CHAPTER 12
EMILY
I woke up with a headache. Not a nagging pain that would go away but a dense throb that felt like a cinder block duct-taped to the left side of my head. Add a side of nausea, and bang: recipe for my morning.
After coffee and three ibuprofen, the cinder block turned red brick, and the nausea came out as the star of the show, took a bow, and wouldn’t leave center stage. I showered, dressed, and got to work only slightly grumpy.
The morning sun blasted through the windows and went right into my brain. The early birds were at the craft services table or checking equipment. I grabbed a piece of bread to soak up whatever my insides were producing too much of.
“Good morning,” Carter said as he poured fresh coffee into his Starbucks cup. I grumbled a polite response. I had more to say, but I didn’t know what he deserved. Thanks for the kiss? An insult for cutting me off at that? Praise for a solid lip-lock?
“I went to Vince’s place last night.”
Every muscle tightened. I didn’t expect him to mention my psycho ex. My entire body tingled with adrenaline.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” He stirred his coffee. “From across the street, he seems like a standard-issue douchebag.”
“He’s much worse up close.”
“I bet.” Pensively, he tossed the stirrer in the bin.
I had moves to practice before everyone arrived, but I couldn’t just walk away.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You want to know how I could be with him.”
“You’re way out of his league.”
“Good to know you won’t question my looks as easily as you’ll question my judgment.”
I stormed off before he could answer. I didn’t want him to defend himself, and I didn’t want to apologize. I didn’t want to hear about how pretty I was or whatever he had in his mind.
Mostly, I didn’t want to get to the true fact. My judgment sucked.
All the signs had been there. I was out of his league, sure. Whatever. He turned his polo collars up and wore his hats backward. He had a drawerful of sweatpants he found appropriate to every situation. He laughed at other people’s misfortunes and took personal offense when someone went the speed limit in the left lane.
All that was true, and I hadn’t seen it.
He was nice to me. He acted as if he were the luckiest guy in the world. He said he won the lottery with me. Blah blah. When another man looked at me, he went wild with jealousy. I had to peel him off a guy at Cat’s Cradle. I blamed the alcohol. But when I was supposed to meet him at the Arclight and I ran into my uncle before Vince arrived, it stopped being cute. My uncle Jim was a fascinating guy. He worked at JPL designing updates to the Hubble telescope and played oboe in the NASA orchestra.
Vince jumped him. He had him on the ground while I screamed, “He’s my uncle, he’s my uncle!”
And oh, the tears. And the begging for forgiveness. And the self blame. He was a picture of contrition. Stupid me. I fell for it, but I made sure to stay away from other men in casual conversation. I introduced him to every male dancer ahead of time so he could shake their hand too tight and glare at them.
And that seemed normal enough. He was still nice to me. More or less. Kind of normal. I figured the honeymoon phase didn’t last in any relationship. I’d tried to explain that to Darlene, who was the product of an abusive father. She wagged her finger at me. She said guuurl a lot and told me she’d be there for me when he went too far. I said I was okay a million times.
I was a frog in boiling water. Everything seemed fine, a little different but tolerable, until it wasn’t. He had everything in the world to say about how much skin I should show when I rehearsed and how I touched the other dancers. His tone got angry and threatening often enough but not all the time. I kept going back to those moments when he was honored to be with me. When I needed him to be 50 percent nicer, he gave me 45 percent. I accepted that.
Then, like a frog in a pot, I realized it was too fucking hot and I was going to get eaten for dinner.
Looking back and seeing how stupid I’d been was a bad habit. Every time I had to look behind me, every time I wouldn’t go on a date because I was afraid he’d come for the guy, every time I refused an unknown number, I beat myself raw. I was a stupid, stupid woman with shitty judgment who was living the life she deserved. There was no chance I could go back to singing either. He’d see me. I couldn’t be seen. I’d paid a price to leave him and to be with him. I’d paid for being stupid, and the price had been my career.
That punitive loop ran in my brain all day long. Even watching the dancers, training Darlene, and trying to avoid Carter’s motherfucking piercing blue eyes, I ran that loop.
I was in denial that I deserved anything good at all, and the denial was such a habit I didn’t know there was another way to live.
It took a lot of concentration to berate myself and choreograph a major production at the same time. When the dozen red roses arrived, I didn’t even see them. They just sat on the piano until Darlene stopped after a turn, nailing the move.
“Excellent!” I shouted.
“Whose are those?” she demanded.
Monty snapped the card off and handed it to Darlene. I assumed they were for her.
She closed the envelope and pointed to me.
“You.” She pointed to Carter. “And you. My crib.”
I met Carter’s gaze. Had he sent the flowers? He was so good at the stone face, I couldn’t tell what he knew or what he thought.
Because she was using the entire floor for studio space, Darlene’s crib was the service hallway. She kicked empty boxes out of the way and wheeled a broken keyboard to the corner so hard it clattered when it hit the wall.
