6. Bea
6
BEA
J ake’s awake when I get home, reviewing his new script.
I ought to tell him that Easton showed up again. He’d be even more upset than I am, but for some reason, when I open my mouth to say the words, nothing comes out.
It’s really more of an Emerson conversation, but I can’t exactly call and badmouth Easton to his new brother-in-law.
“Tips good?” Jake asks when he looks up.
I shrug.
“My director wants to move filming up. I’d be starting two weeks earlier.”
“You’re leaving again?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only been home for ten days. I told Dave I wanted a solid break this time. I could just tell him no.”
“You could,” I say.
“Why do you say it like that?” He drops the script on the coffee table and stands .
“Like what?”
“Like, if I tell them no, I’m Jennifer Lopez or something.”
“I’m not saying you’re anywhere near her level, but if you’re making them delay their schedule because three weeks isn’t a long enough vacation for you. . .” I can’t help smiling. “I haven’t ever had three weeks off.”
“Filming’s hard.” He folds his arms.
“I know it is,” I say. “Wanna come wait some tables for me?”
“It’s not the same. It’s draining for me the whole time I’m filming, on and off set. Plus, I have to live in a hotel. At least you get to sleep in your own bed.”
“I have heard the Hyatt’s a tiresome place to stay.” I shake my head slowly.
“You’re kidding,” he says, “but?—”
The computer dings.
“I’ve been checking,” he says. “Nothing so far.”
I don’t get many emails, so I’ve been obsessively watching my email since I submitted my jingle.
Which is really stupid.
It’s not like I really think they’re going to reply twenty-four hours after I submitted my song, but they did say the applications were rolling and that they’d make their decision quickly after the deadline. I submitted mine right at the end, but surely not everyone procrastinates.
When I step close enough to see the computer screen, it’s an email from someone about the upcoming local election. I groan.
“There’s a special place reserved down below for spammers.” He shakes his head. “They’re like a plague.”
“It’s fine,” I say .
Only, the finals is a few days away—they said they’ll call back just a handful of composers and select from between us with the client’s involvement. They can’t take too long to notify us, right?
I shower, brush my teeth, and put on my favorite pajamas. I’m in bed, almost asleep when I hear it. Another ding. Checking now is dumb. I should go to sleep.
It’s probably an email offering me twenty percent off Ann Taylor’s summer line now that it’s fall.
But then Jake starts shouting. “Bea! Get in here!”
My heart’s hammering when I leap from bed and race into the family room.
“Dear Ms. Cipriani,” Jake says. “We are pleased to inform you that your submission of ‘Smooth like Jello’ has been chosen to advance to the final round of the competition. Your presence is requested to present your jingle on Tuesday, September 7 th , yada yada.” Jake spins around slowly, a smile spreading across his face. “You did it!”
It takes me almost an hour to fall asleep after that. I’m too excited.
I dream of the final round, and when they pick my jingle, for some reason they hang a huge wreath of roses around my neck, like I’m a horse that just won the Grand Prix. The strangest part is that, for some reason, Easton Moorland’s standing beside me when I win, beaming.
When I wake up, I check the time—late enough to call. I dial my boss immediately. “Hey, Harv,” I say.
“It’s pretty early,” he says. “Aren’t you usually still asleep at seven?”
“Did I wake you up?” I wince .
“No, but I was surprised. Today’s your day off.”
“I need to talk to you about Tuesday. I have a thing, and I just found out, and it’s kind of late notice, but I was hoping I could?—”
“No way,” Harv says. “You have to come in at noon and serve Mr. Moorland’s board. You agreed.”
I forgot all about that. “My thing is at seven at night,” I say. “So that’s fine. I was wanting to trade my shift.”
“Done,” he says. “You’re now working the lunch shift. It ends at 4.” He hangs up.
All day, no matter what I do to keep busy, I keep seeing that ridiculous rose wreath and stupid Easton Moorland smiling at me. I’m not sure where Jake went, but I’m going crazy all alone in the apartment. I open my laptop, and before I have time to think about it, I find myself typing in the search box.
