Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SEAMUS
I have a one-track mind.
Emma, reaching down between her legs, her lips parted, her eyes on me.
Emma, bared to me.
Emma .
I already know it’ll never be enough to just look…
I knew it that first night, two months ago, when she opened herself to me, only to slam the door in my face and leave me out in the cold.
“Oh, that’s good,” Ellie says, beaming at me from across the two-top table we’re sitting at in the private event space at Buchanan Brewery—a room with wood paneling, low lighting, and two-top tables with high chairs. An empty room, other than us. The murmur of conversation can be heard from the adjoining tasting room, but Nicole managed to score us this private space, which is good news, because the mask makes me look like a teenager who just broke into a gas station and is demanding Slim Jims and beer or else.
“Yes,” Ellie croons at me, “look at me like that while she takes the photo. That’s perfect. ”
The “she” in question is Nicole, who’s dressed as her “Nicky” the contest supervisor persona. Nicky has teased orange hair and an eighties vibe with a Buchanan Brewery sweatshirt tied at the waist and big hoop earrings. As she predicted, Ellie has not made the connection between her and the driver who brought us to this brewery.
Nicole must have high-tailed it to the bathroom immediately after she parked the car and pulled a Mrs. Doubtfire-level miracle, because she showed up five minutes after a lanky, shifty-looking kid with a mop of hair showed us back here.
Statistically unlikely, but it is the full moon Leap Day, after all, something Ellie has brought up at least ten times today. She brought it up so much she had me thinking it too, especially because we seemed to hit every red light on the way into town.
“Should we have Alfonso here take his shirt off?” Nicole presses after taking the photos.
I give her a screw you look she responds to with a sweet smile, and Ellie, thank God, shakes her head.
Her next words give me pause, though: “I think it needs to happen on the livestream.”
“Oh, for sure .” Nicole hands back the phone, then asks, “Would you like any appetizers to eat off your friend’s abs?”
“Very funny,” I say, feeling very done with this bullshit. The mask itches, it’s been aggravating the bump on my head, and Ellie hasn’t said anything more revealing than that Jeffrey was “a big grump” earlier, and he “needed to be reminded of his place.” But I can’t give up. Three things need to happen tonight—Ellie needs to get comfortable enough to say more than she should, Emma needs time to search her room, and Jeffrey needs motivation to get off his ass and come to Asheville, preferably with a suitcase full of incriminating information.
“I’ll get you some drinks,” Nicole says. “That’s part of your special pampering tonight, although I have a delightful program planned for you. Really. Everyone in town is excited you’re here. I wouldn’t be surprised if they burst into song if you get up to go to the bathroom.”
She’s laying it on a bit thick, but Ellie looks like she’s basking in it. Giving a little titter, she says, “I do have plenty of fans here, although I’m not much of a beer drinker. All those carbs. What I’d love is a Midori sour.”
Which is full of sugar.
I smile indulgently at her. “I remember you mentioning that earlier.”
“Of course, we can do that for you,” Nicole says. “Anything for our favorite star.”
Ellie smiles back at her. “Thank you so much. I don’t like to cause trouble. I hate to put anyone out of their way at all. It’s the worst feeling in the world. But can you make sure they have the good cherries? Maraschino cherries have that awful red dye in them, and I cannot. So no cherries at all if they’re the bad cherries. And can you ask if the ice is made from filtered water? I’m very sensitive to toxins.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely going to do all of that,” Nicole says before backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.
Ellie starts messing with her phone and then grins up at me. “We look good.”
She flashes the screen at me, and there we are in the ambient light of the private room, me in my Slim-Jim thief mask leaning toward her across the round high-top table. Looking at her like I worship the ground she walks on.
Because I was thinking about Emma.
That’s a worrying development, and so is the text beneath the photo.
When God closes a door, he gives you a sexy masked man who knows how to open a window. What do you think, Reeders, should I go for it? Any guesses about who my friend is? #goforit #whosthatmaskeddaddy #leaveyourexonleapday #onwardandupward.
I lift the mask, which feels stupid and unnecessary given I’m not currently on camera. “Uh, I don’t really want people trying to guess who I am. That was the whole point of wearing a mask.”
