The Honey-Don’t List by Christina Lauren

 

When I was little, my family had a hen named Dorothy. My dad called her Dotty for short. She was a Blue Laced Red Wyandotte—fairly fancy chicken for our neck of the woods. Her terra-cotta feathers were tipped with blue, and so unusual in color they didn’t look like they were real. Dorothy stood out against the dusty background of our small Wyoming farm and was always the center of attention in the yard. She was prettier than the other hens, she was definitely noisier, and despite lower-than-normal fertility rates among the breed, she laid twice as many eggs. It’s not that the other hens weren’t perfectly good chickens; it’s that Dorothy was that much better.

She was also sort of a bully.

I’m always reminded of Dorothy when I look at Melissa Tripp. I realize how that sounds—comparing my boss to a chicken—but it’s the image that pops into my head every time I see Melly holding court, like she is right now at the party. Dorothy would strut around the coop, head high, pecking at everything she could reach and daring the other hens to come at her. Like her, Melly sweeps around the room, comfortable knowing every eye is on her, daring someone else to take center stage.

“Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” The crowd quiets as Melissa holds a Waterford champagne flute aloft, her bright blue eyes glistening with unshed tears. Melly drinks only when there’s no getting around it, and most don’t realize that there’s sparkling cider in that glass, not champagne.

“Alcohol is nothing but empty calories and can make you messy,” she once told me. “I have zero time for either.” With a Tiffany bracelet dangling from her tiny wrist, she’d taken the glass of rosé from my hand and given me a judgmental once-over. “As long as you work for me, Carey, neither do you.”

Turns out, she’s not wrong. With Melly and her husband Rusty’s current home renovation show, New Spaces, officially wrapping today, their newest book releasing in two days, and the super-secret, as-yet-unannounced new streaming show launching in a matter of days, I’ve hardly had time to sleep, let alone get my drink on. But for the love of God, a night with no work, my DVR, and a couple of beers would be divine.

Sadly, as you’ve probably guessed, there’s sparkling cider in my champagne flute, too.

Melly’s pink lips curve into a bittersweet smile as she surveys the quieting crowd now watching her expectantly. Hand pressed to her heart, she makes sure to look at each member of the television crew in turn. “Sixty-five episodes, three holiday specials, countless promo clips, and one very large going-away party. We couldn’t have done any of this without each and every one of you.”

Another round of solemn eye contact, a pause. A resigned nod that makes her sleek platinum hair fall gracefully around her shoulders.

“Five seasons!” When she thrusts her glass forward in the air in cheers, her wedding ring catches the overhead set lights and casts stars across the walls.

Hearing it really does blow my mind. We’re standing in the set where we’ve shot five seasons of the show, and it all went by in a blip—probably because I didn’t sleep for most of it—and now it’s ending. I met Melissa Tripp when I was sixteen, on the verge of dropping out of high school and needing to make some money because my parents didn’t have any to spare. The Tripps had recently opened their home décor store, Comb+Honey, in Jackson, Wyoming, and posted a HELP WANTED sign in the window. Although the local Hardee’s hired, on principle, any high schooler from our area who wanted a job, the idea of working as a fry cook between Mitch “Sticky Hands” Saxton and John “Toothless” McGinnis wasn’t tempting. So I walked inside the upscale store and applied.

I’m still not sure what I was thinking or what she saw in me. I was in my good cutoffs, and my fingers were still smudged with charcoal from sketching under the bleachers instead of attending my last two classes of the day. I smelled like sunblock and my hair was bleached to a fine, pale crisp, but I was hired.

For the first few months, I helped customers whenever Melly was busy, and eventually ran the register. Once I got that down, she let me start managing custom orders and invoices. When Melly learned more about my love for art, she pushed me to play around and dress up the window displays—on two conditions: it couldn’t interfere with my regular duties, and I had to finish high school.

