Smoke & Mirrors by Skye Jordan
27
Isabel
It’s freaking freezing outside, and I wait in front of the jail for my Uber ride, which is taking forever. To be honest, I’m shocked Uber even operates here.
Hands hidden in my sleeves, arms crossed, I shift from foot to foot and concentrate on the cold to keep the anger and pain and self-disgust from sinking any deeper.
Logan has every right to be angry, but I also have every right to keep my messy past to myself. Only, the hurt and angry look on his face flashes in my mind and cuts me deep.
The only car on the road approaches and pulls to the curb. I check the license to the app, and when it matches, I pull open the back door and slide into the warm car. The heat feels so good, I close my eyes and exhale sharply.
“Hey there, Isabel.”
My eyes pop open to find Larry Moore grinning at me from the driver’s seat. My heart sinks, joined by dread. Larry is a retired teacher who now spends his days volunteering—at the library, the church, the school, the fire department. When he’s not doing any of that, he’s on a barstool at the Cockloft.
It’s painfully clear this screwup will no longer stay between Corbett, Aiden, Logan, and me. Now the entire town will know what a fuckup I’ve become. What a liar I’ve been.
“Hi, Larry. Can you take me to the Cockloft, please?” He already knows where we’re going. I’m just trying to get him to stop grinning at me like he’s got a secret and take me to Tucker’s.
He faces forward and pulls back onto the street. “So,” he says with a long pause. “Jail. Sure is the last place I expected to find you.”
“I don’t suppose we could keep this between us.”
He laughs.
I sigh and stare out the side window, thinking about nothing but the physical pain in my body. My brain is fried. My heart burns. My stomach is stuffed with a concrete pillar.
I came here to fix my life and ended up incinerating it instead.
Thankfully, it’s a short drive, so I don’t have to ignore Larry’s questions for long.
I use the key the guys gave me and make my way up the back staircase toward Tucker’s loft, dreading the conversation I know he’ll want to have.
He answers the door faster than I expect.
“What—” Then it hits me. He’s sleeping on the sofa, closer to the front door. Maya is using his bed. “Shit. I forgot Maya was here.”
“Come on in,” he grumbles, stepping aside. “I’m pretty sure you’ll still fit in the bathtub.”
That brings a rush from the past and how, as a kid, I used to climb into the bathtub to hide when Mom was fighting with whatever guy was in her life at the time. I’m not sure why, but when Tucker wasn’t home, hiding in the bathtub behind a closed shower curtain seemed the safest place to be.
I force my mind toward other sleeping options, but it’s late, and I don’t feel like driving forty-five minutes to the closest Motel 6. It’s also too cold to sleep in my car.
I step inside, struck by the fact that my life is still in a fucking downward spiral I can’t seem to stop.
Maya comes out of the bedroom wearing sweats, her hair down and messy, no makeup. The sight shoots me right back to high school, and I’m hit by a staggering loss on top of all my other misery.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
I’m not sure how to answer that. “Logan’s fine.”
The concern fades from her expression, replaced by something resembling sympathy. “Come on, sleep with me.”
“No, that’s okay. I just forgot you were here. I’ll find another place.” I turn toward the door.
“Don’t be stupid,” Maya says. “We’ve only shared a bed a couple hundred times. Get in here.”
Tucker falls back on the sofa and throws his arm across his eyes. “Don’t stay up all night giggling, don’t eat me out of house and home, and no fucking pillow fights.”
I laugh, because that’s exactly how Maya and I used to spend our sleepovers when we were kids.
“We’ve given him sleepover PTSD,” I tell Maya as I pass into the bedroom. I take one look at the rumpled sheets and add, “I see you still do gymnastics in your sleep.”
“Shut up,” she says without heat as she drops back into bed.
I slide out of my jacket and get a better look at what she’s wearing. “I didn’t even know Givenchy made sweats. How much did those cost?”
“They were a gift,” she says. “Don’t judge.”
I don’t want to know who gave them to her or how that came about, only I do. I wish we could stay up all night talking about our lives in New York. Then the chasm between our experiences hits me, and I consider Motel 6 again.
“If you try to leave, I’ll tackle you,” she says, reading my mind and making me smile.
