by Hazel Parker
Jessica floundered. “You’re picking me up?” she asked. “And I don’t even get to choose what I’m wearing?” He rolled his eyes.
“Just cancel any plans you might’ve had,” he commanded. “And probably for the next day, too. There’s typically a lot of alcohol,” he added after a pensive pause. The driver pulled up before Jessica could argue further, and he watched her climb in, wondering irritably how someone could possibly manage to complain about a party that most people would kill to get into. Jessica Owens wasn’t making this easy on him.
Chapter Five: Jessica
Jessica felt guilty about having to cancel plans with Marissa just so she could drop everything and have lunch with Jace. She’d never been flaky before, so she knew that Marissa was probably worried about the sudden change of plans, but she’d been lucky enough to catch her on a slightly less busy week, so she’d been free to reschedule for the next day. As usual, by the time she arrived at their brunch spot, Marissa was already sitting down. However, instead of her usual excited look and pre-ordered mimosas, she was greeted by a very somber, expectant-looking Marissa. Jessica has been dreading this moment.
“Hey, girl,” Jessica tried casually, “what’s up?” Marissa gave her a scrutinizing glare.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” she replied forebodingly. Jessica gave a nervous chuckle.
“What do you mean?” she asked, feeling it safer to play dumb than to own up to anything outright. It turned out to be the wrong choice when Marissa’s eyes turned on her, now downright hostile as she reached into her purse and pulled out three magazines she’d purchased. Though she normally didn’t read that type of trashy tabloid, it was immediately clear why she’d purchased them: Jessica’s face, unmistakably flirting with Jace from the first night at the restaurant, was plastered over the fronts of all three.
“Right,” Jessica admitted, “that.”
“What the hell, Jess?” she demanded shrilly. “You’re fucking engaged? To some guy I’ve never even met?” Jessica took each magazine and leafed through the pages, reading the sub-headlines. Some were celebratory, most were derogatory, but all wanted to know the same thing Marissa did: how had this been kept a secret?
“Marissa, I can explain,” she countered, but immediately she realized that really, legally, she couldn’t.
“I had to find out from some magazine?” Marissa continued her tirade. “The whole world knew before I did. I thought I was your best friend!”
“You are my best friend,” Jessica pleaded. “I didn’t tell you because… things just moved so fast, and it was unexpected. I swear that I wasn’t keeping it from you.”
Marissa’s eyes still looked furious, but she sat back in the chair and took the magazines back, putting them quietly away in her purse. “I still think there’s something weird about this,” she said suspiciously. “You’ve always told me everything, Jess. How could you have kept something so important from me?”
Jessica shrugged, unable to think of any way to make it seem more plausible without making Marissa angrier, and finally just shook her head. “I won’t do it again,” she promised lamely, feeling immediately guilty for knowing that she was actively lying to her even now. They’d been best friends since childhood; they’d grown up together. Jessica had told Marissa about her first date, her first kiss, when she’d lost her virginity—three separate occasions, of course—and Marissa had told her everything in return. It was unlikely that Jessica would even go on a date that Marissa wouldn’t hear about, not to mention having a relationship serious enough that he’d propose.
As a metaphorical olive branch, Marissa stuck out her hand and waved her fingers demandingly, into which Jessica placed her left hand.
“Jesus, that’s a hell of a ring,” Marissa observed. “I thought you always said big rings like this were tacky.”
Jessica couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “The ring was a surprise, too,” she admitted, “but it’s kind of grown on me. It’s pretty.”
“It’s more than ‘pretty,’” Marissa corrected, “it’s fucking astounding. Any girl in her right mind would be jealous.” Jessica nodded—that much was true, she knew. “And engaged to Jace Oliver. Since when is that a thing?”
Jessica smiled. “Well, you already knew that we met when I was on the show a few years ago,” she said. “I guess we just… reconnected.” Desperate to take the focus off the story she was only just getting used to telling, she leaned in close. “He’s taking me to the closing party for Code Blue this weekend,” she said. “It’s apparently going to be wild.”
Marissa’s eyes went wide with excitement. “You have to tell me everything about that.”
Jessica smiled. “I will, I promise.”
The rest of the week passed pretty quickly. Jace was so busy on interviews for the ending of the show that he didn’t need Jessica to do much publicly, so she mostly spent her time fitting couple’s interviews into her planner every time Nora emailed her a new appointment and trying to keep up with the whirlwind of her own public opinion. It seemed to change every day, fluctuating wildly between her image as the beautiful, sweet girl that he must’ve fallen in love with during her time on the show, and a devilish gold-digger who was manipulating him.
