“So, what all do you remember?” I asked abruptly once our plates were taken away. It wasn’t the most gracious way to bring up the issue, but well… I was hardly gracious.
Mickey froze, his face completely straight, before he swallowed.
“I remember us dancing, and then going back to my room. Then I remember us… spending some time together.”
“That’s a very polite way to say you worked me over so hard that my legs still feel it.”
I shouldn’t have said that! Why did I say that?!
Instead of smirking smarmily, he just nodded matter of factly. “Good to know I did my job well.”
“Mmm-hmm,” was all I could manage, hastily chugging my water. Most guys I knew would preen and gloat at their sexual prowess being complimented. Mickey just treated it like anything less would have been inexcusable.
That was something else.
“Then I woke up this morning, alone, with a ring on my finger.”
I frowned. That story sounded far too much like my own. “I remember raiding your mini-bar, but that’s it. Are you sure you can’t think of anything else? Where we went? What we did? Did we get-” I cut myself off and swallowed harshly. Even though we were in Vegas, and we had woken up with matching bands, didn’t mean that we had legally gone and done the deed. Surely whoever ran the sham chapels on the strip would know that we were far to drunk to be doing anything legally binding.
…right?
“It’s all blank.”
“Do you think that there’s a chance that we, uh, that we really…”
“Got hitched? Yeah. I’m pretty certain.”
“Why?”
He sighed and pulled his cell phone out. “While I was waiting for you to arrive, I checked my charges on my card and I found some very sketchy looking ones. That made me then look into my email, where I found a marriage certificate had been forwarded to me. I sent them both to my lawyer to figure out which place it came from.”
“Wow,” I groaned, sinking my head into my hands. “I can’t believe that I got drunkenly married in Vegas. This is a new low.”
“A new low? I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before.”
My head snapped to Mickey and I blushed. Oh shit, that was probably a pretty mean thing to say right in front of him. “I didn’t mean that! It’s just… the situation is, uh,-”
He chuckled and waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it, I was just teasing. My lawyer will probably get back to us tomorrow, it being Monday and all, and we can work on an annulment. Unless you don’t mind being Mrs. Dirussi.”
I laughed automatically at his joke, pleased that he was being so great about the whole situation, but then I saw the slightest downward twinge at the corner of his mouth. “Wait, you’re not serious, are you?” He couldn’t be, right? We hadn’t talked in around three years. Why on Earth would I think it was a good idea to stay married to him after a drunken tryst!?
There was a fraction of hesitation before he let out his own laugh. “Of course not. If I ever am married one day, I would prefer it with someone who was proud and happy with the arrangement. And, uh, I think I’d like to remember it actually happening. Just had the passing thought of the convenience of it all.”
“Convenience?”
He shrugged, his intense gaze staring right through my soul. “Have you noticed that a lot of things about our world are made for couples? Life insurance, power of attorney, credit, even insurance. In some ways, a situation like this could work out to be beneficial. Not that I’m saying we should, just that there’s always a silver lining.”
“Uh-huh,” well, we were in possibly the last place I expected the conversation to go. “There would definitely be upsides to being hitched to a famous MMA fighter, I’m sure, but I’m going to insist on the annulment. I’m sure you understand.” Did he? I hadn’t just suddenly gotten myself into a situation that was even worse than I thought it was, did I?
“Oh, of course. It makes sense to, uh, everything considered.” He gave me a nod and I always felt a little guilty. Like I had somehow hurt his feelings. But that was ridiculous! There was no way he could want to have his wagon hitched to me, some co-owner of a stunt company who was definitely way too far in debt and had her own temper issues.
Besides, I was sure that he had a literal cadre of fawning women to soothe his wrinkled pride or ego, or whatever was making him look slightly disappointed. And besides, it wasn’t like he wasn’t being polite, so maybe I was just reading him wrong.
“Well, thank you so much for meeting with me so we could get on the same page. This certainly wasn’t how I expected my Sunday to go.”
“You and me both,” I said with a huff.
He nodded and stood, placing a fifty on the table that would more than cover both our meals plus a very, very generous tip. “I wish you the best. I hope we hang out sooner than the last time. I’d love to stay, but I really need to head back home and get to the gym. My trainer has already been texting me like a mom whose son is out after curfew.”
I laughed shakily. “No problem. Get those gains, or whatever it is. Thanks for being so cool about this.” I really was grateful. There were at least a dozen different ways that the whole conversation could have gone, and I was pretty sure I had gotten the most pleasant outcome.
“Of course. We’re friends, Amber, and we have been since we were teens. Even if we don’t talk very often, your welfare will always be important to me.”
It took a whole lot in me not to flush from head to toe at that. Instead I just gave him a wink and some awkward finger guns. “Right back at ya, bro.” Bro? Since when did I say ‘bro’?
“Be safe, Amber.”
Another small nod and then he was out the door, leaving me staring at his empty seat and wondering when my life had become such a sitcom.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was such a gentleman. After all, I’d been friends with him since puberty, basically, and he’d always been a decent guy. I wished all men were as confident in themselves. I was sure there were some who would have taken my insistence on an annulment as an insult on their masculinity or something.
