Chapter 4
ELI
TRACK: Etta James, “I Got You Babe”
Reese is on her feet, coming around her desk and trying to peer around me. “Excuse me,” she says when I don’t move.
Kelly’s text plays across my mind like tickertape.
Hey—we’re in the area and Neil wants to drop by today for a walk-through. Sorry for the short notice.
When Neil had called right after, I’d tried to talk him out of it, but he’d been so insistent, so excited, my protests sounded nonsensical. And they were. It was my fault I hadn’t told Reese the truth.
“I’ll finally get to meet your lovely lady, eh?” Neil had said before hanging up.
I grip my hair with both hands, that spinning feeling I felt after getting the text coming back full force.
I shift so she can’t see what’s going on. “Reese, that call from Neil—” I begin.
Her eyes dart to mine, wide with alarm.
“They’re here to do a walk-through,” I say fast. “I’m sorry. They were already on their way when they called.”
Reese looks panicked. She presses her hands to her temples. “Eli—we’re not prepped for this!”
“I know.” Guilt twists my guts as I look at her.
She’s standing in front of me now, so close, and despite the fact that my whole life is about to mushroom-cloud, I can’t help noticing the way the delicate stretch of her collarbone looks as it disappears into her shirt.
How the freckles on her nose seem to dance when she scrunches her nose.
“Can you please move? I need to—”
“That’s not all, Reese,” I say, my voice thick in my throat. I hesitate for a moment, unsure how the fuck I tell her they think we’re together? That I felt compelled to lie in the heat of the moment way back when I ran into my ex-wife and her new wildly successful husband?
You just tell her.
But before I can say anything, there’s a clap on my back. “Eli!”
I turn to see Neil in his skinny jeans, snakeskin boots, and a hat that looks like it once belonged to Crocodile Dundee. He’s got to have at least a decade on my thirty-nine years, but he dresses like a twenty-five-year-old rock star.
“Mate, it is fabulous to see you again.” His eyes go straight to Reese. “And this must be her.”
My heart pounds so hard I feel like my throat is pulsing. Fuck, fuck fuck!
“The esteemed manager of L’Aubergine”—a brief wash of relief goes over me. Okay. I’m okay. Then Neil raises his arms, turns around, and shouts, “The next filming site of Chef’s Apprentice!” The room erupts in cheers—the giant Scot out in the kitchen even whoops. Everybody looks fucking gleeful.
Except for Reese, who’s still in her office, trapped there by Neil and me crowding her at the door.
“Come out here, my dear,” Neil says, reaching out and draping an arm around Reese’s shoulder. She stiffens, but goes with him, her cheeks going pink as everyone in the kitchen continues to whoop and cheer.
I want to hate Neil, I really do, but his enthusiasm is infectious.
The guy is a walking good time. And thankfully he seems to have left Kelly behind.
Despite my precarious position, I smile, feeling myself relax slightly.
Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a completely shit idea.
Even Reese smiles, though she looks deeply uncomfortable to be at the nucleus of all this.
“Thank you so much for accommodating us, Reese, honestly,” Neil says as the cheers back down into loud conversation.
“Well, you know. Whatever Eli wants,” Reese says, her eyes meeting mine with a you owe me kind of look.
Neil laughs, bringing his hands to his hips. “It’ll be wonderful. Wonderful! So we’re thinking of setting up our main station over there…”
But as Neil talks, I go stiff, my stomach flipping inside of me. There’s a man with a camera on his shoulder, pointing it at various parts of the kitchen—a prep chef chopping carrots, a dishwasher scraping food off a plate. But behind him, I spot a flash of black and red. The swish of a long skirt.
Then he shifts, and Kelly is suddenly there, walking our way in a cloud of fabric and perfume, like a dark-haired ethereal being.
Everyone’s heads turn as she walks by—she always has that effect.
My stomach seizes.
“Eli,” she says. Even her voice makes something crack inside of me. This woman. This fucking woman. When we met at college, she’d been majoring in broadcasting. She always knew she wanted to be on TV. Sometimes I wonder if that was part of the reason I’d been so enamored with her back then.
“Kelly,” I say, my voice coming out almost halting. At least it doesn’t fucking break.
Her eyes leave mine, and I let the breath I’d been holding out. I hate how she has this effect on me. Even now that I know divorce was the best thing for us, she still makes me antsy as fuck.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asks, smiling, as her eyes go to Reese.
My first instinct, somehow, is to step between them. To guide Reese into her office and close the door, keeping her untangled from the shit between me and Kelly. But it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it, Eli?