I toss my jacket over a chair, then sit on the edge of the mattress to take off my boots.
“What happened with Logan?” she asks.
His angry, hurt expression at the jail instantly fills my mind, and I exhale a moan.
The first words I think are I fucked it up like I do everything in life, but remember he was the one who made Aiden and my life in New York a problem, not me. I didn’t lie to him. I went out of my way not to lie to him. Yet we still ended up here.
“You were right. My half-truths didn’t go over well with him. It’s just my past coming back to haunt me.” I reach under my sweater and unfasten my bra, then take it off without removing my clothes, a trick I learned at summer camp in sixth grade. A trick Maya taught me.
“Or his coming back to haunt him,” Maya suggests.
“Probably both,” I agree.
I slide into bed. Maya turns off the light on her nightstand, and darkness fills the room, alleviated only by the moonlight streaming in the window. It reminds me of my night with Logan, the way our bodies were lit up in moonlight and shadow. A yearning I don’t completely understand hits me in the gut.
“I hear you got an interview at Threadbare in San Francisco.” Maya’s voice is soft, but it still seems to fill the room.
Shit. I forgot to cancel that. “How did you know?”
“Natalie told me.”
I search my mind and find the memory of telling Natalie the call from Threadbare was the was the reason I left the rink, not to run after my shitty ex.
“One of the girls I interned with the summer of my junior year works there,” Maya says. “If you really want it, I can call and put in a good word for you.”
I’m dumbfounded into silence, and the room seems to ring with her words long after they dissipate.
“Or not…” she adds.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you do that?”
“Sounds like New York has embedded itself in your bones. People occasionally do good things for other people. It’s called humanity. It’s sometimes hard to spot in New York, but not everything in life has to be a competition or a hustle.”
“Says the woman with the dream job,” I say softly. I don’t begrudge Maya her success. I know how hard she had to work to get it.
My mind rolls backward in time, to my three jobs, scraping by, working like a dog, never getting a break. Yeah, I guess I have viewed life as competition, and I definitely hustle. It’s all I know. It’s all I’ve ever known.
“You never answered my question.” Maya rolls toward me, props herself up on her elbow, and rests her head in one hand. “What did you see in McBride? If I were a betting woman, I’d put money on his status as a narcissist.”
“Wish I had that clarity. Could have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“You probably didn’t work with him very often.”
“Like never.”
“I’ve met him several times at events. Know people who know him. He’s sexy until he opens his mouth.”
That makes laughter bubble up. “Ain’t that the truth. Doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“What happened after you left the bar?”
I take a deep breath and relay my story to her. She knows the worst at this point. No sense trying to save face.
“Seriously?” Maya says, as if I’ve just told her about unicorns and rainbows.
“Unfortunately, yes. When Logan came to get me, he was an ass, and I refused to go home with him.”
“He can get a little heavy-handed now and then. It’s for the right reason. He just sucks at delivery sometimes.” She laughs again with a shake of her head. “You always were good at finding trouble.”
“Only because I knew you’d get me out of it. Ever regret not going into law?”
She shrugs. “I deal with enough idiots as it is. Fashion isn’t known for employing the most easygoing crayons in the box.”
“But then there’s you.”
“Aww.” Her face breaks into a smile. A big, authentic smile that glows in the dark. “I get into my share of debates and arguments. It’s just related to fashion, not crime. Although, a lot of the designs that come out of New York are truly criminal.”
That makes me laugh. Hard.
A little more tension leaves my body, but I’m struck by a hot, quick jolt of loss. I don’t know if you ever get over losing a childhood best friend the way I did, but it seems safe to bet the pain hollowing me out right now tells me you don’t ever get over it. And Maya isn’t the only friend I’ve lost. I can add Logan to the list too.
“I wish you had told me about your mom’s boyfriend instead of bailing,” she says, voice softer. “I would have tied his balls in a knot.”
“I wish I’d known about your mom’s death before the funeral. I would have come.”
My mind veers toward that time in our lives. To the decisions I made on the fly—telling Tucker about Derik, taking Maya’s scholarship, leaving without telling her, and losing touch because I couldn’t face what a shitty friend I’d been to the best and most loyal friend I’d ever had.