My brother will flip his lid, and then I might have to tell him everything…
“Oh don’t worry,” she says, waving a hand at me. “Most of the people on the internet are stupid, and it’s not like you’re famous or anything.” She squints her eyes at me as if trying to see me better. “Wait, you’re not famous , are you?”
“Not famous,” I agree. “But I don’t want my private life made public.”
She releases a loud, gusty sigh. “Yeah, I get that. I mean, it’s pretty nice having fans who love you and send you free stuff, but it’s hard having everyone think they know you. It starts to feel like no one knows you. Like you don’t even know yourself.”
It’s a surprisingly deep thought from someone who’s taken at least a dozen selfies in the past hour, and it hits home more than I was prepared for it to. I’m a man who wears someone else’s last name. James . A man who can’t talk about his childhood with anyone but his brother and sister. A man whose brother and sister don’t know about the most pivotal moment in his life. A liar.
Sometimes I feel like it’s impossible to be close to anyone, because no one really knows me. Even my family.
Ellie’s gaze drifts back down to the phone. “Wow, there are already, like, fifty comments of people guessing who you are. That’s fast. This is going to be huge . Thanks, Alfonso.”
“Fantastic,” I say flatly.
I adjust the mask on my forehead, watching as she scrolls through the comments.
Nicole opens the door a few minutes later, holding a tray with two cocktails and a plate of fried food.
“I was able to verify that the ice is made from the finest mountain spring water,” she says in a very serious tone. “Collected each morning from the Blue Ridge Mountains. And they tell me the cherries are one-hundred-percent naturally bright red.”
“What are those?” I ask, grabbing one of the fried things as she sets them down. The last thing I ate was a piece of dried toast at Cracker Barrel, and my stomach is rumbling.
“Frog legs in celebration of Leap Day,” Nicole says.
I set it down. “Could we get some dry toast?”
Ellie downs the first cocktail in two gulps.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Nicole shouts, pumping her elbow up and down. “Would you like another drink?”
She’s back seconds later with a second drink for Ellie, who sucks it down as fast as the first. I catch her glancing at the door, as if hoping Nicole will sweep in with more Midori, so I slide her the drink I had no intention of touching. She takes a sip and then starts talking mid-sentence as if picking up a conversation we put on pause hours ago. “It’s just…don’t cancel on me last minute, you know? Like, doesn’t Jeffrey understand how embarrassing that was? I mean, you were expecting two people, right, and you got one.”
“The better one,” I comment, actually meaning it. Don’t get me wrong: she sucks, and she’s convinced herself she’s a saint who never asks for half of what she deserves. In comparison to Jeffrey, though…
My loathing for that man is growing with each passing minute. Mostly because of what he did with Emma, but being subjected to this conversation isn’t helping.
“Yes, thank you. Thank you ,” she says. “I mean, he’s got everything a man could possibly want, right? A great career. Me. But he’s so critical. In the beginning, it was all Ellie, your husband is a fool. And Ellie, let’s make something beautiful together. I won’t be ashamed to be on your socials with you. You can plaster me all over them. So I agreed to give it a go. And when he had this woman stalking him, I stood behind him.”
“He had a stalker?” I ask, trying to sound interested and not pissed on Emma’s behalf.
“That’s why he didn’t want to come to Asheville,” she says with an aggravated sigh. “It’s this woman who worked in his office. I guess she secretly had a thing for him. When she realized that he and I were seeing each other, she flipped out. I mean, I was there. She threw a cactus at his head, and he had a burr stuck in the middle of his forehead. I had to pluck it out with tweezers.”
Go, Emma , I think, hiding a smile.
“She called him a lot of ugly names, too, but I got it all on camera, and we were able to show it to the police officers. Jeffrey says it’s very hard for a man to get a restraining order against a woman, but we had the footage, of course, and she’d also sent him some strange text messages. Anyway, she lives near here, and he was worried she’d see my posts and live casts. That’s why he decided not to come. But who cares? I mean, it’s been months. She’s not going to track us down to throw more cactuses at us.” She shrugs carelessly. “And if she did, we’d just call the cops. Easy.”
