Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (37 page)

I got lucky with parking. My Chevy is only a block away on the street. I head past the looming facades of two more hotels, digging in my clutch for my car keys.

“Sydney,” someone says.

I halt. My name came from somewhere behind me.

“Sydney,” he repeats. It’s a man, and his voice is all too familiar.

Mr. Mulroney steps in front of me, his head cocked. “I thought it was you.”

“Hi,” I slowly say. I glance over my shoulder, not caring how obvious it is. He’s alone, the blonde from earlier nowhere in sight.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Um.” My head is racing almost as fast as my heart. So close. I was
so
close to getting away and not having to interact with him. Judging by my track record, our conversation is only going to result in one thing: my having another filthy dream about him tonight.

He stares at me, a strange look on his face. His eyes briefly flick down to my bare legs. Heat washes over me. I suppose checking me out in his office wasn’t enough. Now he has to do it out on the street.

I briefly consider telling him I was on a date, just to see what he makes of it. “I was just grabbing a drink with someone,” I say, deciding to let him figure out the details himself.

“Ah.”

I shuffle my foot slightly against the concrete, waiting for him to dismiss me or just walk off, since that’s also his style.

“Would you like to get another drink?” he asks. “With me?”

I have to remember to inhale. I also have to remember the fortitude I established in the bathroom ten minutes ago. “I need to be getting home,” I say, making sure to look him straight in the eye.

I know what you are,
I want to say.

The fact that my boss
still
has the pomp to ask me for a drink after I caught him spanking a woman in his office is beyond absurd. The man truly does believe he can have anything he wants.

He stares at me, his face blank. Is he waiting for me to change my mind?

“Have a good night, Mr. Mulroney. See you on Monday.”

I pivot and head for my car, my back held straight as it can be.

Never would I have been able to guess shooting a man down could feel so amazing.

I
raise my arms up high and stretch. Morning light filters through the living room window, and all discernible noises come from across the back parking lot. Bass from a car driving by and the shouting of kids fill the air. In the apartment, all is still and quiet. I don’t even know what time Crystal and Eryk got in last night. All I know is I’ve been true to my word.

Up at seven, I’ve been writing for the last three hours.

If you can call completing one page and sporadically watching YouTube videos writing.

Yet it’s more than I’ve accomplished in days. The screenplay I’ve been crafting for the last few months is at least edging along. My heroine has just arrived at her aunt’s farm in Tennessee, fresh from her parents’ funeral in New York. She’s in the barn feeding the chickens when she has her first brush with the supernatural powers she’ll soon learn she full out possesses.

I roll my head and stare at the cold, half-empty mug of coffee on the table in front of the couch. Two and a half cups down and my toenails themselves are buzzing. I’ve gone way beyond that perfect level of caffeination that leads to a well of ideas and instead I’m now just antsy. My legs vibrate, eager to get moving, and my stomach does little flips.

Setting my laptop down on the table, I head for the shoe pile and pull on my ratty white sneakers. My “don’t fuck me” shoes, Eryk calls them.

The courtyard is just as quiet as my apartment. The streets, of course, are a different story. I make my way to Runyon Canyon, the way already familiar. After driving around a few blocks, I find parking on the street.

I leave my backpack in the car and shove my keys and phone into my shorts’ pockets. One last grab in the glove compartment for some sunglasses and I’m ready to go.

Four years in the city and I’m still not tired of the weather. I hear people complain all the time about how it gets boring when the days are always the same — specifically, sunny and warm. The comments always make me laugh. They should try having to evacuate their town yearly thanks to hurricanes. I’ll take sunny and expected any day over the North Carolina coast’s tumultuous climate.

The wide trail up the hill stretches ahead, full of joggers, dogs, and women chatting while power walking. I skirt to the side, passing a man walking four dogs.

Higher up the trail, a yoga group stretches into cobra pose on the grass. The mob of people and animals is almost too much to handle, but no one pays me any mind. I’m just another person in a mass of many — something I’m perfectly fine with.