Especially now that Reese is extending her hand and smiling.
Her eyes dart to mine, so quickly I might have missed it if I weren’t staring at her. Reese knows how fucked up I was over Kelly. She knows what a mess I was. I was at my worst when she met me.
Yet she didn’t run.
“Kelly, meet Reese,” I say.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Reese says as Kelly takes her hand. She winces slightly as Kelly squeezes hers a tad too hard.
I need to get her out of here as quickly as possible.
“I know Reese has a lot to do today. Maybe we should get out of her hair? I can show all of you around myself?”
“How long have you two been…” Kelly waves her hand between us. “This?”
Reese frowns, and I wonder if it’s at Kelly’s question or the fact she completely ignored me.
“What, working together?” Reese asks. A flicker of irritation flashes in her eyes. Maybe it was both.
“No—”
“Kelly,” I say. “Maybe we can talk about this later?”
“No, I’d like to know,” Kelly says, leveling her gaze on me. It’s then I realize she sees right through me. She knew I was bluffing about Reese. “I’d really love to know how long you two have been an item. Because you don’t seem like Eli’s type.”
My chest sinks.
Reese is staring at me like I’ve grown horns. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Come on, darling, don’t make them feel awkward,” Neil says, smiling at his wife.
He leans in, lowering his voice. “Maybe they’re not open about it.
” He tips his head to the rest of the people in the kitchen, who’ve reverted to work.
While they look at each other, I give Reese an apologetic look.
An I’m really fucking sorry but please play along look—just until I figure this shit out.
“Really, since when have you liked blondes?” Kelly asks, ignoring her husband, too. “I used to think you were so predictable.”
Her tone sends heat rising up my chest. The casual way she’s talking about Reese like she’s not even here. The way she’s talking to me.
“You always told me you thought brunettes had more fun—”
I take a step toward Reese. “That’s enough,” I say to Kelly. This is insane. I won’t drag Reese down with me. I turn to Reese. “Reese, I’m sorry, I should have said something a long time ago. The truth is—
“The truth is they don’t know,” Reese says, making Kelly’s eyebrows fly up.
Neil rubs his hands together. “Ooh, yes, a passionate love affair!”
That irritation I saw in Reese’s eyes a moment ago is a flame now. She’s pissed. Maybe it’s at me—hell, it’s definitely at me. But it’s at Kelly, too.
The smallest part of me dares to hope this might not be my whole life bottoming out. That maybe she doesn’t hate my fucking guts. Still, I can’t make her go through with this, can I?
Kelly chews on her lip. For a moment, I’m distracted by this.
She used to do that when she was mulling something over in her head, and it used to make me wild for her.
Maybe it still does, in a way. But her eyebrows furrow.
“What do you think about that scar on his thigh, Reese? Doesn’t it remind you of the letter F? ”
I frown. What the fuck? I have a scar on my inner thigh I got from falling down in the brush with my brother Jude when we were kids.
We were on a camping trip and fighting, as usual.
I was kicking his ass. As usual. But I ended up with a bloody wound from an overly sharp stick.
My mom was pissed—if it had been deeper or closer to my groin, I could have been in serious danger.
“The letter G, I’ve always thought,” Reese says. “But you need to be looking at it at the right angle, if you know what I mean.”
Kelly pinches her lips shut. She was testing Reese. And she passed.
I’m so stunned, for a moment I can’t speak. My eyes are on Reese’s. By the way her cheeks go pink, I wonder if we’re both thinking about the same thing: how there’s only one way that scar looks like a G. And it requires being in a very specific position to see it like that.
Neil, meanwhile, booms with laughter. “I like her. I really like her.” He claps me on the back.
If my wife were talking about her ex-husband’s inner thigh, I’d be fucking seething. But the man doesn’t appear to have a jealous bone in his body.
“Hey!” Neil says, as if remembering something. “We’re eating tonight down at Viande something or other.”
“Viande et Patates,” I say absently, still staring at Reese. “My buddy runs that place.”
“Well, isn’t that wonderful! You two should join us, then!”
Kelly smiles broadly. “Great idea, my love.”
I hate how that little bit of intimacy rankles. My love. But it does. And it spurs the next words out of my mouth. “We’d love to. Right, Reese?”
Reese, who’d already been angling back into her office, freezes. Her eyes go wide, her jaw tight.
But Neil must take her silence for acquiescence because he beams. “Wonderful. It’s a date. What better way to celebrate our early green light!”
Reese’s still wide eyes snap to Neil. “I’m sorry, your early what?”