Dating You / Hating You
Page 5

“I’m not even sure I know what it means to go ‘full-on Hollywood.’ Is that when you look at the five-hundred-dollar shoes at Saks and think, ‘I should probably get those’? Because we had that in Manhattan.”
“Worse,” I say. “It’s when you recognize the five-hundred-dollar shoes on someone else’s feet and know where they probably bought them. And then you judge the person wearing them a little because those loafers are no longer the town’s number one underappreciated, overpriced designer and you know they were on sale last week so they didn’t pay full price.”
“Wow. You are Eve-il.”
“Oh, that’s not me.” I hold up my hands and then point to my simple yellow flats peeking out beneath my robe. “I’ll have you know these shoes are from Old Navy, sir. Purchased on clearance. But I’ve lived here my entire life. Every day it’s a struggle to not get pulled down into the game.”
“ ‘The game’?”
“Talent agents in Hollywood?” I say. “You know it’s a game.”
“Right, right.” He nods, and I realize that with that one subtle gesture, he’s already playing. And if my instinct is right, he’s good at it, too. He’s wide open until the subject of work comes up, and then a filter slides into place.
Interesting.
I take a sip of my drink, looking out at the party around us. Together, Carter and I form this tiny island in the dining room; it’s almost as if the rest of the guests have been instructed to leave us alone.
“So you’re at P&D,” he says.
“I am.” I look at him, trying to read him like I do every new person I meet so I can figure out how to best interact, and I think: He’s unflappable. “Under Brad Kingman.”
Carter doesn’t react, and if my guess is correct, it’s because he already knew this about me.
“Is it true he’s notoriously picky about food and only eats raw, unprocessed, no sugar . . .” Carter grins as he cheekily tilts his can of Red Bull to his lips. “Obviously I am very health conscious, myself.”
I laugh. “It’s true—all of it.”
“It can’t be as extreme as everyone says.”
“One time,” I begin, “I put a home-and-garden magazine on his desk, thinking he could take the dog-food-bar sample stuck to the cover home to his pampered Great Dane. I walked by later and he was eating it. Like, he’s so used to bland, tasteless food that he ate an organic dog-food bar and didn’t realize it wasn’t for people.”
Carter looks horrified. “Did you say anything?”
“Um, no,” I say, unable to keep from laughing. “But in my own defense, he’d just told me I looked a little fluffy in my new dress. So maybe he deserved it.”
As soon as the last word is out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back.
Agents are notoriously gossipy. In some ways, sharing confidences to make inroads is part of the business. But it’s never been a very large part of my business. I keep it level. I keep it up front. I get things done. And as much as I felt justified letting my boss eat dog food, I don’t get bogged down in sharing stories of bad behavior, drunken antics on tabletops at bars, or which intern is banging which partner. Unless I’m with Daryl or Amelia—in which case, the gloves come off. And in general, I like to run in like-minded circles. Reputation is everything.
Carter leans in. “That’s a pretty terrible thing to say to you, though.”
And dammit—by whispering this reassurance, he’s managed to play both the professional and the reassuring angle. Good agents can read people, instinctively put them at ease and get them talking, or remain discreet in every situation. Great agents can seamlessly do all three.
We all tend to keep our cards pretty close to our chests and not let on what we’re really thinking. Our guards are up, our walls are high, and our bullshit meters are tuned to the most sensitive setting possible.
It occurs to me, looking at him a little more closely, that Carter definitely keeps his cards close to his chest, yeah. But he also seems to have a really good hand.
Chapter two
Carter
Michael Christopher finds me Saturday morning, paper open on the table, coffeemaker sputtering quietly in the background.
“Glad you didn’t try to drive home.” His voice is broken-glass scratchy, and when I look up, I grin at the sight of him in a blue velvet bathrobe hanging haphazardly open over a faded T-shirt and a pair of striped boxers. Atop his head, his hair reaches a campfire peak.
“Morning, Mr. Hefner.”
He swears roundly when his foot locates a handful of Legos buried in the fluffy kitchen rug.
“Language.” I’ve heard Stephanie give him this understated reminder at least a dozen times.
Michael growls, bending to inspect the damage. “You don’t know pain until you’ve had one of these fuckers embedded into the arch of your foot.” Satisfied he isn’t bleeding, he hobbles the rest of the way to the cupboard, pulls down a white ceramic coffee mug with Morgan’s tiny handprints stamped on the side, and pours himself some coffee. “Why are you always up so early?”
“I don’t know. My internal clock refuses to give up being a New Yorker.”
“Your internal clock is an idiot.”
“I know.” I laugh. “Nice robe, by the way.”
He pours cream into his mug and slips the carton back into the refrigerator. The fridge in the apartment we shared in college was covered in pizza coupons and phone numbers; this one has a giant drawing of Big Bird and reminders about play dates.
Michael drops into the seat across from me and takes a sip of his coffee. “It was a gift from Steph for Father’s Day.”
“Well, congratulations. You’re officially your dad.”
Leaning over the table, Michael inhales the steam rising from his coffee. “I can’t do smartass yet, Carter. My head is killing me and I’m still trying to figure out why I was wearing Steph’s underwear when I woke up.”
“Nope. No. No.” I shake my head, hoping to dislodge this particular mental image before it burns itself into my brain.
Standing, I head for the ibuprofen I know is kept in the cupboard next to the sink—the medicine cabinet, they call it. It’s filled with prescriptions and Band-Aids and every over-the-counter medication you could ever need. There’s a bottle of iodine in there, for God’s sake.
Adults have iodine. My mom has iodine. I’m twenty-eight years old and couldn’t tell you with absolute certainty what a bottle of iodine is even for.
It’s at these moments that I see the stark contrast between our lives. Michael and Steph have a three-bedroom house on a quiet residential street. They have a mailbox with Evans whimsically hand-painted across the side, and a growth chart on the back of a closet door. They have a kid. I have a small one-bedroom apartment and a cactus I’m proud to have kept alive for six months.
When did he move past me on the Adult Achievement Scale?
Maybe it was getting married or braving the real estate adventure that did it, or maybe it was becoming a dad. Either way, I could never ask, because as responsible as he and Steph have become, they both still consider themselves barely out of adolescence, and any mention to the contrary would lead to their insisting we crash a kegger or find the nearest rave. And I, ironically, am definitely too old for that.