Jason watched Jeremy intently, waiting to be judged by one of the few people whose opinion actually mattered to him.
“And then this thing with Taylor . . .” Jeremy whistled disapprovingly. “Boy, did you ever fuck that up. That stunt you pulled with Naomi was a shitty thing to do. You know, you really can be a selfish, spoiled pain in the ass.”
Jason nodded. He looked at the ground.
“Except ...”
He glanced up at Jeremy.
“Except when it comes to the people you really care about. Because to them, you are generous and loyal as hell. Around those people, you are a good guy, Jason. And those are the people who, at the end of the day, will never doubt you. No matter how big a pain in the ass you can be.”
Jason grinned in relief—and also surprise. Jeremy never talked like this.
Jeremy pointed. “Don’t get all teary-eyed on me now.”
Jason laughed. “Wouldn’t dare.”
“So, now—about this thing with Taylor,” Jeremy said. “Yes, you’ve made a lot of mistakes. We both know what you’ve done in the past with other women. But I’m talking about the person you are with her. So again, my question to you is: Should she trust you?”
At this, Jason met Jeremy’s gaze. His eyes never flinched.
“Yes.”
Jeremy nodded. “Then stop playing games with her. Lay it all on the line. If she loves you, she’ll see the real you.”
Jason nodded solemnly. The thought of actually putting it all out there with Taylor made him quite nervous. Seeing this, Jeremy punched him in the shoulder good-naturedly.
“Look at you, Mr. Hollywood, all soft and vulnerable.” He beamed. “I’m proud of you, man.”
Jason pushed him away, embarrassed. “Get out of here with that.”
“No, I’m serious,” Jeremy told him. “As your moral superior, I can say honestly say that I’ve never been more proud of you than I am right now.”
Jason glanced over, eyebrow raised. “Not even in college, when I convinced those twins you were the guitarist from Guns N’ Roses?”
Jeremy pointed at him.
“That could be a close second.”
Thirty
“SO THEN WHAT happened?”
Taylor rolled her desk chair over to her credenza and grabbed a file from the bottom drawer. “So then I ran off the dance floor, and I haven’t talked to him since.”
It was Sunday afternoon, and she had come into the office to catch up on work. To save time on the Black & Pink post-game analysis, she had three-way called Val and Kate.
“And what about Scott?” asked Kate.
Yes . . . and what about Scott? Now that was an interesting question. Taylor filled them in on all the details.
After leaving Jason on the dance floor, she had hurried over to the bar where she had last seen Scott. She wanted to tell him she was leaving the party, not that she thought he’d mind terribly much, given the fact that they had exchanged about ten words total since arriving.
She was making her way across the veranda when she felt someone grab her by the arm. She looked over and saw Scott.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
Without waiting for an answer, he led her off into one of the gardens, where they were hidden behind some trees. He stared at her angrily.
“Are you having fun out there, making a fool of me?” His eyes narrowed. “I saw you dancing with him, Taylor. The whole fucking party saw you with him.”
Despite the fact that she didn’t think Scott had exactly been the perfect date, either, Taylor felt guilty. She knew it was time to put an end to this little charade of theirs.
“I’m sorry, Scott, I wasn’t trying to embarrass you. I—”
He cut her off. “Christ, Taylor, everyone here knows you’re the Mystery Woman. The paparazzi have been going nuts, trying to get a shot of you and Jason together.”
Taylor started to speak, then caught something Scott had just said.
“Paparazzi? I thought you said those were just ‘industry photographers.’ ”
“Yeah, well . . . whatever. The point is, they think you’re here with Jason, not me.”
Taylor again tried to make amends. “Like I said, I’m sorry. We were just dancing.”
Scott scoffed sarcastically at this. “Oh well, if that’s all it was, don’t let me get in the way. Perhaps you should go back and find him. Although I should warn you—Jason Andrews’s dance card is usually pretty full. He doesn’t normally make it around to the same girl twice.”
Suddenly tired with the whole scenario, Taylor decided it wasn’t worth the effort to respond. “You know, I think I’m going to call it an evening,” she said. “I’ll just call a cab to pick me up.”
Scott appeared surprised by this. Then his expression softened.
“You don’t need to call a cab, Taylor” he said, his voice full of concern.
Mocking concern, as she learned with his next snide words.
“After all, I’m sure your ‘friend’ Jason would be happy to give you a ride home,” he said. “At least one of us should get to fuck you for getting you into this party.”
Taylor nodded. Okay . . . so that’s how it had to be. At least now there was nothing more to be said between them.
“Thank you for making this so much easier. Good-bye, Scott.”
He seemed surprised when he saw she was actually leaving, and blocked her way.
“Wait—are you serious? You’re really going to leave, just like that?”
“Yep, just like that.”
He grabbed Taylor by her arm. Apparently, she had struck quite a nerve.
“You think you’re so smart,” he hissed. “But do you know how many women would kill just to get one look from me? Who the hell are you, you fucking nobody? You’d walk away, just because of one dance with Jason Andrews? You think that’s worth it?”
Taylor peered up at Scott’s furious face. There really was only one thing she had to say in response to that.
