Chapter 2
Beth
I feel uneasy with Jacob staring at me across the conference table. He rarely openly gawks at me, especially with a weird smile on his face. I did my best to avoid prolonged eye contact with him through the remainder of the meeting. As soon as Tyson began closing up the conversation, I faked a need to rush out of the room and practically ran to my office to avoid any conversations that would lead to me sticking my foot in my mouth with Jacob present. I feel as if something unspoken may have happened when he picked me up on Sunday, something I wasn’t completely sure I was ready to officially face.
I didn’t want to look too much into the weirdness that occurred on the ride back to the city. His entire demeanor changed and while I knew that he wasn’t pissed off with me, there was a level of him being irritated about something. We chatted randomly as he drove me back home, but nothing was too heavy. It was by far the longest car ride of my life.
Once in the confines of my office, I notice that the room smells fresh and flowery and look around to see a vase with yellow roses on my desk. I walk further into the room to find the card when a tap on the door behind startles me.
I slowly turn and I am graced with the six-foot-two presence of a surfer instead of one of the Maddox brothers whom I was assuming would be there instead. My friend Luke, who also happens to be my friend in Santa Cruz, stands in my doorway, taking up the majority of the room with his frame. He was your stereotypical surfer guy: tan, constantly sandy in random spots, and smelling like the ocean. He also had that slow lazy drawl in his voice. Luke and I tried to date shortly after college, but our ambitions were so different that we didn’t last a month. Instead we remained friends and learned that was the direction we should have gone in the first place. He was kind and affectionate, we just didn’t mesh well on the romantic level.
“Hey there. You like the flowers? I brought them by since I was meeting an investor for the shop for lunch in the city. The receptionist said you’d be out of your meeting soon. Anyways, I’m totally sorry your Beamer took a dive after our lunch.” he says as he settles into the seat in front of my desk. I sat on the edge of my desk, angling my body towards him as I fingered one of the roses.
“Thank you. But you didn’t have to. Lunch was enough and my car issues weren’t your doing.” I smile at him.
“Yeah, but I’ve got to make sure that I take care of my number one girl.” He smiles, just as Jacob walks by and almost trips over his feet, which catches Luke’s attention.
I cover my mouth with my hand and stifle my laugh to not draw attention, even though Luke sees Jacob almost face-planting and smiles. Luke knows of my crush and what happened with Jacob several months ago, we share unspoken words of putting on a show and then he leans forward and puts his hand on my knee. He speaks but I can’t for the life of me hear what he’s saying as I’m watching out of the corner of my eye that Jacob slowly walks in front of my office door again, pretending to look forward and not into my office. All I hear is static and the pounding of my heart.
I smile and nod my head at Luke.
“Hey, you free for lunch? I’m starving; I could eat a whole horse right now.”
“I hear their meat is a bit gamey.” I retort.
“I enjoy a challenge.” He smiles as he stands and I walk around to my desk and grab my purse.
We exit my office, and I lace my arm through his as we walk to the elevators. Jacob is lingering next to the reception desk with a magazine upside down in his hands and the envelope from the meeting tucked under his arm. He looks up from his upside down magazine and smiles at us as we approach.
“You out of here?” he calls after us just as we reach the elevator.
“Oh, no we’re just going out for lunch.”
Jacob nods and looks back and forth between Luke and me. Shamelessly, I lean in closer to Luke, who isn’t paying attention to the unspoken body language between Jacob and myself.
“Have a good lunch.” Jacob says as we walk into the elevator lift.
I smile back and nod as the doors close.
Luke and I decide on a deli about a block away from the office and take our sandwiches to a nearby park. We sit next to one another on a bench talking about absolutely nothing of importance when a brilliant yet possibly dangerous thought comes to me.
“Luke, you know that guy that I was talking to before leaving my office?”
“You mean your hook-up from the summer?”
“It was only a one time hook up” I say.
“If I recall your swooning, it was more than once.” He laughs.
“Whatever. So would you have said that he was acting weird up there?” I ask, wanting to gauge his opinion.
“Well, I don’t know how he normally acts, but I would say that he was reading a magazine upside down. Unless he had some crazy super power that makes that possible, then yeah, I guess he was acting weird.”
“Can I ask a huge favor of you?”
“Anything.” He says without hesitation.
“Pretend to be my boyfriend?” I rush out while I had the nerve.
He coughs and as his eyes are watering, he looks at me. “Come again?”
“That’s what he said.” I couldn’t resist. “I think that Jacob is jealous of you. At least that’s the only explanation that I can think of. You’d be helping me out.”
“How so? He doesn’t even know me. Barely acknowledged me up there.”
“On Sunday, he picked me up and seemed weird when I mentioned I met a male friend for lunch. Then he tripped when he walked by my office just now – you saw that – then purposely walked by again. Then, as you saw, was pretending to read a magazine. What if I can make him jealous by saying that you’re my boyfriend?” I pause. “It’s believable; we dated before. I could kiss you and it would look believable.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ll even pay you if you want, you know for time and travel?”
“Am I an escort now?” He laughs.
“Um, no. You are a really, really, really good friend.” I put on the extra charm.
“Why do you want to make him jealous? What benefit will that get you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far yet. What do you say?”
He looks at me and considers the proposition. I know that it’s ridiculous and could potentially backfire. I’m willing to try anything at this point. My crush isn’t going away and maybe all I want is for him to acknowledge the fact that something happened between us.
“You wouldn’t be an ugly fake girlfriend, and I guess I wouldn’t mind kissing you, even if it’s not real.” He winks.