Heaving a sigh, I felt some of the stress in me bubble away. Sure, I was still kinda married and had definitely done something monumentally stupid, but it was on the way to being solved already. In the grand scheme of things, it might have been the most cleanly solved of all my blunders, and that was nice.
All I had to do was wait until the next day, that wasn’t bad at all. And to be completely honest, I was anxious to get home and get back to work. When I was busy, I didn’t get into nearly as much trouble.
And boy, could I use just a little less trouble in my life.
7
Mickey
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk!
I peppered the punching bag with blows, concentrating on my form, my breathing, on concentrating on the target and nothing but the target. I was aware that I was punching it much harder than I really needed to for the particular exercise that we were doing, but I had so much coiling within me that I just needed to get it out somehow.
And at the moment, it seemed that beating the absolute shit out of gym equipment.
Thunk! Thunk! THUNK!
At my last cross, the chain snapped and suddenly the bag crashed into the floor a few feet away. I blinked at it, surprised by my own destruction, and my trainer clicked his tongue as he came over to see what all the noise was about.
“Is something bothering you?” he asked, crossing his arms as one of the assistants ran to move the bag. It wasn’t unheard of for people to accidentally snap chains, but it wasn’t exactly a common occurrence either.
“It’s nothing,” I said quickly, squaring my shoulders. “Just working off a little steam.”
“A little steam, huh? I’d hate to see you when you’re angry then.”
“Ah, you know me, I’m not the angry type.”
“No, no you’re not. And I gotta be honest, it’s nice t
o have a fighter on my roster who isn’t a hot head. But just because you’re pretty even keeled doesn’t mean that nothing is upsetting you. You can talk to me, you know that, right?”
I nodded but I wasn’t about to pour my heart out to my trainer. For one, he was employed by my boss and I liked to keep a professional boundary with things. Secondly… well I was a bit embarrassed by what was going on in my own head.
Because what was in my head was basically Amber and only Amber. She occupied every nook and cranny of my thoughts and it was driving me absolutely crazy.
It had been two weeks since our drunken hook up/marriage and things were going nothing like I hoped.
Monday had passed with the lawyer saying he would look into it. An anxious text from Amber that night was the only communication I’d gotten from her, and when I said the lawyer was looking into it, her response was one word.
Then, right before I’d gotten to the gym, my guy had given me a call. I’d answered, half expecting him to say that everything was fine and taken care of, but that wasn’t what he’d said at all.
Instead, he was going on his scheduled vacation and was having his assistants do the financial hunting for the little chapel and that he would file the annulment as soon as he was back, which would still be in a very easy window to get an annulment.
I’d thanked him for keeping me in the loop -he could have just pretended that he was working in the office after all- then immediately called Amber. I expected her to be a bit disappointed, maybe even irritated. I imagined calming her over the phone and making her feel better, maybe that turning into a deep conversation and then an invitation to talk about it more over dinner.
But instead she’d been half listening and clearly distracted, her answers along the lines of vague affirmatives. Finally, I asked if that was alright with her to see if this was some sort of strange, passive aggressive thing she had developed from the biz, but she just sighed and said that she was fine with it, she landed a huge project as it was and she needed to concentrate on that.
I’d laughed, made a joke about her always working, and then she hung up.
That was it.
I knew it was stupid of me, but it made me burn that I was such an after thought to her. We were married, for Pete’s sake! Since she was so insistent on an annulment, one would think that the whole matter would be able to actually hold her attention.
But that was how it had always been with us. She was always so fiercely determined, driven. Her eyes had always been focused on success and beating the hand that had been dealt to her. I suppose I was the fool for expecting her to change just because we’d finally hooked up.
But… I guess I had kind of hoped that things would change because we’d finally hooked up.
Not that I thought there was anything wrong with her. I had just hoped that she would be able to carve out the tiniest sliver of life for me to squeeze myself into. I could be a great protector to her. A sort of anchor in the very choppy waters of Hollywood. But if she didn’t want that, didn’t feel that she needed that, it would do me no good to pine like some sort of high school boy. We were adults; I needed to act like one.
Still, I didn’t think there was a rule about adults taking out all their disappointment, irritation and maybe slightly rankled feelings on a punching bag.
“Alright, well let me know if you change your mind about that talk,” my trainer said, reminded me that he was still there because I had completely forgotten.
“Yeah, I’ll do that. I just spent a little too long outside of the gym.”
“I’m sure ya did. For now, how about you maybe hit the ropes? Get some of that pent-up energy out with some old-fashioned cardio.”
“Right, right. I’ll do that.”
I went about taking off my gloves and unwrapping my hands, setting them on the bench that I had pretty much claimed as my own in the two years that I’d been training at the place. It helped that I spent nearly eight hours a day there, five days a week.