Melissa and Rusty were sweet as pie back then: parents to two kids, struggling to get their business off the ground, and head over heels for each other. They treated me like their third kid, and celebrated my remaining high school victories when my own parents slacked on the job. Mom and Dad had always been better at yelling at me and my brothers for being ungrateful than they were at earning our respect. Suddenly the Tripps were there, showing up to my art shows, driving me to dentist appointments, and even helping me buy my first car. I would have happily given them my right arm if they asked for it.

But that was ten years and a lifetime ago. Comb+Honey isn’t just a home redesign store anymore; it’s a booming corporation with ten storefronts and a host of exclusive product lines with a dozen retail partnerships. The Tripp kids are in their twenties, and Melly has new boobs, lashes, and teeth. Rusty has been outfitted as the fashion icon carpenter dad in Dior jeans and Burberry blazers. The world knows them as affectionate, playful, cooperative, and innovative.

And fun: their seven million Instagram followers are treated less to glossy promotional shots and more to video clips of Rusty pulling pranks on the New Spaces cast and crew, Melly visiting an estate sale and happening upon the perfect addition to a remodel, and photos of Melly and Rusty being adorable or adorably exasperated with each other. Fan favorites are the GIFs of Rusty being Rusty: dropping a hammer on his foot, clumsily spilling a bottle of Coke onto one of Melly’s famous honey-do lists, messing up his intro again and again to the great amusement of the entire crew. People love Melly for being polished and patient. They love Rusty for being goofy and approachable. And they love them as a couple for being the two perfect halves of a whole.

You wouldn’t know from scrolling through their idyllic Instagram feed that Melly and Rusty aren’t quite as sweet on each other anymore. Looking back, I’m not really sure when they decided their marriage mattered less than their brand. It chipped away slowly. A bit of sarcasm here. An argument there. Slowly their worst sides seemed to take over: Melly is a neurotic perfectionist who never sleeps. Rusty is impulsive and easily distracted by whatever—or whoever—is around him. Luckily, only their inner circle sees this downward tilt because the Tripps still manage to put on an impressively convincing show for the public.

Like now. Rusty stands at her side, nodding and clapping at the more sentimental points in her toast. It’s an after-party, so the blazer is gone and he’s wearing one of his custom Broncos jerseys. He can let loose! He’s a fun dad and relatable!

He’s forty-five now, and while viewers still swoon over the strong jaw and quarterback build, they love even more the way he looks at his wife. Rusty looks at Melly like they’re celebrating their first anniversary this year, not their twenty-sixth. It’s the way she rolls her eyes at his jokes but then blushes, totally endearing. When they’re like this, it’s easy to see why their on-screen chemistry made them instant favorites on New Spaces. They were relatively unknown when the show started, but they—and their infectious love—immediately eclipsed the popularity of their costars, including the show’s former-Miss-America host, Stephanie, and the expert, Dan—a younger, hipper home remodeling icon who’d had his own show for years.

The Tripps’ outwardly enviable marriage is why Ford Motor Company used Melly and Rusty in a truck commercial. It’s why they have merchandise lines at Target and Walmart, emblazoned with their bright, blissful smiles; why their two home design books have both been longtime bestsellers, and why their soon-to-be-published book on marriage is already at the top of the sales charts and hasn’t even been released yet.

And, of course, Melly is an enormous stress case over the upcoming announcement of their new solo show, Home Sweet Home. We’re all overwhelmed, trying to strike while the iron’s hot, but what else can we do but work our hardest?

“Some people might say what we do is just decorating.” Melly is apparently not finished addressing the crowd, because she pulls attention back to where she stands at the front of the room. The table behind her is filled with empty champagne bottles and the remnants of a stunning six-tier petal-pink cake.