She handed Carter the little envelope.
He read it and didn’t make an expression one way or the other. He gave it back to Darlene, who handed it to me as if serving me papers.
Babe, you’re so sweet when you laugh.
Next time I’m going to see it.
I swear I changed.
Give me one chance to prove it to you.
I spit-laughed.
“You’re not thinking of giving him a chance, are you?” Darlene asked.
“No. God no. It’s funny he thinks I’ll fall for this.”
“He knows where you work,” Carter said. “If we weren’t sure yesterday, we know now.”
A year and change earlier, I would have considered talking to him. I’d believed in my ability to convince Vince I wanted him to go away, and he repeatedly came back, proposing to love me more than before. Promising he’d changed. He brought flowers once, chocolate another time. Darlene said he was one visit away from bringing me a hat made of my dead cat’s fur.
“There’s nothing to do.” I tossed the envelope and the note into the trash. Vince’s attention was cyclical. He’d be insistent for a few weeks, then he’d go away.
I glanced at Carter. I cared what he thought. I didn’t know why, but I wanted him to know I wasn’t going back to Vince. I needed him to know I might have been a poor judge of character, but I wasn’t stupid or weak. He wasn’t looking at me.
Darlene folded her hands together and put them over her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to make this about me.” When she brought her palms down, she slapped them against her thighs. “Yeah. True facts. The tour starts in two weeks, and we have Vegas in a few weeks.”
Darlene was doing a supersecret preshow at the MGM Grand that was about to go public. Tickets would sell out in minutes. It was a way to work out the kinks, make sure everything looked good, and bump excitement for the tour. It would be my last working day on this show.
She continued. “We’re not ready. The show’s not ready. You know what I got riding on this tour.”
“I know.”
Tours were money. Big money. A good 40 percent of her income, which meant my income. The dancers, the techs, the publicity people—everyone depended on her tours. Sexy Bitch had to do 30 percent better than Sexy Badass to make up for the 20 percent increase in expenses.
“And I need you. I need your head in the game. Don’t start, okay? Don’t tell me it is. Yeah, I know it is. I know you got this. But I don’t. I freak out every time I see a goatee.”
I’d never felt smothered by my friendship with Darlene until she scolded me with Carter watching.
“He’s not going to bother me,” I lied. He’d just fed me a pot brownie, texted me, and sent flowers. The falsehood was so easily provable I shrank to half my normal size. My credibility in the matter was shot anyway.
“I’m done.” Darlene cut the air with her hands. Was she firing me? “You’re done.” She couldn’t fire me. I had the entire show in my head. “All done. You.” She pointed to Carter. “You’re in charge of her.”
“Wait, wait . . .” He held up his hands as if anyone or anything had the power to ward off Darlene McKenna.
“No waiting. Now.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” I piped up as if I wanted him to be in charge of me. Which I didn’t. I was in charge of me.
“I just can’t.”
“As God is my witness, Carter Kincaid,” Darlene said, “I will call Carlos, and he will make this happen if you won’t.”
“Why not?” I hadn’t even heard Darlene. I was just mad and a little hurt.
Carter’s eyes went from me to Darlene and back. We’d cornered him good. Darlene with her demands and me with my questions.
“I have something to do this afternoon.”
“Fine,” Darlene said. “Start tonight at Club NV.” She wasn’t about to take no for an answer, even if I threw a tantrum.
“I’ll let Carlos know.” He didn’t seem happy about it.
“You do that.” I didn’t wait for anyone to ask me to leave. I just walked out. I had work to do.
I’d been away from Vince for almost two years. Before that, we were together eighteen months. Moved in together three months after meeting on Tinder. Nothing in his profile indicated he was crazy.
I’d been dating a lot when we met. I expected nothing. I showed up, met a guy, nine times out of ten we didn’t make it past the second date. Two times out of ten we became friends and said hello whenever we crossed at the usual first-date meet-up spots. Coffee shops. Parks. Sandwich stands.
Sex was a third-date thing. I usually didn’t get that far. But I tried to like the men I met. I tried to see the good in them before deciding if they were for me or not.
Nothing about my expectations or attitudes would have made me a target for a guy like Vince. I wasn’t easily sucked in by sweet words or shows of affection. I was looking for a guy who was good for me, not the other way around.
But something clicked. We met at a custard place on Sunset. The customers put the frozen custard in the cup and chose the toppings from a bar. The price was based on weight. I didn’t eat a lot of dairy because it wasn’t good for my voice. So even though the custard cup was huge, I didn’t fill it with more than a squirt of soy vanilla and a teaspoon of chocolate chips. That was plenty.
But Vince, a guy I didn’t even know, thought it would be funny to put more toppings in my cup while I wasn’t looking. I thought it was funny too. As many dates as I’d been on, none had done anything the least bit spontaneous or impulsive. They’d all sat down and told me their life’s accomplishments as if they were at a job interview.
