Jessica did, but Jessica didn’t begrudge her for that. She was one of those people who couldn’t help but be magnetic, who was apparently born without crippling self-doubt and an inner voice that repeatedly told her no one gave a shit what she had to say. Weird.

  Quentin chatted congenially with Jameson, but Jessica knew her old friend well enough to know he was only half listening. Something else was on his mind, and she was just high enough to want to get right in the middle of it.

  She stood, grabbed him and told Jameson, “I’m going to steal him for a minute.” No explanation provided, but none was needed.

  Quentin put up no resistance as she hauled him off into the shade of a giant oak twenty yards off, high stepping around blankets and over sprawled-out festival goers.

  “You looked like you could use a break,” she said.

  He cringed. “Was it that obvious?”

  “Oh yeah. You’ve used that glazed smile on me a bunch of times when I start talking about the bakery. Hey, how come you didn’t tell me about Callie?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t know about it until like two days ago. I’m still not sure where it’s going, but hell yeah, I’m going to take her up on a free AMF ticket.”

  “She seems really cool,” Jessica said, fishing.

  Quentin scrubbed a flat palm over his close-shaved hair. “Yeah, she is. I could actually see this going somewhere.”

  Jessica had expected that answer just from the way he and Callie had related to each other, sneaking conspiratorial glances even when they were involved in different conversations. What she hadn’t expected, though, was how devastated she was by the idea of Quentin being in a new relationship. It blindsided her. “Going somewhere like marriage?” she asked.

  He jerked his head back. “I wasn’t talking about that exactly. I was talking about being exclusive. Jesus, Jess, are you caught up in that fever, too?”

  “What fever?”

>   “The one people get into where they’re obsessed with everyone getting married so they don’t have to focus on their own failed romance.”

  She puffed out her lips and arched a brow at him. “That’s not a thing. And no, I’m not there.”

  “All right. Just asking. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

  She considered it. “Yeah, mostly.”

  “Great. But before we pop back over there, and I pry my date free so I can get a little one-on-one time, how in the hell are you not gonna give a guy a heads up about who was waiting for us over there? I almost made a complete ass of myself when I realized ‘Bolt’ was Bolt Stevens.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Calling them by their full names seemed like too much of a name drop.”

  Quinten shook his head disappointedly. “Sometimes you gotta drop the names, Jess. If you’re living it, don’t be shy.”

  “Noted. Hey, you know things about the world, so maybe you can tell me this. What’s scientology?”

  “A religion,” he said.

  “Right, but what … is it?” She couldn’t find the right words. She was pretty sure it didn’t fall under Christianity or Judaism, which meant she had a zero percent chance of knowledge through cultural osmosis.

  “Um.” A deep crease appeared in his forehead and he put fists on his hips. “Basically, this science fiction writer got bored of mass producing books, so he wrote out some scripture.”

  “About?”

  “Aliens, mostly.”

  “And then people … just believe it’s real?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I dunno, Quentin. Aliens, a sci-fi writer … So, this guy just comes out of nowhere and makes up a bunch of nonsense and people believe it … why?”

  Quentin shrugged. “Because it takes their mind off their problems?”

  “That sounds more like a fandom than a religion.”

  “I’m not sure there’s a difference.”

  Jessica was just high enough to consider it but too high to come to any intelligent assessment. “Shit.”

  They began their journey back to the blanket.

  Weaving through the crowd made it impossible to chat further, which was fine. Jessica became lost in her own head. Not about Scientology, though. That seemed pretty straightforward; if Sir David wrote scripture about the elegant gazelles or prankster ring-tailed lemurs—which, she supposed in a lot of ways he had—she would follow it—which, she supposed in a lot of ways she did.

  Her mind was on something else entirely, though. While she was happy that Quentin was happy, something about his new potential relationship left her panicked. She could feel it in his words that his energy had officially shifted away from Miranda and attached itself to Callie.

  The twinge in her sternum alerted her that she might have just hit on something.

  Miranda and Quentin. Jessica had presumed Miranda dating someone new was just a phase. It would end, and she’d be free to go back to Quentin, who had been carrying the torch. But if Quentin and Callie ended up together, he was as good as tossing the torch into the lake. There would be no one left to fight for that relationship, and she really wanted someone to.

  But more than that, she realized she’d been relying on Chris to carry the torch while she went out and had her fun. What if he interpreted her staged relationship with Jameson as a hint to move on. And then he did!

  Could it really be over over between her and Chris? A relationship that had seemed like an inevitability in her life for so long now seemed an impossibility.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I steal my girl from you,” Quentin said to Bolt as they returned to the blanket.

  Bolt laughed generously and held up his hands. “All yours.”

  Callie crawled to her feet. “Actually, I’m all mine.” She addressed Quentin. “You’re just lucky enough to take me for a test spin.”

  “How do you know it’s just a test spin?” he said coolly.

  OH, THAT WAS GOOD.

  Yeah. Yeah it was.