“Absofuckinglutely.”
Finished there, Taylor pried Scott’s fingers from her arm and slid by. She cut through the garden on her way out, being careful to avoid the paparazzi.
And just as suddenly as she had appeared, the Mystery Woman left the party.
AFTER HEARING TAYLOR’S story, Kate and Val were silent on their ends of the line.
“What? Say something,” Taylor demanded anxiously.
Kate responded first. “You know, ending your date with an A-list movie star with an ‘absofuckinglutely’ really is so played these days.” She laughed. “Seriously, Taylor—where do you come up with this stuff?”
Taylor noticed that her other friend had been uncharacteristically silent. “Val, you’re awfully quiet.”
Valerie spoke slowly. “I just want to be sure I have this straight. You manage to score a ticket to the best party of the year with one of the biggest celebrities in town. But then you dance with another guy—who just so happens to be, like, the hottest man in the world—then you ditch your date and run out of the party like an obscene Cinderella, never to be heard from again.”
Taylor squirmed uneasily in her chair. “Well, it really was just the one obscenity—”
Valerie cut her off sternly. “Taylor Donovan.”
Then her tone changed. To one of pride.
“You are a friggin’ genius!” Val shrieked. “Everyone’s going to be talking about you! You are so going to be on the cover of Us Weekly this week!”
Taylor tried to control her friend’s excitement. “Don’t hold your breath, Val. They didn’t get any pictures of me.”
“That’s what you celebs always think. But then you end up topless on the cover of the Enquirer and you suddenly think, hmm . . . maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea to sunbathe nude in Cabo after all, maybe that was a camera stashed underneath the towels that pool boy was carrying . . .”
“So what are you going to do about Jason?” Kate interrupted, getting back to the b
usiness at hand.
“Nothing. There’s nothing else to do,” Taylor said. “I wanted to tell him that I’d been wrong about him because I thought it was something I needed to say. That’s all.” She paused. Then she lowered her voice, even though there wasn’t a single other person in the office that Sunday morning.
“Why? Do you think I should do something else?” she whispered.
“You know I can’t say that,” Kate told her.
“I can say it,” Val volunteered.
Taylor spun around in her chair, frustrated. “What am I doing? Seriously—I’ve got way too much work to do. I can’t be worrying about this right now.”
“If all you worry about is work,” Val lectured, “then one day you’ll come home and realize that it’s the only thing you’ve got.”
“It’s better than coming home one night and finding Jason fucking some supermodel on our dining-room table.”
The phone went silent.
Wow—that had flown out of her mouth before she’d even thought about it.
“You’re right, Taylor,” Val said quietly. “If you really think that might happen, then I think you did the right thing in walking away from Jason.”
There wasn’t anything else her friends could say. But a few awkward minutes later, when Taylor ended the call, she realized that she had never felt less victorious in winning an argument.
HATING THE WAY her conversation with Val and Kate had ended, Taylor did what she always did when she felt out of sorts: she threw herself into her work—a tendency that apparently (according to Val) was going to one day render her an angry, lonely old maid who yelled crazy gibberish and threw ratty gray house slippers at neighborhood kids riding bicycles past her house.
Fine—that may not have been word for word what Val had said, but Taylor took the liberty of filling in the implied innuendo of her friend’s “one day you’ll come home and realize that work is the only thing you’ve got” comment.
Taylor Donovan, expected life trajectory:
Associate.
Partner.
Retirement.
Crazy gibberish, ratty slippers.
Pathetic death (alone, of course), thinking of the one time she had almost kissed Jason Andrews.
R.I.P.
Determined to push aside Val’s warning and all accompanying morbid thoughts, Taylor turned back to the files on her desk. The next morning she would be cross-examining the most important witness in the EEOC’s case and she needed to be ready. This witness, the named plaintiff, had always troubled Taylor. She knew the witness planned to testify that she had suffered severe emotional distress because of the alleged harassment she’d been subjected to in her work environment. It was testimony that, if believed by the jury, would help bolster the EEOC’s demand for significant monetary and punitive damages.
Derek chuckled when he dropped by Taylor’s office later that day and found her reviewing the files from the psychologist who had treated the plaintiff for her stress.
“You’re reading those again? We’ve been through those files a million times. Trust me—there isn’t anything we missed.”
Taylor set the file down on her desk, rubbing her temples. “There has to be—there’s no way this woman would’ve become so distraught because of her work environment. Even if everything she says is true, it’s not enough to cause someone severe emotional distress.”
“But the psychologist ran diagnostic tests and found her to be clinically depressed. How do we get around that? Argue that she’s an eggshell plaintiff?”
Taylor sighed, reluctant to go down that route. An “eggshell plaintiff” defensive strategy meant arguing that the plaintiff was “fragile,” that is, more sensitive than the average person on the street. That a more “reasonable” person would not have been bothered by the same conduct the plaintiff claimed caused her depression. Such arguments generally did not go over well with juries—no one liked to see the big-money corporate defense attorney calling the poor distressed plaintiff, in essence, a weak-ass little wimp.
