“Exactly! It was supposed to be two sexy strangers having a good time and then going their separate ways. But no, he had to ruin everything, so now he’s going to pay.” Probably. If she went all the way. In the not sexy sense. Jean scowled into her drink. “Why are men the way they are?”
“If I knew that, I’d write a bestselling book and then franchise it into a podcast and series of self-healing workshops and branded yoga apparel.”
That was something Jean appreciated about Hildy: she had an eye for opportunity. It didn’t matter that her agenda wasn’t identical to Jean’s. There was enough overlap to make the partnership work. Hildy would get her in the door, and Jean would teach Charlie a lesson he’d never forget. Everything Charlie had done to her—lying, seducing, and then leaving—was about to get served right back to him. Doubling down on the deception and dicking around with someone’s feelings.
And then she’d one-up him by letting the press (aka Hildy)have a field day with his secrets. Jean kept imagining tabloid headlines like “Charlie Pike Is the Father of My Alien Baby” or “I Saw Bigfoot Kissing Charlie Pike,” but she’d leave the details to her co-conspirator.
“This is going to be epic,” Jean said, ripping the tail off another shrimp.
“If we’re talking about my story, then hell yes. There is dirt to be dug.” Hildy tapped the side of her nose. “I can smell it.”
“That’s definitely part of it,” Jean agreed.
The same way a fuse was part of a bomb.
Pike’s Spike! Beer Sales Soar After Pike Heir Spotted with Adriana Asebedo
Bottle & Barrel Quarterly
Your dad’s favorite beer is cool again. With reliable sources reporting a brewing (ha!) relationship between the youngest member of the Pike dynasty and the musical superstar, everyone wants a taste of one of America’s oldest microbrews.
Does Adriana drink Pike’s Pale Ale? We’ll have to wait and see if she adds an “I Like Pike” sticker to her guitar case.
Chapter 14
The most boring week of Charlie’s life did not help him forget Jean, contrary to Mugsy’s assurances. That was the problem with falling for someone so distinctive. You couldn’t pretend you’d ever meet a person like that again. She was the good kind of different—unlike him.
His parents made a fuss when he first arrived, telling him how happy they were he’d finally come home, even though he was late and “looked a little pale.” Love with a side of judgment (and chewable multivitamins) was the standard script at the Pike household.
After that, Charlie did his best to fly under the radar, standing where they told him and blinking blindly into the flash for a new family portrait. He promised to try on the clothes hanging in garment bags in his closet and nodded at the party-planning details blasting him like a rogue sprinkler. It felt like being one of those cardboard cutouts they prop up in movie theater lobbies: resembles a real person from the front, but it’s flat and empty inside. A stiff wind could have knocked Charlie over, and he wasn’t sure he’d get up again. Lying on the ground seemed like a reasonable response to his current predicament.
More reasonable than pretending to care whether pigs in a blanket “set the right tone.” The only tone Charlie could hear was a constant whine.
Why didn’t she want me?
That was what it boiled down to, when everything was said and done. If she’d felt for Charlie a fraction of what he felt for her, Jean wouldn’t have traded information about him for money.And yet how could he blame her for not loving him? That wasn’t something you could force on another person, because what was love worth if not freely chosen?
Maybe if he’d been brave enough to level with her, she would have made a different call. He tried to picture himself saying, “Jean, here’s the situation. Can you take me as I am?”
Unless she hadn’t felt anything for him at all. But that possibility was too upsetting to look at head-on.
Not for the first time, he thought of texting Jean, even knowing how pathetic that would seem.Remember me? I can’t forget you.
Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, for his dignity—Mugsy had confiscated his phone for a forty-eight-hour post-breakup digital detox, a concept Charlie suspected she’d invented on the spot. By the time he got it back, all traces of Jean were gone.
Charlie stared morosely at his phone, lying beside him on the bed like a useless hunk of junk. Mugsy might as well have kept it, for all the good it was doing him now.
The screen lit up, firing his nervous system with a burst of electricity. He nearly sent the phone skidding across the floor as he scrambled to pick it up.
An email!
If a person couldn’t text you because someone else had rudely blocked their number without your permission, she might try to get in touch the old-fashioned way.
But no. It was from one of the professors he’d worked with in Australia. Under other circumstances, Charlie would have been thrilled to hear from a leading researcher in his field, but Dr. Dillingham had the disadvantage of not being Jean.
The message was brief.
A friend of yours was looking for you, Charles. I said I would pass along the information. And now I have.
