HDU #2: Dirt (33 page)

Amanda couldn’t
help her pout as she cooed.
 
“That’s so sweet.
 
Do you
have pictures of her?”

Jake smiled as
he retrieved his phone.
 
“These are
really old,” he said as he scrolled through an album of pictures until he could
show Amanda a few shots of a striking girl with honey brown hair and ears about
a half-size too big that somehow worked on her oval shaped face.
 
When they reached a video, Jake’s
swiping finger accidentally played a second of it before he bobbled the phone,
clicking it off and hastily putting it back into his pocket.

“What?” Amanda
laughed.
 
“That looked good.
 
Did she want to be an actress?” She’d
seen about two seconds of the video but it had been obvious that the girl was
slating for a camera and practicing some sort of monologue.

“Yeah.
 
I used to always help her
practice.
 
She was crazy
talented.
 
I mean she had more
empathy than everyone I know combined, which is probably how she was such a
good friend, too.”
 
He paused.
 
“But, yeah… she didn’t know that I took
that video.
 
It’s just…” He trailed
off.
 
“Another example of me being
weird and too eager.”

“Is that why you
two broke up?”

“I don’t
know.
 
It’s kind of connected to
why Casey stopped talking to me.”
 
Jake stuck his tongue out at himself.
 
“I was a dumbass.
 
She was the only friend I ever had and the most important person in my
life.
 
And she wanted to be an
actress and never asked me for anything even though she knew who my family
was.
 
So when we were about to
finish high school, I thought I’d finally do her a favor and introduce her to
Casey.”

“Oh
right
.”
 
Amanda squinted, remembering his story from the night in
Chinatown.
 
“So you messaged Casey
on Facebook to see if she could help this girl become an actress and Casey…
stopped talking to you.”
 
She
frowned.
 
“And your girlfriend dumped
you because of that?”

Jake shook his
head.
 
“She went to college on the
East Coast and I stayed in the Midwest.
 
But before that, she was already starting to act distant with me.
 
It was around the time Casey stopped
responding to her emails.
 
And then
when she left for college, she didn’t say goodbye.
 
And then both she and Casey stopped talking to me, pretty
much.
 
Casey because I bothered her
so much about helping with the acting thing and Angel because… I don’t know
exactly.”

Geez
.
 
Amanda’s face contorted.
 
Not so angelic anymore
.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
That’s… I don’t even know what happened there.
 
But that wasn’t your fault.
 
Some people just don’t know where to
place their blame.”

Jake lowered his
eyes, his lip twitching.
 
He opened
his mouth to say something but quickly shut it.

“Yes?” Amanda
teased, cocking her head so he’d look at her.
 
“Don’t make me chuck more candy at you.
 
What were you going to say? I’m sure it
wasn’t ‘weird.’”

Jake
grimaced.
 
“I was gonna say, ‘like
your friend, Ian.’
 
He doesn’t know
where to place his blame.”

Amanda cocked an
eyebrow.
 
“What do you mean?”

“He called Casey
all those horrible things that one night but it was
his
fault.
 
All those
things he did.
 
I know he did it
because he was under the influence of stuff but he blames
her
and that’s not right.”
 
Jake shook his head.
 
“Like,
what was he on the other night? He seemed
really
messed up.”

Amanda stared
with a deep frown.
 
“Ian’s been a
hundred percent sober since leaving rehab,” she said, sounding probably more
curt than she meant to.
 
Jake’s
eyes fluttered upon detecting the tone in her voice.

“I’m sorry.
 
Sorry.
 
I didn’t mean for that to sound rude, I just…” He shook his
head hard.
 
“No one in their right
mind would say those things about Casey.
 
Anyone can tell she’s just a good person in a bad place.”

“Um.
 
Yeah.”
 
Feeling the conversation veering somewhere dangerous, Amanda
became suddenly very aware of the time.
 
“Shit, I’m late, I have to go.”

Jake sprung to
his feet with her, his big eyes apologetic.
 
“I’m sorry I upset you.”

“It’s okay,
Jake, you didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Are you
positive?”

“
Jake
.”

“Okay, I just…
sorry.
 
I just really didn’t
appreciate the things Ian called my sister that night.”

Amanda eyed him
as she pressed the button to the elevator.
 
“Let’s not forget that you hit him so technically, you did
start it,” she said, feeling as if she were talking to an five-year-old.

“But that
doesn’t count.”

Amanda laughed
as she stepped into the elevator, Jake trailing.
 
“Why not?”

He shrugged, his
brows knitting with frustration.
 
“It just doesn’t.”

