chapter fifteen
evie
If I thought I was angry with Carter before, now there’s humiliation thrown into the mix. Over the next couple of days, I spend entirely too much time looping back through those few seconds he’d leaned in and looked at me like I wasn’t the enemy. I must have appeared to melt in my chair.
With any other romantic failure, there’s the regret, and the replaying of the good times and bad times. Maybe there’s even the occasional awkward run-in around town because, as huge as LA is, it feels tiny. But it’s a different matter altogether to work alongside a romantic failure. To pass him in the hall, to see him at meetings, to be forced into a tiny space to plan company retreats together . . .
I get to the small conference room first and take a seat on the couch at the far end, near the windows. It gives me the benefit of being able to see Carter walking all the way down the hall and toward me—not the worst view in the world—escorting the planner from Corporate Fun!
She’s put together in a bland, anonymous way, but Carter—because he’s the devil—exudes sex. Hands in his pockets; lazy, confident stride; crooked smile. Is it more noticeable now because I’m not getting any? Probably. Or is it just how he is? His dark dress pants fit him perfectly, sitting low on his slim hips and hugging his quads. I swear I can see the outline of his cock along his thigh. His dress shirt today is a subtle blue-and-white-check pattern and seems like it was poured on him, it looks so good. When he smiles more broadly at something the planner says, his entire face lights up and somehow, he looks sweet again.
I’m ruined, I can see that now. I look bleakly out at the next few years of my life, working here or somewhere else and unable to get over my hate-crush on Carter Aaron. Or even worse, watching him with someone else. I’m doomed.
I stand when they enter, smoothing my skirt before shaking hands with the woman—Libby Truman—who already seems enamored with Satan’s Errand Boy and his stupid perfect face. As she holds on to his upper arm, she gushes about how funny he was on the walk down here.
On the walk down the hall. Thirty seconds, tops. How amazing, no doubt.
We sit, do the perfunctory explanation of what we need—and honestly, I feel like we could have had this meeting over the phone. We require someone to plan some games for the group of fifty or so people over two days. We require activities that won’t (a) make us all cringe or (b) trigger our grossly competitive natures. We require alcohol. That’s it; it’s pretty simple.
But whenever possible, people like to come to the P&D offices for meetings. It’s for the exact reason I can see Libby occasionally looking out through the glass walls of the room: she’s hoping to spot a celebrity.
Unfortunately for her, she sees only Justin, who peeks his head in about five minutes into things.
“Jett Payne is here; he’s waiting for us upstairs. Also, Kylie wanted me to let you know that she overordered for the break room Keurig, and you’re free to take a box or two home.”
Carter stands with a smile. “Thanks, Justin.”
My jaw drops.
“You double booked?” I ask him, wearing a tight fuck you smile of my own.
“I guess I did. Sorry about that,” he says, as if it were purely accidental and he’s not meticulous about his calendar. He stands, reaching forward to shake Libby’s hand. “Great to meet you, Libby. Evie can handle the rest of the discussion. And make sure she validates your parking. Looking forward to what you two have planned!”
Libby, a little breathless, overexclaims, “It will be great!”
• • •
About an hour later I wrap up the meeting with Libby—still fuming—and head back to my office while checking the rest of today’s schedule on my phone.
I have forty-five minutes to get across town to meet Sarah Hill for a hair appointment. We just landed Sarah a part in an adaptation of a runaway bestselling teen novel, and the studio insists her hair be a specific shade of blue for the role. It’s in her contract that her agent and the producer be present for quality control. What it means, essentially, is four hours in a salon, trying to stay alert enough to be able to tell the subtle difference between fifteen different shades of blue hair.
Passing Carter’s office, I stop dead in my tracks, seeing that he’s already put two boxes of K-Cups in the middle of his desk.
When I was a teenager, my father was strict; it was the opposite of Daryl’s family, who basically let her run around with whoever she wanted. I wasn’t allowed to date until I was sixteen, and even then there were rules. I could date as much as I wanted, but I couldn’t have a boyfriend, which meant no consecutive dates with the same guy. I’m sure the intent there was that I didn’t get too serious with any one guy, because serious leads to sex. Their plan worked, mostly: by eleventh grade, I hadn’t had sex yet. Had never really even come close.
And then I met Kai Paialua. I managed to sneak as much time with him as I could, away from my parents’ watchful eyes. The night of the Homecoming game our senior year, we found ourselves in a bedroom at a party. Somewhere in another room Santana was playing on repeat, his sexy guitar riffs egging action along, and . . . I wanted to have sex with Kai. I was pretty damn close, too—his pants were around his ankles and he was checking to see if the condom he’d carried in his wallet since sophomore year had expired—and I knew I was at a crossroads. Go one way and that was it, we’d have sex and there would be no turning back. Or pull my skirt down from around my armpits and my hymen would live another day.
