Chapter 13
Sarah
I took an Uber back to work and tried to clear my head. I couldn’t believe it. Mason Baker was my best friend’s brother. From the moment he told me he’d stood up his sister for that dinner, I felt a bubble of trepidation bounce around my stomach. I’d listen to Emma talk for years about how she wanted to rekindle her relationship with him. How she wanted to get to know him. Love him. Embrace him despite their parent’s estranged relationship. I’d held Emma while she cried over this man. Over the phone calls he wouldn’t take and the dinners he’d cancel last minute.
But never had he stood her up until that dinner, and I could see the anger and heartbreak it planted in my best friend.
I’d never felt so confident about walking away from a man in my entire life. Had I started to like him a bit? Sure. He understood this fame bullshit and need to stay away from the cameras. He was a hell of a beast in the sack and knew how to wield his cock, but it wasn’t worth it at this point. Not only was he my best friend’s brother, he was the brother who was hurting the heart and soul of my best friend. He was bringing her pain. He was the reason she came crying to me some nights, and I wasn’t about to condone any of that shit.
A man like that was bound to cheat on me anyway. Between his playboy attitude and his blatant disregard for his family’s feelings, whether he wanted a family or not, a man like that would only bring trouble for me. There’s no way we could be together, and at this point, I wanted nothing to do with him anyway.
And the scandals! Yikes. I’d probably become another one of them. I didn’t even want to go into those. The pregnant women coming out of nowhere and the sexual harassment lawsuits. What the fuck had I been thinking?
My own heartbreak had I continued with him would’ve been my own damn fault.
The Uber driver pulled up to my work, and I made sure to tip her well. I walked back into the studio with my head high, though my stomach was growling from the lack of food. I’d gorged on sweet tea but didn’t place a damn bit of that food in my mouth. The moment I came around the corner and saw Emma, I froze.
That is until I saw her holding bags of food.
“I bring good tidings of great joy,” she said, smiling.
“You’re the best,” I said as I embraced her.
“Wanna go eat in your dressing room?”
“Yes, please. I had a disastrous lunch hour, and I could use some pity food,” I said.
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
“Oh, I went out to lunch with that guy,” I said.
“Ah, the mysterious guy whose name you won’t give up. What happened?” she asked.
“We broke it off.”
“Why? Who is he? Did he hurt you? I’ll beat his ass if—”
“Settle down, Hondo. Put those guns away. We just didn’t click. I was falling right into the trap you said I would, only this time I caught it.”
“Girl, good for you. Does this mean you’ll tell me who he is?” she asked.
“It’s not important. Plus, I don’t want to ruin his image with anyone. I’d like to think he’d give me the benefit of the doubt as well.”
“Well, as nosy as I am, I can respect that,” she said. “I’m sorry you guys didn’t click.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re right. I’m not. You shouldn’t be jumping into another dating scenario right now, and I’m glad you’re not,” she said.
“Great. Now, all we have to worry about is devouring this glorious lunch you surprised me with.”
“And it sounds like I came on the perfect day,” she said.
“You did, Emma. You really did.”
Just as I went to take a bite of my steak salad, my phone buzzed. I looked down, saw it was Mason calling, and I silenced my phone. If he was going to be this intent on trying to get in touch with me again, I was going to have to fucking shut off my phone. If Emma peaked over and saw his name scrolling across my screen, I’d be in a shit-ton of trouble.
We both sat there and ate our food in relative silence. It was the calm before the storm. Before Angie would descend on me and plaster me with makeup. I was interviewing some of the men from the Dallas fire department after the incredible save they’d made earlier this week. There had been a massive apartment complex that caught on fire because the electrical wiring wasn’t up to date, and I was using them and their stories to bring awareness to the fact that business moguls in the area needed to put the appropriate funds into their buildings in order to ensure they were brought up to code.
