Dating You / Hating You
Page 39

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.