“Here’s to another successful acquisition,” Scott says as he clinks his shot glass, full of one of the world’s finest tequilas, to Angie’s and mine.
“At a hundred bucks a shot, you’d better hope we sealed the deal today,” Angie adds. Scott and I vehemently nod our heads in agreement before we down the expensive liquor and savor the burn.
“Gavin, you were on fire,” Scott says. “I thought we might lose the screenplay altogether until you pulled out the big guns.”
“It never hurts to drop a name or two just to get these young screenwriters seeing stars and dollar signs,” I say. I turn to Angie and tell her, “Don’t forget to put that meeting with his lawyer on our schedule next week. I’d hate to lose it on a damn technicality.”
“I’m on it boss,” Angie assures me, already typing away into the calendar on her phone.
“So, did you ever get Karen to read this one?” Scott asks. “I thought it might be right up her alley being all ‘Desperate Housewives’ and what not.”
Angie almost chokes on the Diet Coke she’s drinking. She laughs, saying, “We are talking about Gavin’s wife, Karen . . . my friend and former sorority sister . . . the very same one who only bothers to read a magazine if there are tips on how to reduce wrinkles or prevent split ends?”
We all share a laugh. I’ve known Angie since college. She and Karen became inseparable when they rushed the same sorority. After graduation, however, reality struck most of us who understood the value of a hard day’s work, a group Karen never aspired to become a part of. Angie showed a lot of promise and Scott and I quickly brought her on as our assistant as soon as we started the company a few years later. She’s been with us ever since, almost four years now. I think Angie now qualifies more as my friend than Karen’s, but even I don’t have the balls to tell Karen that.
Karen couldn’t be more different from Angie now. We got married right after graduation and she proceeded to make a career out of being a social butterfly. I was so busy working my way up as a production assistant that I never even noticed how she truly lacked ambition to do anything in life besides garner a fashionable entourage. But our life works for us. She stays out of my business and I stay out of hers. It’s kind of like the way we were back in college—friends who keep each other grounded while living our own lives. Only now we have sex. Occasionally.
“No, she didn’t read it,” I tell them, waving the bartender over. “What’ll it be guys?” I raise my eyebrows at them awaiting their drink orders.
“Oh, no,” Angie says. “You’re not getting me drunk again on the road. Hangovers and airplanes do not play well together, especially when the flight from Chicago to L.A. is not a particularly short one. I’m calling it a night, boys.” She leans in and gives us each a hug before exiting the hotel bar to go up to her room.
“Scotch and soda for me,” Scott says to the bartender. Then he looks at me. “I’ll puke on a plane. Doesn’t bother me.”
I laugh at him as I order my own drink and we turn our barstools around to peruse the area for Scott’s next conquest. “What about that brunette over there?” I motion to the woman sitting at a table in the corner of the bar playing with her phone.
“Nah, she looks desperate,” he says.
“How can you possibly tell that?” I ask.
“She’s been checking us out since we got here. Clearly she’s here alone. Too easy a target,” he says.
That’s Scott Carlson for you. Always up for a challenge. As if being the starting quarterback on his college football team wasn’t enough, he has to have the bad boy look that all women swoon over with his spiky hair and tatted up arms. It’s amazing that we ever get anyone to take us seriously in the film production business. I guess that’s why I get to take point on a lot of the public appearances. Makes our company seem a little more clean-cut.
“Okay, how about the one at the end of the bar with the big teeth?” I nod over his shoulder at an attractive woman.
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” he says, turning around to check her out. He quickly turns back and says, “Too old.” He shivers. “After Gretchen, I swore off anyone over thirty.”
I raise my eyebrows at my thirty-one-year-old partner.
“What?” he says, holding his hands up in surrender. “You only live once, man and I’m not getting any younger. Not all of us can still be in our twenties, you know.” He slams back the rest of his drink and motions for another. “Hey, that reminds me, I got some ‘save the date’ thingy from Karen the other day. She’s really doing this one up, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “Why the hell is she sending out ‘save the date’ cards anyway? It’s a birthday party, not a wedding,” I groan.
He laughs when I chug the rest of my drink. He says, “Your wife isn’t happy unless she’s spending your money on some kind of extravagant event is she?”
