Opening Act (20 page)

Zee was feeling restless and uneasy. She was still upset by the inconclusive way her second interview had ended and was now saddled with additional guilt over the way she'd handled Pernita, allowing her to think that
she
was the girl Shay Dayton had hooked up with, not Loni. Pernita had intimidated Zee
almost to the point of paralysis. The girl was so beautiful, so polished, so poised—everything about her screamed
finishing school
. But there was also something about her that seemed chiseled out of granite. That girl was
hard
. She had money and power and glamour—everything poor, plebeian Zee lacked. Zee felt like an idiot for having ever thrown herself at Shay. What could he possibly have seen in her, when he had a girl like
that
to turn to?

And yet, Shay had pursued Loni. Pursued her, caught her, and taken her down. Though wasn't Loni, too, someone who outclassed Zee by miles? Loni, with her upper-class cheekbones and her perfect vowel sounds and her computer brain? In a different way, she was as intimidating as Pernita. Zee had known Loni since they were both gangly, insecure adolescents, so she had never realized it before, but Loni had grown into a woman to be reckoned with. If, however, she had to bet money on a cage match, Zee would choose Pernita. She was clearly used to getting everything she wanted and trampling over anyone who got in her way. Loni was still too sweet, too sympathetic. She was still someone who
listened
when you talked.

Whereas Pernita had made it clear to Zee—in phrases so sweetly worded and so pleasantly modulated that it was only later that Zee realized the lethal force behind them—that if she ever came anywhere near Shay Dayton again, Pernita would rivet her ass to a concrete block and then kick it off the nearest pier. So, in a way, Zee had done Loni a
favor
by letting Pernita win. She'd pretended to be angry and hurt by the revelation that Shay Dayton was in an open relationship with another woman—and after all, Loni probably
would
be hurt and angry—and had told Pernita she never wanted to see him again. Pernita would no doubt go back to Shay, return his phone and wallet, and relay the news that he'd fucked up his chances with
that
particular piece of tail, and Shay would never come sniffing around Loni again.

So Loni would be safe from Pernita. Zee had
helped
her.

Right? And she should be pissed at Loni anyway! Right? Loni knew how fanatical Zee was about Shay Dayton, but she just went ahead and did whatever she did with him anyway. Probably with not a single thought about Zee and how that would make her feel.

Except…except if all that were really true, why did she have to keep telling herself it was true? Why did she have to keep repeating to herself that
she
was the one who had been wronged and she had nothing to apologize for, if she in fact really
had
nothing to apologize for? If she was really helping Loni, and not just taking even more revenge on her for getting between her and Shay Dayton, why did it take so much
convincing
?

Maybe because the Shay Dayton she loved was a fantasy she had concocted from seeing him onstage and on album covers, but the Shay Dayton Loni knew might be a real person?

She felt itchy in her own skin and wished she could get out of it somehow. But when the opportunity came, she balked. She got a text from Lockwood Mott.
Hey just checking in u ok?

She considered not responding, but after a few minutes of lying on her couch pretending everything was totally fine and failing, she decided what the hell, and texted back,
Fine thx
.

He replied:
How did interview go?

She wrote back,
OK.

U get the job?

Don't know yet.

There was a slight pause, and she wondered if that was it. She was surprised by feeling a little flurry of hope that it wasn't. But when he texted back,
Movie?
, she drew up her shoulders. She may
have wanted some attention—distraction from her seething brain—but not
that
much. She certainly didn't want to have to
see
Lockwood Mott. He wasn't exactly a guilt-free association for her.

Cheer u up
, he texted before she could think of a reply.
Totally NSA.

She grimaced and texted back,
Thx sweet but v busy.

He replied almost instantly.
Understand tk care.

Zee considered several replies but rejected all of them and was still staring at her phone, wondering if he'd say anything else, when Loni let herself in. One look at her roommate's face was all it took to snap Zee out of her funk. “Oh, my God,” she said, sitting upright. “What the hell happened?”

Loni strode angrily into the apartment, her face flushed and her eyes puffy from tears. “Nothing,” she said, and her voice actually cracked. “Can't talk about it now.” She threw her purse into a chair and headed for her bedroom.

“Anything I can do?” Zee asked as Loni swept past her. “Get you a hot tea or something?”

“Thanks, I'm good,” Loni said, then went into her room and firmly closed the door behind her.

Zee blinked and felt her heart begin to skitter.

Something had obviously upset Loni—upset her
deeply
.

Zee couldn't imagine what that might be. Her first impulse, naturally, was to assume that Loni had discovered some of what Zee had been doing behind her back. Possibly Shay had mentioned being blocked from her Facebook page, and Loni had figured out Zee was responsible. Though if that were true, Loni was the type who'd confront her with it immediately. She wasn't shy about that kind of thing. But she'd come in and barely acknowledged Zee, as though anything to do with her was the furthest thing from her mind.

That at least made Zee feel safe in her little nest of deceit. Still, seeing Loni so distraught—having her right here in the apartment, probably collapsed in tears on the other side of that door—made her incredibly uncomfortable. What if she came out again? What if she wanted to confide in Zee, come to her for consolation, or unburden herself to her closest friend? What if she wanted to talk about Shay Dayton?