Easton Moorland.
I hate myself for looking him up.
It’s not like it’s going to change anything. He’s too good looking. He’s too famous. He might not be as recognizable as Jake, because who is? But any notoriety is too much for me. Plus, there’s no way someone like him actually likes someone like me. I’m sure he only tried harder because I said no.
Guys like him probably never get told no.
I should have thought of that and found a way to just put him off. I could have said sure and then canceled. After a few scheduling issues, he’d have given up. He’d never have gone to the trouble of asking my boss for a Tuesday lunch meeting every week if I hadn’t felt hard-to-get.
There are dozens and dozens of articles on Easton Moorland .
Most of them are pretty boring. I mean, I already know he’s slaying in the business world. Reading about all the thoughts people have on why is. . .yawn. I know his parents and his sister’s name. It’s a little creepy they have them listed online, as well as the fact that his sister just married Emerson, heir to the famous Richmond fortune.
I do see the irony in the fact that I’m reading about him and yet that’s why I don’t want to date him. Because people like me read articles about him and I want no part of it.
I hate that this kind of information even exists.
And yet, I type in another search: Easton Moorland girlfriend.
I really hate myself for it, but I have to see what kind of girl he usually dates. Maybe he’s left a string of broken-hearted waitresses in his wake. It might even be his usual MO. I bet there’s, like, a warning posted online, telling all the support staff at the various places he frequents that he’s a dirty perv.
Only, every single article says he’s a self-proclaimed workaholic, and as far as they’ve been able to uncover, he’s never dated anyone .
That can’t be right.
I mean, I’ve never dated anyone more than a handful of times, but it’s mostly because no one has ever been interested in me. When you’re a mousy little nobody, people tend not to ask you out. Easton, however, is not mousy, and he’s definitely not a nobody.
There’s no mention of Miss Collagen USA, so clearly the tabloids miss some stuff. Maybe he’s been paying someone to get all the torrid stories about him cleaned up. People do that in movies. Or maybe one of his old Rutgers cronies owns a search engine, and they suppress anything bad about him someone tries to print.
So far, the articles are setting off one red flag.
When I search for something on Amazon, and there aren’t any bad reviews, I’m immediately suspicious. Did they pay for their reviews? How do they have so many good ones? Trolls are everywhere, and they like to complain. So if not a single person has left a negative review? It’s fishy.
So it worries me that no one has anything bad to say about Easton Moorland. As a business mogul, I find it bizarre. Shouldn’t he have lots of enemies? By lunchtime, it’s still bugging me, and I realize that I have no choice.
I have to call Emerson.
He answers on the second ring. That must mean he wasn’t doing anything too important. “Bea! I’m glad you called.”
“Uh-oh,” I say. “Do I owe you money I forgot about?”
“Funny,” he says. “I was just talking about you.”
“You were?” That can’t be good. “Why?”
“Remember when we were kids how you were the only one who could fix that toilet that just kept running?”
Definitely not what I expected him to say.
“We called a plumber, but they can’t come until tomorrow at four.” Emerson sounds desperate, which is kind of funny.
“You know, if your toilet’s running, you should really catch it.”
“Wah wah,” Emerson says. “Same lame jokes I remember.”
“Did you want my help? Or was that a lame joke? ”
“On second thought, that joke was clever. So clever. Ha, ha, ha.”
It’s annoying that the first time I call in at least a week, he wants me to come fix a toilet, but I do want to pry for information, so I’m not really any better. “I can’t believe your grandmother doesn’t have someone on speed dial to deal with any problem, including plumbing.”
“Andre, her groundskeeper and handyman, is on a trip,” Emerson says. “But even if he wasn’t, this toilet is at the shelter.”
Of course it is. Where else would they be on a Sunday afternoon? I swear, if Elizabeth wasn’t such a kook about animals, I’d have thought she married Emerson for his money. The only thing that woman spends money on is horses and pathetic, unloved critters.
“If I come over, you have to swear you aren’t going to try and fob one of those little fuzzies off on me.”