I nod my head at him. “Let’s just say she’s very fucking happy these days if my empty wallet is any indication.”
“You two are the most functional dysfunctional couple I know,” he says.
I can’t argue with that logic. I notice a few women walking into the bar. “What about one of those?” I raise my chin in their direction.
“What is it with you and brunettes?” he asks. “If I recall, your wife is a blonde. You married Barbie for Christ’s sake.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Dunno,” I reply. “I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for them.”
The bartender puts another round of drinks down, sending a piece of paper floating off the bar onto the floor. Scott reaches down to retrieve it. He stares at it for a minute while a smile spreads across his face. “Yesssss,” he hisses, pointing to the paper. “This is the one. This one will be squirming under me before the night is out. And look, she’s even a brunette.” He shoves the flyer in my face.
I grab it and look at the picture. My heart lodges somewhere in the vicinity of my throat as my head wraps around the image. Flashbacks of my sophomore year at UNC cloud my vision. Suddenly, I become unstable on my barstool and find myself grabbing the counter for balance.
It can’t be her.
I scan the flyer for a name and that’s when I see it. The name that has haunted me for years. I look back at the picture. That face. That smile. Those unforgettable eyes. It’s her. The only woman I’ve ever loved. The woman who broke my goddamn heart.
Baylor Mitchell.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, closing my eyes and crinkling the paper in my hand.
“Dude, don’t ruin the picture,” Scott says, pulling it from my clutches. “If I can’t get the girl, I can at least use the picture to rub one out.” He smooths out the flyer on the counter.
“Not this one,” I say, picking it up so I can study it again. It says she’s speaking here at the hotel.
Tonight.
I quickly look around the bar as if she might be in here this very second.
She’s doing a book signing after. She’s an author. I remember that she studied journalism back in college, until she left school. Until she left me. But, an author . . . wow. And by the looks of it, a pretty well-known one, too.
“What the hell, man?” Scott asserts. “Give it back.”
I brush his hand away. I can’t tear my eyes away from hers. They are exactly as I remembered. Pale brown, hazel almost, with flecks of blue and green. I swear those eyes would change color based on what she was wearing. In this picture, she’s wearing blue and her eyes look aquamarine. She looks happy.
How can she look so happy after what she did to me? I wonder if she married that asswipe, Chris. If she did, she didn’t take his name.
“Dude!” Scott says. I look at him and he’s got his hands out, palms up, silently asking me to fill him in on whatever he’s missing.
“I know her, Scott,” I say. I close my eyes and my head shakes back and forth as I struggle not to remember that fateful day. “She ripped my fucking heart out.”
He looks at the picture incredulously. He points at her face. “This girl?” he asks. “I thought you didn’t have a heart, Gavin. That’s what you’ve always said. That’s why you say you and Karen are perfect for each other.”
“I used to have one,” I say. “A long time ago, until . . .” I find it hard to even say her name after all this time. “Until Baylor kicked the shit out of it and rendered it useless.”
“Oh, shit! Really?” he says. He motions for a round of shots. “How is it we’ve been friends for six years and you’ve never mentioned her once?”
While staring at her picture, I throw back the shot that was just placed in front of me. She has barely aged. Maybe the picture was Photoshopped. She’d be twenty-six now, but she still looks like that co-ed I ran into at her freshman orientation. Her hair is longer and straighter than it was back then, but she’s still gorgeous. Flawless. Perfect. I slam my glass down on top of her picture and immediately regret it when the ink runs.
“I don’t talk about her,” I say. “Not since the day she left.” What I don’t tell him is that even though I haven’t ever spoken a word about her, she is the only woman I’ve ever dreamed about.
Damn, that makes me sound like a real bastard, not dreaming of the girl I married.
“Well, maybe you should talk about her,” he says. “You know, so you don’t blow a gasket, or worse, cry like a goddamn baby right here at the bar.” He laughs.
“Fine,” I say, still mesmerized by the now-smeared face of the woman who was my whole world eight years ago. “But you better keep ‘em coming.” I lift my empty glass and Scott calls the bartender over.
Then I start talking.