Miss Independent (30 page)

He found Vanessa not long after.

“Here,” he said, handing her a drink.

“Thanks.” In one swig, it was gone. She handed the glass back to him and he raised his brows, concerned.

“Maybe you should slow down a bit.”

“I think I need to have a little more in my system if I’m going to be forced into enjoying this thing.” She snatched the other drink from his hand and guzzled it back in a single swig as well. She sat it on the table behind her and flipped her hair back. “There.” She turned to Maurice and smiled wide. “Wanna dance with me?”

He smiled back, entranced by everything about her in that very moment, but wondered if dancing was such a good idea after drinking that much alcohol so fast. And then he saw Nathan moving through the crowd and suddenly felt territorial. Maurice sized him up, noticing he looked a little taller than the last time he had seen him, and was more built. The gym had obviously become Nathan’s new best friend in Los Angeles. He frowned, wondering if this was truly his competition for Vanessa’s heart. She started dancing by herself in place, the alcohol had really started to kick in even more. Maurice sat down his glass and took her by the hand, gesturing toward the floor.

“Let’s go.” He kept an eye on Nathan the entire time.

Just as they were about to embrace one another in a slow dance, the music stopped midway and Sheila appeared on stage. The majority of the room clapped for her while others simply turned their heads and began whispering to whoever was next to them.

She nervously chuckled and took the mic from the stand at the end of the stage. “I just wanna start out by saying, welcome everybody to Lockney High’s Five Year Reunion!”

Everyone clapped then, the guys hooted and hollered while the women laughed at them. Vanessa looked up at Maurice and stuck her finger in her mouth, imitating a vomiting motion.

Sheila pumped her fist in the air and dropped back on her heels. “YEA! I wanna thank everyone for coming tonight. I know that for some it wasn’t easy to make it down here…” She wiped hair from her face and neck, tossing it behind her. “But you did, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see so many familiar faces.”

Vanessa tugged Maurice’s jacket. He bent down to her lips. “Does she look slightly drunk to you?”

“Can you spot each other across the room like that?”

She reached up and slapped him on the arm. “I’m being serious. She looks blitzed up there and sweating all of her makeup off.”

“You would too under all of those lights after everything you’ve had to drink tonight, and on little to no food. I shouldn’t have given you that champagne in the car.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “I can hold my liquor, you know that better than anybody else here.”

He did know it better than anybody else. She very rarely got sick in high school after having too much to drink, but she often passed out in various places around the city that most would consider too dangerous to even criminalize. When she wasn’t sleeping off the booze at Sheila’s house, she was sleeping it off with Maurice at his. He often snuck her in after his parents were asleep, carrying her upstairs and watching her most nights to make sure she was still breathing throughout. It didn’t happen often, at least not so much until after she learned of Nathan and Sheila, but when it did, he was always there to make sure that she was okay.

“Joan wanted me to let everyone know just how sorry she is that she couldn’t be here,” Sheila continued. “But she has that new baby to take care of.” Vanessa sensed sadness in her voice, but chose to ignore it. “With all of that said, we are here to have a damn good time tonight! And in that damn good time, I want to welcome someone to the stage who may not have been around during our time, but from what I heard, she was a sensation during her own.” Everyone looked at one another and made strange faces, shaking their heads. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce to you the one and only, Miss C. Dennis!”

No one knew what to say or how to react. Some halfheartedly clapped while others just stared unknowingly.

A pale, slender woman with blistering red hair came out on stage then. She was wearing a long dress that flowed behind her, covered in dandelions and lilies. She shook hands with Sheila, who looked out into the crowd and spotted Vanessa with Maurice. She nearly fell off stage but caught herself before she could.

Maurice leaned over and made a face. “Who the hell is that?” he asked. “You’re always listening to that old stuff in your room.”

“I don’t know this one.” She opened her hands. “C. Dennis?”

He jokingly looked around the room. “Where? Is he here?”

Vanessa playfully hit his arm again.

“Hello, all,” C. Dennis began, her strong British accent booming over the microphone. “I’m certain many of you aren’t aware of who I am, but what I
am
certain of is that you’re going to remember me before this night is over. Welcome back, Lockney High.” She turned back to the DJ and raised her mic. “HIT IT!”

A high pitched tone started playing over what sounded like a million wind chimes. As the tune sped up, some of the crowd kind of stood around looking while others just shrugged it off and started dancing as she sang with the music.

“This song kind of sounds familiar to me now.” Vanessa found her groove and began dancing to the beat. “
Hold me, baby, drive me crazy, touch me
--”

“Gladly.” Maurice began dancing as well, moving closer to her.

She laughed aloud and pushed him back. “Those are the lyrics to the song!”

“They’re the lyrics to our lives, V!”

He took her by the hand and spun her around.

Sheila stood watching them from across the room. She glanced around and spotted Nathan watching them from the other side, and noticed him drinking what appeared to be cognac which he had purchased from the hotel bar.

Nikki, meanwhile, was trying to catch up with Eliza, who didn’t care for the music. She finally managed to corner her near the spiked punch bowl.

“Hi,” she said, grazing her fingers against Eliza’s elbow.

Eliza turned and slightly jerked back. “Names are to be said, bodies never to be touched.”

“Sorry. I don’t know if you remember me…?”

Eliza’s green eyes flickered. She pulled her brows together, wrinkling her pale forehead. She was truly pondering who was standing before her. “Help me out, I’m a little lost.”

“Nikki… Nicole Sanger. You called me the Spanish fly all throughout freshman year, and you didn’t mean it as a compliment.”