I loosen my jaw with difficulty. “Sounds like Jeffrey’s a coward.”
“No, I wouldn’t call him a coward, exactly,” she says, her brows creasing. “He killed an enormous spider in my bedroom last week. But he does like to get his way. Lately, he can’t stop complaining about my music, how messy my house is, and how much time I spend on social media, as if it’s not my literal job. You don’t see me calling him out for giving people shitty legal advice, do you?”
“Shitty legal advice, huh?”
Taking a sip of the drink, she says, “ Yes , shitty advice. He had to pay off a few people to keep them quiet. They were going to sue him. Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be? Getting sued by a client for giving them bad advice? And the money had to come from somewhere, you know. He wasn’t about to offer up his own savings to rescue the firm.”
“He must trust you a lot, to tell you something like that,” I say.
She laughs. “He didn’t tell me.” Her face gets a pinched look. “He thinks I’m stupid. So he talks to his clients in front of me as if I’m not there. But I’m not stupid. I made recordings and collected the information. It’s always a good idea to have collectibles. I keep everything.” Grinning at me, she lifts her eyebrows, “No one gets to leave me unless I want to be left. Sometimes Jeffrey needs to be reminded of that. Like today.”
She meant collateral, I’m pretty sure, and my pulse picks up. Because this means she’s got the goods on the asshole. Making nice with this woman has just become priority number one.
I whistle through my teeth. “He must have been pretty pissed off.”
“Oh, he was, but he took off in a huff anyway, saying no one gets to control him.” Her mouth firms into a pissed-off line. “Especially an airhead with fake tits and a bad credit score.”
“He said that to you?” I ask, not having to fake my incredulity. “What a complete and total dick.”
“You’re right,” she says. “I’d called him an uptight boomer, but he is an uptight boomer. I have an 800 credit score, I'm a successful businesswoman, and my surgeon did a fantastic job. You know what? Fuck Jeffrey. My ex-husband was a coward too. He hated that my social media accounts were blowing up, and he didn’t understand why I went to Jeffrey for legal help. Fuck—”
The door starts to open, the murmuring from the adjoining room growing louder, and she shouts, “ Fuck you .”
The door closes.
“Sorry,” the person calls, so it definitely wasn’t Nicole.
“Anyway,” Ellie says to me as if nothing had happened. “I don’t want to talk about him . Jeffrey betrayed me. He—”
This is getting good, but she cuts herself off, glancing at the camera. “The livestream. We have to do the livestream I promised my fans. I can’t let them down. They’re expecting a love story. It needs to be a love story. They’re going to forget all about Jeffrey, and he’s going to realize the only reason people took notice of him was me .”
“There’s no rush,” I say. “Let’s—”
There’s a timid knock on the door.
“Come in,” I say, lowering the mask again.
The nervous young guy who let us into this room walks inside, a bit of a flop sweat beneath the armpits of his shirt. “Hi,” he says cautiously. “I’m Otis. I’m the guy you just told to fuck off.”
“So why didn’t you?” Ellie asks with a straight face. “I’m sick of men walking all over me. Taking and taking and taking and never, ever giving.”
“Uh. Nicky sent me back here. I’m supposed to give you a tour of the brewery while she prepares a surprise for you out back.”
“See, he’s a giver,” I tell Ellie with a smile.
“Is it a behind-the-scenes tour?” she asks, pushing her bottom lip out as she considers.
“Yes,” he says, “very exclusive.”
Those must be the magic words, because she gets to her feet. “Do you have any beer that tastes good?” she asks. “Because I don’t like the ones that taste like beer.”
“I need to climb up there,” Ellie says, eyeing the copper kettle at the back of the brewery. We made our way through the tap room, where—no shit—a table of very drunk people burst into song. Nicole obviously must have paid them off, but Ellie beamed at them and signed a couple of napkins that were probably crumpled and tossed the second we left. Everyone was staring at us, and especially at me, which felt like a natural reaction to seeing a man in a full ski mask walk through the brewery.
It was a relief when Otis led us into the back to show off the kettles. He just pointed out this one, where the brewery’s new pale ale is maturing inside.
