Page 42 of Lucky Star

“He probably guessed Sarah would be able to get you to come around and sent her in as the first wave of their assault,” he explained pragmatically.

“Well, I played right into it because thirty minutes later, I was sitting in that conference room acting like I barely knew her.” I stepped under the spray and washed my body clean. Grabbing a towel from the hook next to the shower, I wrapped it around my hips. “Dude, you have to get better towels. This thing barely covers me.”

“Do you know how expensive towel service is, motherfucker?” He stepped next to me front of the mirror. “Besides, it’s not like you pay for your membership or anything. You should be happy I let you use my towels at all.”

He had me there. I’d never given him a red cent for the privilege of exercising here. Neither had I paid him for his advice about my diet and exercise regime. Then again, he’d never bought groceries or paid the utility bills when we’d lived together, so I liked to think that made us even.

“What did you say to Sarah when she told you?”

“She kept saying it was the best thing for my career, and all I could think was ‘fuck that.’” I ran a comb through my hair and rubbed some pomade through it.

Mike grew serious. “You haven’t talked to her since the meeting?”

I pretended to misunderstand. “Who? Julie? No, why?”

“That’s not who I was talking about, and you know it. Sarah, you asshole. You haven’t talked to her?”

With my shoulders so tense they’d taken up refuge somewhere around my ears, I said, “No, I came straight here. I needed to work off some of my anger first.”

“You probably don’t want to hear this, man, but you need to go home and talk to her. This is some fucked up shit, and she’s got to be freaking out about it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s her own damn fault, isn’t it? Maybe she deserves to stew for a bit.” I hadn’t meant to snap at him, but I didn’t know how to corral my response. The truth was, I was delaying my conversation with her because I wanted her to know what it was like to panic. And yeah, maybe I wanted to punish her, too.

Understanding the reason for my behavior didn’t make it any better though. It just made things worse. I gripped the back of my neck tight. “Everything about this is just so fucked up.”

“I’m not gonna lie,” Mike volunteered as he sauntered to this locker and shoved his legs into a pair of worn, faded jeans. “You’re a handsome fuck, but I don’t envy you. I wouldn’t want to deal with this bullshit.” Pulling a gray t-shirt with the gym’s logo over his head, he added, “This is why I stay away from women.”

That drew a laugh from me. “You don’t stay away from women. You surround yourself with them,” I said, pulling on my own clothes.

“Ah, but here’s where I’m smarter than you,” he teased, pointing a finger at me. “I don’t fall in love with them.”

“Only because they don’t stick around long enough for that to happen.”

As we exited the locker room, he grew serious again. Dropping his hand to my shoulder, he said, “All joking aside, Sarah’s a good woman, and she loves you. She wouldn’t have agreed to this if she didn’t honestly believe it was the right thing to do.”

I grunted a non-response. I wasn’t sure what hurt worse: the fact that she’d agreed to play a role in this whole stupid plan, or that she’d practically bribed me to go along with it. Because at the end of the day, she’d been right about one thing: I wanted nothing more than to marry her and get us the hell out of Hollywood. I wanted to settle down where I trusted the people, and where we could live life on our terms. And those damn kids she promised me? That was what had finally swayed me.

“I don’t know, Mike. She blindsided me, and it’s going to take some time to come to grips with that. For fuck’s sake, this weekend we threw a party announcing our engagement, and now I have to ask everyone to keep it quiet? How am I supposed to explain that in a way that doesn’t make me sound like the worst fucking asshole on the planet? I mean, just picture it. ‘Sorry folks, but you know your good friend Sarah? Well, my director doesn’t think she’s good for my image, so we’re going to need you to keep our relationship a secret while I pretend to be in love with someone else.’ Yeah, that’s going to go over real fucking great.”

Mike shoved his hands in his pockets. “It sucks man, and I’m sorry … but let me ask you something. And try not to punch me when I do.”

I dropped my chin in a silent gesture to continue.

“Who do you think this hurts worse, you or her? You might come off like a dick, but she has to face her friends and family having been labeled unworthy. How do you think that makes her feel? That’s gonna fuck with her worse than anything you might have to go through.”

He was right; I did want to punch him. Not because he’d said the wrong thing. In fact, it might be the only thing anyone could have said to snap me out of my bout of self-pity. This might be inconvenient for me, but it was downright insulting to her.

And yet she’d chosen to bear it for the sake of my career.

And I’d rubbed her nose it in, the cherry on the shit sundae.

I groaned. “I’m such an asshole.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“But you were thinking them,” I pointed out.

He thinned his lips into a hard line and nodded. “Yeah, I was.”

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