“You really have to cut yourself some slack,” Maya says. “We were all just kids trying to not only parent ourselves, but stay out of the messes our parents created for us.”
My phone dings with an email notification.
“If Aiden harasses you electronically, it’s a crime,” Maya says.
“Really?”
“Really. Save all your correspondence.”
“Guess if anyone would know it’s you.” I’m smiling as I look at my email. I already know it’s not Aiden. He would have texted or called.
“Just ju—” The last part of “junk” cuts out as I see an email from another company where I applied for a job as an associate designer.
“What?” Maya asks.
“It’s from Charlie Moss. I mean, not the Charlie Moss, but the company.”
Charlie Moss is the Donna Karen of athletic wear and has all of Hollywood in his back pocket.
“Nuh-uh.” She bolts up and scoots close until we’re shoulder to shoulder staring at my phone, the way we used to read each other’s texts.
Now, we’re reading an email that says a girl I went to school with got ahold of the résumé I sent in and recommended me for the opening. They want me to come in for an interview.
“I applied for an opening there,” I say, “but I never thought…”
I never thought my résumé would make it past the lowest-level clerk in the company.
“You know Crystal Morrison?” Maya asks, her eyes wide. “The queen bitch of bitches? I did an internship with her at Kate Spade one summer. She spits poison.”
I forget just how small the fashion industry is. The only reason Maya and I never crossed paths is because I existed on a parallel plane of reality well below hers.
“She does,” I say, remembering Crystal’s cold, calculating, competitive personality. “She’s also an absolute genius when it comes to design. Truly out of the box. I learned a lot from her.”
“I never thought she was capable of relationships.”
“Oh, she’s not. We weren’t friends.”
“How’d you get a recommendation from her?”
“Probably for saving her ass on a final project junior year. She was making some crazy-ass wraparound dress and ran out of feathers. God, she was an absolute wreck. Had a full-fledged meltdown in the studio at four a.m. We were the only two there. I ran home and grabbed a stupid boa I’d picked up—I don’t even know where, Halloween or Mardi Gras or something—and let her use it to finish. She got an A, of course. She was using yellow feathers and my boa was pink, but she mixed the colors and, Jesus, how she made that thing come out worthy of a runway still baffles me.”
As does this job offer. The second one in twenty-four hours. The kind I would have killed for in New York. Is this the universe nudging me toward leaving? Nudging me away from Logan?
“Associate designer,” Maya says, scanning the email. “Well, I guess if you’re not going to stay here and start your own thing, Morris or Threadbare wouldn’t be a bad second choice. You’d rise through the ranks and be a full-fledged designer in no time. Someone just needs to give you a chance.”
I’ve thought that more times than I can count. I thought every job I went for would be that chance. The opportunities were clearly implied in the ads, but it was all just an illusion. Over the years, I’ve learned that assistant designers make coffee and run errands. That merchandizing managers bow to the assistant buyers and the buyers.
So many jobs. So much bullshit. But I kept banging my head against that wall. Always hoping. Never realizing. It’s an exhausting cycle. My interest in both the jobs curdles.
My past disappointments turn my mind to Logan. To our argument. To the way he walked out of the jail.
“Though,” Maya says, pulling me back from my thoughts, “I still think designing for someone else so they can profit off your work is beneath you.”
“You have no idea what I’m capable of. As far as you know, I could design like a kindergartener.”
“I did my research,” Maya says. “I know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t know who you talked to. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been trapped in dead-end jobs since college.”
“I talked to people you went to school with.”
I roll my eyes. “That was forever ago.”
“Those kinds of skills don’t just evaporate.”
“Doesn’t matter. I learned the hard way that wizards create these job ads, and the magic fades the day you start work.”
“Jaded are we?”
“After you’ve been lied to often enough, I guess you just start expecting everything—”
To be a lie,sticks in my throat.
All the times I’ve been lied to about jobs has made me cynical about believing their promises. The same way all the lies told to Logan has made him distrustful of women. And I realize I doubt all jobs the same way Logan doubts all women.
My shoulders sag under the weight of this epiphany. “Well, shit.”