The Face of Scandal

by Helena Maeve

  A muscle twitched in his square jaw as he looked away.

  “You didn’t,” Hazel added. “You were awesome.” You always are. She kissed the top of his head on her way out. “Try not to let this get to you.”

  This, meaning Sadie, meaning Hazel nearly tripping herself up with the certitude that her best friend had taken drastic action over some guy.

  “I’ll see you later?”

  “I’ll be here,” Dylan promised, squeezing her hip.

  The pressure of his hand on her flesh lingered long after she’d walked out of his bedroom.

  * * * *

  Rush hour had yet to hit the greater LA area. Ward wove cleanly between a few early morning commuters, the silence in the front seat of the BMW shaken only by his occasional humming.

  Hazel couldn’t tell if the nonchalance was just an act or if Ward had effectively shelved the tumult of the past couple of hours like he did his college years—like he’d once done with Hazel’s secret. She was grateful for it. Too quickly, the scenery outside her window changed from fashionably grungy warehouses and converted factories into a strip of squat, square restaurants and shops crammed shoulder to shoulder on either side of just another access route into the city.

  Ward pulled right up to the curb and put the BMW in neutral.

  “Thanks,” Hazel said, already reaching for the door handle. “I’ll get the Volvo filled up this afternoon—”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  Hazel arched her eyebrows. Shoot.

  “Don’t take this on by yourself. Sadie needs help.”

  “I know.”

  “Not the kind that a friend can provide,” Ward clarified, holding her gaze. “I know you want what’s best for her. It’s very noble. But she’s going to have a lot of anger…”

  “I really need to go,” Hazel said.

  Ward clamped his lips together. She could tell he wanted to say more, had probably spent the drive to Marco’s thinking up ways to drive his points home. He was an arguer at heart, and a damn good one, at that. But he seemed to know when to give up. This wasn’t a topic over which his reasoning could hold sway.

  “All right,” he sighed. “See you tonight?”

  Relieved—and hating herself for it—Hazel leaned across the gearshift and kissed him. She could do that now. Ward and Dylan were no longer her dirty little secret.

  “See you.”

  She was out of the car before he could tug at her heartstrings. The bells above the diner door chimed as it swung open and shut. It had a lock, but Marco only used it for Labor Day and Christmas morning. The rest of the year, the diner stood open twenty-four-seven, the ghosts of breaded meat and potatoes and grilled cheese hanging thick in the poorly ventilated interior.

  After nearly a week’s absence, Hazel barely resisted the urge to turn tail and run back out to the BMW. Ward was likely gone, anyway.

  She tilted up her chin and forced her feet into motion.

  “Ah, there she is!” Marco’s booming voice echoed from the kitchen. “How’s the family? Did you bring pictures?” A divorced father of one, Marco was as fond of children as he was volatile with grown-ups. When he’d found out that Hazel’s sister-in-law had given birth to her first child, he’d been all too eager to grant Hazel a leave of absence.

  Sadie was the one to tell him, albeit against Hazel’s will. She’d been instrumental in softening his prickly heart.

  Hazel thought of her newborn niece back in Missouri, of her freckled, beautiful young mother rushing the christening because she’d already lost two babies to miscarriages and had learned to live in fear. She patently avoided thinking of her own parents at all.

  “A few,” she told Marco, “on my phone. Want to see?”

  Emmalee, one of Marco’s recent hires, sauntered out from behind the counter to take a look as well. So far, no one had asked about Sadie. Hazel wondered how best to broach the subject. Straight-up lies were not her strongest suit.

  “Travis,” Emmalee called into the back of the diner. “Come out here, fool. Hazel’s back.”

  Oh, God. Hazel forged a smile. Her last head-to-head with Travis had led to name-calling. Always one to pick avoidance over a fight, she didn’t relish the prospect of rehashing what had been little more than a misunderstanding blown out of proportion.

  “Wait until Sadie sees these,” Emmalee cooed. In her early forties, she looked as if she’d descended from the silver screen sometime during the war. Her crimson lipstick and red-painted fingernails were staples of pin-up art and she wore them well.