Thankfully, no one died in this fire, but that wasn’t always going to be guaranteed should there be another one. I felt the topic affected our area greatly, especially since the whole of downtown Dallas is nothing but studio apartments and apartment complexes.
The owners needed to invest in them. Otherwise, they’d lose their properties altogether.
And people would lose their lives.
Suddenly, my phone started to vibrate again. I silenced it without even looking down, knowing damn good and well who was calling.
“Everything all right?” Emma asked.
“Yeah. If they call again, I’ll have to take it, but I’m hoping they’ll get the gist and leave a voice message I can check after the show today.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
“My doctor’s office,” I said, lying.
“Sarah, are you okay?”
“I had that pain in my lower back checked out,” I said. “They told me they’d call if there was anything significant.”
“Then you need to answer that call,” she said.
And as if Mason could fucking hear us around the corner, he called again.
“Answer the fucking phone, Sarah. I know you hate doctors, but this is serious.”
“Fine. All right. I’ll be right back.”
I felt like shit for lying to my best friend. Pure, utter shit. But what the hell was I going to tell her? I could only brush her off for so long before she’d start getting suspicious. I had to throw her something, and she’d been bugging me about getting my back checked out for months. Honestly, I hadn’t had a problem with it the past few days.
And something in my gut told me to attribute it to the stress release Mason had been.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Don’t hang up. Look, I’m on my way to your studio to talk with you. Just please, would you fucking let me in when I get there?”
“No. No. Mason, you have shit timing, but right now is, like, pathetically shit timing,” I said.
“I know you’ve got a show to do, but we really need to talk. Please, Sarah.”
“No,” I said.
“Then come over to my place tonight. I can pick you up and we can—”
“I said no, Mason. Get that through your head.”
I hung up the phone on him and turned it off before he had a chance to call me back. I took a deep breath and walked back into the room where Emma was anxiously waiting for me to get back.
“Well, what did the doctor say?” she asked.
“You’d think with how they called me, it would’ve been life-threatening,” I said. “Apparently, I’ve just got some deeply set knots that my regular massages won’t work to get out. They’re suggesting acupuncture or some shit.”
“They blew up your phone for that?” Emma asked.
“Apparently.”
“Sounds like they need to take one of your muscle relaxers,” she said.
“No joke,” I said as I sat down beside her.
The truth was, I hadn’t taken one since my first date with Mason. Not a single one of them. My stress levels had been regulated, and my back wasn’t as tense. Physically, I felt better than I had in a very long time. But Mason was no longer an option, and as I sat next to Emma while we finished up our lunches, I studied her. I could see the familial resemblance, the same green eyes, the same stoic expression, the same long necks. Her skin was paler and her hair was much lighter than his, but when she looked over at me and smiled, my breath caught in my throat.
She had his smile, and something inside of me ached a little at that revelation.
“You okay?” Emma asked.
“Yeah. Fuck, these firemen I’m interviewing are hot,” I said.
“I don’t know how you do it some days. Really,” she said.
“Do you ever watch my show?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you ever seen it?”
Surely, if she watched the show, she had seen Mason on it. How could she watch my show, see that I’d interviewed him, and not told me that was her half-brother? Was it possible they’d never met? Even if they hadn’t, how could she at least not know that was him?
“I mean, not really. Don’t get me wrong, I support you. I always have, but I’m not much into the whole talk show thing.”
“What about social media? Anything on there?” I asked.
“Where is this coming from?” she asked, giggling.
“Just wondering, that’s all.”
It was her business if she didn’t want to tell me who her brother was. Just like it was my business to not tell her who I had been fucking around with. And that was how I was justifying it. If she got angry at me because I had been screwing around with her brother, I could tell her I had no idea it was her brother because it wasn’t like she talked about him anyway.
There. That’s what I would do.
But something in the back of my mind kept gnawing at me, and I knew the moment I turned my phone on, the voices would dissipate.
Because after I got done interviewing the firemen, I turned my phone back on, and I was flooded with voice messages.