Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (39 page)

I put my hand on my hip. “If you’re speaking of percentages, over half of the moviegoers in America are women.”

Both men turn their heads back to me, and I go on, no longer really caring whether they want my opinion or not. I’ve got something to say and holding it back seems nearly impossible.

“It’s not that much more,” I continue. “But it’s something. Last year it was about fifty-three percent.”

A long silence follows my statement and I clench my teeth together. Damn. I may have done it again. Was that last comment too out of line?

Mr. Murakami bursts into laughter and claps his hands together. “Sydney is right, Simon. We just need to give the audience a chance.”

Relieved, I smile.

The edge of Mr. Mulroney’s mouth ticks. Is that a smile playing there, or a grimace?

“Maybe you should hire her instead of me,” Mr. Murakami says.

My stomach flutters at the compliment. “Thank you, sir.” My boss still doesn’t say anything. I’ve definitely overstayed my welcome. “Let me know if you need anything else.” Nailing my gaze to the floor, I quickly leave the office.

Daniel is on Facebook when I haul ass through the door. He snaps the laptop closed and turns in his chair with an expectant look on his face. When he sees it’s just me, he turns back around and opens his computer back up.

Chuck and Dana are both lost in their own busywork. No one pays me any attention. I go and sit down across from Dana, my mind on a joy ride.

Supposing I did just tick off the man who signs my paycheck, at least I impressed John Murakami. Maybe if the day ever does come where I get fired from Mulroney pictures, Mr. Murakami will hire me on as his personal assistant.

Heck, I’d be his dog walker if that’s what he needed.

Mr. Murakami leaves thirty minutes later. He says a pleasant goodbye to the four of us and ambles out the door. Twenty seconds later, the buzzer goes off.

“Send Sydney in,” Mr. Mulroney says.

I cringe at the request. It takes everything in me to not drop my head face down onto the desk and thump it until my brain bleeds.

You’ve done it this time. You’re getting fired for sure.

Dana glances at me but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know what happened and probably doesn’t think anything out of the ordinary is going on.

He’s sitting in his chair going through a stack of papers and I slink back through the door. His hair is ruffled in the front, like he just ran his hands through it. Unfortunately, it looks an awful lot like his hair does in my recurring dream about him.

I shut the door behind me and hover there.

“I’m not mad at you,” he says, still busy with his papers.

“Oh.” I look at the floor, then out the window, then at the wall. When I look back at the desk, he’s staring at me.

He opens his mouth, then hesitates and closes it again.

The silence is too much to bear. I need to do something. “That’s good.”

He smirks.

“What?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. I’m toeing the line. I shouldn’t be using such a blatant attitude with my boss.

But everything about our relationship toes — or crosses — the line. From the very first minute, it’s been that way. We’re miles and miles past any sense of real propriety. Nothing about this work environment could be considered “normal” in any regard.

“You’re cocky,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

I burst out laughing. “
Me?”

I think he’s going to chastise me for my cheekiness, but he only smiles. It’s genuine too. The corners of his eyes crinkle up and there’s a lightness in his blue eyes I haven’t seen before.

“Well, now I can never fire you,” he says. “John likes you, and he’s a commodity. Each one of his films grosses more than the one before it.”

I respond without thinking. “So put a woman in the next one. Maybe your expectations will be surpassed.”

He gazes at me. “Maybe.”

In half a second, my heart beat doubles. Am I imagining the heavy connotations in that one word? I need to leave this office before everything I promised myself I wouldn’t do happens.

“I should get back to work.”

He smiles again. His voice is slow and sweet, the consistency of molasses. “I know you four don’t do anything when I’m not around.”

The comment takes me by surprise. If he’s going to be so honest, maybe I should do the same.

“Then why keep us around?” I ask.

He blinks rapidly, his honey colored eyelashes fluttering. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

Ouch.

“It’s good to keep up appearances,” he tells me, leaning back and linking his fingers behind his head. “When people see I have four assistants, they think I’m more serious about my job.”

I snort. “That’s what I suspected.”

