CHAPTER 6
“Focus, Charlie.”
I let the textbook thump against my lap and took in a deep, cleansing breath. “Sorry.”
Reagan shifted across from me, sorting through papers and figuring out what other random question she should select and torture me with.
“Talk to me about bilateral and unilateral contracts,” she said, chewing on a pencil. She was focused on her notes, and her hair was thrown into a tangled bun at the top of her head. She was dressed in a hoodie and sweats due to my love for air conditioning, but for some reason it looked effortless on her.
She was curled up at one end and I was on the other, my pink muumuu still in place. I felt comfortable in my cocoon, nice and warm while I wallowed in my ineptitude. Reagan’s rule was merciless. I had to correctly answer five questions in a row, and as my prize, I could watch five minutes of Slade’s press conference tonight. So far, I’d gotten three correct.
In total.
“Tell me the difference between them.”
“Um.” I rubbed a hand across my forehead, pulled my hair out of its ponytail, and retied it. “I got this. Hang on. Bilateral is a mutual promise. The definition I believe is ‘a promise for a promise.’ ”
“Yep.”
“And unilateral is that action. That, you know, performance thing.”
“Charlie.” Reagan crossed her arms, her papers an organized mess on her lap. Our notes were strewn all over the couch and both our laptops sat on the glass coffee table.
“I’m right,” I said, searching through the notes beside me. “I know it.”
“You kind of are,” she said. “But use the actual definition. Key words. Don’t be lazy.”
“Okay, let me think.” I had these facts memorized three hours ago. Recall used to be the best power I had until law school messed it up by forcing students to recite verbatim random sections of hundred-page assignments. But Reagan had a point—it was about the key words.
Action. Forbearance.
“Unilateral is a promise for an action or forbearance,” I said.
“Exactly. See? Don’t psych yourself out. You know this.”
“I’m trying.” I said, burrowing deeper into my pink fluffiness. “How come you don’t seem overwhelmed by all this?”
She shrugged. “I am. But I figure it’s not worth freaking out over. It has to be done, breakdown or no breakdown.”
“Grudging acceptance. I like it.” I corrected my posture, determined to conquer. “No more pity parties. Let’s do this.”
She laughed and unfolded her arms. “Nah, break time. We’re both overloaded and it’s only been a little more than a week. You want to take ten minutes?”
“Please.” It came out in a rush of air. Save me.
I stood up, stretched, and went to the kitchen where I poured a glass of white wine.
With new resolve, I walked back into the den. “Rae, screw the break. I’m ready. I’m focused. I’m going to kick this thing’s ass. Hit me with you—what was that?”
Reagan smacked her laptop shut and flew away from it as if it had just exposed her to the fires of hell.
“Nothing,” she said, but if she was trying to be nonchalant, she was seriously lacking. Her face showed the trademark signs of guilt—her lips pulled to one side, her cheeks warming with red.
“What were you looking at?” I asked, trying for innocent. She probably stumbled upon my worst-dressed article and felt bad about reading it. I’d already gotten enough stares from the girls in our law section, and she’d come to my defense whenever someone commented about it. But curiosity is a funny thing and I couldn’t blame her. In her position, I’d be doing the exact same. “You look like I just caught you watching porn.”
“No!” She was horrified, her mouth an O as her cheeks reddened further.
I pushed at her shoulder as I maneuvered past her and resumed my position. “I’m kidding. That’d be super weird of you.”
“Stranger than normal, I agree.” Reagan said, resting against the pillows. “Okay. Tell me about…an adhesion contract.”
“You don’t have to hide it,” I said, taking a sip. “I understand if you want to check out the blogs. It’s a bizarre position I’ve put you in.”
“No way,” she said, pushing her notes aside. “I’m thinking more about you and how you even deal with it.”
I shrugged, taking another sip. I didn’t know how I was able to handle it.
“I mean, these pictures; it’s crazy. They find you everywhere. You’re given zero privacy.” She gestured to the hallway behind her. “They even get you on your freaking balcony!”
Ever so carefully, I lowered the glass from my lips. “Pardon?”
“It’s like they got you minutes ago because you’re in the exact same—oh, wait. Oh, crap. You’re going white.”
Reagan shifted toward me, crumpling papers as she came closer. Without saying a word, she wrapped her hands around my wineglass, lifted it up, and shoved it at my lips. “I think you need to sip a little more of this.”
Though I’d just taken in such a large amount of wine it couldn’t be termed a sipping but more of a funneling, my voice sounded parched when I said, “They got me, didn’t they? A few hours ago.”
“Um.” Reagan’s eyes shifted down and to the laptop behind her.