She felt a surge of panic. The idea of Loni in an extremity of distress counting on Zee,
trusting
Zee, when Zee knew perfectly well she'd betrayed that trust not once but twice today—blocking Shay from Loni's Facebook page and pretending to
be
Loni to Pernita—well, it would just be more than Zee could bear.

She texted Lockwood:
Changed my mind movie sounds gr8.

A moment later, he texted back,
Fantastic
, and followed with the theater and show time. Zee quietly picked up her purse and crept out of the apartment. She was halfway down the stairs when she realized she hadn't even asked what the movie was. Not that it would've mattered. She'd have said yes even if it was some typical car-crash-and-explosion dude-stravaganza. The only thing that mattered was that it offered her an escape.

Loni lay on her bed, feeling utterly destroyed. She'd known Byron would be upset when she turned down his offer after having kept him hanging on for so long, but she had no idea he'd be so completely, off-the-wall deranged about it.

“How can you do this to me?” he'd raged at her, his face the shade of purple Loni associated with heart-attack victims.

“I'm not doing anything to
you
,” she'd said. “I'm making a choice about what I think is best for
me
.”

He'd laughed bitterly. “What the hell do
you
know about anything? The only thing you know about life is what I've taught you. I
made
you, little girl. God
damn
it!” He'd gotten up at this point and stormed around the table, causing other patrons at the coffeehouse to look up in alarm.

“Well, then,” she'd said, trying to keep her own voice as neutral as possible, “that's even more of a reason for me to go out on my own. I can't expect you to be responsible for me forever.”

He'd sat back down then and put his face into his hands.

And he'd
sobbed
.

Byron Pennington, her mentor, had bawled like a baby.

And when, after a few minutes, she'd reached across the table to comfort him, he'd reared back and snarled at her, like some kind of vicious raptor. “I don't need you,” he'd said with a sneer. “I don't need your airs and your pretenses, that way you have of making people feel like you're doing them some kind of fucking
favor
when they put themselves on the line for you. Do you know how many times I've risked my own neck to get
you
ahead? And all the thanks I've ever gotten for it is that attitude you have that it's the goddamn least I can do.”

She'd felt that one, felt it against her face like a blast of radioactive wind. It almost flayed the skin from her skull.

“That's not true,” she'd said, leaning back in her chair as though recoiling from a frontal assault. “I'm grateful for everything you've done, I've always
said
—”

“Oh,” he'd interrupted her with a dismissive wave of his hand, “you're
always
on form, I'll give you that. You dot your i's and cross your t's, and say please and thank you and speak when you're spoken to. No one can fault you on that. But,” he'd continued, leaning across the table, like a panther preparing to pounce on its kill, “it doesn't begin to hide the egoism at your core. The massive sense of
entitlement
that makes you feel every good thing that happens to you is something you're
owed
. Well,
fine
, then.” He'd abruptly sat back and pushed his chair away from the table. “Go your own way. You're so fucking confident. Let's see how you do without some idiot mentor running on ahead, clearing away all the obstacles for you so that you never even know they were there.”

By this time, Loni had been unable to speak. She had been so completely taken aback by the ferocity of his attack—by the fact that he was attacking her
at all
—that she'd had to focus merely on breathing. She'd felt, honestly, as though she might pass out—just fall out of her chair in a mortified swoon and lay in a heap on the floor.

After he'd gotten up and stormed out—leaving her with the bill, she didn't fail to notice—she'd sat for a long time, just recovering from the shock and horror of it all and trying to pull herself together so that she could get up from the table and walk home without trembling like a leaf. But it was a hard job. Her mind kept boomeranging back to all the terrible things he'd said—the accusations, the condemnations. Was it possible that he really thought of her that way? Was it possible she really
was
that way? If what he'd said of her was even remotely true—if someone she'd considered her friend and protector could say such things about her—then what about the people in her life she was even
less
bound to? Zee, for instance; what did
she
think of her, in her private moments?

The thought of Zee reminded Loni of yet another mortification to come. She'd have to tell her about her morning with Shay. She couldn't begin to imagine how Zee would react to that. The girl had spent weeks plotting to meet and seduce him, and then at the crucial moment Shay had targeted Loni
instead—completely shutting Zee out. That had to have been humiliating for her. If what Lockwood Mott had implied was true, she'd left the party an emotional wreck. The news that Shay and Loni ultimately
did
hook up wasn't going to help. The truth was, Loni had barely spared a thought for Zee the whole time she had been with Shay. What did
that
say about her? Well, whatever Zee might think about her, she was going to think worse of her now.

And that wasn't even factoring in the possibility that her morning's adventure with Shay wasn't just a one-off. She'd felt something solid spring up between them—a kind of foundation on which anything might be built. A friendship, a romance—who knew? She couldn't be certain, and didn't even like to risk hoping, but she wanted to keep herself open to all possibilities.

It was that—the thought of some kind of ongoing bond with Shay—that eventually gave her the strength to pay the bill, get up, and make her way home. He was, after all, the reason she'd turned Byron down to begin with. Whether she and Shay went any further than they had this morning, he'd shown her that there was more to life than following a plan in lockstep. There were opportunities she'd never suspected, a wonderful randomness that she wanted to embrace. It was exhilarating to think about, but the thought of Byron kept getting in the way, shooting her back into the scene at the coffeehouse and horrifying her anew. She had to get past that—cry it out of her system—before she could move on.