I’ve wanted to take a pause so I can text Nicole and Emma about the collectibles , but Ellie’s constant demands for attention have made that too risky. She’s exactly the kind of person who’d look over someone’s shoulder.
“Uh, I’m sorry,” Otis says. “But no one’s allowed up there except for the head brewer. There was an incident a few years ago where a contaminant got into the beer, and—”
Ellie is already removing her high heels.
“Miss—”
“It’s fine,” she says dismissively, shoving the heels at me. I let them fall.
She gasps. “Those are vintage. They can’t be on the floor .”
“Yes, God forbid they be used for their intended purpose,” I say. “Look…I’ll take a photo or video of you in front of the kettle. It’ll be just as good.”
She considers the offer for half a second before shaking her head and picking up the shoes, which she shoves at Otis, who accepts them.
Then she starts padding toward the kettle in her stockinged feet. The floor looks clean, with rubber honeycomb matting on top of the concrete, but I wouldn’t want to walk on it in my bare or nearly bare feet, and the fact that she’s doing it without hesitation suggests she’s tanked.
“I don’t want to cause trouble, but this can’t be avoided. The video needs to be taken while I’m on the ladder,” she says, “I won’t get anywhere near the top. And it’ll be fantastic publicity for your brewery. Your bosses will be wowed.”
“Miss—”
He reaches for her arm, but she sidesteps him.
“I can’t let you do this,” he tries.
“I can make or break you,” she snaps, giving him a stare-down. “Make or break. I closed down a rabbit spa with one post.”
A laugh escapes me, because I’m guessing that had more to do with an unsound business plan than her social media empire, but Otis looks chastened. He holds her gaze for five seconds before nodding. “Okay, if you’re quick.”
“I still think it’s a bad idea, for the record,” I tell Ellie. “You’ve been drinking.”
“Are you implying I’m drunk?” she replies belligerently.
“Yes,” I say. “You’re not walking in a straight line, you had three Midori sours, multiple samples of beers that don’t taste like beer, and five minutes ago you asked if it was beer before alcohol or alcohol before beer that put a person in the clear. You should go back to the hotel to sleep it off.”
She gives me a furious look as she stalks toward the copper kettle—and proceeds to bang into the side, conking her head, because she’s staring at me.
The guy who works here looks about ready to shit his pants, but he hurries over with her shoes still in his hand. “Uh, are you okay, ma’am? Are you—”
“Do not drop those shoes,” she says. “They can’t touch the floor.”
He looks confused, understandably, but he nods ten times as she turns to glare at me. “You’re an assistant, Alfie. Your place is to do what I tell you to do. Do you have the camera ready? Make it look good. Or else I’ll be breaking you too. I’m sorry to take that tone with you, but I believe in people doing their jobs, and assistant’s job is to assist.”
Sighing, I say, “You haven’t given me your phone.”
If she’s chagrined, it doesn’t show. She tugs it out of her purse and hands it to me. “Make sure to get my left profile. The left is the best.”
The staircase is on the opposite side of the kettle, but I’m not inclined to point it out. She’d probably ask Otis to move it so we can get her good side on film, and the kid looks so desperate for approval, he’d probably try.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.”
Because I doubt she’s going to give me anything good while she’s focused on making a video. It’s not exactly an atmosphere for confessions.
She climbs three rungs of the ladder, glances at me, then says, “Actually, you should livestream this. Oooh, yes, I want you to livestream this. People need to know how much fun we’re having. Jeffrey will see that I don’t need some middle-aged bore cutting into my good time.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I say again.
“You’re not paid to think,” she replies, her tone increasingly belligerent. “Remember? You’re paid to do what I tell you to do.”
Actually, I’m being paid to do what Nicole tells me to do—and my only directives are to keep Ellie busy and keep her talking, so I guess it doesn’t matter if she makes an ass of herself on camera. I felt a little bad for her earlier, crappy personality aside, but I’m not her babysitter. If things go wrong for her in front of her precious audience, she’ll have no one to blame but herself.
The kid shakes his head subtly in my peripheral vision, but he’s too accommodating for his own good. That token objection is all he provides.