Needless to say, I never saw my virginity again.
Loitering in the hall outside Carter’s office, staring at those damn K-Cups on his desk, I feel that same potent blend of thrill and dread. If I follow through with the plan forming in my head, I won’t be innocent anymore.
And so, five minutes later, the K-Cups are all swapped out, the pods inside no longer matching what it says on the boxes. And I’m on my way to the salon, nobody the wiser.
Same great flavor . . . now in decaf!
• • •
Friday may go on record as being the best day of my life, because it’s the day that Carter Aaron can’t keep track of a single thought at work.
It’s a little like watching a lion with a limp: it’s just not something you see very often, making it incredibly hard to look away. He wasn’t kidding when he said he can’t function without coffee. Apparently, he walked into the women’s room and stared at the wall, obviously shocked that the urinals were gone, until Jess emerged from a stall and steered him in the right direction. He spluttered his way through a conference call with Smashbox Studios about the setup for the Vanity Fair photo shoot next Friday, and afterward stood in the hall, confused, before turning into his office and sitting down in front of the cup of decaf I’d stealthily placed on his desk.
I wonder if I’m turning into a horrible human being, really, because I am completely alive watching all of this. Who does this kind of backhanded crap? Well, aside from everyone in this business.
Except . . . I’ve never stooped this low, and as soon as I really start to think about how far I’ve strayed from my own ideals, my guilt begins to eat at me.
I dial Steph’s number, thankful when she answers on the first ring. “I’m a terrible human,” I say in lieu of a greeting.
“Is this for anything specific or just in general?” she asks.
I think about it. “A little of both, I think.”
“Do you want to tell me about it or should I have plausible deniability?”
I can hear voices and the sound of glasses and cutlery clinking in the background, so I assume she’s meeting someone and doesn’t have much time.
“Are you busy? I can stop by and confess tonight.”
“Just waiting on a casting agent,” she says. “And by the way, you’ll never guess what my assistant told me this morning.”
I lean to the right, where I can see Carter at his desk, staring blankly at a pencil. I bite back a laugh. “What?”
“She slept with Carter’s brother last night.”
This gets my attention.
“No,” I say, straightening. “Your assistant?”
“Yep.”
“Jesus, this town is small. Where did this happen?”
“At some party. They didn’t exactly do a lot of talking, and she only put two and two together this morning.”
Honestly, if I weren’t busy hating Carter Aaron, I would be texting him immediately to share this so we could laugh together.
Unable to resist, I lean over again and peek into his office. Today just keeps giving. “And?”
“And . . . from what I gather, it was a ringing endorsement for the Aaron family. A fact you’d have personal knowledge of if you two would get your heads out of your asses.”
I groan. “Do not remind me. Speaking of his brother, we have a shoot with him next week. Now I’m going to be thinking of him banging Anna.”
Steph laughs into the line. “Tell him she says hi!”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well then tell Carter his suit is hanging in my bathroom. He needs it for Friday.”
“His suit?”
“He took Morgan trick-or-treating so we could go out, and she threw up all over him. I’d yell at him for letting her eat an entire bag of candy, but I got a grown-up party and hotel sex, so . . .”
“No, Mistress Overshare, not today. Don’t tell me about your sex life, and definitely don’t tell me cute things about Carter. He’s a monster.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Okay, I see my person walking in. Love you and stop being a terrible human.”
Why does the universe do this to me? I’m riding high on inefficient, undercaffeinated Carter when the world has to remind me that he might not be entirely awful. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve messed up, and maybe Steph’s right: I am a terrible human.
The anxiety gnaws at me a little during a lunch meeting with Adam Elliott, and when I’m with America’s favorite aging hottie I can’t be distracted, not even a little.
Carter isn’t in his office when I return, so I can’t confess, can’t even give him the fully caffeinated cup of joe I got him on the way back from lunch. I open my email and absently reach for the bottle of moisturizer on my desk. But instead of reading, and instead of cultivating the lingering guilt, my mind goes back to Carter forgetting Brad’s name this morning when they passed in the hall. That one was pretty great.
I rub my hands together and smooth a little on my elbows and my face, and a little more on my legs as I recall Jess telling me how Carter got off on the wrong floor earlier, and sat down at Evan Curtis’s desk up in Legal.
I’ve repeated the process two more times before the guilt returns and I realize what I need to do: I need to replace the coffee and ’fess up. Karma is a bitch I do not need coming after me.
