by India Lee
“Miss Nathan? Would you like me to show you to Mr. Brody and Mr. Schaffer’s table?”
Amanda blinked up at the hostess.
“Oh. Yes. Actually — is it our usual table?”
“Yes, it is.”
Amanda brushed her bangs out of her eye. “I’ll just go myself. Thank you,” she said, flashing a polite smile before continuing her way into the dining room. The wave of eyes and hushed whispers that followed her were almost comical. With every table she passed, Amanda could hear a quizzical, “Whoa, is that…?”
Yes, it’s me, she laughed inwardly though her own smile faded as she glanced over at one of Lilac’s mirrored walls. She always checked her reflection on the way over to her table but for once, she couldn’t immediately spot it sticking out like a sore thumb. Tonight, among the ultra-chic crowd, she actually looked right at home. Playing with the ends of her hair, Amanda bit back the disbelief curling her lips.
And when she looked up, there was Liam.
He looked handsome enough in his charcoal button shirt, but something about the part in his lips, the complete shock in his eyes made Amanda really smile. It was hard to catch Liam Brody off guard, if even for a second. Doing so sent enough of a thrill up her spine that she forgot about the interview, about Casey.
“Hi,” she smiled, gathering her hair over one shoulder. Liam watched every second of the motion before lifting his gaze up to her curved lips.
“Hey.” He slid his hands into his pockets, leaning back and cocking his head as his eyes devoured her. He smirked as he regained his outward composure. “Something’s different.”
“I let them do a few things to me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Lucky them.”
Amanda bit back her grin as he took her hand and pulled her over. As he soaked her in from head to toe, she cocked her head to look at their table behind him, offering an apologetic little wave to Connor and his girlfriend, who smiled and waved excitedly back. I’m probably imagining that, Amanda thought in regards to Connor’s frosty expression. Normally, she would’ve devoted more time to overanalyzing, but Liam was standing before her being all too distracting. The way he looked at her was about equivalent to silent dirty talk. She blushed as the waitstaff and diners gawked at them. The moment didn’t feel like something appropriate for them to witness, especially as Liam tilted his head, unapologetic as his eyes feasted on her side view.
He ran his hand over his mouth and jaw, slightly tugging on his lower lip. “So how am I supposed to do this tonight?”
“Do what?”
“Sit through dinner. This is going to be torture.”
“Well.” Amanda wet her lips as she eyed the frown between Liam’s brows. She’d never seen a frown so handsome. “You thought a double date was torture anyway, so I guess we’re right where we started.”
“We didn’t start with you wearing a little black leather dress.”
“I’m sorry. I’d change if I could.”
“Might help if you took it off.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and laughed. “Liam. Your friends are waiting on us. Let’s go sit down.”
“I need to fuck you right now.”
“Liam.” Amanda held a finger to her lips, which twitched with a reluctant smile. That stupid smirk of his always charmed and irritated her at the same time. She ignored his satisfied grin, taking his hand and leading him back to their table. “We’re going to have dinner with Connor and his girlfriend. Now. Come on.”
Once seated, Connor’s raven-haired girlfriend held her hand out and her drink up. “Ah, hi! I’m Stella. I feel like I should let you know that we had like, three rounds of drinks while waiting so if I talk too much or say anything inappropriate, it’s because of that.”
Amanda laughed. “Gotcha. I’m so sorry about being late, by the way. I don’t know how the interview ended up taking so long.” She offered a cheery smile to Connor as Liam ordered her a cocktail. “Hi again. We’ve met before… like, once,” she laughed politely.
Connor simply looked at her, his expression unreadable. “Yeah.”
Amanda nodded, waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, she smiled in the way she did when she felt awkward. “At the June Magazine party. That was… that was a great party.” Oh my God, you suck at small talk, Amanda.
“It was good.”
