Miss Independent, Volumes 1 - 4

by Kiki Leach

  She called Melanie up and waited for her to answer. A few rings was all it took before she heard a clicking sound on the other end.

  “Hi,” Melanie responded. She sounded exhausted and overwhelmed while attempting to make breakfast for her daughters. “I’ve been trying to call you since last night and got worried when you didn’t respond.”

  “Sorry about that, Nathan and I got busy.”

  “That’s okay. I just hadn’t seen you in a few weeks and was wondering if you were interested in another spa day? My friend Jill from the bar called to invite me out so that we could catch up, and I thought it would be fun if you came out with us too.”

  “That’d be great, but I’m not actually in the city right now.”

  “Oh?”

  “No, I’m in the Hamptons with Vanessa and everyone else.”

  Melanie placed two bowls of freshly sliced fruit on her kitchen counter and paused. “Vanessa actually invited you out there to be with her?”

  “It didn’t exactly happen like that, but she hasn’t kicked us out yet. I’m starting to think that maybe getting away from the city might help to leave a lot of the bullshit between us behind.”

  “How do you plan to do that?” she asked.

  “I have a few ideas.” Sheila saw Nikki and William as they headed out to the deck and smirked. “Listen, I don’t know if you and Oscar have any plans tonight and tomorrow, but Nathan and I are staying at my parent’s place on the beach and you’re more than welcome to stay in a spare bedroom. Bring the girls if you want! Make it a family filled weekend.”

  “I don’t know. The girls have already spent time up there with Oscar’s parents and this is so last minute. I wouldn’t want to feel like we’re intruding.”

  “You wouldn’t be and the girls would probably love to come back one more time before school starts up again. There’s plenty of room if you want to join in with the rest of us. And I’d be absolutely thrilled to see you here.” There was a touch of a devious tone to Sheila’s voice, but Melanie overlooked it.

  She wavered as she poured milk and cereal into each bowl, mixing it in with the fruit and serving it to her girls at the table. “Who’s out there besides Vanessa and maybe Maurice?”

  “Me and Nathan, and um…” She coughed. “William and Nicole.”

  “Nikki? I haven’t seen her since that night at the bar. She’s been on the schedule at the shop, but Oscar says she hasn’t been coming in. And I’ve been at the other place taking care of a few things.”

  “In that case, there’s nothing like a little face to face intervention. Or to finally tell her that she’s fired.”

  “I could do that.” She continued to waver. “Why don’t you give me the address just in case and I can get back to you on it.”

  “Perfect.” She gave her the directions. “We plan to come back home Sunday to beat the traffic, so if you can, try to make it up before then.” When Nikki walked back into the kitchen, Sheila hurried Melanie off the phone and hung up.

  She eyed her strangely and went over to the fridge. “What were you doing?”

  “Just talking to a friend. Hey, when V comes back, tell her I stopped by?”

  “Bet she can’t wait to hear from you again.” She grabbed a bottle of water and headed back out to the deck.

  “I bet she can’t either, Nik,” Sheila said to herself. “Especially once she learns what a lying, two-faced, sack of shit you are.” She snatched the last of her bagels and tossed the empty bag in the trash, then left the house the same way she came in.

  Out on the beach, Maurice and Vanessa traveled hand in hand alongside the water, kicking up the dirt and shells with their feet as they moved. They hadn’t talked much since leaving the house, but Vanessa had finally managed to cool her nerves.

  “I just really wish this weekend could’ve been about us and not everybody else,” she said.

  “We can still make it about us, V. You don’t have to constantly let everybody get to you like this.”

  “I can’t help it! The sight of William without his shirt on is equivalent to seeing Alexander in the same way and I feel like gagging. Couple that with Nathan and Sheila showing up and it just makes everything that much worse.” As they looked ahead at two people chasing each other around the water, Vanessa thought to go back to the house in order to avoid getting involved in their frolicking. It was only when she recognized one of them as being Harold that she decided to stick around. When he spotted her, he waved and grabbed the hand of his current girlfriend. Maurice instantly recognized her as someone he had known awhile back, but tried to play it as if he had never seen her before, and hoped she would do the same as a courtesy. When they raced over, they were out of breath from laughing. Vanessa glared. “What’s so funny?”

  “Something I mentioned to her before we got over here,” Harold replied as he adjusted his sunglasses. His girlfriend looked at both Vanessa and Maurice, but kept her gaze on him while he tried avoiding her eyes. “It was a joke I don’t think would understand.”

  “Why? Did it originate in the Stone Age?”

  “That’s funny, Vanessa. Maybe a joke like that will help to sell more copies of the magazine next month.” He turned his attention to Maurice and showed his hand. “Harold Kramer.”

  “I know.” Maurice refused to shake his hand. Harold closed his fingers inside his palm and dropped it to the side.

  He wrapped his other hand around his girlfriend’s waist and pulled her close. “This is Olivia Greenwald. She used to work as an editor at Page Six.”

