CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
REBECCA
STARK AND STRAIGHT-FACED. YOU’D think this was an introduction at an AA meeting. Or perhaps a confession.
My eye goes to the viewer count. It’s above a half-million now. Something sent this thing viral, but what?
I have a secret.
My mind reels. I never saw many secrets in Evan. He’s close about his personal affairs, but not deceptive.
What did he do?
Movement on the side of my screen. A new ad in the same series: Keep watching.
I finally get it. The ads are from Evan. He’s hyper-targeted the audience for the aggressive series so tightly that I’m the only person who’s seeing the ad. He couldn’t reach me through phone or email or PM, so he’s reaching me the only way he can. It’s how we met. In a dorky way, if we’d made it, LiveLyfe ads might have been our song.
“There’s a rumor that I was at the Hill of Beans in my Austin office building last Tuesday. According to people who claim to have been there, I caused a scene.”
I wait. Breath held.
“It’s true. But it wasn’t entirely my scene.”
My pulse rate doubles. Me. He means me.
I wait for him to say, A disgruntled ex-employee. A consultant who didn’t work out and got fired. A loudmouth who sneaked her way into learning insider information at LiveLyfe and then spilled it to her friends.
And that’s when I understand what this is: a quickie public relations move meant to get ahead of bad press. Steve blabbed. He told someone what I told him — the private, confidential stuff about the employees inside LiveLyfe — and someone trumpeted that news to the world.
This is Evan’s attempt to step up and address a coming scandal.
I’m about to watch LiveLyfe burn, under attack from interest groups determined to pry it open and tell the world that information isn’t safe at LiveLyfe, that all your personal data is for sale.
It’s the fire I started, just like Evan was afraid I would if he let me off the leash inside his company.
No wonder Evan looks so nervous. He’s in deep shit.
Damn my big mouth.
This is my fault. My fault.
But instead of explaining me as a crazy employee, Evan says, “A woman. Someone I didn’t know until recently, who has turned my world upside down. Her name is Rebecca Presley.”
Upside-down. I guess that’s better than Nuttier than a fruitcake.
Evan swallows. He reaches off screen and takes a glass of water, raises it to his lips, and sips.
“But there are also rumors that claim I was seeing this woman. Dating her. Those should have been self-evidently ridiculous because I’m a very private person. I eat at home, or with small groups in private dining rooms. I’d never date in public. There would never be rumors if I were dating, because I don’t expose myself like that. And if I was dating Ms. Presley? I certainly wouldn’t have been sitting in a Hill of Beans surrounded by other people — something the two of us did many times together. It was always business. That’s why I was so confident spending all that time in public.”
I don’t know why I’m watching this. Is he about to throw me under the bus? Explain how the PR crisis I’m imagining is all my fault?
There’s a heavy feeling in my chest. I want to be bothered watching Evan, but I can’t be. I still feel pulled toward him. And when his eyes meet the camera, I remember a day when I believed he felt pulled toward me.
“Or at least, that’s how I saw things.”
I sit up. The number of viewers is climbing.
“The truth is that that second batch of rumors was also accurate.”
My head lifts. Through the screen, our eyes meet.
“I screwed up. I tried to maintain my privacy. To keep my personal life to myself. But I’m an idiot, and I didn’t see what was right in front of me. We were colleagues. Why wouldn’t we go out in public? There was nothing to it.”
He looks down. His fingers move against one another, restless.
“But there was something to it.”
There’s a long moment of silence. My heart softens. A tear spills from my eye and rolls down my cheek.
There was something to it.
To me.
To him.
To the two of us, together.
“My name is Evan Reese Cohen,” he tells the camera, “I was in love, and I blew it.”
My hand goes to my mouth.
I don’t know how to feel.
Happy? Confused? Overwhelmed?
I’m paralyzed. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
“I’m Evan Cohen, and if you come to the Vortex Co-Work Center right now, you can ask me whatever you want. I’m here alone. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about …”
I hear the rest as a descending series of incomprehensible words, too faint behind me as I sprint for my front door.
I’m here alone.
Well, not if I can help it. He’s a block away. With luck, I’ll beat all the others.
The crowds.
The invasive, probing questions.
Stuff Evan hates. Stuff I can maybe save him from. Because as pissed as I got when Evan said it to me, I want to take care of him, too.
I’m out the front door, down the stairs, and onto the street before I realize I haven’t even put on any shoes. I was also trying a thing with my hair — and I’m talking way before my webcam show — and have a big, fat curler still above my right ear. I only now remember putting it there. I put one curler in, got distracted, then never finished. I obviously had the curler there throughout my entire show, and nobody said anything. God bless my fans — that’s how well they know me, that they figure one forgotten curler is just Becca As Usual.
Fuck it. I’m running like a sociopathic child. I’m the least elegant thing you’ve ever seen. The least sexy reunion-in-the-making anyone has ever heard of.
I go for the Vortex door, not seeing the old man reaching for the handle. I practically knock him down. He gives me a hard look as I turn to wave my apology. Because I’m looking backward, I don’t see the coffee table in the main area. I’m ass-over-teakettle, weightless in mid-fall, knowing this is going to hurt.
The press and lookie-loos, when they show, will have even more to ask Evan about. Like, Who is this dead girl on the floor? and What the fuck is wrong with her?
I see the ceiling tiles as I fall.
Then something stops me. I look up to see Evan above me, shocked to have caught me. He’s blinking down at me. His look isn’t adoring, which is what’s supposed to happen when lovers run into each other’s arms. He looks confused, his face clearly saying, What the hell am I getting myself into?
“Becca?”
“Funny meeting you here,” I say.
Now that I’m straightening, his face lights up. The shock is passing, and I see the other side of the expression he wore on the video. Nerves, not fear. Evan loves his privacy. Hates the public, and exposure. That had to be harder for him than sitting still would ever be for me.
And now that we’re here together, his arms properly around my waist and our eyes meeting, I see those nerves becoming something else.
Adoration.
Relief.
Poor bastard. He knew full well that he could have done all of that, and I might not even have come.
“You’re insane,” he says.
“Yeah, well, you have a stick up your ass.”
There’s a noise from the street. I barely hear it. We’re in our own little circle.
With his eyes on me, Evan says, “I love you, Rebecca Presley.”
My smile is weaker than I’d hoped. I wanted to be a hardass just to mess with him, but my heart is melting too fast.
“I love you too, asshole.”
The old man at the shop’s front yells at someone. Someone apparently even ruder than me.
We both look back. People are starting to arrive. I don’t think they’ve seen us yet, but the staff is loud, clearly wanting to make themselves understood after one crazy bitch sprinted past without paying.
Evan looks at me. “I don’t care. I’ll answer all their questions. Privacy means nothing without you.”
It’s sweet. But I have other designs on Evan right now, and I don’t want an audience any more than he does. “There’s a back door,” I point. “There.”
He stands firm, resolute. “I mean it. I love you, and I won’t hide us anymore.”
But I shove at him, my heart full and thoughts lewd.
“Move it, Cohen. We’ve got things to do, and we can’t do them in public without getting arrested.”