I’m just reaching for the phone to ring Jess and confess, to ask if she’ll help me switch it all back, when a call comes in that I’ve been waiting for.
Forty-five minutes of actress flattering later, a knock sounds at my door.
“Come in,” I say, eyes still on my computer screen as the bottom of the door whispers across the carpet.
“Hey, did you see that email about the aud—holy hell!” Jess gasps, and I look up to meet her wide eyes.
“What? What?”
She shakes her head, a hand coming over her mouth. “Evie, oh my God. I’ll be right back.”
She rushes out of the room, returning a moment later with Daryl at her heels and closing the door behind them.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Why are you two looking at me like that?”
Daryl can barely keep it together. “What did you do, Garfield?”
“I—what?” I reach for the compact I keep in the bottom drawer, and I immediately see it. My hands, mostly my palms and up to my wrists, are orange. “Oh my God.”
“You look like a construction cone,” Daryl says, and she finally loses it, barely managing to add, “You’re making me crave buffalo wings.”
“Oh my God, would you shut it?” In fumbling with the mirror, I manage to nearly hurl it across the room.
My face is orange, too. Not just orange but shimmery. I look like a sparkly Circus Peanut.
Daryl moves to stand next to me. “What did you use?”
“I didn’t—!”
I stop, reaching for the lotion bottle I used earlier.
No.
Unscrewing the cap, I bring it up to my nose and sniff.
No.
Instead of the subtle vanilla scent I’m used to, I now notice a faint chemical smell.
“Nooooo,” I growl, my voice low and savage. “I’m going to kill him.”
“He put sunless tanner in your lotion bottle?” Daryl whispers, sounding horrified . . . but also a little impressed.
Jess runs out and runs right back in again. Coming around the desk, she kneels on the floor next to me, pulling a makeup wipe from a little plastic package. “I’m now afraid for him.” She reaches for my arm and starts to scrub. “Okay, a lot of it is coming off. It’s just bronzer.”
Daryl laughs. “Give it eight hours.”
“Oh, Evie, what happened ?” a deep, mocking voice says, and we all look up to see a smiling Carter leaning against the doorframe. Jess practically falls backward in her attempt to flee.
“You did this!”
“You want to start pointing fingers, Chef Decaf?”
I giggle in spite of myself. “Pardon?”
Pushing off the doorway, he steps closer. Daryl and Jess, wisely, clear the room. “I ran home at lunch to make some of my own coffee, because the cups here just weren’t cutting it. But sure enough, the ones at home are decaf, too. In the grocery store parking lot I couldn’t remember where I parked my car and nearly got arrested trying to get into a different silver Audi.”
I feel a surge of pride rush through my blood. “You did?”
He grins, shaking his head at me. “I did. Not cool.”
Holding out an arm for him to inspect, I say, “You don’t get to come in here and play the victim card, sir.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” He steps closer, so close that I can feel the warmth of his skin against mine. The playfully contentious mood slips away and I can practically feel the sweep of his attention as he moves his gaze briefly to my lips.
As if he might kiss me again.
No way. I think we both know that that won’t ever happen.
“I liked you,” he whispers.
An ache worms itself between my ribs when he says this, and my response comes out more raw than I’d planned: “I liked you, too.”
He stares at me, unblinking. “Evie—”
“I’m just glad I figured out who you really are before we got in too deep.”
• • •
From deep in a pile of bubbles in Steph’s bathtub I address everyone and my innermost core at once. “I’m going to bury him.”
We’re all here, crowded into Michael and Steph’s small bathroom: Daryl, Amelia, Jess, Steph, and, of course, me. Naked and slightly less orange.
“That’s great, honey,” Daryl says, handing me another loofah around the shower curtain. “Just not tonight.”
“You have to admit that was pretty fucking clever,” Amelia says. “To figure out how to use your lotion fetish against you?”
I look sullenly at the murky water around me. Makeup kept most of the bronzer from absorbing into my face, and it washed off pretty easily. But my palms and elbows absorbed more of the color, and both remain a faded, sickly shade of orange.
“It’s not a fetish. More of a nervous tic. And he didn’t figure anything out, I told him about the lotion thing. He took something I shared and used it against me. Dirty traitor.”
“Yeah, let’s not let that halo slip too far there, Evie. You did strike first,” Amelia reminds me. “His decaffeinated self walked into a wall in front of my office.”
I peek my head around the shower curtain. “He did?” I say gleefully, wishing I’d been there to see it.
My smile straightens as she stares at me with a single stern eyebrow raised.