He cocks his head and a look holding some semblance of pain quickly flashes across his face. I’m instantly regretful. Douchebag or not, maybe the comment was a little harsh.

I grasp at the doorknob behind me. Time to save my tail. “Do you need anything?”

“Who were you with Friday night?” he asks, taking me once again by surprise. “Were you on a date?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He straightens his back and opens his laptop. “And I’m fine.” He stares at the screen in front of him as if I’m no longer there.

He stares at the screen in front of him as if I’m no longer there.
What
on Earth just happened?
The man is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Seriously. It’s the only thing that explains his sudden attitude shifts. Or, if he’s not from a nineteenth century Scottish horror novella, he suffers from legit bi-polar disorder and needs to get himself hooked up with some meds right away.

My brain exploding — just like it always does when Simon Mulroney is around — I leave the office.

A
t midnight, I still can’t sleep. I stare at the TV while Eryk channel surfs.

“How’s the screenplay going?” he asks from the other end of the couch.

“Huh?”

He waves a hand in front of my face. “Hello. Earth to Sydney.”

I force a grin. “Sorry. I was just spacing out. The screenplay… is going. Kind of.”

He looks back at the screen and continues flipping. “What does that mean?”

I sigh and drop my head on my arms. “I seem to have hit a bump in the road.”

“What’s it about again?”

I run my thumb over my bottom lip. “I don’t really have a pitch put together yet.”

He gives me a look. “Do I look like a movie producer? Save it for your boss.”

I ignore that one.

“Come on,” he prods. “Tell me.”

I twist my hands together. There’s a lot on my mind, and I don’t really feel like talking about writing. I take a deep breath, racking my brain.

“It’s about this girl who moves to the south to live with her aunt after her family dies in a car accident. Strange things start to happen around her, and she discovers she has supernatural powers.”

“Ooh. So it’s a superhero movie?”

“No. It’s more subdued.”

“Is there a bad guy?”

“The town sheriff, who wants to turn her in to the government.” I shrug a shoulder. “It’s okay. I feel like there’s something lacking.”

“Like a… a what do you call it… a theme?”

“The theme is learning to let go and trust the new people in your life. The main character doesn’t get along with her aunt at first, but they have to learn to trust each other in order to beat the sheriff.”

“Cool.”

“Eh,” I mumble.

His thumb goes back to work. “What do you want to watch?”

I shrug. “Whatever. None of it is any good anyway.”

“Wow. Sorry to hear you feel that way, Miss Debbie Downer.”

I nibble at the edge of my fingernail. It doesn’t matter what Eryk calls me. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or does. All that matters is that the enigma of Simon Mulroney is threatening to destroy me.

“What’s up?” Eryk asks.

I look over at his face, the television screen flickering against it in the darkness. He’s still got his black work shirt on and smells faintly of kitchen grease.

“I lasted one hour.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

I sigh. “I had it together. I actually stopped caring about what that maniacal man does for a whole sixty minutes this morning. Then we had one conversation and I lost it.”

“You’re in love with him.”

I snort. “Yeah, that explains why I hate him so much.”

Eryk shrugs. “Damn, well, I don’t know. All I can say is I don’t think I’ve been as hot for someone the way I think you are for him. Maybe it’s because you’re a woman, and women are just crazy.”

“Hm.” I give it some thought. “Maybe.”

“So what happened?”

The words are lame before they even come out of my mouth. “He was nice to me.”

Eryk stares at me like I’m stupid. “Wasn’t he nice to you the other day?”

“Yeah, but this was different.”

“How?”

“It… I don’t know. It just was. It was more intense.” I drop my face into my palms. “I’m just being stupid. Oh my God, Eryk. What is going on with me?”

Eryk shimmies along the couch to settle next to me. He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Sydney Andrews, look at me.”

I drop my hands and do as he says.

“I’ve said it before,” he continues, “but I will say it again, since I obviously have to. You. Need. To. Get. Laid.”

I stick my bottom lip out. “I think you’re right.”