“They say it’s just home remodel,” she continues. “Just design.” Her high, sugary voice works well for TV because it matches her bubbly personality, white-blond hair, and animated expressions. But off set—and especially when she’s displeased and on a tear—that voice becomes cartoonish and piercingly loud. “But it’s always been our motto that the home reflects the person. Build the home you want, be flexible, and life will be a Tripp! Thank you for helping us share our philosophy! We love you all. Here’s to the next chapter!”

A chorus of cheers echoes through the group. Everyone drains their glasses and disperses to offer congratulations. Now the toast is over—never mind that the cast of New Spaces is composed of four independently famous individuals, and Melly has just monopolized the moment and ended with her own personal slogan, making it clear that no one else is going to speak in acknowledgment of what they’ve all accomplished together.

I glance over to gauge the reaction of Stephanie Flores, the aforementioned former Miss America, social media darling, and host of New Spaces. She seems to be keeping her eyes from rolling with great effort. Renovation god Dan Eiler is huddled with a producer, speaking in hushed, angry tones and jutting his chin toward the front of the room, where Melly just stood. Publicly, the show is ending so that everyone can pursue other new adventures—like the Tripps starting Home Sweet Home—but honestly I think it’s ending because no one can stand in Melly’s ever-growing shadow anymore. She may wear a size two and need sky-high heels to reach the top shelf in her own stockroom, but she is the alpha dog, and she will never let you forget it.

I see Rusty tug at Melly’s hand and nod toward the door. I don’t need to be a lip reader to know that she’s reminding him that this is their party—they have guests. Never mind that this entire room full of people essentially works for the Tripps, and a party with your boss isn’t really a party. I don’t think anyone would be all that disappointed if Melly and Rusty called it a night.

Setting my drink on the tray of a passing waiter, I check my watch and wince when I see that it’s almost eleven. Melly catches my eye across the room and looks around us in commiserating horror. What a mess, her expression groans. I scream through a smile; this mess is not her problem. Whether or not Rusty and Melly decide to stay, I am nowhere close to getting out of here. Sure, we have waiters circulating food, but in a half hour they’ll get to toss their aprons into the back of a catering van and head home. I’ll be left cleaning up.

I do the mental math. If I can get the place cleaned by one, I might be able to catch a few hours of sleep before our nine o’clock meeting. Netflix execs are actually flying to Jackson freaking Hole first thing tomorrow for a face-to-face, and the day after that, the Tripps leave for their book launch in Los Angeles and I get an entire week of living in my pajamas and not answering text messages in the middle of the night. I have to remind myself that this is mile twenty-five of the marathon; if I can just make it two more days, I can crash. But I’m running on tired legs: Before even prepping the wrap party today, we shot the remaining scenes for the two final New Spaces episodes—one with a family remodeling their craftsman home to welcome their first baby, and a five-season retrospective to close out the show. A normal day with Melissa Tripp is exhausting. Today was completely debilitating, and it’s not over yet.

I exhale slowly, calmly, surveying the damage to the room, and decide one way to let people know they should start heading home is to begin cleaning up.

A few minutes later, a shadow appears at my side. I can sense by its tense, annoyed presence exactly who it is. “Did you see where Rusty went?”

I look up at James McCann: tall, lanky, always exuding superiority.

“I’m not in charge of Rusty,” I say. “He’s yours.”

He stares for an annoyed beat, but I know it’s only partially meant for me. I’m an assistant and have been for the entirety of my adult life. By contrast, James—a nerdy engineering type—wasn’t hired to work as Rusty’s right-hand man, but that’s exactly how his job has panned out. Midnight beer runs, dry-cleaning duty, sports ticket procurement, and daily coffee retrieval. Not what he bargained for at all.

“We have an early meeting with the Netflix folks tomorrow,” he tells me, as if it hasn’t been a topic of conversation—the date all but branded onto my brain—for weeks. As if we aren’t all sweating bullets about how the new show is going to fare with audiences and what that will mean for the company.

“I remember, James.” I slide a cluster of empty beer cans into a recycling bin.