Despite her instincts to post comments on every celebrity gossip site that bashed her image, to record a video and post it to social media or at least to have an interview with a magazine to tell her side of the story, Jessica followed Nora’s strict instructions to keep silent. It was painful to sit by and watch people write terrible things about her: things that weren’t true, authored by people who’d never even met her, things that her friends and family were surely reading and forming opinions about. Thank goodness her parents weren’t tech-savvy enough to have social media. Nora had told her that responding would only make the accusations wilder, and that if she started to dispute things that weren’t true, people would begin to believe that anything she didn’t comment on was. It was better, therefore, to leave it alone and wait for the interviews she’d scheduled for her and Jace to come out together as a couple and put the rumors to bed for good.
However, before they could have any time for that, there was the matter of the closing party for Code Blue. Jessica had tried to ask Jace questions about where it would be and how she should do her hair and makeup, but he replied with apathetic, one-word answers when he replied at all, which always made her angry, so eventually she just decided that she’d look however she liked and if he didn’t like it, tough. Nora had eventually sent enough details that she at least felt confident that she wouldn’t be embarrassed or, worse, in trouble.
Friday finally arrived, and, much earlier than Jessica would have preferred, Jace knocked on her door. She’d showered already, but her hair was still up in a towel, and her makeup wasn’t even started. When she answered the door, it was in a plush, white robe.
“Jace,” she exclaimed, “I’m not ready yet.” He gestured to a long bag in his hands.
“How could I expect you to be ready without an outfit?” he asked.
“Fair,” she replied, “but I at least planned on having my hair and makeup done by the time you got here. I didn’t want to make you wait.”
He shrugged and handed her the bag, heavier than she’d anticipated. “I don’t mind waiting,” he said.
Jessica ushered him into her apartment and led him to the couch. “Make yourself at home,” she instructed, feeling a little embarrassed that she hadn’t picked up. Her place wasn’t messy, nothing more than a few empty mugs and some books and blankets strewn about, but it was still not the first impression she’d have liked to make.
“I haven’t been in an apartment this small since college,” he noted distastefully, and Jessica frowned.
“You’re free to wait outside,” she snapped, effectively changing Jace’s tone.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” he apologized, sitting down in an armchair facing her. “I think it’s a nice place. It’s cozy.” Jessica, havin
g not been born yesterday, knew that was just a platitude for “small,” but she didn’t want to argue it any further.
“Yeah,” she dismissed, “well, I’ll be ready in a bit. You can turn on the television or something if you want.” Jace nodded and turned instead to her bookshelf and Jessica tried to not laugh at the fact that instead of just doing what he was told, he was choosing to rummage around in her things. It was so on-brand for what she knew about him so far that she couldn’t help but smile.
Jessica had never been one to take a long time to get ready. She only had a few pairs of heels, most black, that went with every outfit, and her hair was naturally wavy and cooperative enough that she didn’t have to do much outside of blow-drying it. She opened up the dress bag just far enough to see what color it was to match her makeup—a gorgeous, deep plum. It just so happened that the shade was her very favorite color, but she tried not to be too impressed, knowing that Jace hadn’t known that and likely hadn’t even seen the dress yet. She applied her makeup with a light touch, mostly just a bit of foundation and blush so she wouldn’t look washed out under the lights, some mascara to make her eyes pop, and a beautiful, light red lipstick to avoid making them stand out too much. After her hair and face were finished, she carefully removed the dress from the bag and gasped when she saw it in its entirety. It was far and away the most beautiful thing she’d ever gotten to wear: a floor-length dress, one that was elegant but not too formal, that tapered in at her waist and billowed out gracefully at the legs. Glancing at the clock and realizing that she’d already been getting ready for almost an hour, Jessica threw on the dress as quickly as she could and checked herself over in the mirror before opening the door into the living room.
Jace had apparently gotten bored looking through her stuff and decided to turn on the television, but he looked up to the sound of the door opening and immediately froze in shock. His mouth had opened to say something, probably a complaint about how long she’d kept him waiting, but snapped it shut as soon as he saw her. Jessica flushed pink as she watched his eyes look her up and down like a predator about to pounce.
“Do I, uh, look okay?” she asked after a long silence. That seemed to snap him back to reality as he blinked and straightened his posture, fixing his suit as he stood from the chair.
“You look beautiful. That dress looks better on you than I even imagined.” Jessica felt her heart skip a beat.
“You picked it out?” she asked.
“Well, I sent Nora a picture,” he shrugged, “but she’s the one who ordered it.” She couldn’t believe it—he’d put that much effort into her look for this party?
“Why?” she blurted, feeling embarrassed once it was out in the open. “I mean, why not just let Nora choose something, or give me a budget and tell me to do it myself?”
Jace beckoned her close, and once she was standing in front of him, turned her around to face away from him.