“You know, the tiny Shih Tzu you liked is still here,” he says. “He’s actually kind of whimpering right now, and. . .what’s that, Ivin? You miss Bea?”
I hang up.
On my way out the door, I glance down at my outfit. I’m still wearing the shabby plaid pajama pants and faded navy t-shirt that I slept in. Emerson got me the pajama pants a few years back for Christmas, and Jake gave me the shirt for my birthday when I was sixteen. It says, “Yeah, I’m short. God only lets things grow until they’re perfect. Why are you so tall?” I would normally change before leaving the house, but I’m going to be working on a toilet, and when I’m done, they’ll probably need help with the kennels.
The last time I went over, I ruined a brand new pair of khaki capri pants Jake gave me for my birthday. They were designer, which he told me in a very high-pitched voice as I tossed the urine soaked and scratched pants in the wash. To be fair, I think his tone was less about my pants and their condition and more about the clothes he already had in the washer. Apparently he didn’t want them marinated in my filth.
Anyway, I’m nearly to my ten-year-old Toyota Camry when Jake pulls into the spot next to me in his Nissan Z. He claims it’s ‘not flashy,’ and that it lets him ‘fly under the radar.’ I might’ve believed him if it wasn’t electric blue.
“Where you off to?” He scrunches up his nose. “Nowhere public, I hope.”
Jake never leaves the house without looking like he’s ready to walk onto the set of some commercial or other. Ironically, he often spends half of his movie scenes covered with fake blood or carefully designed grime, but in real life, he’s pristine.
I heft my home repair tool bag across to the passenger seat. “I’m helping Emerson with a toilet.”
“That’s even worse than anything I imagined.” He shakes his head as he walks past me. He throws a hand back in a half-hearted wave. “If you run into trouble. . .” He laughs. “Don’t call me. I definitely won’t answer.”
“You’re an amazing brother,” I shout. “The best!”
He pivots from where he’s standing on our threshold. “You know, that guy could hire a full-time plumber to just be on call, and no one would ever notice. Why on earth he needs to make his sister go over there to work on a toilet. . .” He’s still grumbling as he walks through the door and disappears.
I think Jake’s problem is that he spent so long taking advantage of people that he always thinks people are trying to bilk him. No one I know is more sensitive to someone else asking for a favor—he repays everything anyone ever does for him, and he expects everyone else to do the same. Not with me, but with literally every other person in his life.
On the drive to Emerson’s, I intend to think about what kind of outfit I should wear to the finals on Tuesday. Instead, I keep thinking about Easton. What he does on Sundays. Does he work on weekends? What kind of pet he might have or want to have? Whether he likes helping at the shelter. Whether he’s a good mentor to that kid.
It’s the dumbest thing ever that after turning him down, twice really, I keep thinking about him. My one consolation is that no one else knows what I’m thinking. They can’t see my pathetic dreams or my ridiculous thoughts. And if I’m planning to work in questions about Easton while I help my brother selflessly, well, there’s no reason for me to feel bad about it.
Who would know what his love life is like better than Elizabeth?
That girl does not pull punches.
She does play dirty, though. When I walk through the door, there’s a box of puppies in the entryway. “Seriously?” One of them has a bow around its neck like I’ve walked into some kind of Hallmark movie. “You guys are disgustingly obvious.”
“You think we put cute puppies in a box there just so you’d see them and want one?” Emerson waves me through. “Please. Someone dumped those guys twenty minutes ago. People are the worst.”
I crouch down. “They do look like little angels.” The one closest to me clamps down on my index finger and I revise my assessment. “They’re actually gremlins, aren’t they?”
“We think they’re some kind of German Shepherd cross.” Emerson tugs on my shoulder. “But for real, thank you. This stupid facility has a septic, and it’s one of the dumb newer ones with the water tanks that have to spray off. I was starting to worry we’d wind up with toilets backing up any time.”
“I’m coming,” I say. “Geez.”
It takes me exactly two minutes to figure out that the handle on the toilet is jammed and won’t unstick. “Bad news,” I say. “This needs a new handle, and I brought an extra flapper, but I don’t have that.”