“In fairness, you never write anything down or log in to the shared calendar. I thought I’d check in.” Unfortunately he misses my eye roll when he blinks down to his watch and then out over the room, tense again. “Don’t you think we should be wrapping this up?”

This question could only come from someone who works for Rusty, a boss who is used to being bossed around. Anyone who works for Melissa Tripp would know that trying to shepherd her out of a party in her honor is like trying to get a cat to tap-dance.

“Probably,” I say.

I carefully drop a few empty champagne bottles into the recycling bin before shaking out my hands. It’s been a long day, and the left one is starting to act up. At this point, massage doesn’t really help, but I try to casually rub out my fingers before moving on.

“I don’t know why you’re following me when he’s over there,” I say, and motion toward the front of the room, where Melly gave their speech.

“Over where?”

I groan in frustration and turn to show him. But my irritated smugness dissipates when I find only Melly near the remains of the frilly pink cake. I don’t see Rusty anywhere. “Have you texted him?”

James gives me a blank stare through the perfectly unsmudged lenses of his glasses. From this close, it’s impossible to miss that he has really pretty eyes. But, like many men, he ruins the effect by speaking. “Don’t you think I’d do that before asking you?”

“Just checking,” I say.

His brows come together in irritation, which makes his glasses slide down his nose. “I texted him. He’s not answering.”

“Maybe he’s in the bathroom.” I step around him, tired of being in charge of everyone every second of the day.

“He’d definitely answer if he was in the bathroom,” James says, following close behind. “He takes his phone everywhere so he can check sports scores.”

James is obviously a smart man—Lord knows he reminds me all the time—but like my dad used to say, sometimes I wonder if he’s only got one oar in the water. Is he incapable of walking around a set and finding a six-foot-four grown man by himself? I’m about to blow up and ask him, but when I look up I’m surprised by the desperation in his eyes. The dread and suspicion there make my stomach sink.

I pass my gaze around the room—to the back corner where some of the set designers are opening fresh beers, to the small seating area where Dan is now pretending to enjoy chatting with Melly. In the crowd of nearly seventy people, I don’t see Rusty, either.

“You don’t want to go searching, do you?” I ask quietly, on instinct.

James shakes his head slowly, and we share an extended beat of eye contact. It’s not that I immediately suspect anything, but like I said, Rusty can be impulsive. Who knows what kind of trouble he could be getting into?

“Maybe he’s out getting high with some of the camera guys,” I say.

Another shake of his head. “He doesn’t like to smoke, and he tried edibles a few weeks ago and said he’d never do that again.”

“Maybe he left?” I say.

“Without telling us?”

I exhale a shaky breath, growing a little uneasy myself. “I swear to God, if he’s cheating on his diet …” On Rusty’s current honey-do list is Melly’s instruction that he lose a few pounds before the new show is announced. According to her, he looks puffy on-screen. If he’s hiding somewhere with cake in his lap I’ll never hear the end of it.

For the most part James and I have kept to our own schedules since he joined Comb+Honey two months ago. It’s not that I dislike him, exactly, but the way he writes off my job as disposable and frivolous and treats me like I’m only intelligent enough for remedial assistant activities—unless he needs help performing one himself, of course—really pisses me off. But I don’t want to pretend the Tripps’ world would be an easy one to walk into and immediately comprehend, either. Even I sometimes have no idea what’s going on with them. Rusty and Melly pay well and make it possible for me to keep the health coverage I need, but their relationship is obviously complicated.

“Okay,” I finally say. “Let’s go find him.”

With a grimace, James follows me out of the main room and down the hall that leads to the warehouse. The air conditioner seems abnormally loud in the small space, loud enough to drown out James’s clunky footsteps on the industrial carpet behind me. Along the way there are five doors, each closed. One is an A/V room, the next is a janitor closet. After that there’s a greenroom for visiting guests, a small crew lounge, and the editing studio. Trying to imagine what we’ll find inside any of these tonight makes me queasy.

