Oh! You Pretty Things (32 page)

I
have four messages from Megan when I get off the plane in L.A.

Boof, call me.

Where are you? I have a bottle of Chateau Petrus. Don't make me beg.

Where ARE you? I'm having a moment. JJ said he was going to do press, but I just heard a voice mail—okay, I hacked his inbox, sue me—and some PA left a message about his “days off.” WTF?

JESS, IT'S MEGAN. NEED YOU.

I call her back while I'm in the taxi line on the arrivals level, sweating in the humid L.A. evening.

She answers as soon as I hit Send. “I've been calling you all day,” she says indignantly.

“I'm standing in the cab line at LAX. I just got off a long-ass flight.”

“Where were you?” she says, and her voice flattens like a dog's ears sensing an intruder.

“Work. Long story. I'll tell you when I see you.”

“Which needs to be immediately.”

I hear her pull the cork from a wine bottle and ask, “Are you starting without me?”

“I'm pre-gaming. That's not the Petrus.”

A guy in blue Dickies work pants and a reflective vest taps me on the shoulder. “You wanna move up?” he says, gesturing to the hole I've left in the stream of people jostling their bags as they wait for the taxis to swing into place.

“Are you even listening to me?” Megan says.

“Shit, I'm sorry,” I say. “I'm getting in a cab. Can I call you back?”

“Seriously? I've been waiting to talk to you for
three days
.”

“Boof, it's been
six hours.
”

“I need you,” she says, her voice small and contained.

“I'll be there in an hour,” I tell her, hating the hurt in her voice. “I'm sorry I wasn't here.”

“JJ is sleeping with someone else,” she blurts.

“I'm on my way, Boof,” I say. “Fast as I can.”

Ninety minutes later, the meter rounds seventy dollars and we're still inching our way past Third Street and the Beverly Center. The driver finally stopped laying on the horn and yelling unintelligible epithets out the window, and settled into cycling through the radio dial, pausing for a few seconds on each blaring station. That kind of chaotic, cacophonous noise usually makes me crazy, but it's perfectly mirroring what's going on in my own head right now and I'm kind of grateful for it.

I can't believe I've been so stupid about the clues. My stomach is looping in lazy, greasy circles; I'm nauseated to the point that I think I may have to roll down the window and puke. Megan has been my rock since I set foot back in L.A. She's always had my back; never—not once—has she not been there for me when something big went down. And I've done the same. Until now. This.

I'm such an asshole.

J
J's house is a sprawling two-story faux-adobe structure with a terra-cotta-tiled roof, perched at the top of a steep hillside driveway lined by a row of backlit hedges.

Megan buzzes me into the compound and is waiting in the open doorway as I trudge up the stairs leading to the wide, rough-beamed porch. Her eyes are swollen and she looks like she hasn't slept for a week, which, for the record, still leaves her 82 percent hotter than anyone you'd run into on a regular day in any other town.

“Oh, Boof,” I say, wrapping my arms around her.

“You have no idea,” she says. “I'm just— I'm gutted.”

JJ's been working as an actor and supporting his family since he was nine, and his entryway confirms that he hasn't made a lot of strides in the grown-up decorating department. The two-story wall flanking the staircase looks like a prop castle from a
Game of Thrones
set. There's an old-timey soda fountain in what should be the living room, complete with red leather barstools. Instead of a normal seating arrangement, a row of high-end Barcaloungers faces a wall-size HDTV screen.

“Let's smoke,” Megan says, leading me through a set of French doors onto a patio where a two-story waterfall splashes into a pond filled with fat koi and lily pads.

“This is better,” I say, sinking into a teak chair with a burgundy-and-cream-striped cushion.

“His sister did this part,” Megan says. “She brings people through on a tour at noon on Mondays and Thursdays.”

“Sounds like fun for you.”

“Doesn't make a difference at this point.”

“Oh, Boof.”

