Sweet Little Lies (17 page)

Scarlett did a double take. The blond girl was Jane! She was clinging to Jesse, who was drawing his fist back to deliver a right hook to…OMG, it was Braden! The red-haired girl was what’s-her-name, Willow, who was not Braden’s girlfriend, exactly, but more of a friend with benefits. (The arrangement was likely his idea, not hers. Scarlett had seen the possessive look Willow gave Braden whenever there was another girl around. Clearly, she didn’t like to share.) Jesse punched Braden in the mouth. Jane and Willow both screamed.

Near the back of the room, Scarlett spotted Trevor talking to someone on his cell, his face bright red and furious-looking. He must have been having a heart attack witnessing this scene unfold. Trevor loved conflict for the cameras, but not conflict involving Braden, who refused to be on the show, and not with this crowd present. Dana was nearby, also shouting into her phone.

Jane. Scarlett had to rescue Jane. She shouldered her way across the line of ogling partygoers with no plan of what to do in order to extract her BFF from this insane mess. (Scarlett didn’t care that they weren’t speaking to each other—Jane was still her BFF.) But before she could reach Jane, she felt someone bump into her, hard.

“Hey!” she yelled.

“Sorry!”

Scarlett recognized the fake-blond hair as the girl swept past her. Madison. She turned briefly to lock eyes with Scarlett before running up to Jane and grabbing her hand, pulling her away from Jesse. At the same time, a couple of theL.A. Candy crew members, and what looked like Roosevelt Hotel security, appeared and separated Jesse from Braden.

“How fucking dare you!” Jesse was yelling at Braden. “How fucking dare you show your face in this town, after what you did?”

“You’re a drunk asshole!” Willow was yelling at Jesse. She looked like she was crying.

Braden said nothing, merely swiped at his bloody lip, his eyes blazing angrily.

Jane was crying, too, her mascara streaking down her cheeks. Madison draped her arm around her shoulders and escorted her through the crowd, whispering in her ear. A couple of random girls tried to follow, but Dana, for once in her life being useful, blocked their way.

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Shit,Scarlett thought, watching Jane going off with Madison just like she’d managed to do at STK.Shit, shit, shit. That she-devil has totally taken over Jane.

“Do you think Jane’s gonna get back together with Braden now?” Gaby said to Scarlett.

“Can we talk about something else?” Scarlett snapped. “Another one, please,” she added to the bartender.

The bartender raised his eyebrows at her before pouring her a shot of Patrón. This would be her fourth.

Or fifth? Or sixth? She had lost track. But she didn’t care. She wanted to obliterate the last hour from her memory. No, not just the last hour but the last few days, weeks, and months of her dying friendship with Jane.

Jane had left Teddy’s, along with Jesse. If she ever saw Scarlett at the party, she gave no indication.

Frankly, she seemed too upset to notice anyone or anything. Madison was gone, too, as were Braden and Willow. (Scarlett overheard a couple of guests saying that Willow was a contributing writer forAlt , which explained why she and Braden had shown up at this particular event.) The PopTV camera crew lingered, mostly because Dana had wanted to try to salvage the night by getting some footage of Scarlett and Gaby “hanging out” at the bar.

Yeah, right. Good luck with that,Scarlett thought.

Liam was stationed in a corner near the bar, filming Scarlett and Gaby. Scarlett had steadfastly avoided looking at him, even though she knew that he was looking at her, and not just professionally through the lens. In fact, he had sent her a text a few minutes ago—WANNA GRAB A LATE DINNER

AFTER?—but she hadn’t responded. She didn’t want to have dinner with Liam. She didn’t want to have dinner with anyone, not with the mood she was in.

Gaby gave up on Scarlett and started flirting with some older guy to her left, having finally picked up on Scarlett’sdon’t talk to me vibe. (Tonight’s Very Special Episode ofL.A. Candy , when it aired, would no doubt start with a brawl between Jesse and a blurred-out guy and end with Gaby making out with some dude who was a member of AARP.) Maybe now Scarlett could just slip away and head home and go to bed, in anticipation of the massive hangover that would surely be waiting for her in the morning.

“Hey? Scarlett, right?”

