Page 45 of Fool Me

“Dana, what are you doing here?”

Dana squinted up as if seeing her from a mile away. Her forehead beaded with sweat and a sickly grey tinged her normally pale cheeks. “Oh. Hey, Sadie,” she said weakly. “I’ve seen you on the socials. Guess you finally got discovered like you wanted.”

Sadie’s shoulders tightened in a full-body cringe. “Don’t remind me.” She bent to look at Dana more closely. “Are you okay?”

She pressed a hand to her abdomen. “I ate some of the ham from work this morning, and now I don't feel so good. I didn't see your name on the overtime list though. Where’re your coveralls?”

“Overtime list?”

“That director guy, Mr. Widdy or whatever, he needed extra hands at his party, and I need the money.” She groaned. “Do you think I'm gonna die?”

Sadie straightened back up and looked around. “No. But I think you should go home.”

“I called my brother. He should be here soon.”

“Good.” The tendrils of an idea began to twine through Sadie’s mind. “So…Mr. Widner hired you to serve food here at the party, and you’re supposed to wear your deli coveralls?”

“Yeah. He thought they already looked retro. He even made the catering company servers wear them. They weren’t too happy.”

An entire lightbulb store of lightbulbs flicked on in Sadie’s head. Nothing disgusted her more than her work uniform, but becoming a formless green pepper again meant that none of the partygoers would pay her any attention, and especially not Julia. She would be blessedly invisible. “Hey, let me borrow your coveralls, and I’ll do your shift for you. I’ll even give you the money I make, okay?”

“You will? That’s so nice,” Dana said through heavy breaths. “I always thought you were nice.” She clutched her stomach. “Owwww.” She began unsnapping her uniform, and Sadie sat down next to her to help.

The oversized coveralls slid easily over Sadie’s outfit, but her distinctive hair could still give her away.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Dana said. Her brother had arrived and was helping her up from the ground. “The director guy wanted us to wear these ugly things too.”

She handed Sadie a brown paper grocery bag. Sadie opened it to find a large, floppy straw beach hat inside.Perfect!

Tucking her tell-tale hair up into the hat, Sadie wished Dana well and thanked her brother. She hurried off toward Ronny’s house, where she could see several other servers in colorful, retro-looking coveralls and straw hats standing behind a row of food and drink tables near the pool. As she neared, her feet sunk into sand and she remembered Ronny’s comment about the sand delivery.

All she needed now was a plan to prove to Grant what Julia had done, a plan as dastardly as Julia’s. Come to think of it, Juliahadsaid she liked revenge served cold.

27

Julia did a quick scan of the guests. “Hmmm,” she said, tapping her chin. “Who should I introduce you to first?” She pointed surreptitiously toward a woman in a mouse gray pantsuit speaking quietly to Ronny. “Look there.”

Ordinarily, the entire point of a mouse grey pantsuit is to not stand out. At a beach-themed costume party, she might as well have been wearing a flashing sign saying, “I don’t have to please the host.”

“Is that—” he started to ask.

“Della Rosings,Surf Summer’s producer. Whatever you do, don’t piss off the money. Not even I can save you if you piss off the money.” She sent him a sexy wink. “But we both know you’ll charm the pantsuit off her—figuratively speaking.” She shifted her gaze to a different area of the party. “Still, let’s not meet her right away. Let’s break you in a bit first…” A half-second later, her eyes lit up, and she began pulling him by the arm. “There’s Rob. Something tells me he’ll appreciate you.”

Grant had no idea who she was talking about until he spotted a small knot of people a dozen feet away. He instantly recognized the person she must be calling “Rob,” and his mouth drained of moisture. He could have licked the sand at his feet, and his tongue wouldn’t have felt any different. What was a farm kid from Ohio supposed to say to Robert Roundtree? Julia left him no time to figure that out.

“Julia!” Rob said, turning toward her when she tapped him on the shoulder. She leaned forward and he kissed her lightly on both cheeks. “Congratulations on your latestandyour newest upcoming project, but you have to cut it out. You’re making the rest of us look bad. Nobody can keep up with you.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Julia said, blinking coquettishly. “It’s very exciting.” She smiled toothily at Grant and hugged his arm tighter as she added, “And this is my newest leading man, Grant Mason.”

Grant steeled himself as he held out his free hand to shake the hand of a living film legend, but the gesture went unanswered. Rob gave him a cursory smile and nod before continuing his conversation with Julia.

“Hey,” Rob said, cupping his hand on her waist and pulling her closer to him, “I was talking to Billy the other day, and he said he’s got a script that might finally get all three of us on-screen together. Wouldn’t that be a thing?”

Grant slipped his empty, outstretched hand into his pocket like a child caught reaching for the cookie jar. For several minutes, he stood there awkwardly as Julia and Rob spoke and laughed in low voices. So that he didn’t appear quite as useless as he felt, he took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter dressed in bright yellow coveralls and a floppy sun hat.

Over the next fifteen minutes, his experience with Rob repeated several times. There was the flutter of anxiety as Julia introduced him to yet another impossibly famous person, followed by them ignoring him completely as they focused solely on Julia.

“Star struck yet?” she asked him as they moved away from a group that included two double Oscar winners and a Golden Globe awardee.

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