“I know it means ‘thou mayest’ from the biblical translation, as in ‘thou mayest triumph over sin.’ I was a religious studies minor at Grinnell College as well as an English major.”
“Then you should know.”
“I do. It’s from East of Eden, but that’s not the last line. ‘His eyes closed and he slept.’ That’s how it ends.”
“Very good, Sierra. Very good.”
She could tell she’d really impressed him. His eyes seemed to light up—at least the one that wasn’t bloodshot and gnarly. Truthfully, she had just read East of Eden for the first time after Kyle had mentioned his love for the book, making sure to analyze every sentence in case he brought it up again.
She realized that was why William had felt so familiar. She’d been in Kyle’s office that one day when she urged Kyle to take William’s call. He had referred to the man as his mentor. She figured it would certainly help her earn points with Kyle if he saw how well she and William were already getting along.
17
JAMIE PUT HER arm around Kyle as they headed downstairs at the Library for Sierra’s party. They’d been to the Library before—a trendy spot in East Williamsburg with bookshelves for walls and drinks that referenced old literary titles. They were in a better place than they’d had been in a long time, at least thanks to the other night. Besides being so attentive, Kyle had finally revealed the piece of his past that had been nagging her ever since William brought it up. The fact that he trusted her enough meant their relationship was finally moving to the next step. And after they’d gotten back from dinner at Vinyard, he was an animal in bed. She could barely even move the next day, happily sore. While she was a tad on edge about meeting Sierra for the first time, she resolved to let go of any jealousy toward the girl and not only enjoy the party but maybe snag a new client out of it too.
“There’s Sierra,” Kyle said.
Even in the dim lighting, Sierra looked radiant. She wore an oversize white floral lace tunic dress that Jamie recalled seeing on the rack at a Cynthia Rowley store. An older lady with red glasses hovered close by. Jamie figured it was her agent.
Seeing Kyle, Sierra skipped over. Jamie linked her fingers with Kyle’s before Sierra had a chance to go in for a hug.
“Hi, you must be Jamie!” Sierra said, full of energy. Jamie already pegged her as the kind of girl who never stopped smiling.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” they both said at the same time. Jamie let go of Kyle to shake Sierra’s hand.
“So, are you excited?” Kyle asked, surveying the party of about twenty people.
“I hope more people will show up,” Sierra said.
“Everyone probably wants to be fashionably late,” Jamie said.
The agent poked her head into the conversation. She had an ultra-long neck and a tiny head with a bowl haircut, resembling a periscope.
“Delia Edgecomb,” she said, offering a veiny hand to Jamie quickly and then holding on to Kyle’s. “Kyle, darling!” She gave him three kisses on his cheeks.
Since Delia wasn’t letting go of Kyle anytime soon, Jamie was forced to make conversation with Sierra. She debated excusing herself to get a much-needed drink.
“So Kyle told me you have your own design company?” Sierra said.
Jamie noticed that Sierra barely wore any makeup. It made her question if she had caked too much on herself.
“Yes, I just got my first investor.”
“Cool. You and Kyle are like a power couple.”
Jamie could tell Sierra felt dumb for saying that. She glanced around the party for anyone she knew, itching to talk to Kyle’s boss since he certainly had an eye for design and might want to update Burke & Burke’s look. She’d been waiting for the right time so Kyle could make the introduction.
“I hate all this attention,” Sierra said.
“Soak it up,” Jamie said. “You never know when it’ll come around again.”
“Did Kyle tell you I was having trouble writing recently?”
Jamie flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Kyle doesn’t really talk about you.”
“Oh,” Sierra said, like she’d swallowed too much water.
“He doesn’t talk about work often,” Jamie added, realizing she was being cruel. “After a long day, who really wants to?”
“All I want to do is talk about my book because I’m by myself with it all day.”
“So much time spent in your head, I don’t know how you writers do it.”
“I’ve been wondering that too. How’d you get into interior design?”