  “She has,” Hazel fibbed. “I went by her mom’s last night. She’s, uh, not feeling well.”

  “Her mom?”

  “Sadie.” Hazel glanced to Marco, whose soft spot for Sadie was the only reason Hazel had been hired in the first place. “I suggested she stayed home today, sleep it off.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “I don’t think so.” If she claimed otherwise, Marco might be tempted to take Sadie a bowl of chicken soup. “Just one of those twenty-four hour bugs. She’ll be on her feet in no time.”

  “Is that what the kids call’em nowadays?” Travis drawled from the back of the diner.

  He moved with eerie grace for such a big guy. Hazel had been intimidated when they’d met and she was still intimidated by him now, knowing that he had seen her amateur porno online before it was taken down thanks to Ward’s clever scheming.

  “We used to say hangover,” he added, fixing Hazel with a smug stare.

  “If Sadie says she’s sick, then she’s sick,” Marco snapped. “Bah, get to work, all of you. I don’t pay you to sit around…”

  Hazel locked her phone keyboard, already tuning out his vociferations. She hadn’t missed this part of her job during her brief holiday—the yelling and the bullying were almost worse than the minimal pay and grabby patrons—but complaining about it did no good. She’d put up with worse to make ends meet. There was always another wide-eyed country girl willing to take over if she couldn’t hack it.

  Emmalee and Travis had learned that lesson fast, post-hiring. They dispersed quickly to wipe down tables and refill the cups of the one or two patrons scattered around the diner. Hazel prepared to do the same when Marco touched a hand to her elbow.

  “You sure she’s okay?” He locked his gaze on Hazel’s, probing.

  “Yeah. She’ll be fine,” Hazel promised. She has to be.

  Marco nodded, but didn’t appear convinced. Hazel wondered if he knew about Sadie’s engagement, if he felt as though he’d been passed up. She locked down the thought. Jealousy was all too familiar a sentiment. It poisoned everything.

  Chapter Two

  Aching down to the marrow of her bones after a day of darting around the diner like a headless chicken, Hazel heaved herself out of the plastic seat as the bus slowed to a creaking halt. Ward had offered her a ride home from work, but she’d declined. The bus stop was only half a block away from the loft on four-seven-one Aulden Way. In this neighborhood, she wasn’t afraid to be outside after dark.

  She tried not to drag her feet on her way to the apartment. The day wasn’t over yet. She had to get Sadie home, figure out what they could do to keep her away from Frank. It wasn’t a return to normal after her brief stint in Missouri, but it could’ve been worse. At least Hazel had Ward and Dylan to back her. She hated to admit it, but without them she wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to keep it together when Sadie called, let alone after.

  The loft door opened at the turn of her key in the latch, metal grinding on metal. A strange sense of solace instantly furled around Hazel, tugging her over the threshold. She didn’t get much farther than a first step.

  The sound of Sadie’s tittering laugh echoed down the bookshelf-lined hallway that led to Dylan’s bedroom.

  Hazel froze with the loft key in hand, ears prickling. The cheerful guffaw rang out again.

  Feeling as if she were an intruder, Hazel set out in the direction of the merriment. John Grisham n
ovels and cookbooks promising to reveal the secrets of the best way to braise duck filets gave way to the sight of Sadie sitting up in bed like a Victorian damsel, teacup in hand. Dylan had drawn his chair close to the bed. His back was to the door for only an instant, but it was enough to etch the image onto the inside of Hazel’s eyelids.

  Then Dylan twisted around.

  “Hey, you’re home.” He seemed surprised by this turn of events.

  “Yeah…” Hazel nodded to the cards strewn over the bedding. “Poker?”

  “Go Fish,” Sadie corrected. “Hi.”

  Without any makeup and surrounded by white bed sheets, Sadie looked pallid and washed out, her hair limp against the sides of her face. Hazel found her gaze tugged to the ugly goose egg swelling on Sadie’s cheek.

  Sadie must’ve noticed, because she glanced away—to Dylan. “Could you give us a minute?”

  “Sure.” He was quick to rise, folding up his hand and laying the cards on the bedside table next to the stylish white teapot. “I’ll get dinner going,” he told Hazel, leaning in to kiss her temple.