“No, I’ve been trying to come up with some other angle for her cross.” Taylor stopped rubbing her temples and peered over at Derek. “You subpoenaed all her medical files, right?”
Derek nodded. “This the only psychologist she was treated by.”
“How about her general practitioner—do we have any files from him?”
“Yep, and I already checked them. Nothing.”
“What about any other doctors she saw? Her ob-gyn?” Derek made a face. “You want to read her gynecologist’s files?”
“Not particularly,” Taylor said. But at least it would keep her busy, so that her mind wasn’t drifting off with thoughts of Jason.
The things he had said to her at the Black & Pink Ball.
How he looked in his tuxedo.
How it felt to be dancing that close to him.
All dangerous thoughts. She needed to stay focused—she had a job to do.
So Taylor asked Derek to bring her the file. And twenty minutes into her reading, she had absolutely no problem staying focused on work.
She picked up her phone.
“Derek. You are not going to believe what I’m reading right now.”
“IF YOU DON’T mind, Ms. Campbell, I’d like to shift gears and talk about your claim for emotional distress damages.”
Up on the witness stand, the named plaintiff, Emily Campbell, sat straight and upright in her chair. She nodded to Taylor, who stood in front of the jury, just a few feet away from the stand.
“So if I understand your earlier testimony correctly, Ms. Campbell,” Taylor said, “you are certain there was nothing else going on in your life during the time of your employment with the defendant that could have contributed to your stress. Is that correct?”
Ms. Campbell folded her hands demurely, looking chaste and proper in her cream sweater set and pearls. “That’s correct—the only stress I experienced was caused by the terrible work environment I had been subjected to. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I had to see a therapist several times a week just to get by.”
“And you’re positive that nothing else could have been causing the stress you experienced during that time frame?”
“I’m positive,” Ms. Campbell said definitively.
“And, according to you, the stress was so bad that you sought treatment from a psychologist—a Dr. Gary Moore—is that correct?” Taylor crossed over to the defense table. She picked up a file and brought it back with her to the podium.
“Yes—I went to see him because—”
“A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice, Ms. Campbell.” Taylor smiled politely. She opened the file she had brought to the podium as she continued on with her questioning.
“Ms. Campbell, as part of your claim for emotional distress damages, you signed a waiver permitting us to look at your medical records, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And that waiver allowed us to look at all your medical records?”
“Yes, although Dr. Moore is the only psychologist I saw for the emotional distress I suffered.”
“I understand that, Ms. Campbell, but for a moment I’d like to talk to you about treatment you received from a Dr. Michelle Phillips at 1089 First Street in Santa Monica. You do know Dr. Phillips, don’t you?”
There was a scurry of activity over at the plaintiff’s table as Frank began riffling through his files. Taylor heard him mumble under his breath to his cocounsel, presumably something along the lines of “Who the fuck is Dr. Phillips?”
Ms. Campbell looked at Taylor, confused. “But Dr. Phillips is my gynecologist—I really don’t see what she has to do with any of this.”
“Yes or no, Ms. Campbell.”
“Yes, I know Dr. Phillips,” the witness grumbled.
Carrying her file, Taylor stepped closer to the witness stand.
“Do you recall telling Dr. Phillips during your appointment on February second of last year that you needed to be teste
d for sexually transmitted diseases because—let me make sure I get this correct here . . .” Taylor read out loud from her file, “Because, quote, ‘your weasel-dick husband slept with a skanky whore stripper and the cheating bastard didn’t use a rubber’?”
Ms. Campbell shot up in her chair. “She actually wrote that down?”
The jury tittered with amused laughter and sat up interestedly. Finally—things were starting to look a little more like Law & Order around here.
“I take it that’s a yes?” Taylor asked.
“Yes,” Ms. Campbell’s voice cracked. She cleared her throat as Taylor asked her next question.
“And do you also remember telling your gynecologist that you were, quote, ‘under extreme emotional distress because of your unfaithful dirtbag husband and couldn’t eat or sleep’?”
Ms. Campbell sunk lower in her chair as if trying to hide. “Yes,” she whispered.
Taylor pointed to the file. “And then, according to Dr. Phillips’s records, did you also tell her, ‘Thank god I at least have my job to get away from that lousy son of a bitch, or I’d probably kill them both’?”
By now, Ms. Campbell had sunk so far down in her chair that there was little more than two eyeballs peeking out over the witness stand.
“I may have said that,” she said meekly.
Taylor smiled patiently. Of course she had.
“Well, then, going back to your earlier testimony, are you sure you want to tell this jury that the only thing causing stress in your life was your employment with the defendant? And not the”—she consulted her file one last time—“ ‘weaseldick unfaithful dirtbag’ you were married to?”
The two eyeballs blinked at Taylor from behind the witness stand.
“There may have been a few other things going on in my life at the time.”
Taylor snapped her file shut. “Okay—I’m glad we cleared that up.” She looked over at the judge. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.” She returned to the defense table and took her seat next to Derek.
“You love this stuff, don’t you?” Derek whispered teasingly. Taylor hid her smile, not wanting the jury to see. She did, she really did.