Skinny Bitch in Love (19 page)

I felt a tap on my shoulder and opened my eyes.

It was the staring woman. I yanked out my earphones.

“If you fall asleep,” she said, “you’ll miss your number being called.”

“I’m just the moral support.”

“That’s nice of you,” she said. “This is my tenth audition this week. No one ever comes with me. And I never get picked, so I don’t even know why I keep trying.”

I should stick Jolie next to this woman for five minutes. Maybe she’d depress Jolie right out of the business.

Sara and Jolie’s group had been gone about ten minutes when the door opened and they started filing back into the room, most sulking.

Like Sara.

But not Jolie.

“She gets chosen to audition and I don’t,” Sara said, mock glaring at Jolie as we left the building. “It’s because you’re eighteen and blond.”

“You’re what, twenty-five? And you have amazing hair,” Jolie said.

“True, but you still stole my audition.”

“I read this really interesting book about the acting profession and how you have to have a really thick skin,” Jolie said. “But it must always suck not to get a callback.”

“It does,” Sara said. “It sucks like you would not believe.”

Zach would be pleased to hear her say it. Not that it had anything to do with Jolie. Her first time out and wham. A shot.

“Sometimes I think I should just give up,” Sara said. “Become a paralegal like my mom thinks I should.”

“You can’t give up,” Jolie said. “Ever. You never know when you’ll make it. And then you’ll be living your dream.”

“Well, I’m not living my dream now,” Sara said. “Though I did get a second callback for a commercial I really wanted.”

“See?” Jolie said. “Awesome.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m supposed to meet Rufus at four, but now I have two hours to kill.”

“Let’s go to the pier,” I told her. “We can get lunch from the trucks and hang out.”

“And you can tell us all about Zach,” Sara said to Jolie. “We want info.”

“No, we don’t,” I said, elbowing Sara in the ribs.

Sara gave me a shove. “Yeah, we do. And you’re giving it for stealing my audition.”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Jolie said. “And there’s a lot to tell.”

We parked our butts on a bench as far away as we could from the guy strumming his guitar and singing depressing seventies-era songs. It was one of those perfect southern California afternoons—seventy-two degrees and sunny and breezy—and the pier was mobbed. Jolie and I had had to wait fifteen minutes on line at the best Thai truck.

Sara took a huge bite of her veggie burrito. I knew she was dying to ask Jolie for the lowdown on Zach, but while she’d been pumping salsa on her burrito at the truck, I’d sidled up behind her and ordered her not to.

“So give us the lowdown on your brother,” Sara said to Jolie, ignoring the glare I shot her.

“Zach is great. He can be annoying, but not as annoying as my father.”

“Did you two grow up together?” Sara asked.

“When I was born, Zach was fourteen,” she said. “He and his brother and sister totally doted on me, even though they can’t stand my mother. I can’t either half the time, so I get it.”

“So you’re all close?” I asked. “That’s great.”

“I’m the closest to Zach and always have been. Avery’s great, too, but she’s way too serious for me. If I’d gone to her last night about my dad cutting me off she would have said he was right and told me to grow up. At least Zach tries to understand, you know? And Gareth—my other brother—is cool and all, but he’s the opposite of Avery—not a serious bone in his body. Zach is the only one I can really talk to.”

“Okay, so be totally honest,” Sara said. “Does he have a girlfriend in every major city or what?”

“Don’t answer that,” I said.

“He should be a total player, but he’s really not,” Jolie said, forkful of pad thai en route to her mouth. “Gareth isn’t, either. You watch your mother get totally betrayed and it has an effect, you know?”

“Gotcha,” Sara said. “My father cheated on my mother with
a friend of ours. My brother got married pretty young, like at twenty-two, and he’s totally devoted to his wife. I can’t imagine him ever cheating.”

“I’d think some guys might avoid commitment, though,” I said, not really meaning to say it aloud.

“Maybe” Jolie said. “But Zach’s always been kind of intense about his girlfriends. He’s had years-long relationships. Then again, he’s never been engaged, so who knows? Probably because of Vivienne, some French women’s magazine editor who managed to break his heart.”

Vivienne. I hated her gorgeous French name. “Broke his heart, huh?”

“
Devastated
him. I’d never seen Zach like that before. I think he was planning to propose, too. I don’t know what happened, though.”

Well, shit.

Jolie eyed me like she realized she’d said too much. She started to say something, but her phone rang. “Hey, Rufus. Omigod, I’m coming right now.” She jumped up. “Rufus found us an amazing legal sublet on 9th Street, not too far from Montana. I’m going to see it now.” She threw out her containers, then held out her arms. “Thank you guys so much for today. Thanks to you, I have my start in acting—and I didn’t even expect it. You guys are the best.”

Zach wasn’t going to be happy that a) we got his sister an audition and b) that she was probably going to sign a lease on an apartment today. I knew he’d been expecting her to go back home in a couple of weeks, completely battered by the real
world. Instead, in one day, she’d accomplished a hell of a lot. Including impressing me. And depressing the fuck out of me.

“I hate that I like her so much,” Sara said as we watched her race away to meet Rufus. “She’s gorgeous and stole my audition. And maybe talks too much, after all.” She peered at me. “You okay?”

“Eh. He got his heart smashed same as I did, same as everyone does.” But something told me Zach was even more guarded than I was.