“Come on,” I whine, breaking under the pressure, “it was coffee. I struck first with coffee. Besides, he pulled Dan Printz away from me, swapped out the Vanity Fair photographer for his brother without consulting me, and ditched our joint meeting with the chatty retreat coordinator. I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to roll over.”
“So all he did was up the stakes,” Amelia says calmly. “And if I know anything about you, you’re already plotting retaliation.”
“You’re damn right I am. Jess?” I say. “I’m going to need you to do some unsavory things.”
She looks over at me from where she’s sitting on the bathroom counter. “Am I going to be doing anything illegal?”
“Ummmm . . . not sure yet.”
She rolls her eyes. “Will you at least take the fall if I get busted?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’d like to go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea, but fine, I’m in.”
“You know, as Carter’s friend, I feel I should step in here,” Steph says.
I tilt my head. “Perhaps you’d like to see the inside of your bathtub?”
She holds her hands up to stop me from moving. “No, no. Not necessary.” She looks over her shoulder toward the sound of the doorbell. “I’ll be right back.”
Slipping back behind the curtain, I pick up the bar of soap and lather the loofah again. “The shoot is next week—and he may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”
“Before I forget,” Jess says, “I was originally coming into your office today to ask if you’d seen the email from Accounting. They’re doing an audit and I need copies of all your expense reports.”
“Audit?” Daryl repeats.
“Yeah,” Jess says, “it has something to do with the private equity firm that backed P&D in the merge. I guess outside money means a closer eye on things. They want everyone’s records, even mine.”
“Just reconciling the books post-merge,” Amelia says. “Pretty normal stuff.”
Footsteps carry down the hall and I peek out again to see Steph walking back into the bathroom with Daryl’s assistant, Eric, right behind her.
“What are you doing?” I shout, clutching the shower curtain to my chest.
“I have my eyes closed,” Eric says. “I needed to drop off these contracts for Daryl.”
And as if to illustrate that he really does have his eyes closed, he runs into the doorjamb.
“Right here,” Daryl says, maneuvering her way over to him. “Thanks for coming all the way out here, Eric.”
“What are you all doing, anyway?” Eric peeks one eye open to glance around the room. “Secret meeting . . . in a bathroom?” He squeezes his eyes closed again when he catches sight of me in the tub, and offers me a small wave. “Oh hi, Ms. Abbey.”
“Plotting revenge against one of your own,” Daryl tells him with the cap of a pen between her teeth. She turns him, holding the papers up against his rather broad, muscled back so she can use him as a makeshift table. “You might be wondering why Evie is sitting in a nest of orange bubbles.”
“I mean,” he says quietly, “the question had crossed my mind, but Ms. Baker from HR is here so I figured this is a don’t ask, don’t tell situation.”
Amelia nods. “Good instinct.”
“Someone put bronzer in the lotion on Evie’s desk,” Daryl says, and Eric is unable to hold in a single, loud burst of laughter. In a whisper, Daryl adds, “Carter did it.”
Amelia slides her hand down her face.
“Daryl—don’t reveal names to the civilian,” I say, a little loudly.
“Relax,” she says. “Eric is cool. Hell, he might even have some ideas.” She turns him back around, handing him the stack of signed papers. “You might be pretty terrible with phones but you’re a genius with computers.” She smiles winningly up at him. “No offense.”
“Could you create a program that automatically reconciles our expenses with invoices?” Jess quips drily from her perch on the counter.
Daryl waves her off. “Boring, Jess. We’re talking sabotage.”
He shrugs. “I could be Team Estrogen. What do you need? I could wipe Carter’s credit score. Create a warrant for his arrest?”
My stomach gives a surprising lurch. “I don’t actually want him to go to prison.”
“I could hack into his email?” Eric suggests. “Maybe rearrange his calendar?”
My interest is momentarily piqued. “You can do all that?”
We’re treated to a sexy little lift of his chin. “Sure. I can do pretty much anything.”
A roomful of women watches Eric when he says this, absolutely taking his word for it.
Finally, Amelia covers her ears. “No way this won’t end badly.”
“She’s right,” I say. “I appreciate it, but I’m going to have to keep it more zany hijinks and less criminal mastermind.”
Steph throws one of Morgan’s ducky washcloths in my direction, and the group files out of the bathroom, leaving me to finish up and ponder revenge alone. Climbing out onto the bath mat, I look up, and through the steam on the mirror, I see something hanging on the door behind me.
Carter’s suit.
I smile at my reflection. Zany hijinks it is. He does call me Evil, after all.
If I’m going to the dark side anyway, I might as well do it right.