Dating You / Hating You

by Christina Lauren

  “I know that things look bad, and the timing of you telling Evie about Dan Printz and the article coming out looks suspicious, but I can guarantee she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. The two of us have had our differences in the past, but she would never jeopardize her integrity, or that of anyone working here. She knows what’s at stake—as do I—and respects you and the job, our clients and contacts too much.”

  “What the hell is going on, Carter?” Brad leans in, eyes narrowing. “Why are you in here telling me this? Are you white-knighting for the girl you’re fucking? Is that it?” My heart claws its way up my chest. “Are we going to have a little talk about the birds and the bees right now?”

  “No, Brad. I just wanted to clarify—”

  Brad holds up a finger to stop me. “The only thing that needs clarifying is that you work for me. And right now I want you to get the hell back to your office and do exactly that—work. Just like I hired you to do. I don’t want your drama in here. Evie fucked up, period, and it isn’t the first time.” He slides his hand horizontally above his desk. “Let her roll under the bus.”

  I think back to the day of the merge and how thankful I was that I still had a job. I remember the relief of thinking I was in the clear, and being in this very room when I realized that I wasn’t. We did exactly what Brad had hoped we would do and went for each other’s throats, in the hope that only one of us would be left standing. It’s shocking to realize that the only one standing is me.

  “Actually,” I start, and the more I think on what I’m about to do, the more I know it’s the right thing. “I don’t think so. I’m done.”

  Brad sits back in his seat, surprised.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Carter. Think on it tonight. Don’t be a hero and wake up regretting a decision you made with the wrong fucking head. Because whether you’re here or not, she won’t be.”

  • • •

  My phone goes off on my way out of the office, but I ignore it. I don’t bother to take anything, deciding there will be plenty of time, or I can have Justin send it to me . . . somewhere. My head is an absolute mess and I have zero idea what I’m going to do now, but at least it will be on my terms.

  I take the stairs to the second level of the parking garage and unlock my car, sliding inside. My phone vibrates again and I go to reach for it, realizing it could be Evie.

  It’s not.

  chapter twenty-five

  evie

  “You can’t put up with this anymore,” Amelia says, well on her way to wearing a path in Daryl’s new carpet. “I’ve sat by and let a lot of shit go because he’s your boss and sometimes we all have to turn the other cheek, but this is it! You have to do something.”

  I close my eyes and lean my head against the back of one of Daryl’s plush chairs. I read the script, took my meeting with Trent, met Sarah Hill for a lunch meeting, returned approximately seventy thousand phone calls, decided it would be best to avoid Brad entirely until I’d figured out what to do, and left the office at five for the first time in years, heading straight here.

  Thankfully I have friends who will listen to me complain, rant on my behalf, and pour me lots of wine. It’s only six o’clock and I’m on glass number three.

  “What would you have me do?” I ask her. “I have fewer than forty-five days left on my contract. Brad is an asshole, but he’s never done anything I could officially complain about. Reporting him now—after I’m about to be blamed for this enormous agency faux pas—would make me look like a crybaby who can’t hang with the big boys. No way will I give him that kind of satisfaction.”

  Daryl groans into her glass. “I hate to say it, but she’s right. Brad isn’t an idiot, and he’s been very careful not to do anything she could specifically call him out on.”

  I nod, quickly swallowing a gulp of wine to add, “It’s a hostile work environment, sure. But name me a place in Hollywood that isn’t.”

  Amelia drops onto Daryl’s fluffy white couch and gives one of the throw pillows a good shove. “We’re three brilliant, successful women. There has to be something we can do.”

  “I have a grandpa who knows people,” Daryl says without hesitation.

  I cock an eyebrow at her. “Meaning?”

  Daryl smiles innocently. “Murder?”

  “Once again,” Amelia says, motioning to Daryl, “too far.”

  There’s a knock on the door, and realizing I haven’t moved in a while, I offer to get it.

  “I mean, at least I’d have three meals in prison and a little self-satisfaction?” I say, crossing the room. “A roof over my head?”

