A Deal with the Devil by Elizabeth O’Roark

10

“Hi. This is Drew Wilson,” says the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m interested in getting some work done.”

“You’re the Drew Wilson.” This has to be a prank. Drew Wilson is way too famous to be making her own appointments. She’s also way too young and gorgeous to be in need of cosmetic enhancement.

She sounds amused. “Are you always this suspicious?”

“World-famous singers don’t usually place their own calls.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely not trusting my assistant with this. She’d probably call TMZ before she called you. I mean, this is confidential, right?”

“Of course,” I reply, though I’m really thinking what she needs is a new assistant, not plastic surgery.

She tells me her manager wants her to get a nose job and a boob job, but she needs it to be so top secret that no one but her knows. “Mostly, I don’t want my boyfriend—well, I guess I can’t call him my boyfriend, but let’s just say the guy I’d like as a boyfriend—to know. Can you guys do that?”

My teeth sink into my lip. Drew Wilson has the kind of face other women go to surgeons waving photos of. Why the hell does she think she needs to change it? “I...yes, it’s possible, but you know, you’re going to have a lot of swelling after a nose job and black eyes, possibly. Your boyfriend is going to notice.”

“If I did it while he’s on tour, though...” she muses.

I’m not sure how she thinks her boyfriend won’t notice new breasts, but it’s not even the point.

“Look,” I reply, “I could probably get fired for this but I’m going to say it anyway: you’re gorgeous. There’s nothing wrong with your nose or anything else. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She blows out a long breath. “I don’t even know. Maybe it’s a bad idea. My manager’s been on me and this guy...have you been with a guy who’s, like, fucking perfect? You get along so well, and then he just, like, doesn’t call for weeks at a time?”

The question sounds rhetorical, as if it’s a given. But Matt’s the only person I’ve ever dated. I have no experience with most of the awful boyfriend/fuck buddy scenarios other women seem to have had. “I’ve had one boyfriend my entire life so I really wouldn’t know.”

“One,” she repeats.

“It’s shocking, I know. But you’re stunning, Drew,” I say flatly. “Don’t change yourself for anyone else.”

“Spoken like a girl dating the rare guy who’s actually one of the good ones.”

Yeah, I thought so too. I didn’t have a clue until he showed me exactly who he really was.

* * *

I’min the office going over the inventory when I hear the front door open. Hayes has just reached the kitchen when I step into the room, surprise on my face though there’s no reason for it—this is his home, after all. “Hey. Did you need something?”

He shakes his head, and even that small gesture is weary. “I’m going to try your nap idea from yesterday.”

I smile. He’s made it sound as if napping is something I personally invented.

“It sounds like you’ll need it,” I tell him. “Nicole texted with some interesting commentary about the other night and how she’d like to repeat it. Her text began with ‘It’s so big’ and had multiple exclamation points.”

He barely seems to register the comment as he passes me, heading toward the living area, but I suppose he’s gotten quite a few texts like that in the past. He strips off his button-down and I get a nice look at his shockingly defined biceps as he tosses the shirt onto a chair and lies down on the nearest couch, his long frame eating up every inch of space as he arranges a pillow under his head.

“I don’t see women more than once,” he says, with his eyes closed. “That way no one gets hurt.”

He’s asleep in mere seconds. I hesitate for a moment, then cross the room and lay a throw blanket over him. There’s something sweet and unexpectedly boyish about his face at rest, and it creates this strange ache in the center of my rib cage. He’s every bit as bad as I’d imagined at the start, and yet…he isn’t.

Anyone who’s ever met Matt would tell you he’s “one of the good ones”, while I doubt anyone would say that of Hayes. But Matt is not nearly what he appeared, while I suspect—under that beautiful, callous exterior—Hayes might be a little more.

* * *

For two hours,he sleeps like the dead.

When it’s time for him to get up, I call his name, and he doesn’t move a muscle. He’s a heavy sleeper, like my dad was. My hand looks like a child’s as it presses to his broad back, warm under the T-shirt. “Hey,” I say softly, “wake up.”

“Half a syringe,” he murmurs, eyes still closed. The man works so much he’s there even in his dreams.

“Hayes,” I say more firmly, kneeling beside him and shaking his shoulder, “wake up.”

His eyes open, and for a moment he just takes in my face—not as if I’m a stranger or his annoying assistant, but as if I’m someone he’s known his entire life, someone he absolutely trusts. It’s...unexpected. By the time I’ve recovered, the look is gone, replaced by his standard suspicion and disdain.

“I couldn’t wake you,” I say briskly, rising to my feet. “I made you some lunch.”

“Lunch?” he asks, placing his head in his hands as he tries to rouse himself.

“Yes, it’s a form of sustenance taken midday, one universal through cultures across the world.”

“I don’t eat lunch,” he says.

“Come on. It’ll help you get through the rest of the day,” I tell him, going to the refrigerator to get the salad I made him.

Hayes shrugs on his button-down as he walks to the counter, briefly revealing a wedge of taut stomach. “You sound like a mother. Not mine, obviously, but the good kind who doesn’t outsource all her parenting.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I reply, placing his salad on the counter. “I don’t have the greatest mom either.”

He cocks his head as he sits. “Interesting. I pictured you as a beloved only child, cosseted and fawned over daily.”

I laugh outright. Nothing could be further from the truth. “Hardly. I’m in the middle of three girls.”

“Three daughters?” he asks, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jesus. That would drive a man to an early grave.”

My heart tightens into a clenched fist. Even now, even after waking up three hundred days in a row with the same set of facts, it still doesn’t seem real. Sometimes I dream the past months were a mistake, and I wake stunned anew.

I carry the cutting board to the sink, feeling fragile as blown glass. Don’t think about it. Not here.

“Tali?” Hayes says, eyes open now and worried. “Shit. I’m sorry. You’re so young. I just assumed…”

I force a smile. “Well, three daughters, early grave…you kind of called it. He died last summer.”

“Jonathan told me you’d had a rough year,” he admits, looking away.

I frown. Jonathan isn’t the type to go around spilling other people’s drama unnecessarily, so I can’t imagine what led him to spill mine.

“Well, I hope he didn’t tell you too much. I’d like to sustain the illusion of having my shit together a little longer.”

“Have you seen the car you drive?” he asks. “I never thought you had your shit together.”

I laugh. He’s awful, and I like that about him.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he adds, “I think half of adulthood is pretending to have your shit together when you clearly don’t.”

My gaze flickers to his, briefly. There is something bleak in his eyes, something alarmingly honest, and suddenly I ache for him. Hayes, on the surface, seems to have everything he wants. Too much of everything he wants. I’ve been judging him for the way he lives, assuming it’s a reckless disregard for what he has.

But maybe it’s just a reckless attempt at being content with it.