Hiking up the steep, dusty hill that leads to a great view of the city benefits me in more than one way. Not only does it clear my head — which is great for when I need a break from writing — it also is great fodder for stories. I’ve heard all sorts of conversation snippets while on this trail. One time, I heard a woman talking about how she suspected her sister’s husband had been murdered. Honest to God. I turned around and followed her, and before she and her friend veered off to the street, was able to gather it had been an “accidental” drowning in the pool. Another time, I met a man walking a wolf. We stopped to talk and he told me he trains the animals for films.

My thighs ache when I take the second turn. The incline isn’t even that steep yet, but I’m slightly out of shape. It’s been days since I’ve gotten any kind of real exercise, and I’m feeling it in each leg muscle.

I think back to the night before, remembering how little Mr. Mulroney’s face gave away when I turned down his offer for a drink. I laugh out loud and shake my head.

Last night’s dreams were Simon Mulroney free. It’s a good sign, I’m sure. I’m moving past any sort of preoccupation with the man and clearing him from my consciousness.

I work on focusing on my feet while I walk and ignore any more thoughts that come up. The heat rises from the ground in steaming tendrils, swirling around me. The sun feels delicious on my arms, and I’m glad I got out so early. Being under the blaring sun at noon would be nearly unbearable.

By the time I get to Inspiration Point, I’m huffing. Several women in bikini tops and short shorts jog by me, flashing their abs of steel. I grin and bear it, holding back the exhaustion for another minute.

The bench is free, so I plop down onto it. Below the overlook, the city stretches out, buildings pushing all the way to the horizon. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Everything about this morning feels lighter and freer than the entire last five days.

I can only hope the feeling lasts when I get to work on Monday.

Against my thigh, my phone buzzes. I wrestle it out of my pocket and take a look. Laughing, I swipe the answer button.

“Well, hello,” I coo.

“Hello yourself,” Lee responds, her voice comically low.

“What’s that? Are you supposed to be a man?”

She laughs and I feel a wave of homesickness. “I’m not really sure, actually.”

“I thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

My best friend laughs. “Hardly. I’ve just been chained in the middle of The Fish Shack’s dining room.”

“Yikes. Do they at least feed you?”

“They did, but fried flounder gets old after a while, you know? The worst part is the shame. Everyone can come there and see me. They keep the chain tied to a collar around my neck, and on game nights, they let the rival team throw rotting vegetables at me.”

I laugh again. Eight years as friends and Lee still manages to lift me up each time she opens her mouth.

“God, Lee, what the hell?” I ask between spurts of giggles. “That is messed up.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” She’s not, though. I can practically hear the grin on her face.

“So how are things in old Manteo?”

“What do you think? Basically the same. Everyone asks me about you, like, every single shift.”

I crinkle my nose and push my sunglasses tighter against my face. “Really?”

“Really. They think you’re already majorly successful. They want to know if your first film has a release date yet.”

“Why? Just because I haven’t come back?”

“Yep. Precisely.”

“Ha. Well, I only just got out of school, so there’s still plenty of time left to fail.”

“Hey, as long as you don’t come back here, everyone’s going to think you’re a big time director.”

I pull my legs up onto the wooden bench, crossing them. “If only it were so easy.”

“How’s your new job?”

I open my mouth to answer, about to tell her about Mr. Mulroney, then hesitate. Now that I’ve committed to the decision to basically ignore him, everything is so much less complicated. In fact, I don’t even need to talk about it anymore. It’s old news. It’s time to focus on the good and what’s to come.

“It’s nice,” I answer. “It’s just office work, but I’m on one of the biggest studio lots in the world, working for the head of the company.”

“Wow,” she breathes. “It sounds kind of intense.”

I give that some thought. “Not as intense as it should be. My boss is a no show half the time, so it’s not as stressful as I think it would be in another studio office.”

“Hey, that’s pretty sweet. Are you learning anything?”