“Oh, Nikki!” she exclaimed in a light voice, tapping her on the arm. “Oh my God, wow! How are you? I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you. You look so different!”

She looked aside, puzzled. “I don’t look that different. I look pretty much the same as I did five years ago.”

“Did you gain weight or lose it? There is something very different about you. I wish I could put my finger on it.”

“I haven’t changed at all, physically. I’ve been the same weight since I was sixteen and--”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, so what’s new with you aside from all of that?” she asked thoughtlessly as she poured endless amounts of punch into her cup and scoured the table for guacamole.

“I just wanted to tell you that your books are an inspiration. I want to be an actress and I’m not there yet, but--”

“What’s stopping you from getting there?” She sipped from her cup and grabbed a blue sugar cookie from the table, chomping down.

Nikki was taken aback. “I’m sorry?”

“No reason to apologize. I’m asking what’s stopping you from becoming an actress.”

“Nothing’s… stopping me, I just haven’t made it yet.”

“Why is that? Weren’t you the one with parents on Broadway?” She looked down and wiped a few crumbs from her pink dress, a color which happened to match her perfectly painted nails.

“They were, but I’ve been trying to make it on my own merit.”

“Or maybe you’re just not that good.” She swung her brown hair over her shoulder and turned away from her.

Nikki felt like she was in the Twilight Zone. Who did this woman think that she was to speak to her like this? She wrote a few self-help books before twenty-five, and suddenly, she’s ready to tell people in person how to live their lives and what they’re doing wrong with it if it’s not up her standards?

Nikki dropped her hand on the table and craned her neck. She wasn’t in the mood for it. “What the hell is your problem?”

“I’m not the one who seems to be having a problem, Nicole. You’re the unsuccessful actress seeking out my books to use as life lessons.”

“That’s not what I’m doing at all. Eliza, I think your books are an inspiration because they’ve helped me wade through some tough decisions in my life, but I’m not using them as life lessons.”

“Maybe you should. What’s the last book you read?”

“In general or by you?”

“In general… and by me.”

“
How To Land Your Man While Still Keeping Your Dignity
.”

“O
kay
. That is what is so different about you. Your reading of my self-helpers guide to figuring out your proper place in the circle of adultery is telling.”

“What?”

“I wrote that book when I was having an affair,” she said, swallowing back the punch in her cup before going for a second round.

More music began playing, but neither paid attention.

“You were having an affair?”

“Yes,” Eliza told her. “It was two years ago and he was the husband of a friend.”

“Of a friend?”
No wonder she and Sheila were suddenly so chummy tonight,
Nikki thought. She didn’t want to push and ask any further, it made her feel unsavory, but she felt she needed to hear it. “Did you land him?”

“For a while, yes, I did. But he eventually went back to his wife.”

“Did he love you?” The pain in her voice became all too evident. “I’m only asking because if he loved you, how could he have gone back to her?”

“Because she was the mother of his children. She was the one he saw when the sun set in the night after leaving me, and arose the next morning before coming back. She was his everything and I was just his ‘thing’ on the side.” She sighed and drank more of her punch. “He didn’t love me. He used me. I was good in bed, and I kept his mind and body occupied on nights she wasn’t in the mood or went away with her family someplace that he didn’t feel like traveling. There is no love in an extramarital affair, Nikki Sanger, only sex.”

“Sometimes love can be involved,” she said sheepishly. “It’s rare but it’s there for some people.”

“Find them for me and I’ll allow you to co-author my next book.” She reached for more cookies, stuffing them into her mouth.

Nikki dropped back, eyeing her up and down. “You sound so cynical.”

“Do I have a reason to be something else? There’s no love in what you have with this man, Nicole, whoever he is. Whatever he is telling you, which for certain included that he would leave his wife, isn’t true or going to happen. And I’m guessing just from that sad look in your eye that you know it just as well as I do. If you never get anything from my books, at least get what I’m telling you right now.” She looked around the table for more food and pat her stomach. “Are we done? I don’t mean to shoo you away, but I need to get something real to eat and Sheila’s lack of a budget is preventing me from doing that here.”

Nikki nodded. “Sure.”

“Great, thanks. It was good seeing you again.” She dashed off in the opposite direction and headed for the hotel lobby.

“Good seeing you too,” she replied, though she didn’t mean it. The first thing she wanted to do was go home and toss all of Eliza’s books into the trash. If what she said to her was true for herself, Nikki knew she didn’t have a chance in hell of ever landing her man, let alone keeping her dignity while doing so. She had had a little hope after spending more alone time with him again at the shop, despite his wife still being in town for the next few days, but after this? There was no way in hell she could continue going on in the same way.

Nathan sat at the bar drinking the remainder of his cognac. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, all but begging for this night to be over. He thought of Maurice and Vanessa dancing and wondered if something more had come from them in the last five years. He knew of Maurice’s feelings for Vanessa, but was all too sure that she didn’t, hadn’t, and would never feel the same about him. Maurice was the best friend, the typical guy in the movies who had been in love with the girl since forever but never gets her no matter how good looking he may be. Because Nathan was the main attraction in Vanessa’s eyes and always would be. Nathan was the love of her life. He was so certain.

He ordered another round of cognac just as Sheila came up and sat down beside him.

“I’ve barely seen you tonight,” she said.

He didn’t glance in her direction and instead kept his eyes straight ahead at the amount of alcohol decorated across the mirrored wall. “I haven’t enjoyed a good party since high school.”

“This isn’t a party, it’s a reunion.”

“There’s people dancing, singing, and drinking too much,” he said. “Sounds like a party to me.” He waved at the bartender, who handed him another drink. He swallowed some, making an agonizing face as he left the rest in the glass.