Chapter 11
Eleven
Now
CJ
Wyatt’s sisters are happily performing acts of bioterrorism when I slide into the Oakwood’s massive kitchen, fully clown-elfed just to be safe.
“Hi!” Becks flings her arms around my neck and squeezes. “This is the most fun.”
“I fear I’m turning you into a criminal,” I say, squeezing her back and resolutely ignoring the food-prep schmutz on her gloved fingers.
“Nah, but I might major in chemistry once I get to college. This is cool.” She turns back to her work slipping peppers into the mozzarella, prosciutto, and pickled peach skewers bound for Howard.
“How about you?” I ask Drea as we work. “Any post-high school plans?”
“Art.” She glances up through her long bangs. “You’re Liv’s friend, right?”
“Best friend.”
Another teenage eye roll. “Okay. But she’s been talking to me about, like, programs and jobs and things.”
“This makes my heart so happy,” I tell her and geez, does this kid ever run out of annoyed-at-adults facial expressions? I’m saved from becoming even more uncool in her eyes when Wyatt strolls into the kitchen, completely out of place in his mouthwatering tux.
Bad, CJ. There’s nothing mouthwatering about this man. You’re just thinking about the yummy pickled peaches, not this man’s yummy peachy anything.
“Why are you here?” I ask, attempting to shut down my intrusive thoughts.
“What, at this party?” He shoots me a smug smile. “Because I’m a very important member of the business community.”
“I meant in this kitchen,” I say, “although I’d love to ask the universe why you’re here on this earth at the same time and in the same place that I am.”
He drops his head and rubs his forehead like I’m giving him a headache, but I see the traces of a smile when he looks up again and motions to his sisters. “Everyone follow me.”
He leads them out through the door to the ballroom, and I follow them, not sure if that invite included me but too curious not to.
He ushers us into a small gap between two huge, decorated trees in the back of the ballroom near the kitchen entrance.
It is, I realize with pleasure, the perfect surveillance spot.
The whole ballroom’s visible from here, but we’re hidden by the evergreen branches.
The four of us finish cramming into our observation hole just as we’re treated to another verse of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”—and not just any verse, but the showboat one.
“Five goooooolden rings!” Becks sings under her breath, and Wyatt wraps an arm around and gives her a squeeze. To banish the warmth this creates in my chest, I lean in and murmur, “What do you have planned, you deviant?”
The asshole turns his head and gives me an honest-to-god, light-up-his-eyes, kid-on-Christmas-morning, excited grin that sends champagne bubbles racing around my bloodstream.
“Just watch, Parrish.”
So I do, mouth slowly falling open as five people dressed in costumes that I can only describe as “holiday jesters who could pivot to do Carnival in Rio at a moment’s notice” strut into the room with juggling hoops that they proceed to light on freaking fire.
“Five. Golden. Rings,” Wyatt says proudly as they start whipping the flaming circles around the room with no regard for the trailing feathers of their headdresses or the trailing hair and hems of the guests.
“Um. Isn’t everything in this room super flammable?” Drea asks nervously.
“Probably,” Wyatt says. “But the building sprinklers work, they travel with a handler who keeps a fire extinguisher handy, and their Yelp reviews are dynamite.”
We watch wide-eyed as the quintet makes its way to Howard’s table and start tossing the flaming rings over the heads of the VIPs.
The two private equity guys watch in glassy-eyed delight while the rest of the party ducks and cringes.
The wife of the mutual fund guy actually pushes away from the table and walks backward until she hits the wall—smart lady, except she’s now directly underneath one of my durian-fruit garlands.
As I hoped, the passage of time and the increasing heat in the room is working their magic because she wrinkles her nose and glances around for the source of the smell.
Her horrified expression alone is worth every last air hole Liv and I drilled into those hollow plastic ornaments and every last disgusting, stinky slice of fruit we wrapped in cheesecloth and stuffed inside.
Despite what I know to be eau de rotting garbage perfuming the air, Mrs. Mutual Fund chooses to stay glued to the wall instead of exposing herself to fiery projectiles.
After the longest, most harrowing juggling routine I’ve ever seen, the performers douse their circles with a flourish and parade around the room to robust applause.
The room’s filled up with the eight p.m. arrivals since I last circulated, but even with more tables than not now holding guests, the atmosphere’s more baffled than festive.