“That’s not a
sufficient reason.”

His posture
slumped as he took in a deep breath, heaving it with puffed cheeks.
 
“It still counts as Ian starting it
because he started it with Casey first,” he said all in one exhale.

Amanda paused,
her eyes shifting.
 
“No,” was all
she was willing to say.

“Well, that’s
not a sufficient reason,” Jake said, parroting her.

Closing her eyes
for a tired second, Amanda felt her jaw tighten.
 
“It’s going to have to do, Jake.”

“Why?”

“Because this
conversation has to end now, I need to get back to work.”

“Why?”

Oh my God, we are not playing the ‘why’ game
.
 
“Jake.”
 
Amanda looked at him.
 
“Listen, I’m sorry but I have no more good answers for you so please
don’t ask me any more questions.”
 
He shook his head, seeming lost.
 
Please don’t ask ‘why,’
Amanda
prayed.

“Why?”

Amanda felt her
eyes roll behind her closed eyelids.
 
“Because your sister was the one who started it, Jake.”

And… shit.

Jake paused,
standing still in the elevator as the doors finally closed.
 
He frowned, staring at the floor for a
moment.
 
“What do you mean?”

Semi-frozen,
Amanda blinked.
 
“I… nothing.
 
I don’t remember what I said.”
 
Fantastic
save,
she told herself wryly.
 
Even Jake shot her a bit of an incredulous look.

“What did my
sister do to start it?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”
 
Jake nodded, easily accepting her answer.
 
“Okay, ‘cause I was gonna say.
 
She’s a good person.
 
She asked me to call her when I got
back to Missouri.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah.
 
So it was definitely your friend who
started it.”

Amanda kept
quiet.
 
When the silent went for
longer than he liked, Jake peered at her.

“He probably is
still using coke and stuff and you just can’t tell.”

Amanda ground
her teeth.
 
Suddenly, his
childishness was much less endearing than it was irritating.
 
Breathing through her nose, Amanda
willed herself not to bother with a retort.
 
Don’t be a
five-year-old too, don’t be a five-year-old too…

“Oh shoot.
 
He’s probably trying to do Harper Gunn
what he did to Casey.”
 
Jake’s eyes
went bigger than usual as he considered his own theory.
 
“Holy cow, some people really are meant
to be bad people.”

“I lied,” Amanda
felt herself blurt.
 
“It wasn’t
Ian, it was Casey and I didn’t tell her that you were here — she found
out herself because she’s been having someone stalk me and spy on me for the
past month or more to keep tabs on my life.
 
So as far as bad people go, I would actually say your sister
is somewhere closest to the top on that list.”

Chapter 21

I’m at Connor’s.
 
Come here.
 
Please.

Amanda stared
down at Liam’s text, reading it and then the time.
 
A quarter to eight.
 
He was due at
A Soldier’
s red
carpet in fifteen minutes.
 
The
premiere was being held somewhere close to Columbus Circle and yet he was at
Connor’s loft in Chinatown.
 
She
probably shouldn’t have ignored his last text.
 
He
had
warned that
he would go there to meet if she didn’t respond.
 
She had just hoped that he’d been bluffing considering his
time constraints.
 
Guess not
.
 
Standing before the door, Amanda stared at it, gripping her
coat in her hand and fighting the urge to go.

After her big
reveal to Jake on Tuesday night, it had finally sunk in for her.

Connor had been
right about most things.
 
Most
things regarding her, anyway.
 
She
hadn’t in fact been done causing trouble — specifically the kind that
would find its way into Liam’s life.
 
Liam truly
was
a thousand
times better off without her.
 
And
not only that, Casey’s brand of artful, cunning malice was apparently something
she possessed at least a little of herself.
 
After all, she’d let Jake believe in her friendship with his
sister, played to his weaknesses to draw information from him and then
shattered the image of Casey that his fragile heart had set thirteen years of
hope on.
 
She hadn’t had to.

He’s mentally a child.
 
I could have just let it go
, she couldn’t
stop telling herself every time the image of Jake’s reaction popped up in her
head, which was essentially every fifteen to thirty minutes.
 
His initially confusion had been fine
but it was the wide-eyed, slowly crumpling face afterward that made her feel
awful.
 
She wasn’t sure what he was
realizing — that his sister was in fact an evil person or if he’d just
spilled all her secrets to an evil person who clearly wasn’t actually her
friend.

Blinking from
her thoughts, Amanda looked down at her vibrating phone.
 
She didn’t recognize the number but
once the call went to voicemail, the strange number sent her a text.