Or maybe it’s him. Amanda blinked at Connor, trying not to look flustered over his lack of interest in speaking to her. After all, he’d been the same way the first time they met — though this time, there seemed to be a decided rudeness in his behavior, especially considering the normal tone he spoke in with Stella as she asked a question about the menu. You’re the one who scheduled this dinner, you big turd, Amanda thought with while studying Connor confusion. He brushed at nothing on his buttoned checkered shirt as Stella tugged on his skinny tie with another question. Despite the irritation on his face, the way he asked her to stop was polite. And when Liam returned his attention to the table, his expression went from polite to full on warm. Happy, even.
“So when do you officially sign on to The Legends, big shot?” he asked with a big grin. “You know you’re gonna buy me a Maserati once you get that paycheck, right? Remember what you promised junior year.”
Liam laughed. “I’ll buy you two once I sign the contract.”
“That’s so exciting!” Stella squealed. She turned to Amanda. “So, if Liam buys Connor two Maseratis, he should buy you like, a diamond necklace, right? And take you out to some big, fancy dinner?”
Amanda smiled, resting her palm on Liam’s knee. “If he got that role, I’d take him to a big, fancy dinner.”
“Right. On a low-rung staff writer’s salary?”
Amanda’s eyes fluttered up at Connor. “What?”
He said nothing, instead taking a drink of his scotch. Amanda looked over at Liam whose attention was with Lilac’s general manager who had come around to say hello. Maybe he didn’t say what I thought he said. Maybe you’re still all wonky like you were this afternoon.
“So are you excited to start your new job tomorrow?” Stella asked brightly. Amanda turned to her, catching the scolding look she flashed Connor before asking her question. “You must be so psyched about being a writer! They always seemed like such smart, funny people to me. I mean just judging from Connor and his writer friends.”
Amanda could feel the nervous twitch in her smile. She could sense Connor just waiting for her to give a stupid answer. “I’m… incredibly excited and nervous,” she said. “But I know I can do it,” she corrected herself hastily, not wanting to appear unconfident.
“Do what?” Connor leaned back in his seat and draped a long arm around Stella’s narrow shoulders as she sunk her attention into her phone and taking pictures of her blood orange cocktail. Amanda tucked her bangs behind her ears.
“Um… what do you mean?”
“Their writers have already been on the job this whole summer. They’re mapping out the second half of the season since the first half’s already written and shot at this point.” He squinted, drumming his fingers against the table. “So… what have you been doing this whole time?”
“Oh. Well… Tom emailed me a bunch of things to… familiarize myself with. I’ve been reading the scripts and the treatment. Stuff like that. And other things.” Dear God, Amanda, make a real sentence, please.
Connor scratched his chin, looking at her with exaggerated curiosity. “So you can do what? What are they gonna get from you now that you’ve familiarized yourself with the material?”
Amanda swallowed, watching the ends of Connor’s lips twitch with what she assumed was suppressed laughter. Her mouth opened only to close without a good reply in mind. “I… don’t know,” she finally answered quietly, unsure if he’d even heard her. She stared down at the table for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and if she was imagining Connor’s asshole act. Finally breaking the silence was Stella, who suddenly looked up from her phone with o
blivious perkiness.
“You know they offered Connor a job on that show, too?” she asked excitedly.
Despite herself, Amanda felt her eyes fly to him with curiosity. “Really?”
He studied the menu. “As a consultant.”
“‘Cause of that baseball movie he wrote that won at Sundance,” Stella beamed, running a hand through Connor’s dark blonde hair.
“And… you said no to the Leadoff job?” Amanda asked him.
“I know right?” Stella snorted, flicking Connor’s temple. She only laughed at the death look he flashed her, taking a big gulp of his drink. “Such a dumbass, right? I was like, it’s Tom Fucking Vogel. You don’t say no to Tom Fucking Vogel.”
Connor swatted her hand away, taking his glass back. “It’s Tom Fucking Vogel, yeah.” He took a swig of the drink before lifting his gaze to Amanda. “But it was right around March and considering some of the hires he made at that time, it kind of seemed like he was getting desperate.” Okay, are you kidding me? Amanda felt her jaw tighten. She had been hired in March. “Wouldn’t really want to jump onto a ship that’s already sinking, you know?” Connor said before finishing his glass of scotch. Stella blinked.