“It’s okay. Really.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I hate that this crap keeps happening to you. You don’t see it, but you get such an awful look on your face—like you’re being stabbed to death every time someone mentions it. I really don’t want to be the reason for that. I want to be your friend, not your messenger.”
“I know you do.” I rested my glass on the table and reached past her to grab her laptop despite her whimper of objection. “But it’s better coming from you. Hearing it secondhand from strangers is always worse somehow.”
She lifted a hand in weak protest as I opened her laptop, and the black screen turned into the last picture she’d been studying.
There I was.
Huddled behind the iron bars of my balcony, my expression a mixture of scowling and flinching with my eyes creased in a half-open, half-shut cringe. My robe made me look as though I had the pink folds of a pig. My body was so compact my face was squashed against the bars.
GOLDEN BOY’S GIRLIE IS NOT SO GOLDEN.
I skimmed the post, my heart rate kicking up with the more words I read.
Jason “Slade” Sladerman has the first game of his life tomorrow and his girlfriend is not at his side. Looking more like sagging oyster goo than a quarterback’s first lady, Charlotte Miller is a hot pink mess. No wonder Slade raised his eyes from the ocean floor and decided to hunt on land. The gorgeous specimen you see on his arm has yet to be named, but the scandalmongers are hot on her tail, myself included. Who is she? And why has Slade wasted his time—
I shut the laptop with a smack, and against my will, against my very being, my eyes burned with tears.
“Charlie…”
I waved her concern away. “It’s fine. I’m—” I stopped because a sob was too close to escaping. “I’m used to it.”
“Come here.” Her voice was so full of sympathy and concern I reacted instinctually. As soon as she opened up to me, I lost it.
She pulled me into a hug, rubbing my back. “She’s an asshole. She makes her money doing this—insulting celebrities or people of interest or whatever the current name is. Don’t listen to her. She’s just trying to make a buck on you. Okay?”
I nodded into her neck, blubbering all over her. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t read this stuff, but I can’t help it.”
I inhaled, my mind betraying me and remembering the other picture that accompanied that horrible article. The one of Lara as she walked with Slade, sunglasses shielding her face and looking regal and exquisite. She was captured with her chin held high. Slade’s hand was on her forearm as he led them through the crowd.
“Hey, I have an idea. Let’s turn on the conference. It’s
started, right?” Reagan untangled herself from me and pressed the power button on the remote. “We’re going to turn our ten-minute break into twenty, and you can bask in the hotness of your successful boyfriend—who loves you to death, by the way. You’ll feel all better and be able to slaughter me with your knowledge of contracts.”
“I think the conference is over,” I said. I swiped a forearm across my face, and the terrycloth of my oyster costume absorbed the moisture of my tears.
“They’ll still show him. Snippets and updates, things like that.” I wondered why she sounded so sure until she followed up with, “My brother. He always has sports updates on.”
She tuned in to the channel, and there was Slade, his mouth moving silently as an anchor narrated over the scene. His face flashed with white as cameras caught him in their glare, but he remained nonplussed, nodding and answering whatever question it was with ease.
“See!” she said. “I told you they’d show Slade. He’s amazing. Sports channels are eating him up.”
I raised my chin and leaned toward the TV. The narrator’s voice faded out and Slade’s voice melted out of the speakers.
“I feel fantastic,” he said in response to a question I’d missed. “I’m so honored to be here, to represent my team, to show them this is just the beginning. I’m ready to take this.” He looked up into the camera. “With the support I’ve had, there’s no way I’ll fail.”
“He means you!” Reagan said, bouncing on the couch and pointing toward the screen.
I shook my head. “No, he means everyone in his camp, including me—”
“Love ya, Char.”
He smiled into the camera and waved before he turned into the thicket of people behind him. Voices carried as he walked away, more questions being fired into his back, but he was finished, choosing to fall in with his teammates and coaches who slapped him on his shoulders and back.
“As usual, I am right.” Reagan said. “You should really have figured out my genius by now.”
I laughed with her, hurling a throw pillow in her direction and smacking her in the face with it.
“Hey! Just for that, I’m going to force you into economic waste exception and special damages, and I will not stop until you know it by heart. I will drag you.”
Breaking into a smile, I said, “Hit me. I dare you.”
Reagan accepted my challenge and turned off the TV but not before I caught the last image of Slade standing amongst the crowd. Spotlights and cameras beamed down on him. His teammates surrounded him, but a woman broke through the muscles and electronics and threw herself into his arms.
He caught her just in time for her to lay a wet, lipsticked kiss on his cheek.