Page 6 of The Love Rematch
“I know, I know. But I just— I just can’t.”
Sam pauses on the other end of the line. Her steady breathing is the only sign she’s still there, until her voice cuts through the bullshit. “Is this about Jake?”
Even after all these years, the sound of his name strikes like a bullet straight to Emily’s heart. “No.”
“It is.” Sam scoffs. “It’s about Jake. It’salwaysabout Jake. I can’t believe you right now.”
“It’s not about him. It’s about— Youknowwhat it’s about.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Sam derides.
“I’m being—”
“Listen to me. He left you. He left you without taking a single glance back. Don’t even think about throwing away this opportunity because you’re still holding on to some dream you had back in high school.”
“That’s not—”
“If they call you, if they approach you about doing the show, you need to say yes, if for no other reason than it will give you thirty great chances to finally get over your ex.”
“Would you listen to me for a second?” Emily snaps. No one can comfort her quite like her sister, and no one can annoy her so much either. She takes a deep breath. Calm. Collected. Unbothered. “I’m notunderhim.”
“But you want to be,” Sam states, not like an accusation but like a fact. The words land heavily, an anchor in her gut. “And therein lies the problem.”
The phone goes dead. Emily stares at the blank screen, denial a plug in her throat.
It’s not about that,she wants to scream.It’s not!
But is it?
Her phone lights up with another incoming message, saving her from answering. Then another. And another.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
She stuffs it between the couch cushions.
Her butt vibrates.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
She throws the stupid thing at her hot-pink armchair. It ricochets off the polka-dot pillow and lands on the floor with athud.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
“Damn it!” Emily screams and stomps across the room. With a triumphant shriek, she turns the damn thing off. But in her head, she still hears it, like a gnat she can’t escape.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
CHAPTERTWO
jake
The massive screenat the end of the conference table flickers to life, revealing the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean and…a protruding hairy navel. Jake winces and drops his head into his palm. The creator and executive producer ofThe Love Match, Nick Weiss, is a lawsuit waiting to happen. He’s a genius in the realm of reality television, which almost by necessity means he’s also the personification of athlete's foot as a person—disgusting, embarrassing, known to cause burning, and obnoxiously hard to remove. Jake’s been trying to escape the man for nearly four years to no avail.
“Damn computer.” Nick’s deep voice fills the room. The camera angle shifts, dropping to a precariously knotted towel before scanning all the way up Nick’s bare, unfit chest to settle on his face, which is puffed with filler, frozen from Botox, and fake-tanned enough to be a cautionary tale.
Jake almost prefers the hairy navel.
“I assume you all saw the update from Little Miss Knocked-Up this morning?” Nick says as he settles into his pool lounger. He does seventy-five percent of his business from the deck of his thirty-million-dollar Malibu mansion. That asshole. “And if you haven’t, then what the hell are you doing here?”