  “With your ex?” Vanessa asked. “I see you’re keeping it classy as always.”

  “Only way I know how to keep it.” He grinned wide. “Had I known you were coming up here, V, I would’ve invited you both to the shindig at my house tonight--”

  She snapped her fingers. “Damn. That’s too bad, but truth be told I’d rather stick my face in acid than spend any more time with you outside of work. Sorry. Nice to meet you, Olivia.” She yanked Maurice’s hand back in the opposite direction. “Of course he’s dating someone who used to work with this ex. What a piece of shit.”

  After getting back to the house, Vanessa went straight to the kitchen for a beer while Maurice headed upstairs to grab something from his room. He found Nikki digging around in the dresser drawers and knocked on the door to jolt her into backing away from it.

  “You scared me,” she said.

  “That was the whole point.”

  “I wasn’t snooping.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing in here? You should be glad it was me and not Vanessa that found you.”

  “When she packed my stuff yesterday, she didn’t put everything in there. I’m missing a bra and a few pairs of underwear.” Once she found them in a bottom drawer underneath a pile of Maurice’s shirts, she held them up and shook them out. He dropped to the edge of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. Nikki saw the solemn look on his face and didn’t want to ask, but after being in his room uninvited, felt obligated to appear concerned. “Why do you look like somebody just punched you in the stomach?”

  “Because it’s pretty much what just happened,” he told her. And then he shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “You opened the door to this, Mo. What is it?”

  He dropped his head to his hand and moved it back and forth. “I don’t want Vanessa hearing about this, at least not yet.”

  “We can solve that pretty easily.” She went over to the door to close it, then opened her arms. “Okay. What is it?”

  He exhaled and anxiously clasped his hand over his fist, attempting to hold them tight. “Harold Kramer is working with Vanessa at the magazine now.”

  “Is that the same Harold who headlined the Daily News?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on with it and Vanessa won’t really tell me about it.”

  “Do you think she’s hiding something about the reason why he’s there?”

  “It’s possible.”r />
  “Then you haven’t asked her about it?”

  “I have, but stopped because she wasn’t telling me anything worth knowing. I just couldn’t believe he went from the NYDN to Attitude. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “If he needed a change, then it should.”

  “I’d believe that if it were someone else,” he told her. “But this guy has made hundreds of thousands by putting V on the cover of that thing.”

  “If she doesn’t have a problem with him being there, I don’t see why you do.”

  “She does have a problem with it. And she should.”

  Nikki crossed one leg over the other and sighed. She felt there was something more behind his concern than what he was willing to give. “What else is going on here, Maurice?”

  “I’m afraid that the longer he works there, the more comfortable he’ll get. And the more comfortable he gets, the more he’ll start talking. Which means he might tell Vanessa some things that she doesn’t need to know.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Such as me being the one who spilled Nathan and Sheila’s affair to an editor at Page Six.”

  “That was you?” she asked. He nodded. “Huh. But how would he even learn anything about that?”

  “An editor, former editor now, that I spilled it to is his new girlfriend. We just saw them on the beach and she acted like she didn’t know me, but I could tell from the way she looked at me that she recognized me almost immediately. Now that she’s seen us together, I’m not so sure she’s going to keep her mouth shut. Everybody out here is looking for a story to tell. The thing is, I feel like I should say something to V before she learns it from one of them.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything to her about it if I were you,” Nikki said. “The last thing she wants or needs is to be reminded of that time in her life. And I don’t think she cares anymore that it got out now anyway.”

  “If she doesn’t care,” he began, “then why shouldn’t I tell her about it?”

  “She might not care that it was out there, but it doesn’t mean that she wants to know that you’re the one who did it. What would make you do something so stupid?”

  “I thought by embarrassing them, it would take some of the pressure off of her.”

  “But it didn’t, did it? All the more reason to keep quiet about it. You two are happy now, right? If you want to stay that way, just take it from me and don’t say anything about this to her or anybody else.” She left the room and closed the door behind her.

  Maurice didn’t feel good about continuing the lie, but also didn’t want to lose Vanessa over something so petty. He struggled with what to do, though he heeded Nikki’s advice.

  As Vanessa was about to grab her second beer and head upstairs to join Maurice in their room and bed, she heard a light knocking on the front door. She frowned and went over to the stairs to call up for Nikki. “Is William up there with you?” she asked.

  “No!” Nikki shouted back from her bedroom. “He went to the store for some more fruit but he’ll be back soon. Why?”

  “No reason.” When she heard the knocking again, she sat down her beer and opened the door. She wanted to keel over when she saw her mother, stepfather and sister standing there.

  “HAPPY FOURTH!” Gina exclaimed.

  “It was going pretty great,” she lied. “Until now – no offense. But what the hell are you guys doing here?”

  “Don’t sound so happy to see us, V.”

  “Trust me, I won’t – Why are you all here?” she asked. Gina bumped past her and hopped into the den.