I smile and bounce in my seat at my half-thought-out plan, which could work, or it could ultimately fail and ruin everything.
Jacob
Who the hell was that guy?
Why was he calling her his girl?
And why the hell was his hand on her thigh?
None of it was my business. I know that. I’m troubled with why I am so annoyed with everything that just took place.
They left to go eat together. Friends go and eat together all the time. But she looked very comfortable with him, something wasn’t settling very well with me. Again, why am I so bothered about all this?
Because you want her for yourself, you idiot!
I sat at my desk clutching my cell phone. I went through my contacts and came across the folder of “do not answer” numbers, which just so happen to be one nighters whom I would sometimes take for another ride since I knew they would be discreet. I didn’t need someone blabbing that they’re fucking a Maddox. My life stays nicely wrapped up in a small package that doesn’t get leaked out to the media. Tyson is the one who has no fear of the public eye; myself on the other hand, I stay out of it. I don’t attend events, I don’t get into trouble and I have several NDA’s on hand just in case I feel like a chick is a clinger. It’s happened once, and I will never make that mistake again.
Maybe, I just need something to get my mind off of her, a distraction. It’s not like she isn’t doing the same, right? Does she need distracting from me?
I press the screen on the name for one of the numbers in my contact list, a definitely discrete individual who also has a high profile that I know wouldn’t say a word of any trysts that we would have. As I made arrangements for our rendezvous, I began looking through the envelope that Tyson passed to me.
He put a sticky note on the inside of the folder.
“Have Beth help you with organizing this stuff on a board if you need.” his scrawl says.
I don’t need Beth to help me.
I check my watch. I had forty-five minutes before I was meeting my friend, and I had time to go through a few of these head shots. I didn’t have my own assistant, but I sometimes used the receptionist to get me things, so I call her and ask her for a large rolling marker board. She brings me two several minutes later. I arrange them around to opposite sides of my office and then sit back down at the small table in the center. I thumb through the images and, based upon first reactions, I pull the ones I like from the pile and set them aside.
I’m not saying my choices are the best by any means – beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and I was just good at finding good looking women. I wouldn’t fuck any of these women because just as I told my mother, models aren’t my thing. I don’t have anything against models, my soon-to-be sister-in-law is one and it’s a perfectly acceptable profession. I just haven’t had any luck with models personally in the past, so I steer clear as a lesson learned. Plus, it’s my head on a stake if a lawsuit is filed against the company. And that’s publicity that neither I nor the company would need when we’re back at the top of our game.
A knock on the glass beside my door alerts me of a visitor and my cousin Brad pokes his head in.
“Atlantic City this weekend?” he asks with hope in his eyes.
I pull up my calendar on my phone and with a smile I nod.
“I’ll make the reservations. I need to win big this weekend. I did Vegas last weekend and lost big time.” he says.
“If we can leave after the evening traffic that would be best. Make sure the pilot is available at SFO. Call Leo at Borgata, he owes me a favor.”
Brad nods and runs off silently.
I’m left alone for the next twenty minutes until I check my watch again and close up shop for my afternoon distraction.
***
Beth and the tall surfer guy had lunch two more times this week, and I had two more afternoon distractions with the same socialite in turn. I knew that I had to stop this week’s escapades before my socialite decides that it would be good press for our families to join. I was only getting my frustrations over Beth actively dating out of my system in the most acceptable way that I could. I wasn’t harming anyone, but I knew that I was hooking up with someone else for all the wrong reasons, and for that I know I’m a dick. My distraction knew what the score was whenever we meet up and we did the same service for each other. It wasn’t close to a relationship rather than a simple business deal. No emotions were involved and definitely no personal talks were had other than the basics.
I’m walking back onto our floor as the guy and Beth are retreating from her office. I school my features, nod my head in passing and then, as they wait for the elevator, I look back before going out of sight and see her leaning up and him leaning down with meeting in the middle. His arm is around her tiny waist and her hand is on the back of his arm as they kiss. I shake my head and before I walk into the wall, I dodge it and briskly walk into my office.
Atlantic City can’t come soon enough.
The boards in my office are full of faces of all shapes, ethnicities and freshness.
“Why are the boards facing each other? Is this like a beauty battle? Perhaps this side is the contenders, and this side is those who no one would think would win?” Beth asks, poking her head into my office and interrupting my train of thought, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I categorize them based on the notes on their personalities and attitudes.”
“There are notes like that?” Beth asks, walking further into my office and picking up a head shot.
“It’s one of the requirements we set out when we ask agencies for models. Don’t want it to be an episode of The Bachelor where all the chicks are fighting to be in the spotlight.” I shrug, feigning indifference.
“How would you know anything about that show?” Beth laughs hysterically.
“Allison made me watch an episode not too long ago. It was the worst two hours of my life.” I shudder for effect as Beth laughs.
I love her laugh. Whoa!
“Do you need any help? I’ve got the afternoon free; Tyson took off to get ready for the party tonight.”
“Are you and Surfer Boy going?”
“We are, but it doesn’t take me that long to get ready. What about you?”
“Mother sent me a very detailed email saying that if I didn’t, I would be fired, disowned and I would find myself a eunuch.” I shudder at the mention.
She places her hand on my arm and laughs. I can feel her touch tugging at the seams of my resolve. I close my eyes and envision my hand enveloping her jaw and pulling her into a kiss. I can’t stay away from her, no matter how hard I try.
One night was not enough.