Dating You / Hating You
Page 50

The anticipatory horror on his face when I turn is like a hammer to a pane of glass for the tension in my chest, and I burst out laughing. “Two women who have slept with the same man.”
If possible, the horror intensifies. “And this man would be . . . me?”
“I presume so, but I know I didn’t become a sister.”
His face straightens. “Only because of circumstances.”
“I assume whenever two people don’t sleep together, one way or another it’s because of circumstances.”
“Right,” he says, easy again now, with the smile and the eyes and the collarbones. “But those circumstances are entirely different from the ones surrounding why I didn’t sleep with Rose.”
I glance back over to where Rose is still in a tense conversation with Brad, having been abandoned by the rest of us. I want to joke some more, keep it light here with Carter, but it’s nearly impossible when the weight of the job seems to follow us everywhere. I’ve never been let go. I’m not even sure how to deal with that.
“You okay?”
I nod, numb. “Sometimes I just can’t believe I do this for a living.”
His brows pull together. “You don’t love it?”
Instinct makes me tread carefully. Why is it that the one person I want to confide in the most is the one who could use it against me so easily? “I do love it. I love making these things happen, and connecting people. I love the clients and the art they make. It’s the politics I hate. The team behind the curtain is starting to feel . . . terrible. I don’t want to become that.”
His hand is warm when it comes up and cups my shoulder. The touch feels like the most intimate thing he could do right now—beyond even kissing me—because it makes me remember. I remember his mouth there. I remember that Carter likes my shoulders. I remember how his eyes seemed to ignite when he saw them bare, in the dress, that first date, and again on Friday.
It doesn’t feel like an innocent touch, it feels like a message.
“You aren’t like that, Evie.”
But when I look up at his face, he smiles a little, and it carries a shadow of regret.
I know we’re thinking the same thing: But I’ve been like that with you.
Chapter twenty
Carter
Eighteen-hour workdays, no social life, and I’m boarding the plane for New York wondering if the fact that it’s December twenty-first and the only Los Angeles holiday parties I managed to attend were work-related makes me an amazing career man or a terrible single dude.
Michael Christopher and Steph were hosting one—no costumes this time, sadly—but it conflicted with the Paramount party. Jonah invited me to his new apartment in West Hollywood, but the only evening I was free overlapped with his meeting a bankruptcy lawyer. We ended up exchanging small gifts over lunch at a food truck outside my building.
I’ve barely seen Evie, but we seem to have reached a sort of cease-fire. I guess hand jobs foster goodwill? Or maybe it was because I told her she had a poppy seed between her teeth before a Monday meeting, and she gave me a grateful you’re no longer Satan look. Whatever the reason, things have softened between us, and I’m so goddamn grateful for it I nearly want to weep. I’ve never in my life been so busy at a job, so desperate to prove myself and make myself indispensable. But seeing her face as we pass in the hall or hearing her voice coming from her office has made the last three weeks more bearable.
It makes no sense, I realize that. Hers should be the voice that reminds me that the clock is ticking, that the direct deposit notice I find in my inbox every two weeks isn’t a sure thing. And still, hers is the presence that feels the most grounding, the most sane. It’s terrifying to realize that no matter how this turns out, I probably won’t have her as a colleague much longer. So I go into ostrich mode and just don’t think about it.
• • •
Christmas is in two days and I’m shopping with family. The mall is packed, but there’s this shared type of last-minute chaos that puts people in a good mood despite the number of bodies clogging the stores.
Doris and Dolores are my two favorite aunts. They’re my dad’s sisters—twins, of course—and although they might look identical, they couldn’t be more different. For as long as I can remember, if Doris was hot, Dolores was cold. If Doris wanted burgers for dinner, Dolores wanted fish. If one wanted to watch a comedy, the other was absolutely in the mood for sci-fi.
“Why so quiet, Scooter?” Doris says, apparently still refusing to believe I am nearing thirty. She peers at me across the clothing rack through glasses so thick her blue eyes are magnified to three times their actual size. “What are you thinking about?”
Dolores picks through a table piled high with brightly colored polo shirts and looks up at her sister. “He’s a boy. He’s not thinking about anything.”
I slide my eyes to her. “Easy, Dolores.”
Holiday music plays on a loop overhead and Doris squints at me. “Look at him. He’s percolating.”
My mom lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You stressed about work, honey?”
As far as she knows, work is fine. I haven’t told her that in the past two months her eldest son began bronzing women without their consent and dealing in contraband glitter and hot sauce. I haven’t told her about my boss and how it’s like working for a real-life Ron Burgundy. I certainly haven’t told her that there’s a small chance I could be transferred back here, because the sabotage I’ve seen from Evie would pale in comparison to what Mom would do to make that transfer happen. And I haven’t mentioned that the girl I met at the party all those months ago is becoming my favorite person in the world and I’m feeling mildly lovesick.
“Just wondering,” I say, pointing at the pile of shirts Dolores is upturning, “what kind of monster digs through clothes during Christmas shopping and pulls every single shirt from the pile, unfolding it?”
Dolores throws me the stink eye.
“Don’t you know how long it takes to fold all of those, Double D?” I started calling my aunts this long before I knew—or appreciated—what it meant. They’ve always found it hilarious, but after twenty-plus years of hearing it, my mom no longer finds humor in Double D: The Twins. She gives my aunts a reproachful look for encouraging me by laughing. I adjust the bags in my hands and follow her as she moves to another table.
“Honey,” she says. “Tell me what’s bothering you. Are you in some kind of trouble? You know, I saw this episode of Law & Order where it talked about the underbelly of Hollywood.” She lowers her voice on that last part, the tiny bells on her earrings jingling as she sorts through shirts. “Anyway, they exposed it all. About the prostitutes and gangs, the drug dealers.” She looks at me with wide eyes. “You’re not near that, are you?”
“No, Mom. I think the underbelly is on the other side of LA. The side Jonah is on.”
This time the reproachful look is all mine.
“Mom, I’m fine. Was just thinking about him, actually. Wondering if he’s going to be all alone on Christmas.”
I am an excellent manipulator, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned growing up in this family, it’s that the way to change the tide of any conversation is to steer it directly toward Jonah.
Mom frowns, and even though I’m sure she knows exactly what I’m doing, her desire to defend her can-do-no-wrong son wins out. “You know how busy he is,” she says to me, but also toward Dolores and Doris, who’ve stopped to listen. “He said he’d be fine. He has friends. I’m sure he has some important job he’s wrapped up in, it being the holidays and all.”