“I’m a particular man, Jessica,” he whispered in her ear, his breath warm enough to make her shudder, “and I’m going for a very specific image with this whole stunt. I can’t waste a second of our time together being careless.” Suddenly, his hand was reaching around her shoulders and draping a beautiful amethyst necklace around her neck, and she gasped in surprise. She’d seen that necklace before.
“This is the necklace my character wore in my Code Blue episode,” she pointed out. The necklace had been the emotional crux of the whole season, uncharacteristically touching amidst what most critics thought was “too much melodrama,” when Jessica’s character had given it to Jace’s to remember her by just before she died. “You kept it?”
Jace laughed lightly. “No,” he admitted, “but I remembered it was in the prop closet. I thought it could be a nice story to tell. This is our first real night together in front of the public. I figured we’ve got to make it count, right?” Jessica nodded, reaching up to twist the necklace between her fingers. She’d absolutely adored the purple stone when she’d been on the show, but she never thought she’d see it again.
“Right,” she agreed, allowing him to take her hand a little earlier than they had to. “Let’s go.”
The venue was bigger than anywhere Jessica had ever been before, and dark. The only light came from several multi-colored lasers that scanned the room repetitively to the beat of a DJ’s music. If Jessica had thought that Jace had been too early to her apartment and they might arrive before the party had begun, she was wrong, because by the time they walked through the doors, it was in full swing. Loud, dimly-lit, and too crowded to walk, it was definitely the kind of party Jessica would normally skip. She geared herself up for the next two hours of smiling and pretending that she was having a great time with Jace.
“Oliver! And Mrs. Oliver,” someone greeted, a man that she recognized as one of Jace’s co-workers.
“Hey, Kirk,” Jace greeted, dropping Jessica’s hand momentarily to shake Kirk’s. A preposterously drunk woman staggered up to their group and rested her head on Kirk’s shoulder, eliciting an embarrassed groan.
“Hey, Leslie,” she greeted, ignoring Jessica and Jace as if she didn’t even see them, “I’m going to the chocolate fountain!”
Jace’s eyebrows migrated to his hairline, and he showed a ghost of a smile as the young woman stumbled away. “You brought a girl?” he asked. “I didn’t think you swung that way.”
Kirk sighed long-sufferingly. “My sister,” he grimaced, “and she’s a disaster zone. I’ve got to run and make sure she doesn’t break anything, but we’ll talk later!” Jace’s chest shook with stifled laughter as he watched Kirk rush after his sister, and Jessica watched him fight to keep his composure, forcing the smile that wanted to show itself down into a slight frown.
“Why do you do that?” she asked before she could stop herself. He looked confused.
“Do what?”
“Here,” she said after a long pause, reaching over to grab two shots of whiskey as a waiter brought them by on a silver platter. She handed one to Jace and toasted her own glass against his. “If you want people to stop seeing you as such an antisocial guy, you need to loosen up a little. Take this shot with me, then forget about keeping people from seeing your fun side for one night and just let yourself smile.” As if to show how difficult that was going to be for him, Jace offered only a half-smile in reply, almost more of a smirk, before downing the shot with Jessica, who shuddered afterward.
“You know, I think you’re supposed to order these,” he added as an afterthought, and Jessica covered her mouth with an embarrassed fit of giggles. She tugged him away from the scene of the crime, and they ended up on the dance floor, so close to the speakers that she couldn’t hear anything except the music. She moved her hips to the beat with her eyes closed, focusing only on her own body for several songs before she realized that Jace was no longer beside her. Cursing under her breath, Jessica scanned the room with her eyes, barely able to see anything in the dark, not to mention find and identify her fake fiancé. Forlornly, as she had really been enjoying dancing, Jessica tore herself away from the dance floor to search, finding him sitting at a table with a small group of four other people.
“You ran off on me,” she mock-scolded, pulling a chair up next to Jace. He looked at least a little more relaxed here, away from the center of the party.
“Dancing isn’t my thing,” he admitted, earning a scoff from the blonde woman sitting on the other side of him.
“That’s an understatement,” she remarked, her nose turning up cutely as she made a face at him. “You barely even danced during our wedding scene in season two.” It was then that Jessica recognized the woman as Sharon Lyle, an actress who was a star in the soap opera that had given Jace his big break before Code Blue, where his cameo as Sharon’s husband had turned into a recurring role by popular demand.
She was also his ex-girlfriend. When they’d started dating, people had said some of the same things about Jace as they were saying about Jessica now: that he was using Sharon
to get famous and that the relationship would never last. Shamefully, Jessica remembered even having a discussion with Marissa about their breakup that happened to occur right when he’d gotten a contract of his own, in which she’d called him shallow and predictable. That might explain, she thought, why Marissa was so suspicious of her motives.