“How do you know so much about toilets?” Elizabeth asks.
“Well, my mom got high a lot,” I say. “And when they thought someone was coming to catch them, they’d always flush their supply. Paranoid people do that a lot when they aren’t even being chased.” I sigh. “We didn’t stay in nice places most of the time, so a lot of their toilets couldn’t handle any extra stress. As a kid, I got pretty good at looking things up on YouTube so I could still go pee.”
Elizabeth’s face is incredulous. She can’t decide whether I’m teasing.
This is just another reason Easton and I would be a total disaster. I wish I could ask about him without looking completely obvious, but I can’t think of any way to do that, so I just say, “I’ll head to the hardware store and be back in a bit.”
“You do think you can fix it though?” Elizabeth asks as she follows me out of the bathroom.
“Pretty sure,” I say .
“I can go with you.” Emerson grabs his keys off the counter. “I can even drive.”
Elizabeth narrows her eyes. “I’m onto you, mister. You just don’t want to have to help me finish the kennels.”
Emerson throws his hands up in the air. “I offered to come, remember? I could have stayed home.”
“You can work on the kennels with me, and Easton can take her,” Elizabeth says, pointing toward the front of the shelter. “I think he just got here, and he’s useless with this kind of stuff, but he could at least drive her there for moral support.”
My heart stops dead.
Easton’s coming?
I want to cry—I’m wearing frayed plaid pajama pants and a ratty shirt. I mean, I don’t want to date him, but so far he’s seen me wearing my work uniform. . .and now this. If any part of him did actually like me, well, it was nice while it lasted, feeling desirable.
Not that I care.
Actually, this is probably better. I stick my chin up and square my shoulders. “Sure. Easton can take me. Why not?”
“Yes, why not?” Elizabeth asks. “You’re doing us a huge favor, so you shouldn’t have to pay for gas to and from the store.” She raises her voice. “Easton! I heard bells jingling. That’s you, right?”
“Yep.” He pokes his head around the corner of the door, and his eyes widen. “Bea?”
I sigh. “Come on.” I shove past him and toward the front door, the dogs in the front kennel yapping louder again now that we’re walking past them. “You’re driving me to the hardware store.”
Easton’s beaming. “Sure thing, boss. ”
When we reach the front door, I stop, turning slightly. I press my index finger toward his face, which is really high up. “You will not flirt. You will not ask me out. You will not even think about doing either of those things.”
“Hmm.” He cocks one eyebrow. “I can refrain from asking you out, but I’m not sure you can dictate my thoughts.”
I ball my hands into fists. “I’m wearing pajama pants and an old shirt, because I’m here to fix a toilet.”
“You’re super cute when you’re all growly.”
“I’m not growly.” I scowl. The gremlin puppies are crying and clawing, trying to get out of their sad little box, and I point at them. “They’re growly. I’m firm.”
He laughs. “I won’t ask you out, I swear, but if you start flirting with me, I can’t be held responsible for flirting back.”
I roll my eyes and walk toward my car.
“I thought I was driving.”
“Oh, right.” I look around for his car.
He pulls out his key fob, and I’m shocked to see that he’s driving the boring gunmetal Toyota 4Runner parked on the end.
“Really?”
He shrugs. “Elizabeth told me she needed help at the shelter. The last time I came over in something nice, let’s just say I regretted it.”
It’s his equivalent of my pajama pants and t-shirt. Clearly he has more than one car, though, which I find somewhat entertaining.
“What?”
I shrug. “Nothing. It just wasn’t the car I expected you to drive.”
“What did you think I’d drive?” His eyebrows rise. “ Please don’t say a Ferrari or something.” He follows me over and yanks the door open.
“I can’t say I’d thought about it much.” I’d die before I let him know I was googling him. “I’m kind of surprised to hear you help at the shelter.” I hop in the car.
He leans on the doorframe, his face only a foot away from mine. “I’ll probably keep surprising you for a while yet, Beatrice Cipriani.”
