Chapter 12
12
“T o Mom and Dad,” the sisters said, but Sadie’s contribution came out in a whisper. Never had a Sunday sister brunch at Rick’s been the last place on earth she wanted to be. Their traditional toast complete, Monique stared daggers at her while Ginny amused herself—even more enthusiastically than the previous Sunday—with her social media feed.
“Oh, oh! Look at this picture,” Ginny said, spinning her phone toward them. A study in grey, Grant cradled a relatively clean Sadie high in his arms. “The caption says, ‘A Couple of Mud Bugs.’ But that’s only the start. Search on #themudcouple and there’s dozens more pics!”
“I know, I know ,” Sadie said. She poked at her fried egg with her fork. The partially hardened yoke made a weak attempt at oozing over the white. “Can we stop looking at them now?”
But Ginny, being Ginny, would never let up. “The series of three as he pulls you over the barrier and into the gunk with him is getting meme’d everywhere . I mean…,” she giggled, “your expressions!”
Sadie knew the pics all too well—the bulbous eyes in the first one as his muddy arms wrapped round her, her head tilted back and mouth like a dying trout as he yanked her from the floor in pic two, and the tightly closed lips and frightened, squinting eyes in the third as she prepared to hit the pit face first. He hadn’t let that happen, of course, but the picture series didn’t show that.
“Can we just…not?” Sadie pleaded. She snatched Ginny’s phone and turned it off. “None of that was how it was supposed to go.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Monique growled. She sounded as perturbed as Sadie had ever heard her, and that was saying something. “We had this all arranged. What happened to him getting shoved him in the mud in his fancy suit? Wasn’t he wearing a fancy suit? He was supposed to think you were going out to a nice dinner.”
“He did think that, and his suit was stupid, shiny silk. He’d even polished his leather shoes himself, because of course he’s into that sort of thing! But the second he saw that mud pit, he couldn't wait to wrestle!” She puffed her cheeks and blew out a long breath that momentarily lofted a stray curl from her forehead. “How was I supposed to know he’d been a champion mud wrestler as a kid?”
“Know thine enemy,” Monique muttered.
Two teenage girls approached their table. “Are you the Shirley Temple Mudslide Girl?” the taller of the two said, her round eyes blinking with hope and adoration.
“It is! It is her!” squealed the shorter one.
Sadie recoiled as if slapped. She hunched her shoulders and slid her entire body under the table, landing cross-legged on the cold linoleum. After the first date, she’d been a mystery girl in cute pics with a B-lister. Now that the second date went even more viral, internet sleuths were homing in on her. They didn't yet know where she lived, but they’d discovered her name. Now, total strangers in Rick’s Diner recognized her!
“Okay, girls, head on back to your own table,” she heard a friendly but firm Rick say to the teens. “Your iced lattes are melting and no sending your fries back because they’ve gotten cold.”
Rick squatted down to Sadie’s level. “You can come out now, sweetheart,” he said. His voice held sympathy, but barely repressed laughter crinkled the corners of his deep brown eyes.
“No, thanks,” Sadie said. “I’ll take my breakfast down here if you don’t mind.” The view from beneath the booth wasn’t half bad, actually—some old green gum stuck to the bottom of the tabletop and a panoramic view of the latest shoe fashions of Hollywood’s diner elites. Maybe Rick would let her camp out under this booth for the next year? In time, and with a little luck, she’d become like the green gum—a forgotten bit of refuse.
“C’mon, Sade,” Ginny said, sliding down next to Sadie in her under-table refuge. “Whatever happened to wanting to be a celebrity? You made it! Enjoy it!”
“Enjoy being made a fool of by Grant Mason?” Sadie said in a whisper scream.
“No one else knows he’s making a fool of you—they’re all convinced you’re the cutest little #MudPuppiesinLove .”
“And all publicity is good publicity, right?” Rick added, still crouching low by their table.
Ginny nodded vigorously. “It is. In fact, let’s get some T-shirts that say, “Keep Calm and Mud On” with her face on the back and sell them here at the diner!”
Sadie opened her mouth, ready to command them both to vacate her safe space, when she received a sharp kick from Monique. Ginny must have received an identical and simultaneous missive, because she popped back up to the surface at the exact same time as Sadie, both rubbing the future bruise their respective shins would soon be showing off.
“Ow,” they said in unison.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I interrupt your important meeting?” Monique said, sounding not one bit sorry.
Feeling on display again, Sadie attempted several complicated and disjointed maneuvers with her hands and shirt collar to try to hide her face and hair.
“What are you doing now?” Monique asked.
“I don’t want to be recognized by anyone else.”
After an impressive eyeroll, Monique whipped off the navy baseball cap she’d been wearing and tossed it across the table toward Sadie. “Here. Wear it low and stuff your mop top into it.”
Rick, standing now too, let out a belly laugh. “I knew this spinster pact would get interesting!” Sadie could hear his continued laughter as he sauntered back to the kitchen.
“What’s the plan for date three?” Monique asked. Her voice dropped an octave. “And it better be good.”
Sadie’s shoulders slumped till her chin practically disappeared into her neck. “I…don’t have one yet.”
Monique rubbed her forehead with one finger as if she were developing a headache. “Maybe it’s time to call your old roommates. Since they actually dated him, they probably know thine enem y better than you.”
“Maybe,” Sadie said, but she didn’t want to. None of her roommates had stayed in the LA area, but she texted or chatted with one or another of them every couple of months, keeping in touch. At least once a year, they did a group call, and it had been nearly a year since their last one. She didn’t want to call them now because it would be so much more fun to talk to them after she had exacted revenge on their behalf. “I’m sure I’ll come up with something. Honestly, I figured after this second date the whole thing would be over. J would keep her contract with B, I would get my bit part in her next movie, and Grant would…Grant would…”
“Be screwed,” Ginny said lightly.
“Well…” Sadie said.
“Persona non grata,” Ginny continued, “a Hollywood untouchable, yesterday’s beefcake, the last of the Cutehecans, sitting atop the trash heap of?—”
“STOP!” Sadie yelled, bringing half the diner to a standstill.
Ginny looked at her, wide-eyed. “What? That’s what you want, isn’t it? To destroy him?”
Sadie pulled Monique’s cap a little lower on her head, saying nothing.
“It is what you want though, right?” Monique said, her tone more Spanish Inquisition than sisterly question.
Sadie stared into the spinning cream in her coffee, wishing she could make her mind a whirling black cloud, impenetrable even to her. Lingering on the details of the evening before would only cause more confusion.
She needed to focus on older memories—memories of consoling Trish, Abby, and Carly as Grant obliterated each of their hearts in turn. Memories of them crumpled over and in tears, unable to concentrate on their classes. Trish almost lost her scholarship. Abby gained ten pounds of ice cream weight and forced them all to watch Bridget’s Diary at least a dozen times. Carly hated herself for having seen the pattern with Trish and Abby and still falling for him. She’d needed therapy to get her self-esteem back. “Guys like Grant are a plague on the earth,” Sadie had told them each, putting her Great Aunt Lydia’s phrase to good use. “Get a dog instead.”
Then Grant had gone and stolen her first love, theater, for his own. When she thought about it like that, what had happened in that bar was exactly why she was taking Grant down—because men like him get everything their hearts desire just by showing up.
She looked Monique dead in the eyes. “Yes, that’s what I want.”
So why did she feel so crappy about it?