But this guy was fun. Probably because he didn’t have any life accomplishments. He told me he was a caretaker/dealer and couched that in funny stories. Really funny. Piss-down-your-leg funny. Fuck-on-the-first-date funny.
I thought a lot about those first three months.
Was I insecure?
I didn’t think I was.
Was I lonely?
No. I’d had friends and a career. I spoke to my family often enough.
Did I want to slow down on dating?
Yes. That one was probably spot-on. I should have slowed down and dated a résumé guy for a few months.
Carter didn’t want to be my bodyguard. I took it personally. I felt the same way I had the first time Vince said my tits were too small.
Unimportant. Unwanted. Vulnerable.
Both feelings created emotional acrobatics. One was a full layout and the other was a full pike, but they both left me suspended in the air with more to do before I hit the floor.
I went through the routine a hundred more times that morning, and each time I forgot the feeling of being unwanted a little more. I sweated it out, kicked it away, worked it down.
“Lunch!”
I wasn’t ready to stop. I hadn’t gotten rid of all of it, but I had to let everyone else break.
“Can we talk?” Carter asked from behind me.
I walked toward my bags. “I don’t know. Can we?”
He dropped his voice. “Last night.” He cleared his throat. “If you’re my principal, that can’t happen again.”
“Fine.” There was no venom in my voice, just exhaustion. Everything in my life was mitigated. I had to look where I went, watch what I said, make sure I was alone even if I was desperately lonely. Of course I couldn’t be attracted to a decent man who found me interesting. Of course a perfectly nice kiss had to be renegotiated the next morning.
I pulled a towel off the back of a chair and walked past him without making eye contact, heading for the bathroom, slapping the black door open with the heel of my hand.
I did my business and washed my hands, looking at the sink instead of my face in the mirror.
I regretted being short with him before I even shook the water off my hands.
Darlene came in, pulling the door closed.
“Okay, listen,” she started.
I didn’t let her finish. “I love you. But I need you to back off.”
“I’ll back off.”
She’d never given up a fight that easily in her life.
I snapped towels out of the dispenser. “Really?”
“Just let Carter watch you and I’ll stop getting in your face.”
I tossed the ball of brown paper in the trash.
“I already feel like I live in a prison.”
“I know.”
“I don’t go out unless I’m with you. I don’t date because I’m afraid someone I like’s going to get a crowbar in the face. I’d love to have a cat, you know? A fucking cat. And now you want a guy to follow me around? Thanks, but no thanks.”
“He told me.”
I had to lean on the counter with my whole body bowed. There was no pretending Darlene meant anything but the kiss.
“And?” I said to the floor.
“He is really hot, Emily. He’s one of the finest men I—”
I shot up. “Why are you saying it like it’s a bad thing?”
“Because I trust him to watch you. Look, this is Los Angeles. I can find another choreographer, but I can’t find another best friend. I can’t trust anyone else, and I know I’m making it about me again. I’ve never been as scared as I was when you were with Vince. I felt like I was losing you.”
“I was right here the whole time.”
“Not like that. When he didn’t want you to travel, or be onstage, or let anyone hear your voice, I thought it was only going to get worse. That’s how these assholes start. When he hit you . . . I know that was the end of it. But you’re lucky. Most women who get involved with a guy like that get hit a lot more often before they leave. So now, I keep waiting for you to go back and finish the job with him.”
“You know this has nothing to do with me. This is about your mother.”
“Goddamn it is, and you know it. And I know it. So, girl, let me sleep at night. Let me give you Carter.”
“There are four other guys you can assign me.”
She shrugged. “The other guys are fine, but he’s the best.”
I looked back into the mirror and twisted my hair up into a high bun.
“And I have to keep my hands off him?”
“He’s really clear he can’t protect someone he’s involved with.”
“You’re really sadistic, you know that?”
“If you want to start dating again, girl, I can get you dates. Lotta dates. You know my agent?”
“Gene? With the pink-gold watch?”
“He thinks you’re hot. Told me so. He’ll be at the party tonight.”
Party? Was there a party? I went deer-in-headlights.
“Tonight? Is it Wednesday?”
Darlene opened the door. Music wafted in over the clatter of the caterer packing lunch away.
“Yup. What are you wearing?”
“A dress and a bodyguard, apparently. Except the dress part. I don’t have a dress. I can’t—”
“Simon!” Darlene called out his name midsentence. He came to us, every step a dance. He had the strength of a man and the grace of a woman, with dark-brown skin and supershort hair he dyed white.
“You rang?”
“Emily needs a dress.”
He eyed me from head to toe without a bit of sexual interest, as if taking inventory of possibilities. Resistance was futile. I held out my arms.
“I was thinking something black,” I said. “So I can hide.”
“I don’t think so.” He wagged his finger at me. “We’ll meet right after work. I’m going to get you some attention.”