“He asked me to marry him.” She extends her left hand into the circle of light from the rustic chandelier above us. A yellow diamond the size of a Lemonhead glitters in a wide platinum band. “Last week, at the Griffith Observatory.”

I don't say anything; I just watch her and listen to the blood rushing in my ears.

“I wanted to tell you in person,” she says.

“What happened?”

She tells me she hacked his voice mail, and realized he was sneaking around. She said she knew before the PA left that message. She just knew. “But maybe I'm wrong,” she says tentatively. “Maybe . . . I don't know. Maybe it's something else.”

“It's not,” I say.

“It could be,” she says, and the hope in her voice breaks my heart.

I don't know how to tell her, so I just tell her. “It's Eva.”

“What is?”

“The girl. It's Eva. I walked in on them last month.”

“You
what
?” she says, in that small, controlled voice that brought me here in the first place. “You knew about this and you didn't tell me?”

“No! No, no— I didn't even know what I was seeing, I didn't know it was him until—”

“Until
what
?” Megan stands. “Boof, how could you not tell me this? You're my best fucking friend.”

“I know that! I know—it didn't click until I was on the plane today.”

She narrows her eyes at me, a suspicious look she's never leveled in my direction until this moment.

“I didn't know when it was happening, I swear.”

“How do you not know?” She wipes her eyes on the back of her sleeve. “How do
you
not know?”

I don't have a good answer. Because I didn't want to know? Because they're Eva Carlton and JJ Kelly, and I didn't want to know?

“I just—” My voice gets even smaller than hers. “I didn't.”

“When you've got to make a call between what you know and what you suspect, you cover the home team, Jess. You cover the fucking home team.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I'm so sorry.”

She runs upstairs and shuts the door to the master bedroom with a sharp snick. I wait and wait for her to come back down, but she doesn't. I text her:
I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Please come out.
But my phone is mockingly silent no matter how many times I repeat it, so finally I call a cab and go home.

S
ince I moved to Hollywood, I've gotten in the habit of hiking Runyon Canyon first thing in the morning. At first I did it because it was the only time of day I could turn my cell phone off without worrying about Eva's imminent need for wheatgrass or another copy of Eckhart Tolle's
The Power of Now
.

But today I can't sleep. Everything's gone so completely off the rails. So I trudge up the hill and sit on the first bench and watch the early sun brush the buildings downtown, so far away. I feel like I'm trapped in someone else's life, yet I know this is all mine.

My myopic self-centeredness hurt my best friend, and a coil of red shame writhes in my torso. And the only way out of it is through the middle.

I call Megan again when I get back in the car, but it goes straight to voice mail after one ring, like she sees it's me calling and hits Ignore.

W
hen Eva gets back from New York, she leaves a chirpy message on my voice mail. “Are you ready to work tomorrow? I'm not in this week's episode, but I have a lot of bullshit I need done. We missed you. Well, Scout didn't, but I did.”

I hear Scout in the background, laughing and calling Eva a bitch.

Now we're all acting like she was just fucking with me when she sent me home early? We're glossing over the fact that she pretended she'd forgotten about Trent—or, worse, that she actually
did
? This is the worst thing you can do to a neurotic-brained girl like me, pretending that everything's fine. I'd rather have a fistfight in the street than Megan's freeze-out or Eva and Scout's fakey
Pleasantville
situation. Also, when there's no one for me to brawl with, I beat myself up worse than anyone else could. I'm such a dirty fighter when my only opponent is me.

Since I've been back I've been holed up in my apartment, eating potato chips and watching
The Real Housewives of Everywhere
until I feel greasy and nauseated. I call Megan twice a day. She never answers. If I were a cutter, I'd have crop circles on my thighs, but instead I'm just bloated and fuzzy.

I wake up every morning feeling like I'm swimming through smog-colored Jell-O. In my gray desperation, I even call my mother, but her phone just rings and goes to voice mail.

You there?
I text.

Nothing.