The A/V room is dark and empty. The door hinge squeaks into the quiet room.

The janitor closet is locked, and too small to be useful as a hiding place for a grown man.

The greenroom is empty; the crew lounge, too.

The soundproof editing booth is last, and the door is locked.

I’m not sure why I’m nervous as I pull my key ring off my belt and find the right key, focusing to keep my right hand still as I carefully slide it into the lock.

We both hold our breaths as the knob slowly turns.

The sound hits us first—deep groans, skin slapping against skin—followed by the briefest flash of thrusting white butt cheeks, swinging testicles, and a bright red floral dress pushed up over a woman’s shoulders, her dark hair really all that is visible of her. It takes a couple of grunts and thrusts before my brain connects the dots and melts. Unspotted, I carefully pull the door shut again.

Rusty was definitely not eating cake.

I slowly turn around. James is still staring past me at the now-closed door, unblinking, mouth open.

“That was Rusty,” he whispers.

I give Captain Obvious a nod. “Yes.”

They have a TV show and a book coming out. A book on relationships. Rusty—and his thrusting butt—has impeccable timing. “And Stephanie,” James adds.

I hoped I was the only one who realized that, but no such luck. I exhale slowly, already trying to mentally Tetris my way out of what I just saw. Moments like this make me realize why professional distance is a good thing. I’ve done holidays with the Tripps and watched as they grew from owners of a single store to rulers of an empire. Literally no part of my life isn’t somehow tied up and overlapped with theirs.

“Yes, James, with Stephanie.” I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to figure out what the correct response is here.

When I look back at him, James is staring at me, his eyes round with shock. “But he’s MARRIE—”

I clap a shaking hand over his mouth. “Shut up, oh my God!” I look up and down the hall to make sure no one has witnessed what we’ve witnessed. “Shhhhhhhh!”

I pull him with me around the corner toward the warehouse. A vent blows overhead, hopefully masking our voices. “You have got to keep your cool about this!” I haven’t even figured out how I feel; I cannot deal with James freaking out on top of it.

“Carey, he’s cheating on his wife!”

I stare at him for an astonished beat. Did we not both just witness Rusty and his swinging balls? I visibly shudder. “I got that.”

“But …” James trails off, bewildered. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Of course it bothers me,” I tell him calmly, trying to not feel frustrated that this newbie, of all people, is telling me how to react to a couple I’ve known my entire adult life. Defensiveness bubbles to the surface. “But I’ve worked for them for a long time, and I learned years ago that some things are not my business.”

Marriages have ups and downs, Melly told me once. I need you to focus on the work, not what’s happening between me and Russ.

I’d grown up watching my dad come home stumbling drunk and reeking of perfume, only to see him and Mom happily canoodling on the couch two days later, enough times to know Melly was right. The lines are blurry in this job, but I do my best to let the Tripps’ marriage be their marriage, and their business be my business.

From his expression, I gather James is not on board with Operation Look the Other Way. And his horror triggers an uncomfortable dissolving sensation in my stomach. I’m mad and sad and frankly horrified by what we just saw, but I can’t help but feel embarrassed and slightly protective, too. I shove my hands into my pockets.

“They’re about to release their book on relationships,” he says, voice high and tight. “Their book of marital advice.”

I shift on my feet. “I know.”

“And launch a new show that’s based almost entirely on their brand!” he says, struggling to keep his voice down. “That brand being their blissful marriage!”

I work to hide my irritation. To be honest, I don’t see James often because, whether he likes it or not, so far he’s good at his job and keeps Rusty in line. So much so, in fact, that I didn’t realize Rusty was having another affair.

I narrow my eyes. “You’re sure you didn’t know about this? You were awfully reluctant to go looking for him.”

James flushes. “I thought I’d catch him eating a sandwich, Carey, not”—he points behind him, back to the room—“that.”

I deflate. “Yeah, me too.” I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then look around the empty hallway. “We can’t let anyone else down here.”