Rolling my shoulders, I crossed over to the equipment wall and grabbed a jump rope from the hook they hung from. It was a bit funny that something so simple from everyone’s childhood was still a quite effective exercise, but sometimes there was nothing wrong with a classic.
But I only went through maybe one circuit before the doors opened and I recognized my agent strolling in with that purposeful walk of his. The man was plenty polite, but he never came to the gym unless he had a serious gig for me.
“Hey there, Mickey? How’s it going?”
“Well enough,” I said, twisting the rope around my knuckles as he crossed over to me. It seemed that even now I couldn’t sit still. There was so much fire and energy inside of me I felt like I might burst if I stayed too still. “You got a fight for me?”
“Not quite. You know how these months are. Not exactly the primetime season.”
“Yeah, I’m familiar with the normal schedule of things.”
“Right, of course you are. No, I’m actually here because we landed a commercial gig for you if you’re interested. About a week of shooting-ish, maybe as little as three days. Some sort of over dramatic, period-piece costumed thing for a video game. Big battle, lots of shouting, and a very pretty offer. Interested?”
Normally I would say no to something like that. I hated getting all dolled up and sitting in the make up chair. I hated all the loitering around and redoing things because one little thing didn’t turn out exactly right.
But… I didn’t mind acting. I liked the rush that came from executing a well-choreographed fight. Honestly, it seemed like I could use the distraction too. Anything was better than moping over Amber all the time and putting myself in a shitty mood.
“You know what? I’ll take it. Sounds like a good opportunity.”
“I thought so myself. I’ll go ahead and give them a call and I’ll get the contract over to you along with the script ASAP. You’re a winner, Mickey.”
“Every now and then,” I answered with a crooked smirk. “I’ll see you around, Chris.”
“See you around.”
He went to shake my hand, but I was already grabbing my rope again. Thankfully he took that as a cue to leave and headed out with a wave. I watched him go, hoping that I would soon be back to normal.
A glint on my finger drew my attention to the ring that was still there. I hadn’t taken it off, even though I knew I was being an utter moron. But seeing the ring made me feel… better? No. Not better. It just made me feel something.
Something good.
And perhaps it would be better if I just didn’t question that.
8
Amber
“Alright, let’s talk through this one more time,” I said, holding the mini-white board in front of me as I pointed to the different symbols and arrows on it. “Both sides start out at opposite ends of the shot in battle-ready stance. Red side, you’re the ones who are going to charge first. The producers will do two tracking shows, one horizontally beside you, the other straight through the center of you. Blue team, you will be needed for the background of that center one. Then we’ll do the inverse of all that for the blue team.
“After that, there’s going to be close ups and b-reel footage, and we break for lunch. Are you all with me?”
“Yeah. Then after lunch we work on spot choreo for b-reel while you work with the leads and supporting leads on the main stuff.”
“Yes, very good. Now this is a short shoot with a whole lot of people not from our company. The hardest part about this isn’t going to be teaching them any moves or stunts, it’s all going to be about talent and time management.” I swallowed, trying to keep my tone level when really I was so pumped, I felt like I could punch through a board.
Sure, the whole marriage thing with Mickey was still going on, but that was almost background noise to me at that point. Because Monday night, when I was laying in bed and grousing over my situation, we’d gotten an email for a gig that was not only going to pay a pretty penny, but al
so give us plenty of clout.
And goodness knew, as a relatively new business, we could use all the clout that we could get.
Besides, it was a pretty exciting project as it were. Big, epic battle with a female lead versus a male lead. Costumes. Wardrobe. And thankfully, no high heels.
As an added bonus, since it was all about battle and war, the producers were fine with having me do actual stunt work in some of the b-reel tracking shots. It felt like ages since I had a chance to work in front of the camera as well as behind, and it was just fantastic.
“We have a schedule, so we need to stick to it. If anything else in production causes there to be a delay -which, let’s face it- always happens, then you use that time to rehearse and go over your choreography again and again until it’s burned into the extra’s eyes. Got it?”
There were nods all around and I gave them one of my patented smiles. “Alright. This can be a huge deal for all of us. We do well, we’re pretty much guaranteed to get more and more work. So, let’s do this all together, okay team?”
There was a cheer and I felt satisfaction wash over me. Sure, the whole project was far from over, it was just beginning really, but I had confidence in my workers. Although our company was small, that had allowed me to hire only people I had one hundred percent confidence in, and that was pretty darn nice. I knew we were going to rock it, and this was pretty much the big break I had been waiting for my company to have.
“Hello, Mrs. Shelstien?” a young, whippish looking man sidled up beside me, looking a bit uncertain with a clipboard in his hands.
“It’s Miss,” I corrected quickly. I hadn’t spent all my time working on building my name up and my brand for it to go to some non-existent Mr. Shelstien.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed because of the ring.”
Well, what about the very real Mr. Dirussi?
I jolted, then cleared my throat to try to recover from the reaction. “Ah yes, that. Just a little promise ring. Nothing that serious.”
Beautiful Mistakes: Contemporary Romance Boxset Books 1-4 Page 5