  “Oh, Vanessa,” Alexis said. “Have you forgotten that quickly that you and Maurice invited us here?” She shuffled her way inside the house ahead of Alexander, who bent forward to kiss his stepdaughter on the forehead.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi. I don’t want to make her sound crazier than normal, but we didn’t invite anyone here. Has she been dipping into the vodka inside her desk at work?”

  “I can hear you, girl,” Alexis told her, “and I have done no such thing. Alexander received Maurice’s text messages from last night, asking for us to come for the weekend dinner he had planned. It’s all right there. He saved them.”

  “What?” she asked. Alexander handed her his phone. As she scrolled through the messages, she scrunched her face, horrified. “He didn’t send these.”

  “It’s all right here, baby girl.”

  “Yeah, I can see that, but there is no planned dinner tonight. We originally intended for a weekend together with just the two of us.”

  Alexis moved closer to the back of the house and pointed. “Then why is Nathaniel Taylor making his way up this deck?”

  “Great,” she groaned.

  Nathan knocked, then opened the door and peeked his head inside. “I come in peace, V,” he said.

  “What the hell do you want now?”

  “I was hoping Maurice was around so that I could talk to him.”

  “What do you want?” Maurice asked while jogging down the stairs.

  “Hold on.” Vanessa turned to him and placed a hand on his stomach. “Did you send these text messages to my dad and Alexis about some dinner you had planned for tonight?”

  He scrunched his brows, confused. “I haven’t used my phone since we’ve been out here because the service has been so shoddy.”

  “Right, but the messages came from your phone. If you wanted to invite them up here, why not just tell me?”

  “I didn’t send anything out to anybody, V and I don’t know anything about a ‘dinner’.”

  “I think I can help solve this.” Nathan stepped forward and grinned. “I used Maurice’s phone to send the messages last night. He had it lying around and I thought, ‘why not?’. But don’t worry, I didn’t see anything I wasn’t supposed to. And I erased what I sent once I got conformation from Alexander that they would be showing up, to avoid any confusion.”

  “That worked out real well, didn’t it?” said Vanessa. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I’m planning the dinner for tonight. And I wanted everyone who’s ever been a part of my life to be here for it.”

  “Why? Are you dying, or something? Is this your last supper? Cause if so, I can go out and buy some streamers, confetti, and a rainbow colored reef for the occasion.”

  “I just wanted to start fresh with everyone before we got back to the city and I thought this was the best way to do it. Like a cleansing,” he said. “Leaving all the bad shit behind in the past where it belongs.” He turned his attention to Maurice. “Which is why I’d like to talk to you for a second in private.”

  Vanessa became nervous. Everyone looked at Maurice as he dithered, but finally agreed to meet him out on the deck.

  “This won’t take long,” Nathan said, as Maurice shut the door behind them.

  “What do you want?”

  “To apologize for being such an asshole. From the lack of our friendship since high school on down to my behavior at the reunion. Seeing you and Vanessa together…” He gulped back what he was truly feeling, which was a mixture of repugnance and rage. “It’s shown me how much you two really do deserve each other.”

  “Much like you and Sheila.”

  He laughed. “I just wanted to tell you that we may no longer be cool with each other, but I still think of you as the brother I never had. That’s hard to forget when you grow up together like we did.” Maurice was unconvinced, but continued to listen. “Anyway, I’m hoping that tonight will really bring some changes throughout this group and shuffle the dynamics a bit. I think it’s about time we all started to finally accept things as they are and try to move past what happened back then. I know it’s been hard on V the most and I’m hoping that will change.” He offered his hand. Maurice inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled and grabbed his hand tight, but didn’t hold on for too long. “And if you could do me a favor, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I kn
ow that everyone in there isn’t convinced about my motivations tonight, but I really meant what I said in there and what I’m saying out here. I don’t think they’ll show up unless you convince them of it.”

  “I can’t make you any promises,” said Maurice.

  “I’m not asking for any. Just a favor or two. I’d really appreciate it, man. Around 8:30 if they can.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded.

  “Thanks. I better get back over to Sheila. She doesn’t know about the dinner just yet.” He slapped Maurice on the arm and headed back down the deck.

  Maurice didn’t know what the hell to think about the entire situation. There was a part of him completely confused and baffled by Nathan’s actions. While another part of him wondered if they could be trusted. As he headed back into the house, everyone but Gina who was still enthralled in TV, began asking him questions regarding what had been said. As they all began talking at the same time, Maurice held up his hands to keep them from continuing on.

  “He’s only interested in everyone showing up for this dinner,” he said. “That’s it. He sounded as if he wanted to make amends for his actions and move on.”

  “Oh, that’s bullshit,” said Vanessa. Alexis didn’t even bother to dispute the language she had used. “He’s so full of it. What else did he say?”

  “That was pretty much it.”

  “Maybe he really wants to move past all of this,” said Alexander. “It’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe it’s a possibility.”