“Let’s give her what she wants, chief,” I say, turning on the livestream and aiming the camera on Ellie.
“Let them know what you’re up to,” I say.
“Reeders,” she croons, suddenly all sunshine and sweet tea, “I’m here at Buchan Brewery—”
“Buchanan,” the kid says—and is skewered with a look that has five-inch nails.
“Actually, you take the camera, Buchan Employee. I want my fans to see my beautiful masked man. They’ll want to officially meet him”
Fantastic.
The kid hurries up to me to claim the phone, the flop sweat under his arms having gotten so bad it’s almost joined in the front. He smells like fear and corn chips, seasoned with hops.
“We don’t need to do this,” I comment. “I doubt it’ll end well for anyone.”
“The customer is always right,” he parrots in a shell-shocked voice as he takes the phone from me—and immediately turns it on me.
I’ve worked in customer service for years, so I know for a fact that’s not true. The vast majority of the time, the customer is not right. People come in for a tire rotation when no amount of rotation in the universe is going to get them what they need—new tires. People insist they don’t need a new air filter, even if theirs has been reduced to Swiss cheese. There’s a reason they came to you and didn’t do it themselves…
Ellie doesn’t know anything about beer or kettles, and she shouldn’t be climbing up the side of one. But this guy’s clearly scared of Ellie and inclined to do whatever she asks.
At least this is taking time. It’s possible that whatever Ellie has on Jeffrey is hidden in her hotel room, and if it is, then maybe I’m giving Emma what she needs—time to search. Hundreds of hours of time, it feels like, even though it’s probably been less than two.
I back away from the camera, wave to it, and gesture him over to Ellie.
“Are we ready to go live again?” she asks, even though the feed has been live the whole time. “Make sure you get my good side, and don’t film my ass from below—it’s not flattering.”
The kid looks freaked out, because she obviously doesn’t realize what’s up, but he nods as if he can rewind time through sheer force of will.
“Great. Three, two, one, action !” she says, then turns on her sweet tea voice. “I’m here at Buchan Brewery with my masked man. Come here, honey,” she says, beckoning me forward. “Don’t be shy for the camera.”
I walk toward her, reminding myself it’s for Emma. All of this is for Emma.
Ellie wraps an arm around my neck, giving me a whiff of Midori that turns my stomach. “We’re here in front of this gorgeous copper kettle, Reeders. What do you think, should I climb it? Life’s an adventure if we make it one, right? Let’s make this a Leap Day to remember.”
Without waiting for any kind of input, she starts up the ladder in her stockinged feet. “I’ve climbed the first rung,” she announces.
The kid looks at me in shock from above the phone, as if to ask, Is she seriously going to announce each rung?
The answer to that is yes .
The mask itches and my head aches, and I’m doing this for Emma.
Ellie makes it five rungs before she starts to slip.
“A little slippery here, Reeders,” she says with a shaky laugh, then takes another two steps. She’s nearly to the top. What’s she going to do when she gets there? Sit on it?
“Eight,” she says, and then her stockinged feet slip on the slick metal, and she falls in an inelegant tumble that has me lunging forward to catch her.
I do, but I trip over the rubber mat in my haste to get to her, and land hard. Pain bursts in my side. Shit. I think I might have cracked a rib. Ellie scrabbles to hold onto me—and before I know what’s happening or why or how, my mask has come off.
“Buchan boy,” Ellie shouts, looking over my shoulder at him. “Did you get that? My masked man saved me!”
“Yes,” he says as he pads over. I’m amused to see her shoes are still clutched in his other hand. “Yeah. It’s still running.” Shifting his gaze to me, he says, “Do you…uh…need medical help?”
Now he asks.
I hear an uproar from inside of the tasting room. Someone shouts, glass cracks, and a woman screams. As much as we all have our ego, I’m pretty certain it has nothing to do with my mishap. A few seconds later, a harried woman rushes into the room. “Otis, I need you. There’s a sk—”
She cuts herself off when she notices me lying on the floor, because my mask is pushed up, and we know each other.
It’s Bad Luck Sophie.