“Wait.” She held her hand up, squinting drunkenly. “That was totally rude,” she pointed out as if Connor might not have any idea. “”You know Amanda’s working on that show, right?”
Connor looked at her incredulously. “Oh. Right.”
Amanda could only stare. Did that really just happen? Connor had just taken less than two minutes to act like a complete unredeemable asshole to her and her only witnesses were either too drunk to notice or engaged in polite chatter with a needy, overbearing restaurant manager who wouldn’t go the hell away.
“Liam.” Amanda tugged on his sleeve, flattening her lips into a smile at the ever-clueless manager, who finally excused himself.
“Christ. Thank you,” Liam said under his breath. Glancing down at his knee, he removed Amanda’s hand. “This counts as torturing me,” he murmured with a low laugh before returning his attention to the table. Upon looking up herself, Amanda caught Connor’s steely grey eyes on her, dropping them to the hand she’d had on Liam’s thigh. He shook his head, giving a disgusted roll of the eyes before flicking a switch and jovially answering whatever question Liam asked him. Amanda gaped, too struck with disbelief to say a thing.
What in the actual fuck?
~
Maybe there is a God.
Throughout dinner with Connor and Stella, Amanda had desperately prayed for a reason to leave. She couldn’t help feeling completely unsettled by Connor. Unless it was her imagination, he seemed to find every opportunity to say something snarky to her — and in a way so passive or vague that she couldn’t even point it out. As she and Liam rode in his Mercedes to Chelsea Piers, Amanda recalled every odd thing that Connor had uttered, hoping to convince herself that she was being stupidly paranoid, that her boyfriend’s best friend of thirteen years didn’t actually hate her.
“Okay. Connor is totally tired of hearing me talk about this but I don’t even care right now,” Stella had started after downing her second champagne cocktail, swatting Connor’s hand away when he tried to take her glass. “Amanda, I just need to tell you how much I love your total Cinderella story. Like, the fact that you moved here for Liam and were completely lost and clueless in the city and then ended up totally killing it? That’s like, the American dream right there.”
Before Amanda could even respond, Connor had interrupted, giving Amanda a brief and unreadable look. “Come on, Stella. I don’t think Amanda was ever clueless. She always knows exactly what she’s doing.”
It had sounded like the makings of a compliment but something in his tone tipped Amanda off to the fact that it probably wasn’t. But she couldn’t quite pinpoint why.
“True, true!” Stella agreed enthusiastically. “Considering you went from magazine writing to TV writing? That’s like, amazing. A clueless girl could never pull that off.”
Connor nodded. “She does move on quickly.”
Again, a compliment that sounded just a hair off, that somehow seemed a whole lot more like an insult. But again, Amanda couldn’t put her finger on what exactly was so strange about his remark. Oddly enough, it was a conversation about dessert that solidified her suspicions that Connor might just flat-out hate her. She had merely been trying to decide between two pastries when Connor spoke up.
“You’ll like the treacle tart,” he’d said, innocuously. “It’s British.”
Staring out the car window at the Hudson River, Amanda felt her entire face growing suddenly hot. Holy shit, he was totally talking about Dylan.
“You okay?”
Amanda blinked herself out of her thoughts, looking up at Liam, who stood holding open her car door for her. She hadn’t even noticed that the Mercedes had arrived at Chelsea Piers let alone seen that Liam had gotten out of the car. Holding one hand out to her, his other gripped his skinny tie at the knot, loosening it to prepare for the impromptu Soldier publicity stunt that Terrence Rambis had interrupted their dinner to have performed. Despite the bizarre request to meet him at Chelsea Piers close to midnight, Amanda couldn’t have been more grateful for Terrence’s call. She’d had officially enough of Connor’s underhanded insults and had been a second way from snapping and looking like the crazy, irrational girlfriend.