“It’s a little soon to say. Does how to live without any view from the window count?”

“Definitely. And at least the job is something to put on your resume.”

“Right.” I nod, though she obviously can’t see me.

“Oh my gosh,” Lee gasps. “Guess who I saw yesterday?”

“Who?” I ask, glancing over at the young couple just arriving at the overlook. They clasp hands and stare out at the view, their backs turned to me. The scene is sweet and sickening at the same time.

“Brendan.”

I don’t say anything. The name comes with waves upon waves of connotations, and I’m a little too busy drowning underneath them all to respond.

“Sydney? Did you hear me? I saw Brendan.”

I clear my throat. “Cool,” I feebly respond.

Her voice grows lower, uncertain. “Should I not have told you?”

“No,” I quickly say. “It’s fine.”

“He asked about you.”

I play with the hem of my shorts while staring down at my lap. Lee’s announcement is unexpected, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. If you want to get cheesy about the whole thing, you could call Brendan my high school sweetheart. We dated for four years, including the first two I was away at school in California.

It’s been almost a year since I saw him, and it did not go well. Even though we’d been broken up for a while, I still left the house party in Manteo a complete wreck after seeing him there with another girl.

Details? Okay. I drunkenly cried in the back of Lee’s car while she drove me to her mom’s house where I then fell asleep on the living room floor — still crying over Brendan.

And we hadn’t even said much. It had just been a simple, “Hi, how are you?” and a “Good. How are you?”

But just like that, old wounds had been opened up.

Sometimes, when I allowed myself time to think about it, I wondered why Brendan and I broke up in the first place. Distance was an issue, of course. And sometimes it seemed we just didn’t have much in common anymore.

Sometimes I think that I was too pushy. I wanted him to move out to California, and it was clear he wasn’t feeling the idea. Perhaps if I had just given him his space, we would have eventually come to some kind of agreement. Instead, I brought it up all the time until the weight of the decision just hung over our heads like a heavy cloud, discoloring every conversation we had.

Really, couldn’t we have made it work if we tried? Obviously, as of a year ago, I was still in love with the guy.

“What did you say?” I ask Lee, my voice cracking slightly.

“I told him you just got a job at a movie studio. He seemed really impressed. He’s working at a construction company now.”

I bite my tongue, resisting the urge to ask the question I’m burning to. In the end, I go ahead and ask it. “How did he look?”

“How did he look?” Lee hesitates. “Um… good. Really good. He’s really filled out. He’s got all these muscles now.”

“Oh.”

Crap, I shouldn’t have asked. Now I want to know even more.

“I wish I could come visit you,” Lee sullenly says.

I sit up straighter, glad for the change in topics. “You can. You should totally come!”

“Plane tickets are so expensive.”

I slump back against the wooden boards. “Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe in the fall.”

“How about you just move here?” I ask, half-serious. “Then you’d only have to get a one-way ticket.”

“What would I do there?”

“The same thing you do in Manteo, except in L.A. The only difference is that it would be better here.”

Lee laughs. “How? How would it be better?”

“I’d be here, for one.”

“True.”

“Also, there’s just so much more to do here.”

“Hm,” Lee murmurs. “I believe that. It’s just…”

“What?” I press, holding my breath.

“My family is here. And most of my friends.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Suddenly I don’t feel like Lee’s Best Friend Forever anymore. I feel like just another friend. It’s not like we share two parts of the same heart shaped necklace or twin woven bracelets we made together at summer camp, but we’ve been calling each other “my other half” for years now.

Though, come to think of it, it’s been months since that term escaped my lips.

When did things change?

“Don’t you ever get bored to death?” I ask.

“Sure. But it feels good to be close to everyone, you know? Here you can walk down the street and know the names of half the people you pass. And the other half of the people you at least recognize.”

I glance over at the couple leaving, knowing in most likelihood I’ll never see them again. “Yeah, it’s different here,” I agree.

“But I still want to visit some time.”

“That would be awesome.”