Party Girl (25 page)

“Then tell me what’s going on!” she yells.

And because I am angry now, I yell louder.

“Oh yeah, because you’re so forthcoming about all your stuff!” I glare at her.

“It’s not the same thing—”

“No, you’re right. Your secret was much worse because it was dangerous! You never tell me
anything
, and the only reason I did find out was because I found you in a fucking coma on the kitchen floor!”

I never curse,
never
, and I can’t believe I just screamed that at her. My hands are shaking, and I look down at them, afraid to see hurt in her eyes. I just want her to leave me alone.

Neither of us speaks for a minute, and when she finally does her voice is soft in a way I’d never heard.

“And look what happened to me . . . when I didn’t let anyone help. You’re my friend, and I should have trusted you with what was going on, just like you should trust me now. Brody says he thinks he got you in trouble at work again. You’ve spent the last week avoiding everyone, you barely sleep, and you don’t look like you’ve had a meal in days. If she said something—or did something—you don’t have to work there, you can find another—”

With each word my composure slips a little more until I feel like I might drop to the floor in a blubbering heap. I interrupt her with the line I’ve been telling myself over and over for the last couple of days.

“I’ve been busy this week. Just need to get through Sundance and everything will be fine. Maybe when I get back, we can have drinks or—”

“Landon.” Concern fills the single word all the way to the brim. “I’m worried about you. We all are.”

I can handle her scowls, her bad moods, even her anger. But Max being so sweet, talking to me softly like I am a skittish animal—it’s going to make me start bawling for sure and I’d just finished my eye makeup. I give her my best beauty pageant smile and hope she can’t tell how fake it is.

“Don’t be silly, I’m doin’ great.” I throw the blush brush into my makeup bag and then gather the whole thing up along with my toiletry case and scoot past her to my room. Both bags go into my suitcase, and I zip up in my big winter coat and head to the front door in under two minutes. It is the first time in my life I am traveling with my makeup only half-finished and my hair in a bun. But I get out the door before Max can ask any more questions.

When I wheel my carry-on up to the gate at the airport, Miko is waiting there. She’s wearing a black parka bigger than she is, her gold headphones, and dark sunglasses even though she’s inside a building.

As I walk over she pulls off her headphones and hands me one of the two coffees in her hands.

“What kind of coffee is this?” I let my shoulder bag sink to the floor next to my suitcase.

“It’s the cheer-up-because-you’re-starting-to-freak-me-out kind,” she teases.

My smile crumbles. I can’t handle another altercation this morning.

“Don’t get upset.” She touches my sleeve lightly. “Max said you wouldn’t talk to her—”

“So you’re going to start in on me?”

So now I’m back to being mean to my friends, who are really only trying to be nice to me.

“Hey, just talk to me. What’s going on?” she asks quietly.

I look around the gate that is slowly filling up with passengers and more than a few members of the SSE team. I don’t want to have this conversation ever, but especially not in the Jet Blue terminal with my coworkers around.

“Please,” I squeak, “please, I just want to get through this week. I promise it’ll get better after. I promise I’m going to cheer up and get sleep and stop living off coffee. I promise we’ll have fun and I’ll be the absolute life of the party.” I smile weakly. “Just please don’t make me talk about it now, OK?”

Miko looks me over pensively. Maybe she can see how close I am to the edge of tears, because she finally nods.

“OK, I won’t ask anymore. But you better find that sunny disposition I know and love because this week is going to suck enough already. If we don’t have your eternal optimism to keep us warm, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

She smiles at me, and this time I am able to return it without much effort. I’d never get through the next ten days like I’d gotten through the last several. If I am going to keep it together, I have to find the positive in this situation. Producing an exclusive lounge at Sundance is a dream come true, and I am going to find a way to enjoy the opportunity I’ve been given.

Landing in Utah the first time you go to Sundance is sort of anticlimactic. In the weeks leading up to the festival you spend so much time stressing and worrying and planning for every possible event-disaster scenario that you expect to walk into utter chaos. So when you arrive in Salt Lake City, and it’s just a moderately sized city in the middle of snowy mountains, you get lulled into a false sense of security. By the time you leave the very same airport on the way back out of town, you fully understand just how badly you’ve been duped.

Walking through the airport that first day, you believe the whole trip will be as easy and wholesome as the southwestern-themed souvenirs in the gift shop. Departing through that same terminal, you know the truth about the soul-sucking nightmare it is to produce film festival parties, but by that point, it’s too late.

We drive from Salt Lake City up to Park City in a rented minivan that calls for more than one joke about soccer moms and the sweet sorts of perks of being SSE lackeys. Chadwick drives us through the canyon since he’d grown up in Colorado and says we are all babies for being afraid of a little snow. The “little snow” covers every bit of ground and falls in a steady flurry all through the hour-long drive, and when we finally arrive in town I am shocked by how tiny it is. The festival doesn’t officially start until Saturday, and we’ve arrived a couple days early to finish setup, but it is already a crush of delivery trucks and people hustling in and out of the little storefronts that line the main street.

“It’s so packed,” I say, looking at the activity.

“Wait ‘til Saturday,” Miko tells me. “This is nothing.”

