Dating You / Hating You
Page 7

My brother pulls out a chair, turns it around, and straddles it. Like an asshole. “It was okay,” he says. “Now Vogue . . . that was badass.”
I study him for a few seconds. “Jones, you look like you haven’t showered in a week.”
He grins over the top of his mug. “Fucking crazy night.”
Michael Christopher spins his own chair around and straddles it, just like Jonah. “We had a pretty crazy night ourselves, didn’t we, Carter?”
“It was . . . pret-ty crazy,” I agree, heavy on the sarcasm. They might have had Red Bull and pot, but there was also a sangria bar, a tampon bouquet in the bathroom, and a pumping room cordoned off for nursing mothers.
“Yeah, this place was off the hook,” Michael says, undeterred. “Went pretty late, too. Well . . . I mean, it was over by eleven because Morgan gets cranky if she doesn’t get enough sleep and a lot of the people here had sitters they had to get home to. But until then? In-sane.”
Jonah nods like he can relate, and to his credit he doesn’t give Michael a hard time.
“Carter even hit it off with someone,” Michael says. I groan as soon as the words are out of his mouth.
“A girl?” Jonah grins.
I scowl at him. “A woman, yeah.”
Jonah laughs into his coffee. “Sorry,” he says. “I mean wo-man.”
I give Michael a look that I hope is terrifying.
“What’s her name, MC?” Jonah asks. “Do I know her?”
“No,” I interject. Who knows if I’m right, but it’s a desperate wish tossed out to the universe.
“Evie,” MC says eagerly. “She’s hot, smart, great body. She used to work with Steph over at Alter—”
I cut him off. “Michael. Zip it.”
Jonah claps his hands together and I startle. “Man, Mom is going to love this.”
“Don’t talk to Mom about my dating life, and I won’t mention to her the rotating buffet of barely-legals in your bed.”
He counters my low blow with an even lower one. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want to get her hopes up. You remember how hard she took it when you screwed things up with Gwen.”
I think I hear Michael Christopher wince from across the room.
“Oh my God,” I groan, cupping my forehead.
Gwen Talbot was the first girl I fell in love with, and my mom adored her. Where most mothers might try to convince their twenty-four-year-old son he was too young to get serious, let alone engaged, I could practically see Mom naming her grandchildren whenever I brought Gwen home. But Gwen and I were never on the same page. She wanted a quiet life in Long Island with a house and kids. I was working for an agent and living in a crappy apartment in the city so I could go to every show and meet every influential person in theater. The pay was terrible and the hours were even worse, and we ended our engagement after a year. I don’t think Mom has recovered.
Jonah loves to push this particular bruise and looks pleased as he sits there and continues to drink his coffee. I work on remembering why it’d be a bad idea to punch him in the throat. Jonah with his Range Rover and money and dragon tattoos. Jonah is an asshole.
“Gwen was a whore,” MC finally says, breaking the loaded silence. “And I don’t mean that in a loose-with-her-sexual-morals sort of way, because I totally approve of that and girls should be able to have sex with whomever they want and not be judged. Just, the way she acted when you guys ended things. What a dick.”
I nod in thanks to Michael, because yeah, Gwen was a dick, and then I turn back to my brother. “Just keep your mouth closed. Seriously, why are you here?”
“Mom called a bunch of times and said you weren’t answering your phone. Then she said to check in with MC because if you were dead in a ditch somewhere he’d probably know where.”
“I . . . wait, what?” MC says, looking insulted.
Jonah drains his mug and stands, letting his chair slide noisily against the floor. He leaves both the cup and the chair where they are. “And since you’re not, I can go. Later, big brother.”
And like that he’s gone.
• • •
As if she’s been camped in the hall plotting an ambush, my assistant sees me the minute I step out of the elevator on Monday morning.
“You’re here!” she chirps.
“Becca, what are you doing? It’s barely eight a.m.”
Undeterred, she starts toward my office, notebook in hand, and unless I plan on turning back into the elevator—which isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever had—there’s really no choice but to follow.
“I wanted to make sure I caught you before anyone else did,” she says over her shoulder. “One of Blake’s clients has been asking about you.”
“Who?”
“Pretty One with Biceps.”
Becca rarely calls anyone by their given name. In TV-Literary, we represent an assortment of writers and creators, but very few actors. Most of those land in features. Emil Shepard is one of ours, however, and it takes a moment for me to process what she’s said. If Emil wants to move from Blake’s client list to mine, that would make him the third in the last two months alone, and my first big actor.
Understatement: Blake isn’t going to be happy about this.
“Emil was asking about me?”
“He called three times over the weekend,” she says, tugging on my arm to get me moving again.
“Does Blake know?”
Becca tears off a piece of paper covered in lines of almost indecipherable cursive and hands it to me. “I haven’t heard any tables being flipped, so I’m assuming the answer is no. You need to call Emil this morning if you’re interested, before anyone else catches wind of it. You know what a nightmare that kind of thing can be, and if Emil’s moving, he’s moving. You’re not poaching.”
Her reassurance is nice, but it’s still a messy situation. I want to eventually move into features, but taking talent from colleagues isn’t the ideal way to get there. I can’t even think about what this could mean.
Becca rattles off my schedule: meetings at nine and nine thirty, another at ten over Skype, a staff meeting immediately after, and a possible new author over lunch. I’d always thought that if I had a type, Becca would be it. She’s smart and sarcastic, with red hair and blue eyes and a body that’s on the curvy side. We met by chance in a coffee shop one day right after I moved here, and I’d liked her immediately. In fact, I’d liked her so much I was about to ask her out when she exclaimed she was about to be late for a job interview. That interview, it turned out, was with me. I’m thankful every day that she glanced down at her watch before I asked her to dinner.
But despite our less-than-conventional beginning, things have never been weird between the two of us, or anything other than professional. Becca is amazing at her job, and in reality knows more about what goes on here than any of the partners do. Which also means she’d make a fantastic agent in her own right; she swears she doesn’t have the particular muscle for it, though.
We’ve reached my office by the time she gets to the bottom of her very long list. “Carter?” she asks, noting that my attention has strayed to a spot in the distance. “Did you get all that?”
I glance back down and scan the paper in my hand, pointedly not looking at the piles of mail and various Call me when you’re in! Post-its stuck to my computer monitor. “Most of it, I think,” I tell her. “But it’s possible I haven’t had enough caffeine and I’m not functioning on all four cylinders yet. Give me an hour and check in again.”