  “You can barely watch Orange Is the New Black without getting queasy,” Amelia reminds me. “Let’s not go picking out your prison name just yet.”

  Opening the door, I’m surprised to find Eric on the other side with two steaming pizza boxes in his hands.

  “Hey,” I say, taking a step back so he can come in. “So do you just carry pizza around, or . . .”

  “I ran into the pizza delivery guy in the stairway,” he says, nodding hello to Amelia and making his way to the kitchen. “Thought I’d bring them up for you.”

  “That was sweet,” Daryl says, taking down a stack of plates, motioning for us to help ourselves. “This is how my favorite porn films start.”

  I watch the two of them move back into the kitchen with renewed interest. They’re bent together, whispering. Amelia catches my eyes, mirroring my Are they fucking? expression. I look back and forth between Daryl and Eric when they emerge.

  “Are you two, um, working tonight?” I ask, picking up a slice before taking a bite.

  Daryl nods while she chews, but Eric answers, “Actually, I’m glad you’re here, Evie. I need your help.”

  I point a tipsy finger to my chest. “Mine?”

  He nods, and Daryl explains, “Remember how Jess off-the-cuff asked him to come up with a program that reconciles expenses with invoices?”

  Squinting, I admit, “Sort of?”

  She waves this off. “I liked the idea—and this audit was a drag. So, Eric came up with the most ingenious program. It finds and cross-references all my charges, and then reconciles them with the right client, the relevant invoice, and the correct in-house expense account.”

  I think about how much time this audit has taken and what a miracle something like that would be. “Oh my God, that’s amazing.”

  “So I ran yours, too, to help Jess,” Eric admits. “That’s . . . um, why I came over.” He scratches his jaw. “See, something isn’t working right, because we found some charges on your expense card that don’t line up with any orders or invoices. I didn’t want to go through it at the office.”

  “What do you mean by ‘don’t line up’?” I sit up straighter. My wine buzz is keeping my heart from taking off like a flock of hysterical birds. “On mine? I haven’t had time to sit at my desk and go through it yet this week, but Jess also said something about weird charges.”

  Eric pulls his laptop from his duffel and takes a seat at the bar. “Let’s see,” he says, opening the program. “Okay, here’s one from September. There’s a charge from a catering company—we actually saw it enough times that we tracked each one. The charge says you spent a hundred and twenty-three dollars for Debbie’s Events—”

  “But according to Jess’s notes in your calendar,” Daryl interrupts, “that day you were with a client for only an hour or two for voice-overs. There wasn’t any catering on set because it wasn’t on set. You met in the studio. What was that other one, Eric? The laundry?”

  “Hollywood Linen,” he answers, and I pause, that name poking at something in the back of my head.

  “That’s the one,” Daryl says. “And with that one, it’s not that the charges are for crazy amounts. Most of them are pretty small, like fifty dollars here, or a couple hundred at most, but they’re recurring and add up. You probably would have never noticed if you didn’t have to pull
the reports for the audit.”

  “What was the name of that company again?” I ask, pushing away from the counter to search inside my laptop bag. Jess’s retreat invoices are still in there.

  The ones Brad told me to ignore and send directly to Kylie.

  “Hollywood Linen?” he says.

  “Yeah . . . right here.” I find the line item and point to it on the most recent expense card statement. “That’s here, too. There’s a billing for linen service for the dining room, but we didn’t use any at the retreat. The hotel included all of that in our block rate.”

  I sit on the couch, opening the folder and spreading the invoices on the coffee table in front of me. “Can you give me a few of the other names?”

  “Sure,” Eric says, clicking through his spreadsheet. “There’s Ever Beauty . . .”

  I search down my list, finding it and putting a red check mark out to the side. It’s dated two days before the retreat. “Okay.”

  “Celebaby.”

  “That’s a nanny service?” I ask, finger moving down the page.

  “Yeah,” Amelia says.