Scarlett turned to the studded leather bar chair on her right. The guy from earlier—Matthew?—was sitting down, Corona in hand. “Yeah. Hey.”

“Are you here for theAlt party?” he asked.

“What’s left of it, anyway.”

“I write for the magazine. Matteo,” he reminded her. “It’s nice to meet you. Again.”

“Oh. Yeah, likewise.”

Matteo didn’t seem to have picked up on herdon’t talk to me vibe, because he started telling her all
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aboutAlt , about being a writer, about his pain-in-the-ass coworkers (including Willow). Scarlett had no idea if he was miked or not. She didn’t care. It was almost pleasant listening to his numbingly boring monologue about his job. It was definitely better than replaying the endless mental loop of her problems with Jane, with Liam, with the show. Or drinking more tequila. As if she hadn’t killed enough brain cells tonight.

Scarlett wasn’t sure if five minutes had passed, or fifteen, or more. But all of a sudden, Matteo was leaning close to her and saying, “Hey, you wanna get out of here? Maybe grab a drink somewhere more…private?”

“Yeah, why not?” Scarlett said, before she could stop herself. Getting away from the cameras sounded like a great idea. She stood up from her bar chair, a little unsteadily, and tried to figure out where the exit might be. The room was wobbly. She was wobbly. She saw in her line of vision the PopTV camera pointed at her, and the man behind it, his posture completely rigid. Liam. She couldn’t see his face, but he could see hers. And he could see the fact that she was leaving Teddy’s with some stranger, on-camera, onhis camera, instead of with him. God, when had she turned into such a bitch? But she couldn’t stop herself, any more than she could stop herself from drinking all those tequila shots. She was in pain. And her answer to pain was not crying on someone’s shoulder or talking about her feelings. It was diving deeper into the darkness. And at the moment, that darkness consisted of tequila, hooking up with Matteo or someone like him, and breaking the heart of the nicest guy she’d ever met.

“This way,” Matteo said, taking her arm. His touch felt all wrong, not like Liam’s at all. “You okay?”

“Never better,” Scarlett lied.

26

IT WAS GREAT SEEING YOU

Jane walked through the restaurant doors that led to the open-air seating, squinting into the sunshine and digging through her bag for her sunglasses. The outdoor area at Barney Greengrass was packed, with a mostly older crowd of agents discussing deals over expense-account Cobb salads and middle-aged women enjoying a lunch break from shopping. The restaurant was located on the top level of Barneys, and Jane knew that the photographers waiting for her in the parking lot wouldn’t be able to shoot her up here. The store’s management never allowed the paparazzi to bother customers.

Jane took a seat and picked up a menu. It was cooler than usual for late January, and she was glad she had worn a white sweater over her floral-print dress. She peered at her watch. Noon, exactly. For once, she was on time. Normally it would have amused her, except nothing was really funny to her today. She was still upset about what had happened last night at Teddy’s. Just thinking about it made her stomach twist.

And, of course, she was more than a little nervous about her lunch date.

“Hey, you.”

Jane glanced up. Braden was walking up to their table, car keys in his hand. “Sorry I’m late. God, I’ve been away for, like, a month and I already forgot about L.A. traffic.”

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Jane smiled. “No worries.”

Braden sat down, which took a moment because he was super-tall (six-foot-three), and the tables and chairs on the patio were placed pretty close together. Jane noticed that he didn’t try to hug her or kiss her on the cheek. She wondered what this meant, then wondered why she cared, either way.

“Nice place,” Braden said, looking around. “A lot nicer than Big Wang’s, huh?”

Jane laughed. And it felt good. Braden had always been able to cheer her up. “I guess we are moving up in the world.”

“Yeah, well, speak for yourself. I’ll always love Big Wang’s—it’s the dive bar where I met the famous Jane Roberts, after all.”

“Ha, ha,” Jane said. “I thoughtyou were the big TV star now. You got a part in a new series, right? Isn’t that why you were in New York?”

“Actually, that kinda fell through. The pilot didn’t get picked up. My agent’s lined up some other stuff for me, though. That’s why I came back.”

“Oh…Are you back for good?”