“I was studying prelaw in college, leaning toward corporate law, but I realized I’d rather make things look beautiful than help wealthy companies get wealthier.”
“I think the only thing I’m good at is writing a novel, and I’m not even close to finishing it.”
“Just think, someone will be picking up your book in a store soon and then spend hours reading something you’ve created. It’s rewarding.”
“It is. Thank you.”
“To be able to do what you’re passionate about as a career, it can be rare. You’re lucky.”
Jamie felt Delia Edgecomb peering around her shoulder. Delia pursed her lips. “Ladies, a drink?”
“Just a seltzer for me,” Sierra said.
Jamie shook her head. “No way, you need to enjoy yourself.”
“I don’t want to get drunk tonight.”
“One drink won’t put you on the floor,” Jamie said, and then turned to the periscope woman. “Two martinis, up.”
Delia nodded and made her way to the bar.
“Shit, I see Brett,” Kyle said, and left the two of them alone.
Brett had arrived in a sharp navy suit and cuff links in the shape of an A and a Z. He didn’t look pleased that Kyle was walking over. Now Jamie would be stuck with Sierra even longer, at least until the martinis arrived. She’d make sure to bring up her design business again once Delia Edgecomb returned. The woman had just made a good chunk of money off Sierra, perfect time for some new home decoration.
* * *
KYLE NOTICED BRETT’S ridiculous A and Z cuff links and hated them immediately. It bothered him that Brett had probably picked them out at Saks or somewhere, thinking they’d be conversation-worthy. The guy tried way too hard.
“Kyle,” Brett said, as if his name was a tart piece of lemon. He wouldn’t even look Kyle in the eye. “Don’t you think the Library is a little too on the nose for a book party?”
“Sierra’s agent chose it.”
“She has no other clients, right?”
“Been Google-stalking her?”
“Just a word of advice,” Brett said. “An agent with no other clients means she has nothing else to send to editors. Meaning if you’re looking to discover a new author from her—”
“Yeah, I get it, Brett.”
Brett rubbed his butt chin, as if in deep thought. Kyle could tell he’d recently been self-tanning, his face and neck almost two different shades.
“What I don’t get, Kyle, is why you’d say such untrue things behind my back after I was the one who showed you the ropes at Burke & Burke.”
“What? I should be the one pissed at you right now. You offered to sign William? Really, dude?”
“I see talent and I pounce. Besides, you didn’t want to have anything to do with his book.”
“Because it’s garbage.”
“Au contraire, mon frère. How far did you read?”
“Enough.”
“Obviously not. You have a personal vendetta against the guy that’s clouding your judgment.”
“You mean to tell me that Devil’s Hopyard is actually good?”
“It’s fucking brilliant. I can honestly say I’ve never read anything like William’s manuscript before, and it’s gonna be huge.”
“Can we talk honestly, Brett? Just drop all the bullshit and stop trying to one-up each other. William is insane.”
“I got him fair and square.�
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“I don’t want him,” Kyle yelled. The music had gotten louder and he had to raise his voice, the beats thumping under his feet. “He killed my cat.”
“You have a cat?”
“The cat that lived in my alleyway.”
“Are you on acid?”
“I am doing you a solid right now, Brett. William is dangerous and disturbed. There is a straitjacket at some asylum with his name on it.”
“Well, he’s a fucking good writer, and if he wants to bite his shoulder on his off time that’s none of my business.”
“Those first thirty pages I read made no sense!” Kyle said, gobsmacked. “It’s drivel about some professor who wants to eat a girl’s heart.”
“No, man, the book opens up after that, it’s very meta.”
“You’re just fucking with me.”
“Kyle, I don’t have the time to do that. Evidently, according to you, I spend all my energy trying to poach my colleagues’ clients.”
Brett started to walk away, but Kyle stopped him.
“I am not going crazy. Devil’s Hopyard is a pile of shit and you’re being petty.”