“I’m fine,” Amanda lied, letting Liam help her out of the car. She managed to crack a smile at the way his gaze involuntarily locked on her legs as she swung them over the side of the backseat. “I think I’m just… nervous about work stuff,” she said as she got out. It was true, after all. She hadn’t had the time before to worry about her first day until Connor had decided to be an ass and remind her about it.
“That makes two of us,” Liam laughed, wrapping his arm around Amanda’s waist as they followed one of Terrence’s assistants into the closed building.
“You don’t have any idea what Terrence brought you here to do?”
“No, but whatever it is, I probably had too many drinks to do it safely.”
He certainly wasn’t wrong about that.
Whatever bit of tipsiness Amanda had had from drinking at Lilac promptly evaporated upon hearing what Terrence intended for Liam to do. Standing in the Aquatics Center at Chelsea Piers, at the edge of the Olympic-sized pool in her black Thierry Marc stilettos, Amanda absolutely gaped at Terrence, the ultra-tanned and leathery skin on his cheeks wrinkling from the sheer width of his overzealous smile. His iPhone in hand, he tapped the screen until he had the videocamera open and ready.
“I swear to God, Manda, he did it between takes one day while we were in Jordan. He fuckin’ did and we didn’t get the whole thing on tape but I sure as hell won’t let that happen again because I need the world to know what a fuckin’ real goddamned soldier this guy is! I am gonna get this shit to go viral by fuckin’ breakfast tomorrow.”
“Right.” Amanda managed a polite albeit weak smile for Terrence before turning her look of pure horror to Liam. “Liam, can I talk to you for a second?” she asked through her teeth, her heels clicking neatly as she took his hand and stepped aside on the tile floor. Once out of earshot from Terrence, Amanda let her smile fall flat. “Liam, you are drunk right now,” she hissed. “I don’t think holding your breath for fifty meters under water is safe even when you’re sober.”
Liam rubbed the back of his neck as he gazed out into the still blue pool water. “I did this once before. Don’t worry about me.”
“Uh oh. The girlfriend’s gonna kill me!” Terrence laughed, holding his hands up in apology before turning to the Pararescue reserve whom Liam would apparently be swimming alongside for effect. To the world, he was meant to look like Liam’s competition but Amanda was well aware that he was actually there to supervise in case Liam’s eyes rolled to the back of his head at any point during the near two hundred foot swim. “It’s what the real PJs do during training, Manda! It’s called Superman
School and your guy is a fuckin’ Superman!”
Liam bit his laugh back as he watched Amanda twitch at being called Manda again. He gave a sigh and let his shoulders fall when she shot him daggers. “Amanda — ”
“If this stupid stunt doesn’t kill you, Liam, I will,” she interrupted him. Anger tingled in the back of her throat when he dared to crack a smile. “This isn’t a joke, Liam,” she insisted, promptly turning his face back to her when he tried to sneak a glance at Terrence. Her palms flattened against his jaws, she continued only once his dark eyes looked at her earnestly. “It’s not the same as doing some combat scene and breaking a bone — you are depriving yourself of oxygen. You can get brain damage, Liam, and you are scaring the life out of me right now because you just had three or four strong drinks, or I don’t know how many, and even when people actually training to be PJs and SEALS do this, they lose consciousness. Most of them do. I know this because while you were in Jordan doing every last stupid stunt that Terrence challenged you to do, I was worrying about you here and reading about the entire Pararescue pipeline and praying that he wouldn’t ask you to try any more of those things. You trained for two months, Liam, not two years. You are literally risking your life for a movie right now — is it worth it?”
Amanda sucked in a deep breath once she’d asked her question. She dropped her hands from Liam’s face, embarrassed by the tingling heat behind her eyes. That generally meant that tears were on the way but she thankfully, they didn’t come.
“Amanda, I can’t say no to him.”
“Yes you can.”
“I don’t want to,” he said sternly. “I need to do everything right with this movie, Amanda. I don’t want to fuck one thing up when it comes to this film or my relationship with Terrence. I want that Oscar, I want that next role, I want the big, stupid paycheck. I want all the things that are going to make Logan’s life easier from now on. You know what this means to me.”