“Yeah. New York was just temporary, anyway.”

“Oh!” Jane felt an unexpected wave of relief and happiness at this news. Maybe she had missed him more than she realized?

The waitress came by to take their orders but they weren’t ready yet. While Braden studied the menu, Jane studied him. She hadn’t really had a chance to do that last night at Teddy’s, during all the commotion. He looked mostly the same as before, but upgraded. Braden 2.0. His messy, longish dirty-blond hair was shorter, neater, more styled. He had shed a few pounds from his already slender frame. He wore a white James Perse button-down shirt instead of his usual ripped tee (although the shirt was untucked and a little wrinkled). He seemed to have traded in his black-rimmed glasses for contacts.

His bottom lip was slightly puffy from where Jesse had punched him. Jane winced at the memory and at the fact that the only communication between them in over a month was the note he had left on her door the morning after they’d hooked up—I’m not sure what last night meant, but I’m not sorry. Please call me later—which she’d never replied to, and her email to him, which he’d never replied to.

After the waitress took their orders and left, Braden turned his attention back to Jane. “So. It’s nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you, too. Are you…okay?” Jane pointed to his mouth.

Braden touched the swollen lip. “Yeah. It looks worse than it feels. I promise.”

“That’s good.”

“You probably wanna know why I asked you to lunch today.”

“Um, yeah.”Especially after you never responded to the email I sent weeks ago, Jane added silently.

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“I want to apologize about last night. If I’d known you and Jesse were going to that party, I would never have gone.”

You could’ve just picked up the phone,Jane thought, wondering why he had elected to see her face-to-face. Maybe he had missed her, too?Wishful thinking, Jane.

“Whydid you go? You hate parties like that.” Braden had always been Mr. Anti-Hollywood. Unlike Jesse, he avoided star-studded events like the plague. He wasn’t chasing fame. His dream in life was to be an obscure indie actor in artsy films. He had considered jobs in commercials, TV shows, and mainstream movies only because he knew that he had to pay the bills somehow.

Braden shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Willow invited me. She works forAlt , so I thought I should go.”

“Oh. I guess you guys are still together, then.” Jane felt an unexpected stab of jealousy. Why? She was with Jesse now.

“Well, we aren’t exactly ‘together.’” Braden hesitated. “She was pretty pissed off at me after the…you know, and anyway, she’s over it now, and she asked me to the party, so…” His voice trailed off.

Jane was silent. Braden and Willow had been dating on and off for three years. When she met Braden, he and Willow had definitely been “on.” That was one of the reasons he and Jane had stayed just friends, despite what appeared to be their mutual feelings for each other—or that was what Jane had told herself, anyway.

And they had remained just friends until that fateful night when the photographer had taken those pictures.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t return your email,” Braden said. “It’s just that…things were really bad after you took off for Mexico. My phone was ringing nonstop. Photographers followed me everywhere. I was really mad at you because I felt like you left me to clean up your mess.”

Jane gasped. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I was trying to do.”

“I know, I know.”

The waitress interrupted, bringing them their iced teas and salads. Braden waited until she was gone before continuing. “So I had to get out of L.A. immediately,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. My agent got me this audition in New York, and I just packed up my stuff and moved out of Jesse’s house and headed east. My friend has a place in the Village, so he let me crash on his couch. If the series had worked out, I was gonna find my own place there.”

Jane picked at her salad. “So where are you living now?” At Willow’s, she guessed.

“I’m, uh, crashing with a friend. I’m looking at apartments, though.”

“Well, you could always move in with Scar,” Jane said sarcastically, although she knew that the joke wasn’t very funny. “She’s probably looking for a roommate.”

Braden frowned. “You and Scarlett aren’t living together anymore?”

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Jane told him an abbreviated version of the story, still a little shocked that this was her life she was talking about. “So I moved in with Madison,” she finished. “Her parents own this huge condo. Oh, and we’re getting a puppy!”

“No way. Seriously?”

“Yeah. I can’t wait. She took me to a couple of breeders last weekend to look at these cute little poodle mixes. But I told her we should go to the shelter and adopt a dog from there. They’re the ones who really need homes, right?”