Just get the hell over here and talk to Liam
in person so we can leave for the premiere.
 
I didn’t mean for you to be vague as shit and keep him
guessing as usual.

Connor.
 
Amanda scowled at the screen of her
phone.
 
She was finally doing
exactly what he wanted and yet he still had to be a dick about it.
 
But before she knew it, she had her
coat on and her feet bringing her out the door.

Putting on the
stoic face she’d come to greet paparazzi with, Amanda breezed past the small
crowd of camera lenses outside her building, managing to hail a cab on Avenue C
and eventually lose their tail somewhere down The Bowery.
 
But by the time the car pulled into
Connor’s street — a cramped, narrow bend of barber shops and tea parlors
— Amanda could feel the calm on her wooden face melting with a variety of
emotions that made little sense together.
 
Her heart couldn’t help an instinctive skip of excitement at the
prospect of being close to Liam, of feeling his body near hers.
 
But her stomach also lurched with dread
over seeing him.
 
And then, of
course, there was that prickly irritation creeping the surface of her skin
— the sensation that always reserved itself for Connor.

This won’t end well
, Amanda predicted
dryly as she buzzed into the old apartment building that belonged entirely to
Connor.
 
Grinding her teeth, she
pushed through the stained metal door.

As she climbed
up the steps of the walk-up, she felt her heart pound in anticipation of a thousand
different things.
 
Trying to calm
herself, she kept her eyes down, fixed on her beat up Converses as they touched
each white-green, fluorescent-lit stair.

Upon reaching
the fifth floor, Amanda’s heart fluttered, her eyes meeting the handsome, shiny
black shoes that stood at the top step.
 
Her eyes lifted to the hand that held itself out to hers, helping her up
the last stair.

“Hey.”

Amanda blinked
up at Liam and his casual greeting.
 
It didn’t match the urgency of his texts and voicemails in the past week.
 
Neither did his face.
 
Holding his hand at the top of the
steps, Amanda let her eyes peer up at Liam and the warm gaze she was sure she
didn’t deserve.
 
She tried to say
something or at the very least return his greeting but her lips couldn’t quite
manage.
 
Liam wrapped his fingers
tighter around hers as if to brush off the need.

“Amanda.”
 
His voice was gentle but tinged with a
tiredness that she had never heard before.
 
“I can’t do this anymore.
 
I know you can take care of yourself but I can’t leave you
alone with your thoughts and burdens if it’s going to mean you disappearing on
me.
 
I need to know what’s going
on.”

“Connor didn’t
tell you?” she asked quietly.

“You’ve both
been acting completely strange around me lately, not telling me things,” Liam
gave a short laugh.
 
“He said he
wanted me to hear it all from you.”

Of course he did
.
 
Clenching her jaw, Amanda peered
briefly past Liam into Connor’s open doorframe.
 
She caught his satisfied eye as he passed, swallowing hard
when she returned her gaze to Liam.

“I don’t know
what happened,” Amanda finally started, her voice cracking.
 
“And I don’t know when it happened
either but I turned into somebody else.
 
Someone I’m pretty sure you’d want nothing to do with if I hadn’t hidden
her so well from you.”
 
She shook
her head, sliding her hand out of his grip.
 
“I don’t recognize the things I’ve been doing lately.
 
They’re not me and they’re no right.”

“I have a
feeling they’re not as bad as you’re making them seem.”

“I lied to you
and not just once,” Amanda said flatly.
 
She studied Liam, waiting for his reaction.
 
The fact that he didn’t give one only compelled her to
continue.
 
“There’s a difference
between keeping things to myself and lying to you and I lied.
 
I lied to you about leaving Casey alone
— I didn’t.
 
I specifically
went digging for dirt on her so I could find some way to get her back.
 
I didn’t tell you about how I’ve been
spending time with her younger brother just to get close to him, to see if I
could get any good information from him.
 
And I didn’t tell you that Casey broke into my building and threatened
to go after you if I didn’t stop talking to Jake.
 
She knows we’ve been seeing each other.
 
The guy who’s been following me —
I know she’s the one who hired him.”

Chest heaving,
Amanda sucked in a deep breath, taking a break to life her gaze.
 
It had dropped to her hand as her
fingers counted all her lies.
 
Letting her open palm fall to her side, her eyes darted about Liam’s
frustratingly unreadable face.

“And I didn’t
tell you about how exactly I saved my job.
 
That I got Jake to trust me enough to tell me the worst
memory of his and Casey’s lives.
 
And that a week later, I pitched it as the story for
Leadoff’s
season finale.”

Finally, Amanda
detected a flicker of shock in Liam’s eye.
 