  She smiled. “I’ll come help you—”

  “No, you just got off work. Talk,” Dylan urged. “Promise I won’t set anything on fire.”

  Left alone with Sadie, Hazel hesitated a moment before nudging the door shut. “How’re you feeling?” Oblique politeness was the best she could do. Ugly, selfish thoughts snarled at the back of her mind, like snakes in a feeding frenzy.

  “Tired,” Sadie admitted. “Although I slept most of the day away. I, uh, woke up a couple of hours ago. Dylan said you went to work.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, I told Marco you were sick.”

  Sadie smiled crookedly. “Thanks for covering for me.”

  It’s not the first time. In the hours since they had found Sadie weeping in the dirt, Hazel had gone from relief to rage to bewilderment, a rinse cycle of emotions that chased each other in endless revolutions. After a moment’s dithering, she drew Dylan’s chair back and sat gingerly at the end of his bed, her elbows propped on her knees. “You gave me such a scare, Sadie.” What were you thinking? Why did you go up there?

  She was afraid to ask, should the answer be as terrible as she imagined.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t understand what happened. You were fine when I left…”

  “Do we have to talk about it?” Sadie asked, turning to place her teacup on the bedside table. Her bruised cheek caught the light from the reading lamp as she did so, puffy skin gleaming a worrisome reddish-purple. There was no way it would fade in twenty-four hours.

  Hazel forced her questions behind a locked door. “No. Of course not. We can pretend it never happened.”

  “Worked for you, didn’t it?” Sadie shot back. She might have been laid low, her heart in tatters and her pretty face marred, but she wasn’t defeated.

  If she hadn’t found her in Dylan’s bed, being so chummy, Hazel might have been relieved. As it stood, she had to take a deep breath and find some way to clamp down on the startling flash of anger that threatened to kindle in her chest.

  “You know it didn’t,” she said instead.

  Sadie was the only friend who had seen her through her darkest hours in college. She hadn’t known how bad Hazel’s relationship had gotten—no one had—but later, she had given Hazel the benefit of the doubt and helped her with a job, a foothold in the world. Neither of them were well-off or shattering any glass ceilings, but they had each other. Sadie had once helped Hazel pack up her dorm room and leave St. Louis. She had witnessed Hazel’s exodus back to their hometown and not asked any questions.

  Hazel owed her that much.

  “You’ll never guess who I saw in Dunby,” she put in with false cheer, eager to change the subject before they said something they might regret.

  “Mother Theresa?” Sadie guessed.

  “No—”

  “Jesus? No, I know—Elvis?”

  Hazel rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t conceal a smile. They often played this game. “Malcolm…and Penelope.”

  It hadn’t been the happiest surprise, but reliving the memory was worth the lingering hurt just to see Sadie’s eyes widen in disbelief.

  “No way.”

  “Way. Daddy and him have some sort of deal going.” Hazel toed off her sneakers and propped her feet up on the bed spread. “We had dinner together. Mom served tenderloin steak and fresh herbs from the garden. One big happy family…”

  Sadie sat back against the mound of pillows, jaw a little slack. “Shit… Did, uh, did Malcolm say anything?”

  “About fucking with my mind and messing me up for life?” Hazel shook her head. “Not exactly dinner table conversation.” She left out the part where her college sweetheart had done his utmost to corner her in private and twist the knife in a still-open wound. Sadie didn’t need to think about evil men just now. “Penny looked good, though.”

  “Penny?” Sadie repeated, grinning.

  “It’s what he calls her. God, you should see them together,” Hazel groaned, draping herself across the foot of the bed on her side. “They’re so mushy and all over each other, ugh. They’ve even started to look like they hatched from the same egg.”

  “I can’t believe he’s still with her. Weren’t you two—?”

  “At the same time,” Hazel confirmed. “Malcolm always was a playa.” There was more to it than that, but this was not the time to dredge up the ugliness of the past. The present could do with a bit of a makeover, too.

  Sadie giggled, then winced, raising a hand to her cheek. “Ow, it hurts to laugh…”

  Didn’t sound like it when you were with Dylan.