Before I can say anything, he closes the door and jogs around to his side. When he gets in, he acts like everything’s totally normal. “Cornell’s? Or Wallauer?”
“Cornell’s,” I say. “Wallauer’s overpriced.”
“Good to know.” He’s smiling for some reason. Maybe because the thought of economizing on a toilet handle is stupid to a man like him, and that kind of bugs me.
“You know, you’ll do better in life by controlling your spending than just earning more.”
“Really?” He lifts his eyebrows. “You think so?”
“Well, taxes just go up the more you make, for one. But also, no matter how much money you have, if you can’t live within your means, you’ll never be financially stable.”
“I suppose that’s true,” he says. “And you’re right about the government taking my money. Taxes are no joke.”
“I guess,” I say, staring down at my hands.
I expect him to ask me something, or to pry, or to talk about the upcoming board meeting. He surprises me again by simply driving. He’s just. . .quiet.
Neither Emerson nor Jake is even capable of that. When they’re with me, someone has to be talking. The silence is kind of nice. I didn’t expect to be almost comfortable in his presence. Or at least, I’m not climbing out of my skin like I usually am when he’s at work, watching me.
When we reach the hardware store, he follows me inside, observing without interfering. I’ve just picked the handle that I think is the right color and size when I hear someone giggling.
It’s two women. One of them is older, and one is close to my age. “—understand how people can go out in pajamas. Seriously.”
“You know, Bea, I’ve never understood how people could express their opinions about others in public without being embarrassed about how rude they are.” Easton glares. “Especially when they’re clearly jealous of the person they’re talking about.”
The women look horrified, but they walk the other direction.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” I walk straight toward the checkout.
“Why not?” He’s jogging to catch up. “They were being really rude.”
“I am wearing pajamas. I didn’t think I’d be coming shopping—I was fixing a toilet. But it wasn’t the flapper; it was the handle. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t be dressed like this in public.”
“It’s your fault that, what? That you’re wearing perfectly acceptable clothing that covers your body entirely?” He snorts. “Do you know what kind of trash some people wear? Sometimes they leave their booties or who knows what else just hanging out.”
That makes me laugh. “I suppose some people do wear questionable things.”
“I’ve never commented on their decisions, and those people can butt out about what you’re wearing. I’m the person who’s out and about with you, and I think you look cute. Their opinion isn’t wanted.” Before I can pay, he swipes his card and drops the handle into a bag.
“Are you saying your opinion on what I’m wearing does matter?” I arch an eyebrow.
“I mean, clearly it doesn’t to you, but if the person you’re here with isn’t embarrassed, and you’re covering the relevant parts of your body to be decent in public, then you shouldn’t let them drag you.”
“I’m not their mother.” I snatch the bag and walk toward his 4Runner. “It’s not my job to teach them anything. I take the path of least resistance when I’m in situations like that.”
“Noted.”
“Wait.” I stop at the car door, my hand already on the handle. “What’s noted?”
“That you prefer to ignore rude people, rather than confront them.”
“It’s not like we’ll be going to Cornell’s often.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that,” Easton says. “My sister’s shelter is a bit of a mess, even after the remodel. We may bump into each other a lot in the next decade.”
I can’t help laughing about that, because it’s true. Things there break a lot, which is the nature of a place that has people flowing through it constantly. It’s probably even more true of places that take in animals.
“It looks like they’re just as shameless about using you as they are with me.”
“Only when they can’t get a plumber on the line,” I say.
“Actually, they’ve never called me to help before,” Easton says. “I was telling Elizabeth this morning that I had a crush on you, and she said that the next time she saw you, she’d text and tell me to rush over. ”
I freeze.
Easton’s eyes are steady on mine.
I blink. “You—you’re kidding.”
He smiles. “Of course I am.” He unlocks the car, and this time, he lets me open my own, but he doesn’t walk around to his side until I’ve closed my door.
On the way back to the shelter, he’s totally normal—no jokes.
Part of me wonders whether I imagined the flirting, but it’s happened too many times now. So when he pulls into a parking spot and cuts the engine, I break the silence. “Easton.”