And hey, the guests not hyperventilating in fire-based terror seem to be enjoying themselves.
One of the younger guests is even recording the performance on her phone.
“Check out Howard. He’s not loving it.” I nudge Wyatt and point to where Howard’s gesturing apologetically to Mr. Mutual Fund, who’s got a protective arm around his upset wife. “Ugh, fine, this is impressive.”
“So glad you think so,” Wyatt says, and knock me over with a partridge feather; it sounds like he actually means it.
That’s good, because I mean it too. The partridge from earlier has been joined by two doves—turtle status unknown—in a cage near one of the exits.
Three standard-issue chickens roam around a little penned area by the restrooms, and four white-and-pink birds are positioned near the bar, although whether the lack of traffic is from their periodic screaming or the gross drinks is anyone’s guess.
Wyatt and I lock eyes until Becks makes a quiet alarm sound.
“Whoop, whoop, whoop. Megabitch incoming.”
We snap out of our trance and turn in unison to see a terrifying blonde strolling across the room, her hand resting on the arm of a handsome Black man.
“Um,” I say.
“Fuck,” Wyatt says.
“Bye,” Drea says, grabbing her sister by the arm and hustling them both to the kitchen.
“Take me with you,” I weakly call after them, but they vanish behind the swinging door. I turn to Wyatt. “Why does it look like she wants to murder someone?”
“That’s just her face when she senses you’re in a one-mile radius.”
I have several follow-up questions, but Wyatt’s already melted into the tiny gap between the tree and the wall, completely hiding himself from view.
“Fucking coward!” I whisper-hiss after him, turning in a circle like a panicky cat looking for a similar place to hide, but it’s too late.
Reese and her companion are within eye and earshot, so I ever so slowly turn my body to face the nearest tree and start repositioning one of the ornaments, praying it looks like I’ve been put in charge of neatening up the decor.
“It’s all strange,” Reese is saying to the man. “I helped Howard draft the entertainment plans, and I know there was no open flame on it.” She shudders delicately, the very picture of aggrieved womanhood in her beige lace floor-length dress. “If there had been, I’d have vetoed it.”
The man glances longingly at the jugglers now tossing standard, nonflaming batons back and forth near the main entrance. “I enjoyed it, actually.”
Reese seamlessly pivots, all smiles now. “Well, that’s our Howard.” She lifts her glass of Rumpleshaker in a toast, sniffs it dubiously, takes a sip anyway, and shudders with her whole body. “He’s a risk taker,” she wheezes out.
Ah. This must be another potential investor, although not one important enough to be seated with the biggest of wigs.
Realizing my eavesdropping may have become obvious, I duck my head toward the decorated branches again and let the platinum strands of my wig fall across my face as Reese and her good-looking man of money linger in front of the tree.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
Instead, she does a double take, and my prayer to the void becomes Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me.
She sees me.
“CJ!” Malicious glee fills her eyes as she looks me up and down. “Is business so slow that you had to take up waitressing? I can’t say I’m surprised, honestly.”
How the hell did she recognize me? I’ve never looked more demented or less like myself, so I’m equal parts impressed and insulted. I’m also unable to come up with a comeback.
“I… Um, no, I…”
Reese just gives a tinkling laugh and tugs on her companion’s arm, pulling him away from my impression of an asthmatic fish on dry land. “Come meet my CEO. I’ll tell you all about that one on the way.” She points a finger in my direction with a conspiratorial laugh as they walk away.
“God, she’s heinous,” I grumble as Wyatt slowly emerges from hiding. “No offense, Mr. Profiles in Courage, but she just sucks all the feminism right out of my body. And I can’t believe she recognized me!”
When I glance up at him, all that playfulness from before is gone. “Oh, come on,” I say to his scowly face. “It was a little funn—”
Without a word, he spins on his heel and stalks away from me. Wait, not away from me. Toward Reese.
“Oh, sure,” I say to no one in particular. “Chase her down like you always do.” I walk back to the kitchen with a lot less spring in my step, although the reminder that we’re in the middle of driving Howard mad with hot peppers perks me up a bit.
Becks and Drea are cleaning up the mess from the skewers, and I interrupt their argument about which of them will get to serve them to Howard with an important question.
“Girls, you’ve gotta tell me. Is he like this ’round the clock, or is it only when he’s near me?”
“What, Wyatt and that stick up his ass?” Drea asks. “He pretty much always has that.”