  The thought stabbed through Hazel like a needle. She propped herself up onto an elbow, restless. It felt strange to lie in Dylan’s bed and gossip with Sadie as they might have done in junior high, had they been friends back then.

  Looking back, Hazel couldn’t remember why they’d kept to their separate cliques. She supposed it had had something to do with the Dunby caste system, that rigid and unscientific taxonomy of broods determined by ancestry and the caprices of town gossips.

  “Have I thanked you yet?” Sadie asked out of the blue, the corners of her lips still turned up. “You didn’t have to come get me—”

  “Like hell I didn’t,” Hazel scoffed. She flicked Sadie’s knee with a fingertip. “You had my car, remember?”

  Sadie had been borrowing it ever since she’d wrapped her own around a tree one night. She had always claimed it was an accident—one from which she had emerged miraculously whole—but after this morning’s race to find her, Hazel had her doubts. It was one more topic that they didn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

  Can’t say we didn’t learn from our mothers…

  “You feel up to helping with dinner?” Hazel wondered.

  “You mean I shouldn’t stay in bed and wallow all day and all night?”

  There was some truth to that, but Hazel was under no obligation to acknowledge it. “You can wallow all you like, but I don’t trust Dylan with a hot skillet.” With a sudden burst of energy that was mostly just willpower, Hazel pushed herself upright. “Come on. He needs someone to keep an eye on him.”

  Sadie arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s hopeless on his own.” Hazel pulled her up by the hand, noticing in passing that Sadie was wearing one of her shirts and a pair of boxers borrowed from Dylan. Like an unpinned grenade, she flung the flare of envy that stirred in her chest wide, hoping the shrapnel wouldn’t embed in her flesh.

  Sadie was her friend. That took precedence.

  * * * *

  Dinner at the loft was rarely formal enough to call for setting the table or trotting out the cloth napkins. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Ward and Dylan wanted to make an effort when they had guests. Dylan couched the suggestion in a vague, “I just think it’d be nice.”

  Ward, for his part, stopped at claiming that he’d been r
aised right, which apparently meant proper suppers and digging out the good silver. It didn’t stop him leaning against Hazel’s flank as she arranged the cutlery and whispering, “I’ve always been fond of this table,” in her ear.

  A shiver raced down her spine at the innuendo that edged his voice.

  “I bet you are,” she volleyed once Ward had retreated and she could breathe again. It was too late to pretend she hadn’t felt the full force of his quip.

  She remembered the last time they’d used the table quite clearly. It hadn’t been for its intended purpose. Barely twenty-four hours ago, Hazel had tasted the wood while Dylan had moved inside her, his thrusts picking up speed.

  Discreetly, she pressed a hand to the joint of thigh and hip, sighing on the delicious flicker of pain that flamed beneath her skin.

  “I gotta admit,” Sadie blurted once they finally sat down to enjoy the fruit of Dylan’s labors. “I really thought this was going to be so weird.”

  “Why?” Ward asked nonchalantly, passing her the bowl of sautéed kale and artichoke.

  Dylan anticipated her answer. “Because of you. She was warned.”

  Hazel nodded, sucking her cheeks in to fight off a rebellious smile. Teasing Ward was generally a safe pursuit. He wasn’t quick to take offense and he gave back as good as he got. His weak spots were easily avoided. As long as Hazel didn’t bring Dylan into her jokes, Ward would put up with a lot.

  But Sadie didn’t know that and instead of rolling with the needling, she scoffed, “No, you guys… Just, everything. My best friend is dating two dudes. You gotta admit that’s weird.”

  “It’s a little unorthodox,” Dylan agreed.

  “And crowded, right?” Sadie pressed, gesturing with her fork. “I totally get the appeal, but the logistics seem so complicated. Like, how do you decide who does the dishes or who gets to pick the channel when you watch TV? Hard enough with two people—”

  Hazel reached for her glass. “We manage.” There wasn’t much she could do to bring an end to Sadie’s queries. Once something caught her interest, she was like a dynamo, churning away to dig up all there was to know about that thing—that someone.