“Good. Now you’re getting some sense back in you. Do you want to get on Tinder right now?”

“What? No. I don’t have a Tinder account.”

He claps his hands together. “We’ll make you one.”

“No! Ew.”

He looks offended. “I have Tinder.”

“I bet you do.”

The offense increases two fold as evidenced by his eyebrows. “What is that attitude supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Sorry. I just don’t want to do it that way. I don’t want to meet someone online.”

He sighs and falls back against the cushions. “You don’t want to meet someone online. You don’t want to meet someone at bars. You’re running out of available options here. Sounds like it’s gonna be either your boss or your body pillow, and only one of those options is going to buy you dinner.”

“Very funny,” I mutter.

“I try. Stay here.”

He hops up and runs for his bedroom. I bleakly watch a commercial for a multivitamin. By the time the thirty-second spot is over, he’s back.

“I think I just need an anti-depressant,” I tell him. “Drugs would make everything better.”

“They make anti-depressants in penis form.”

He settles cross-legged next to me, his laptop in his hands. “If you won’t get on Tinder, we can try something else. There are plenty of dating sites.”

I twist my finger around a lock of hair. “I don’t know…”

“How about we just make you a profile and you can see who’s on there? You’re not obligated to go on any dates with anyone.”

“Fine,” I concede. “Let’s do it.”

“Excellent.” He pulls his browser up and begins typing away.

“But what about when people message me asking to meet up and I don’t want to?”

He shrugs, his eyes glued to the screen. “Ignore them.”

“I don’t want to be mean.”

He stops typing and looks at me over the top of the computer. “It’s the internet. It doesn’t count.”

A couple minutes go by while he types and I twirl hair around my finger, imagining a dozen different scenarios in which Internet dating can go wrong. In the best situation, I meet my soul mate but have to spend the rest of my life admitting to everyone I resorted to internet dating in order to find my husband. In the worst situation, I end up dead, lying in three inches of water in the Los Angeles River, like that guy in Chinatown.

“You know what the best part is?” Eryk asks.

“What?”

“Supposing your boss has a profile on the site we pick, you two won’t match up.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say, letting sarcasm drip from the words. “And why wouldn’t we match up?”

Eryk crinkles his nose. “Well… how old is he?”

“Thirty-one,” I say, curling into a tighter ball. Dana told me, and I mentally filed it away in a compartment I’ll never lose. “That’s only nine years older than me. My parents are eight years apart.”

“Your parents are old as sin.”

I make a face at him. “They were younger when they met, thank you very much.”

“All right, well if you like that age, we can find someone else who is around there.”

“You lost it. You’re not being funny anymore.”

“I’m not trying to be. Don’t you have a type? Age usually is a factor in that.”

“No. Do you?”

“Naked.”

He types away for a minute. “Here. You need to log into your email and confirm the account.”

He hands the computer over to me. I settle it in my lap and go to my email. The link to confirm the profile is at the top of my inbox, but right below it is a way more interesting email.

“Wait,” I breathlessly whisper.

“What?”

I’m too busy scanning the two-line email to respond.

“Sydney. What is it?”

I read the email over again. “I just got a message from my ex-boyfriend.”

“O-kay… what does it say?”

My hands drop away from the keyboard and I stare at Eryk’s face. “He’s coming here.”

“You sound like a robot.”

I exhale heavily. “What?”

“You… sound… like… a… ro-bot. Are you hearing me at all?”

My stomach rolls and a wave of nausea hits. “I don’t feel good.”

“You say that every time we get Chinese takeout. I don’t think we should order from that place anymore. Let’s pick the one on Vine next time. Plus, you ate way too much fried rice.”

I rub the spot between my eyes. “My ex-boyfriend is coming,” I repeat. “This isn’t about the takeout.”

“He’s coming to visit you?”

I shake my head. “No, the email says he’s staying with his cousin for the summer in Venice Beach.”

Eryk sits up straighter. “Is it on the water? Find out if it’s on the water.”

I set the computer on the coffee table so I can collapse on my side into the cushions.