She holds the magazine out to him, and he frowns, accepting it after pulling his T-shirt over his head. I mourn the loss of that bare chest. It occurs to me that he’s never felt compelled to remove his shirt before. Did he just strip for me? He totally did. Maybe. I think.
“I’m glad you two are here. Since that involves you both,” she says, tipping her chin toward the magazine.
Jack swears. I step over to him to see what he’s looking at.
I’m on the cover of the magazine, leaning on Lucas as we exit La’s. In a small inset photo, Lucas’s face sports extensive bruising. The lurid headline promises love triangles and violence.
“It’s all over the internet, too,” Margie says. She picks up the drill and gives it a whir, stopping when Jack glares at her.
I grab my phone off the counter and search with shaking hands. Some articles make me out to be a Jessica Rabbit seductress, red in the head, fire in the bed. I tremble. There are no photos of Jack, although one article shows the legal aid society he works for. One outlet has printed the police report and leaked information from the hospital detailing Lucas’s injuries. Another paints Jack as violent, citing a bar brawl on his record—the same fight he told me his friend Moth embroiled him in.
I sit down on my sofa.Oh, boy.
“Lucas is famous, but not like…DiCaprio famous. But I guess having your jaw wired shut and closing down a television production is big news. Plus, nothing else remotely interesting is happening, so…” Margie shakes her head, sitting next to me.
My phone rings. Mom. A faint tremble vibrates my fingers. I just want some space. I’ve had six missed calls from her. I decline the call and fall sideways so that my head is in Margie’s lap. “How do I fix this?” I moan.
She pats my head. “Ignore it. Some new scandal will hit, and it’ll be old news soon.”
I brush stray strands out of my eyes. “Are you okay?” I ask Jack.
He tosses the magazine down and runs both hands through his hair, rumpling it to holy hell. “I don’t love that they have a picture of the office. It’ll have a chilling effect on people coming by to ask for help, especially with immigration issues, if they think there are photogs hanging around. And I don’t love that this is now the second time other people might be hurt by our association. The glitter was whatever, but I had to set aside a court brief to deal with my inbox after the gag you pulled with all that spam.”
Margie lifts her hand like a first grader tentatively volunteering to read aloud. “I should mention, that was my fault. I told Penny I wanted to post your number on the Lucas fan forum, but she told me not to. I was drunk and irked enough to opt for an alternative.” She squints up at Jack, looking very contrite. “That’s my bad. I’m sorry.”
“She told me—” Jack’s lips tighten almost imperceptibly, except to someone who has been observing his facial expressions for the last few hours like Michelangelo about to carve a bust. “But that does nothing to help this situation—” He gestures toward the tabloid. “At least you two look cute, though,” he spits out at me.
I glance down. There’s a shot of Lucas and me on the street the day he came over to get his script. Our interaction was completely innocuous, but the cropping of the photo makes it look so intimate, and Lucas almost appears to be looking down at me with a soft expression.
I feel Margie shift and glance at her. Her eyebrows are straining for her hairline. Her lips twitch, and as I sit up again, she gives me a loaded look that tells me she has information to share. I make a questioning face, and she gives her head one tiny shake in the negative, tipping her head almost imperceptibly in Jack’s direction.
I pick up my phone and text her.
What?
Her phone erupts into the loudest goddamn chime on the planet. Jack narrows his eyes at us.
Margie picks up her phone and looks up at Jack as she opens it. She types out a response to my question.
My phone vibrates audibly.
He is so, so, so jealous.
No he isn’t! He’s pissed right now. BUT. I have to tell you what he told me earlier.
Chime.
Vibrate.
I’m telling you. Trust your much smarter, much more worldly friend. He is jelly.
“All right, I’ll give you two some privacy to handle the clearly unrelated texts you’re receiving.” Jack steps through the wooden framing to his apartment.
My phone vibrates again.
I think he knows we were texting each other.
“O bre, Penny, no offer on apartment from you?” Gence says as Jack and I descend into the lobby in the morning. “Maybe you moving out?”