  She wouldn’t have expected any less game from her favorite fake ex-boyfriend.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jessica thanked Jameson for picking up the cost of the ride share and crawled out of the BMW. Her ears were ringing from the prolonged musical assault from multiple stages, and the only thing she wanted in the entire world after a day full of greasy trailer food and sucking in her stomach for candid photos was to crawl upstairs and spend the next half hour taking the world’s most gratifying poop while playing mindless games on her phone.

  But as she shut the car door behind her, she heard a similar sound from the other side of the vehicle and saw Jameson walking around the back toward her.

  Exhaustion washed over her as she remembered she wasn’t done yet.

  It was a Friday night, which usually meant downtown was a bit of a mess, but with it being a festival weekend, bringing in tens of thousands of tourists from around the world, the energy in the air felt like could explode at any moment into a group brawl, an orgy, or chain-reaction vomiting. Or all of the above. She tried to ignore the phones pointed at her and flashing through the dark when passersby realized who had just slipped out of a ride share together.

  Jameson wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder. “You still okay with this?”

  “Yeah, of course. I know what I’m getting myself into.”

  He chuckled. “No, you don’t.”

  They paused at the entrance to her building and he leaned in. “Any ideas for giving Cash a heart attack tomorrow morning?”

  She laughed, surprised. “What? What are you talking about?”

  He shrugged, and as the streetlight caught the side of his face, she experienced a jolt when she remembered this was Jameson Fractal in front of her. “Sometimes when I’m trying to figure out the best way to get a little extra publicity, I ask myself ‘What could I do right now that would give Cash Monet a heart attack in the morning when they see the paparazzi photos?’ It almost always works.”

  She giggled. “Any ideas?”

  He leaned in, whispering in her ear, “Making you giggle on your doorstep is a pretty good start, but whispering in your ear really amps it up.”

  She made an exasperated noise and shoved him away playfully. “You’re too good at this. You coming up?”

  He grinned and opened the door, holding it for her. “After you.”

  Jessica found it remarkable how the moment the door shut behind them and they lost her audience, the prospect of inviting Jameson up to her condo—his condo—became an incredibly intimidating one.

  This was all just a show, right? Wendy had told them to do this. They were just flirty friends who were trying to advance their clout.

  But there was that moment in the sushi bar … and when they were listening to the headlining act only an hour before, reclining on their elbows, there was a moment when she looked at Jameson, and he was already looking at her. And then, like freaking sociopaths, they just kept looking at each other and grinning.

  She was embarrassed even thinking about it. Because it was quite clear that Jameson could take or leave a real romance with her. And she could take or leave a real romance with him. Three out of four of those combinations meant nothing would happen, but if they both decided to take it …

  No, it was irrelevant. She couldn’t have sex with him anyway.

  She shushed him when he tried to speak in the hallway, worried that it would alert Jeremy or Jesus to their presence, and she didn’t want to have to explain the complications of this arrangement to her half-brother. Or explain the complications of her neighbors’ living arrangements to Jameson.

  As she shut the door quietly behind them, she breathed a sigh of relief to be back in her own space.

  She brought two glasses of water over to the couch and sat on the opposite end from Jameson, both of them spreading their legs longways across the cushions. “I would ask you to rub my feet, but I haven’t had a pedicure
in weeks,” he said jokingly, and she suspected the humor lay in the idea of her giving him a foot rub rather than the fact that he would consider two weeks without a pedicure a long time.

  Flexing her feet to minimize the angle by which he could view her toenails, she chuckled.

  “I had a lot of fun today,” he said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  He grinned, and she almost rolled her eyes at how good it looked on him. “I’m glad. That was the point of this, right? To go have a little fun after working nonstop?”

  “I think the point was for us to be seen together in public so everyone thinks I’m dating a movie star and you’re dating a good-girl.”

  He shook his head. “No, that was the excuse, but not the point.”

  After a heavy moment of silence, he said, “Do it again soon?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  He laughed at her stupid joke, and somehow that only made her think it was even stupider.

  Her bloated stomach gurgled like a volcano, issuing polite notice to every inhabitant of the island to get the hell off and quick, and she cleared her throat to try to drown it out. “Your friends are nice.”

  He nodded. “Did you guess who the scientologist was?”

  “Nope.”

  “Guess.”

  She thought about it. “Jon?”

  “Nuh-uh. Bolt.”

  She pushed herself up further on the armrest. “No way.”

  “Yep.”

  He hadn’t struck her as the fanboy type.

  She finished her water and used it as an excuse to flip her legs around and push herself to standing. “If we’re going to do this all over again tomorrow, we should probably get some sleep.”

  He sat up quickly, his hands on the couch cushion next to him. “Right, so should I just …”

  “Yeah, you’re welcome to crash. I mean, we’re leaving together bright and early tomorrow anyway.”

  Staring at her sideways, he said, “Right. I can swing by my place for fresh clothes tomorrow, but, um, just the couch or—”