“You’re not going to tell her,” he guesses, frowning. “Are you?”

Defensiveness is my default: “Melly made it clear a number of years ago that she wants me and all assistants to stay out of her private life. That includes you.”

I can see by the way his chest rises that his first instinct is to correct me—yet again—that he is not an assistant, but self-preservation wins out. “This could all blow up in our faces,” he tells me. “You get that, right?”

“What do you want me to do?”

He takes another deep breath. “I think we need to tell Melissa.”

“You also thought we should go find him, and you can see how well that turned out.”

He gives me a long stare.

“I am not telling Melly that we saw her husband plowing their cohost.” I laugh. “Hell no.”

Talking to them about this would be like talking to my parents, but multiplied by the Also My Employer factor of awkward. James probably doesn’t realize that my relationship with the Tripps isn’t just employer-employee. How would he? We barely interact.

But I can’t be the one to rat out Rusty. My dad died when I was seventeen. He’d been noticing some swelling in his legs and feet but brushed it off as a hazard of working on his feet all day, climbing up and down ladders and sometimes having to work on his knees. He put off seeing a doctor until it was too late. Years of smoking had left him with stage-four lung cancer, and he died within just a couple of months. Rusty tried not to be obvious about stepping in, but he’s always been there when I needed him. Not to mention he distracts Melly when she goes off on one of her tirades, and he gives me free rein in his shop whenever I have time. I really don’t want to do this.

James looks at me, silently disappointed. “Carey.”

“Maybe she already knows?” I ask hopefully.

“If she knows,” he begins, “then she needs to tell him to be more discreet. It could have been anyone walking into that room, and someone with less loyalty and a cell phone camera could have blown up their entire livelihood, and ours, with a single tweet.”

It’s physically painful to admit that he’s right. Freaking Rusty.

“Fine,” I say, but decide to give myself a temporary reprieve. “We’ll check in with her tomorrow after the meeting.”

“Check in with her?”

“God, why are you like this? We’ll tell her after the meeting. Are you happy?”

He wearily pushes a hand through his hair. “Not even a little bit.”

We both jump at a voice coming out of the quiet hall. “Tell who what after the meeting?”

It’s Robyn, the Tripps’ publicist: a tightly coiled, neurotic busybody.

“Nothing.” I wave her away with false ease.

“Come on,” she says, face pinched. “You’re down here hiding when you should be getting things organized and packed up out there.” She looks between us. “Clearly something is going on.”

I resent the reminder that I need to be cleaning up after all these people and mentally give Robyn the finger. “James and I were saying that we need to talk to Melly tomorrow. I’ll let her know—”

“Why does James need to talk to her?” Robyn asks, too astute for her own good. Melly has never needed James for anything that didn’t need to be opened or reached on a high shelf. “Is it a big deal?”

I give a breezy “No” just as James utters an emphatic “Yes.”

I turn to glare at him. He glares back at me.

“Robyn should know,” he says quietly, and in my head I’m grabbing my hair at the roots, yelling, Goddammit, James, be cool!

But Robyn seems to be picking up what we’re putting down. She chews her lip, worrying for a reason now. “We’ll do it tonight.”

I let out an incredulous laugh. “It’s already been a really long day, and I still need to clean up once everyone goes.”

Now would be a great time for one or both of them to offer to help, but the silence is thunderous.

Robyn sighs deeply and checks her watch. “Netflix is at nine. I’ll grab Melissa and meet you both in the office in an hour.”

An hour means that I’ll have to hustle my ass off here and then book it over to the Comb+Honey offices across town. Awesome.

Robyn turns to leave, and I glare again at James, who gives me a triumphant smile. “We’re doing the right thing,” he says.

“We now have a work meeting at midnight.”

“It’s the right thing,” he repeats.

One hour. He’s lucky that doesn’t leave me enough time to make a James McCann voodoo doll.