Brett pushed Kyle out of the way and fixed his suit. “I see Front Desk Amanda standing all alone with her shaved blue head. Excuse me, but there are some pants I want to get into.”
Kyle figured Brett had to be messing around, but a sliver of him actually worried that he’d misread William’s opus. Had he been so shocked by its contents that he couldn’t see it as art?
Impossible, he thought, making a beeline for the bar. Talking to a crazy person for long enough can make you think you’ve gone crazy too. He ordered a bourbon on the rocks.
Relief swelled over him once it hit his lips.
* * *
ONE MARTINI UP led to three for Sierra. She’d always thought of herself as a social person, but she’d never had to be the focal point like this. A crowd had started to fill in, and Delia yanked her from person to person: this publicist, that marketing director, this other hot new writer. It was all too overwhelming. She figured she’d be left alone at the bar so she situated herself there. Because it looked strange to be sitting without a drink, she was soon ordering a fourth martini, wondering why the barstool seemed so slippery.
She saw Jamie and Kyle intimately talking the way couples do after they already made the polite rounds and gravitated back toward each other. She had liked Jamie but got the feeling that Jamie wasn’t too much of a fan. Sierra worried that maybe she’d given off the vibe that she had feelings for Kyle. Maybe Jamie had seen her look at him in a longing way? She just wanted to be cool around him, but that train had left a long time ago. Last night she’d had a rather graphic dream with Kyle as the star, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he looked the same naked in real life as in her fantasy.
“I’m surprised to find you all alone,” a voice said to her.
“Kyle?” she asked, licking her lips as if she could taste him. She spun around on her stool to find William.
“Sorry to disappoint,” William said. He had a smaller bandage than before on his forehead and his left eye had cleared up some.
“Thanks for coming!” she said, her arms around his neck as she almost fell off the stool.
He caught her before she hit the floor and directed her back to her seat. “Watch it there.”
The bartender left a fresh martini. “Maybe I shouldn’t drink this.” She shrugged and popped the olive in her mouth and crunched down.
“Do you need help finishing it?” William asked.
“Please, before I embarrass myself even more.”
“This is your night, you should be able to do whatever you want.”
Her eyes fixated on Kyle. He and Jamie seemed to be having an argument now, although maybe that was just a continuation of her fantasy.
“What I want, I can’t have,” she said, still staring at Kyle and Jamie.
“You like him, don’t you?”
Her skin immediately got red. She could feel it spreading across her chest and up her neck. Having a pale complexion always made her emotions overly transparent.
“Can I tell you a little secret?” he asked, motioning for her to lean in closer. She complied. “Kyle and his girlfriend are about to break up.”
“No way. Really?”
“He told me she suffocates him.”
“Suffocates?” Sierra said, stretching out the word and making a mental note to never ever suffocate Kyle.
“He actually said he’s developed feelings for you.”
Her heartbeat sped up and a knot formed in her stomach. For a second, she thought she might puke, but she was good, so good.
“What did he say exactly?” she asked, her mouth dry all of a sudden. She took another gulp of the martini.
“Just that spending time with you made him realize how unhappy he is with Jamie.”
She knew it! There’d been times she suspected this, like when he sat so close at the Irish bar and told her how great she was. She had chalked it up to simple, innocent flirtation, but deep down …
“What should I do, William?”
“Take him aside and tell him how you feel. He’s been waiting so he could finally end things with Jamie. If you don’t, he might never pull the trigger.”
Ugh. Pressure on top of pressure on top of pressure. She coughed, and a smidge of bile tickled up her throat. She saw Jamie walking away from Kyle.
“Now’s your chance, he’s all alone.” William took her hand and directed her off of the stool.
“I don’t know if I can,” she murmured, but he gave her a light push. Before she knew it, she was in front of Kyle asking if they could talk in private.