He turns toward me, a half-smile tugging on the edges of his mouth. “Beatrice.”
“No one calls me that,” I snap.
“Why not? It’s pretty.”
“Let me rephrase. Only my mother and my grandfather call me that, and I hate it.”
“Bea it is,” he says. “Sorry to have stepped on that landmine.”
“It’s fine.” It’s really weird I even told him that. Usually I just cringe and ignore it. Always, actually. I always cringe and let it go.
“My parents call me Eastie whenever they want something. It may not be the same, but I hate that, too. I’m not three years old.”
“Do your parents ask you for stuff a lot?”
“Like fixing toilets, you mean?” he asks.
I shrug. “Sure.”
“Not really. They do ask me for money pretty often. Always have.”
“Usually I think it goes the other way, but mine was always asking me, too.” My mom took any two dimes I managed to rub together as a kid, so I guess I get it. But once I got older and had a job, she was downright hostile and persistent. “You should shut that down fast.”
“What?” Easton frowns. “Shut what down?”
“Do you know what enabling is?”
His frown deepens.
“It took me a lot of therapy to learn that when I give my mother money, I’m enabling the behaviors that led to her asking me for money. I thought I was helping, but it does at least as much harm as it does good. It only took a half dozen times of me refusing point blank and telling her I’d only give her food before she quit asking me.”
“My parents aren’t junkies.” He hops out of the car.
He’s out talking to Emerson when I finish fixing the toilet handle. I wash my hands—their soap is mostly donated I know, but the bubble gum smell is annoying—and head back to the front. “I survived the gauntlet,” I say. “Your ploys didn’t work.”
“What?” Elizabeth doesn’t quite get my humor yet.
“I passed through the portal of puppies, and I’m leaving without one.”
“You’re leaving?” Easton asks.
I nod.
“Oh. Well.”
“Hey, what happened with that jingle contest?” Emerson asks.
I want to kick him.
“What jingle contest?” Easton asks.
“Bea plays piano like. . .well, like the Piano Guys or something. She’s amazing, and she’s always making up songs, too. She entered this jingle contest, or at least, she was going to.”
“I did,” I say.
“And?” Emerson asks. “When do you hear back? ”
“I made it to the finals,” I say softly. “It’s on Tuesday.”
“Yes!” Emerson wraps me in a bear hug. “That’s amazing, B.”
“I mean, there are five of us, and we have to perform the jingle ourselves for a live audience so they can choose the winner.” I tilt my head and widen my eyes. He knows why that’s not great for me.
“Oh, shoot.” Emerson grimaces. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Easton asks.
“I can’t sing well, for one,” I say. “But also, I hate performing. I’m good at writing music, not at putting on a show.”
“Can you have someone else do it for you?” Easton asks.
“Are you offering?” I ask.
“Oh, heavens no,” he says. “I sound like the seagull in The Little Mermaid. ”
“He actually does,” Elizabeth says. “His voice is an assault.”
“Bea’s not bad,” Emerson says. “It’s just that since she was a music major, she always compares herself to these opera quality singers.”
“I’d love to come watch and support you,” Easton says.
“Me too,” Emerson says. “What time is it?”
“It’s at seven at night,” I say. “But I don’t think we can take an audience.”
Emerson frowns. “But surely?—”
I shake my head. “I’ll email and ask, alright?”
“Swear?” My brother does not let things go. It’s one of his most annoying traits. He holds out his pinkie.
I slap his hand. “I swear, idiot.” Even if we pinky promised last week, he should know better than to do it in front of anyone else.
“I’m really proud of you. I mean it.”
“And I’m impressed,” Easton says. “I really want to come see you too. I’m a great clapper.”
“A great clapper ?” Elizabeth frowns. “Why are you being so idiotic?” She turns to me. “He’s not usually this corny, I swear. Actually, the only time I’ve ever seen him act this dumb was when I brought my friend Andie over and. . .” She freezes, and then she turns very slowly. “No freaking way. Do you like my adorable sister-in-law?”