We drive through the quaint little streets and finally pull up in front of the rented house the staff is sharing on a hill above town. The SSE staff, consisting of eight people—with the exception of Selah, who is staying at the Waldorf along with the clients—is sharing this modern-looking log cabin for the next ten days. Our house is a quick walk into town and boasts a hot tub and a game room . . . all a huge upgrade from last year’s property, according to the rest of the team. They’d also told me it had been an act of God and an incredibly big budget to find any place to rent with so little lead time. Evidently most places book out six months in advance, and whatever hotel rooms are left cost four times what they would during any other time of year.

As soon as I step out of the van into the driveway I am grateful for my new snow boots; the snow comes up above my ankle. Holt had worked out more than one deal so that we all got a new pair of Sorel boots. All she had to do was mention which space we were producing and she’d been able to snag cold-weather gear for everyone on the team. I chose a pair that is cherry red with a white toe and tan furry trim across the top because I still want a little color to balance out our eternally dreary wardrobe requirements.

In the house little signs of habitation are everywhere. Taylor and two other production guys had arrived a couple of days ago to oversee the unloading of the trucks from LA. The big kitchen is clean, and someone has already made a grocery run because one part of the center island is a tidy little collection of various snack foods. On the other counter next to a coffee pot are enough kinds of beer, wine, and liquor to throw a block party. I point it out to Miko. “Looks like someone is planning for a good time.”

She laughs at me. “Believe me, you will never need a happy hour as badly as you do here. Plus Utah is really weird about liquor. You have to go to this special store to buy it, and they look at you all judgey and weird and make everyone show their IDs even if they’re not the ones buying. It’s a total pain. We usually stock up at the beginning of the week so we don’t have to deal again.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

We wander around checking out everything from the beautiful view out the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room to the coveted game room. Finally we search upstairs until we find an unoccupied room with two double beds. The house has five bedrooms, which means that most of us are going to share, but I don’t mind bunking with Miko; it just makes it feel even more like summer camp.

I’ve just thrown my bag down on the bed closest to the window when Revere pokes his head in.

“First crisis,” he sings to us.

“What happened?” I grab my shoulder bag with all my perfectly organized binders and permits in triplicate.

“Oh, let’s see . . .” He leans against the doorjamb. “Davies’s floral delivery showed up, and it’s all wrong. Tay says he’s already gotten a parking ticket because one of the drivers forgot to keep his load-in permit on hand, and while they have the down inserts, they can’t find the custom pillow covers for the lounge setups.”

“Which pillow covers?” I’d had to rush-order seven custom pillow-cover orders for multiple parties; it had been a nightmare.

“All of them.” Revere winks at me.

“Oh man.” I sigh.

“May as well head over there.” Miko grabs her own bag and walks to the door; I follow her and Revere out. We tramp out into the snow one after another, and I walk towards the van.

“Brinkley, parking is a total pain. It’ll be a million times easier to just walk,” Chadwick explains.

“Oh, right.”

I pull the hood of my parka over my head and move towards the road. One by one we trudge through the snow and the slippery sidewalks into the chaos of our event space. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Our venue is a two-story real-estate building owned by Realtors
who have packed up and left town for the three weeks around the festival. Most of the spaces on Main Street do the same thing; the rent they earn for their little storefronts during Sundance is the best profit they’ll make all year long.

The production team, along with a crew of hired local guys, have cleared the space and rebuilt it to Miko’s specifications. Now it doesn’t resemble an office at all. Instead, it looks like a sleek, comfortable daytime lounge that can change into a sleek, comfortable nighttime lounge with the proper lighting and some well-placed pop-up bars.

Unfortunately, the mysteriously missing pillow covers never surface, which is why I find myself on Friday afternoon in the small upstairs conference room of our space, creating an alternative with Wal-Mart shams and some iron-on printer paper. It is tedious work, but Selah is bringing the clients in for a walk-through in the evening before we open tomorrow, so I have no choice but to finish. Fueled by a lunch of Skittles and Diet Coke, and pop music pumping from my phone into the room, I have a false sense of energy. The door behind me opens and closes, but I don’t look up. This little room is our staff’s satellite office, and people have been in and out all day.

“You didn’t text me back.”

I nearly drop the iron but manage to set it down gently before turning around. Brody is wearing jeans and snow boots with a cream-colored fisherman’s sweater. His style is perfect and effortless, but his smile is unsure.

I’d known I’d have to see him at some point on this trip, but I’d just refused to let myself think about it. Well, he’s here now. I need to be
adult
and
professional
and deal with him. I take a deep breath.

“Mr. Ashton—”

“Brody.” His smile is gone, replaced by the frustration in his voice. “You know my name. Why are you calling me that?”

“I think it’s better if you go, and you shouldn’t contact me anymore. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I—” My voice cracks, and I look up at the ceiling.

“Landon, what the hell are you talking about?”

He takes three steps eating up the space between us, and then he is right in front of me. He smells so good . . . earthy and fresh.
Just like the snowy mountains outside
. I know that doesn’t really make sense, but it’s all I can focus on, and my head is foggy with it. I need to get him out of the room with as little emotion as possible. I need to explain to him the professional ramifications of us being friends because that is the only part I
can
talk about. The other part, the one in which I am either a slut sleeping her way to the top or a new conquest for a player, is the thing that’s had me crying myself to sleep through most of the past week. I definitely can’t talk about that with him.