* * *
KYLE AND JAMIE’S minifight started over the dumbest thing. She wanted a breakdown of everyone at the party who might be interested in an interior designer, and he replied that she was becoming too consumed with work. He should have known that would set her off, since it was about the most hypocritical comment he could make. He didn’t even mean it when he said it. He was still fuming from his interaction with Brett and hadn’t meant for Jamie to get the brunt of his displaced anger. But if he’d really dissected this outburst, it stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t been able to be truthful with her about what he figured William did to Capone, leaving him all alone to deal with the ramifications. Thankfully—bourbon in hand—he was coping with it little better now.
“Can we talk in private, Kyle?” Sierra asked. She had slunk up, unnoticed.
“Of course.”
They wandered over by the bathrooms to a nook with a reading bench. Bookshelves surrounded them, creating their own secluded world. He spied a few titles: War and Peace, The Idiot, Fathers and Sons. Clearly, they had entered Russian territory. He plucked Crime and Punishment and turned to a page, sitting down.
“‘Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most,’” Kyle read aloud.
“So true,” Sierra said, her eyes glittery, but then he saw it was tears.
“Why are you crying? Don’t cry.”
She used the sleeve of her dress to wipe them away, but more kept coming.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as brilliant as you,” she said, her face wet. “I’m a mess.”
“No, no, no.” He reached into his front jacket pocket and removed a handkerchief. She cleaned herself up and placed the handkerchief to the side. “Aren’t you enjoying your party?”
Before he could stop it from happening, she had nuzzled into his shoulder, her gin-laced breath warming.
“I’m ready to give all of myself to you,” she said quietly. “I know you feel the same. And it will get me writing again, to touch you, to feel you, to know that you’re there.”
She kissed him sloppily, like a teenager on a first date. She wouldn’t let him get a breath. He tried to pull away, but she was surprisingly strong, her lithe body straddling him. Her high heels slid to the floor and she tucked a bare foot into his crotch.
“Sierra…”
She kissed his face, his neck, grabbed him by the hair, knocked his head into the bookshelf, and dove in again. When he was finally able to peel her away, Jamie stood there, squeezing a glass of bourbon as if she was trying to make it shatter. Next to her, William’s smug face revealed that he was responsible for making all of this happen.
Jamie marched over and tossed the bourbon into Sierra’s face, the shock of this causing Sierra to fall to the floor.
“Jamie, it’s not what you think,” Kyle said, on his feet, rushing toward her.
“That’s what people always say when they’re caught cheating,” Jamie yelled back. “I knew something was happening.”
Sierra hugged her knees, beyond wasted. “B-but you two are breaking up.”
Jamie towered over her. Kyle thought she might snap and beat the girl senseless.
“You can have him,” Jamie said, eerily calm, then headed toward the exit.
“Jamie, wait!” Kyle shouted.
He passed by William, making sure to give a menacing sneer as he chased after Jamie.
“Baby, baby,” he said, trying to grasp onto her by the stairs.
“Kyle, I know what I saw.”
“I was just sitting there and she started kissing me not two seconds before you came. She’s drunk, she’s young. There is nothing between us.”
But there was no chance of changing Jamie’s mind. Fighting with her was always futile.
“You tell me,” she began, “that you never gave that girl any reason to throw herself at you? You flirt with lampposts, Kyle.”
“I have not nor ever would cheat on you. And especially with a writer of mine. You of all people know how much my career means to me.”
“I thought we were doing better—”
“We were.” And then he finally realized: “Why was William even there? He brought you over at the precise time that Sierra pounced on me.”
“So it’s all a big conspiracy with you as the target?”
“Yes!”
“Sad, truly sad, Kyle. Own up to your shit, fucker.”
“William probably told Sierra we were having problems. Don’t you see that’s how he works?”
Jamie started stomping up the stairs. “Just tell me she was never in your bed. That you always fucked her in her crappy apartment so I wouldn’t have to smell her on your sheets.”
The Mentor Page 14