  There it is. Another check, over the retreat weekend itself. Needless to say, no one brought their child to the department retreat.

  “Roar PR.”

  “Okay,” I say. Another red check.

  What the hell?

  “Glamband.”

  Amelia moves to stand over me, watching as I find the name and scratch out another checkmark. “Holy shit,” she says, meeting my eyes. “That’s a whole lot of coincidence.”

  “I bet if I started looking back through all my expenses, I’d find more,” I say, looking to Eric for confirmation.

  He’s already nodding. “That would be my guess.”

  I stand up, chewing on my nail as I walk to the window. My head feels like a game of Tetris, small pieces everywhere and a clock ticking away while I scramble to make them all fit. I turn to face the group.

  “So, these companies are billing P&D for a lot of services that aren’t really happening?” I propose.

  Eric shrugs, then nods. “I mean . . . yeah.”

  “You know I’m not doing this, right?” I ask, horrified.

  Eric startles, like it would never have occurred to him that it was me, and Daryl and Amelia are vehemently shaking their heads.

  My pulse seems to be thundering inside my skull. “Is this even a thing that a single person could do?”

  “It would take a lot of work, but it’s definitely possible,” Eric says. “I do think it would have to be someone within the company, though. Someone who has access to the various expense accounts, and with enough power to keep people from looking too closely.”

  Carter’s voice echoes in my thoughts.

  Why does he have it in for you, specifically?

  Do you have something on him?

  It doesn’t add up.

  I let out a little gasp, and three sets of eyes meet mine.

  I’m almost positive we’re all thinking the exact same thing.

  • • •

  “Are we absolutely sure we don’t want to call my grandpa?” Daryl says, lying next to me beneath a dirty old blanket in the bed of Eric Kingman’s truck.

  Amelia reaches across me and smacks her. “I swear to God, if you get us caught and I have to call my ex-husband to bail me out for breaking and entering, I will find your old nose and staple it back on.”

  Daryl lets out a horrified little squeak. “You monster!”

  I bite back a laugh, and Daryl takes a deep, calming breath beside me. “Besides,” she says, “we’re with Eric, so I don’t technically think what we’re doing is considered breaking and entering, bu—”

  “Shhhhh,” Eric says through the open cab window as we reach the security gate.

  “Evening, Mr. Kingman,” the guard says.

  The three of us stay completely still beneath the blanket, trying to make ourselves as small and invisible as humanly possible.

  “Don’t think your uncle is home tonight. But your aunt is up there.”

  “Thank you, Jerry. I’ll have Aunt Maxine send down some of those cookies you love. You have a good night.”

  The truck starts moving again, slowly making its way up Brad Kingman’s impossibly long drive.

  We haven’t lost our minds. It’s just that we all know Brad well enough to know that if he’s behind this, he wouldn’t keep any of these fictional company files at work. I’m on the verge of losing my job, and in just a half hour at Daryl’s apartment we totaled over fifty thousand dollars in money charged to my expense accounts alone. No wonder we’re being audited! How many places has Brad skimmed from?

  I am grateful to the wine because it’s keeping at least half of my chill in place. Realizations keep falling onto each other like perfectly stacked dominoes. Primarily this: I was Brad’s fall guy. No wonder he kept me on, assuming that if I ever found out about his little retirement plan, he’s ensured that accusations against him are less credible if they come from a disgruntled has-been. Pinning me for screwing things up with Dave and Carter is one thing; there is no way in hell I’m going down for this level of outright fraud.

  “We’re clear,” Eric says through the window, his voice tight and a little breathless. “You guys okay back there?”

  We finally breathe. “This blanket smells like sewage, and my boss is stealing money under my expense accounts while he carefully frames me for a myriad of fuckups. But other than that, I think we’re good. What about you? You okay?”

  “Are you kidding me?” he sings into the cool night air. “This is awesome!”

  “But are you sure you want to do this? I mean, you could just pull up, kick us out, and get the hell out of here,” I say.