Shame instantly flooded her but she forced herself to
continue.

“I made the
worst thing that ever happened to either of them a fun story for TV.
 
The one thing that completely screwed
with them for the past thirteen years and made Casey into this pathological
schemer when she was actually once a good girl who loved her brother and dreamt
of opening up a dress shop.
 
And
her brother…” Amanda shook her head with disgust for herself.
 
“Jake.
 
He’s the definition of fragile — he’s got this limp
and these complexes and zero confidence or friends.
 
He’s survived all these years away from Casey by completely
idealizing her as this perfect older sister and I couldn’t even let him have
that fantasy.
 
He was on his way
home and I still had to tell him all about what she did to Ian, to me.
 
So not only did I talk to him and see
him when Casey warned me not to, I told him all about the absolute maniac she
actually is.”
 
Amanda drew a deep
breath.
 
“And now I’m just
waiting.
 
Because if Jake doesn’t
end up finding the guts to ask Casey about what I said, she’ll still end up
seeing the season finale of
Leadoff
in a couple of weeks and I don’t know what the hell she’ll have planned for me
after that but I was hoping that if I stayed away from you, she’d leave you out
of it.”

Breathless and
finally finished with her confession, Amanda stared at Liam, whose cheek flexed
as he clenched his jaw.
 
His
disappointment was visible now and so great that Amanda’s eyes felt the need to
drop to the ground.
 
In the corner
of her vision, she could see Connor at his door, in a tux now himself, his
satisfaction palpable and radiating from where he stood.

“Cut her
loose.
 
She was never who she
claimed to be, Liam,” he said.
 
“Just fuck it, man, she’s done enough to — ”

“Stop talking.”

Liam’s low
command was sudden and firm enough that Connor’s mouth snapped instinctively
shut.
 
But all it took were a
couple seconds for him to gather himself and try again.

“Liam, she’s as
much as a schemer as Casey is.
 
She
just told you herself,” Connor protested.
 
“Now let’s get the fuck going before she screws up one more thing for
you.
 
This is the biggest premiere
of your life and you’re already late.”

“Just listen to
him and go.”
 
Amanda forced the
words out from between her teeth.
 
“I want to do you a favor here, Liam.
 
Just admit to yourself that you’re
angry
, that you don’t want to deal with me, with this
bullshit
anymore.
 
I know you see all the ways your life
has complicated since you met me so just tell me I’m right and go!”

Casting a shadow
over her, Liam stepped forward, closing the small gap between their
bodies.
 
“You’re right.”
 
His voice was lower than she’d ever
heard it.
 
“I’m angry.
 
I told you not to screw with
Casey.
 
Twice.
 
I told you that she has the resources
to bury anyone and you’re right, I wish I didn’t have to deal with this
bullshit anymore.
 
Terrence, Casey,
the tabloids, the sneaking around — if I could choose for it to be all
gone, I would but it’s here and it’s happening so I just have to handle it,
Amanda, because I love you and I don’t care what bullshit I have to fight
through so we can be peaceful and happy together at some point.”
 
Amanda opened her mouth to protest but
he interrupted.
 
“That’s
enough.
 
I’m not going
anywhere.
 
Either you choose an
easy life or you choose to care about somebody.
 
I did the latter and I don’t regret it.
 
I wish I didn’t have to worry about you
and that I knew you’d always be fine and out of harm but that’s not real
life.
 
There’s work involved in
life, especially the things you want most.
 
So stop trying to tell me what’s good for me — I know
better than anyone what’s good for me and what’s good for me is you.”

Her breath
caught in her throat, Amanda stood before Liam, frozen by his words and stunned
silent as she tried to go back on the decision she’d made before arriving at
Connor’s.
 
She was supposed to end
it, to let Liam go.
 
She had
unconsciously readied herself for the moment for weeks and now here she was,
ready to accept defeat and melt into his arms.

But just as she
prepared to, Connor’s exasperation finally brought him to the hallway, his long
legs marching him over to Liam with just a couple of large, angry strides.
 
He grabbed Liam by the arm.
 
“We’re late.
 
Just
leave
her,
Liam, for Christ’s sake.”

Jerking his arm
back, Liam ignored Connor, keeping his eyes on Amanda and his hand wrapped
tight around hers.
 
“Tell me you’re
off of this.
 
I need to know that
you’re not going to disappear on me anymore.
 
The world can go ahead and believe that we’re separated but
I need to know that we’re not.
 
I’m
about to go to the most important premiere of my life and if I don’t get to
have you by my side at least let me know I have you at all.”