“Kayla? Are you there?” The phone was talking.
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. “Yes?”
“Ticket sales are jumping this morning. The VIP party’s sold out.”
“Fantastic!”
“Must’ve been the history radio show.”
“But he hates me,” I said.
“No publicity is bad publicity.” Millie starting going over all her checklists, and I made noises and decisions where appropriate. “Everything’s under control. You don’t have to rush over there. It’s going to be a late night.”
“I have some kitchen cleanup to do and stuff,” I said. “Thanks for everything, Millie.”
“My pleasure. Now I’ve got to tend to the Bohemia Bartenders’ setup. You’re going to love the cocktails. Eyeballs are involved.” She laughed and disconnected.
Not real eyeballs, presumably. Neil was a purist among mixologists, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t a cannibal.
I let myself feel smug for just a minute about Ken Motebarkle … and also relieved he wasn’t coming to the haunted house, because I was pretty sure it would give him a heart attack. Hell, it practically gave me one.
I slipped out of bed. Oh, wow. I was naked. I never slept naked, not with a roommate roaming the house and having to share a bathroom. Only now my roommate and I had slept together. Naked. And not just sleeping.
Heat rushed through my body as the delicious details of our time on the beach came back to me. I savored each one as I took another shower, this one to wake up, and touched the parts he’d made sing last night. He felt so good. Hewasso good. A really good guy.
Could I let myself enjoy him? Should I expect more? I wanted to expect more, I realized. Maybe I’d been burned by the asshole in Orlando, but Landon had kindled something in me. Hope. Hope was uncomfortable. Hope was scary. But the high of being with him, of thinking about being with him again — it was better than riding a log flume through a dark chocolate river.
I took several deep breaths as I pulled on my work clothes. I was on the ride now. And I didn’t see any reason to jump off. Not when I remembered his smile. His smile and everything else.All the days,he’d said. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but did I mention I had hope?
I checked my email before I left the house and was surprised to find one from my old teacher in Orlando and another from one of the friends I’d emailed about Max Junior’s video reel.
“You’re not going to believe this, Kayla,” my friend Corey wrote, “but that stuff with the hot-air balloons is mine. Who does this guy think he is? I took the liberty of asking a few other friends in a private Facebook group if they recognized the footage, and they were able to attribute three more of the clips to someone else. Watch out for this guy.”
My teacher sent a similar note, saying the beach footage had been shot in Fort Lauderdale by a former colleague.
I hadn’t given them all the context when I’d sent them the reel, only asked if they’d known Max Kantera Jr. I’d never expected this tsunami of plagiarism.
And now I was in a difficult spot. I wanted to tip off Marla, but I didn’t want to look like I was sabotaging Max — my stepbrother, even though he didn’t seem in a hurry to claim me. Sure, I wanted the job, but this would be a shitty way to get it.
However, I couldn’t let this go. Plagiarism was one of the worst crimes on earth, in my opinion. It stole the lifeblood of artists who put their soul into their creations. Everybody online seemed to think they owned everything, but the truth was, they were killing the art by stealing it. I had a lot of friends who were artists. They were having a hard enough time getting by, and if they couldn’t make anything off their creations, in the end, they couldn’t sustain themselves making them. They didn’t need putzes like Max stealing their work.
After much agonizing while munching on a bowl of Cheerios studded with pieces of banana, I wrote Marla a quick note detailing the theft.
“It’s painful for me to write this, and I’m not telling you this to get the job,” I concluded, “although I’d love to get the job. I’m telling you this so you don’t hire someone who isn’t who they say they are, who doesn’t have the ethics someone in your office should have. All the best, Kayla.”
* * *
Milkweed Mansion wasquiet and empty when I got there. Almost.
Landon was there, cleaning up the foyer. He wore holey jeans and a white T-shirt that said “Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening” with a drawing of Galileo on it.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly too tongue-tied to say anything else.
“Hey,” Landon said in a warm-butter voice, coming over to me and taking my mouth with his.
Somehow his languid kiss untied my tongue.
“You left early this morning,” I managed when we took a breath and stepped apart.