  “Hell no. I hate the way Brad treats Maxine, and this shit is crazy! Can you feel that adrenaline?” He howls a little into the cab of the truck. “Let’s take him down!”

  “So Eric’s definitely in,” I whisper.

  Amelia laughs at my side. “What tipped you off?”

  The truck slows to a stop, and Eric unrolls the front windows before turning off the engine.

  “All right. I’ll go inside. None of the staff should be here, so I’ll leave the front door open. His office is upstairs, fourth door on the right. You all remember the game plan?”

  “Got it,” Amelia says.

  “Remember: give me two minutes and I’ll get Maxine to take me into the kitchen for something to eat. I’m hoping I can get you guys at least fifteen minutes. That long enough?”

  “It’ll have to be,” Amelia says.

  The door opens and the truck shifts as Eric climbs out. “Okay,” he says, taking a step before stopping again. “Should we like . . . synchronize our watches or something?”

  “If we sang ‘Swinging on a Star’ to time ourselves we’d be just like Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello in Hudson Hawk.”

  Amelia glares at me in the dark. “Evie, usually I entertain these little movie tangents, but I’m going to need you to shut the fuck up.”

  “Just go, Eric!” Daryl whisper-yells.

  “Right, right. Going.”

  The sound of Eric’s feet on a gravel path carries through the dark, and he knocks on the door.

  While we wait, Amelia taps my shoulder. “Does Carter know where you are?”

  “Ha . . . no. I haven’t talked to him since this morning. Right now we’re dressed like cat burglars and hiding in the bed of our boss’s nephew’s truck. Probably best to leave this part out when I tell him about my day.”

  Voices carry from outside and we all straighten, straining to hear. The front door opens, and immediately we hear a woman exclaim, “Eric, honey! What a surprise!”

  My heart is pounding in my head as I listen to their conversation dissipate and finally disappear.

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  Pulling the blanket off of us and sitting up slowly, I look around, making sure we really are alone out here. I’m the first to climb out, keeping
low to the ground and watching around us. Maxine’s Mercedes is parked at the opposite end of the drive, but—thankfully—there’s no sign of Brad’s obnoxious yellow Ferrari anywhere.

  Amelia is next, and she kneels on the ground by my side. As we both look around, Daryl falls out of the truck, rolling in the gravel.

  “Smooth,” Amelia whispers.

  “Sorry,” Daryl says. “I was kicked out of yoga.”

  It’s strange being here without the Christmas lights and the valets, the holiday music and voices filtering out from inside the giant house. Instead there’s just silence, the chirp of crickets in the bushes beyond. Then, as we get closer, the faint tinkling of laughter coming from the direction of the house, the door left conveniently ajar.

  Thank you, Eric.

  A tiny sliver of yellow light cuts a line across the porch, and we creep forward, peering through the crack and into the grand entryway. All clear.

  Glancing at Amelia, I press a hand on the cool wood, wincing when the old hinge emits a tiny whine as it swings open. I wonder if Eric heard it, because his voice grows louder and more enthusiastic from the back of the house.

  A wide staircase unscrolls in front of us. I motion for Amelia and Daryl to go on ahead, staying behind just long enough to close the door with a soft click. Our tennis shoes are almost silent on the steps as we climb, carefully peeking around the corner before turning right at the top of the stairs.

  At my side, Amelia holds up four fingers and points to a door at the end of the hall. Nodding, I watch as she wraps her gloved hand around the knob and slowly turns.

  It swings open.

  Even here, Brad Kingman’s office looks exactly the way you’d expect. His desk is huge and covered with books and piles of paper. In the light from the window we can see a bunch of golf memorabilia, and what has to be every award and accolade he’s ever received—right down to newspaper clippings—proudly displayed. Framed photos line his bookcases, all sharing a single common characteristic: he’s the star of each of them.

  “Even his office is a pretentious dick,” Daryl says, closing the door behind us. Turning on her small flashlight, she shines it around the walls. “Is that a safe?”