Sara’s phone rang, and she dug around in her bag for it. “Please be a callback for one of four casting calls I went on this week.” She finally found it and glanced at the number on the screen. “Ooh, it’s Duncan—finally. Hi, Duncan. Yeah, that sounds great. Me, too. Okay, bye.” She was beaming. “We’re having dinner tomorrow night. At Vinettos.”

“I love that place,” I said.

“I mentioned it was my favorite restaurant the other night. Which meant he was actually listening to me and not just thinking of sex.” She pulled me up. “Let’s go shopping—I need something amazing for hitting the seventeen-pound mark.”

I still wasn’t sold on Duncan.

Ping
. Text from Zach.

My sister’s seen the light, right?

I texted back.
Not quite
.

And I know way more about you than I should, too.

Chapter 13

Once again, way too early in the morning, the drilling from The Silver Fucking Steer woke me up. What was the point in knowing the owner if you couldn’t get him to stop the jackhammering before a normal human hour?

I was slogging into the kitchen to make a strong pot of tea when the buzzer rang.

Zach.

Really? I looked like hell. And why was he coming over at eight something in the morning anyway? I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and check myself out. I didn’t look half bad, though my hair was kind of wild, and I didn’t have on a stitch of makeup.

I opened the front door and then headed into the kitchen to start the tea.

He knocked then came in. And did not look happy. “Jolie
announced this morning that she’s still planning to marry Doofus, and if our dad won’t pay for it, they’ll just get married on the beach and have the reception in the new studio apartment they found yesterday.”

“Zach, I—”

“You and Sara did a
great
job yesterday,” he interrupted, staring at me like he wanted to throttle me. “Thanks a lot, Clem. She’s definitely
not
going to college in the fall—all because she got an audition for a pathetic walk-on role. Not even the part—just an audition.”

I’d seen Zach a little pissed before, but he was seriously upset. “Zach, I did everything you asked me to do. Showed her my crummy apartment—and thanks for
that,
by the way. Had her watch me slave over a hot stove for a home business you’re sure doesn’t even cover my rent. And then we took her on the open call so she’d be turned off to the un-glam side of acting, and
she
gets the callback—not Sara.”

He dropped down in a chair. “Do you have coffee? I need coffee.”

I made him coffee. Gave him one of my tropical fruit scones to calm him down.

“God, this is good,” he said.

I smiled. “Zach, I totally expected Jolie to run back to Daddy Dearest and beg to go to UCLA. But she surprised me on a number of levels.”

“She’s eighteen. She’s impressionable. Everything is ‘amazing and cool.’ You should have told her how hard it all is, shown her that.”

“Zach, my life is fine. Sorry.”

He stared at me. “Really. You like living in this dump? You like not being able to get hired in any of the restaurants you used to love eating in? You like having to tack up signs for your ‘business’ on streetlamps? Come on. And don’t tell me you like baking cookies all night.”

Okay, whoa. He actually air-quoted the word business.

“First of all, yeah, I do like baking all night. And my Skinny Bitch business is as legitimate as yours—so don’t you ever air quote that word around me again. And this place is not a dump.” Though it kind of was.

He stalked into the living room and faced the windows, looking out on his own “business” and the made-me-want-to-vomit dead deer sign.

“You have nothing to say?” I asked. Like an apology.

He turned around. “I asked you to help me. And you did the opposite.”

“You know, Zach, I realized how messed up it was of you to ask me to show my life and my best friend’s life as a way to dissuade your sister from our pathetic existences, but I got it, okay? Being twenty-six and trying to make it in L.A. isn’t all fun and games. And she’s eighteen and wearing her own cheap rings as her engagement ring. I get it. But you’re insulting me and the way I live.”

“This isn’t about you. It’s about my sister.”

“No, it’s about me. If the way I live is so pathetic, I’m surprised you’re even interested in me.”

“Clem, I don’t have the energy for this, okay? I spent the
past hour telling my sister she’d better not marry that kid and her telling me to mind my own fucking business. And now I’ve got a code violation in the space for wanting to enlarge the kitchen. So cut me a break.”

“You know what? I won’t. I don’t cut breaks to people who claim to like who I am, to be impressed with who I am, but then show the opposite. And tell your fucking workers to stop drilling before nine a.m. or I’ll call the complaint bureau again.”

“Go ahead,” he said and slammed out.

On Friday night my tiny apartment ended up full of people stuffing their faces with my baking mistakes—oddly shaped cookies and a cake I managed to flatten half of by accident because I was upset about Zach. Like I had time to screw up a gluten-free chocolate cake with lemon vanilla glaze. I had four big orders for Saturday morning and too much on my mind. Like Zach, who, yeah, was worried about his kid half sister screwing up her life, but who’d totally insulted me—and I hadn’t heard from him since he huffed out this morning.

And like Sara, who’d texted me an hour ago from the women’s restroom at Vinettos to report that Duncan had given her the “It’s Not You, It’s Me” speech and that he liked her but wasn’t ready to commit and wanted to be up front about that, and did that mean she shouldn’t sleep with him tonight if she wanted to.

And like my dad, who my mom had said on the phone earlier
was bored out of his mind and maybe I could come up to visit this weekend and bring that fun roommate of mine who’d always made my dad laugh.

And then my sister and her fiancé had stopped by on their way to dinner on my block, and then Sara and Duncan stopped up so Sara could get a jacket because she was freezing, supposedly, and then Ty and Seamus stopped up because they were on the way to the movies and smelled something amazing coming from my windows, which couldn’t possibly be true. And that was how I ended up having something of an impromptu party.