Chapter One
“Here’s to another successful acquisition,” Scott says as he clinks his shot glass, full of one of the world’s finest tequilas, to Angie’s and mine.
“At a hundred bucks a shot, you’d better hope we sealed the deal today,” Angie adds. Scott and I vehemently nod our heads in agreement before we down the expensive liquor and savor the burn.
“Gavin, you were on fire,” Scott says. “I thought we might lose the screenplay altogether until you pulled out the big guns.”
“It never hurts to drop a name or two just to get these young screenwriters seeing stars and dollar signs,” I say. I turn to Angie and tell her, “Don’t forget to put that meeting with his lawyer on our schedule next week. I’d hate to lose it on a damn technicality.”
“I’m on it boss,” Angie assures me, already typing away into the calendar on her phone.
“So, did you ever get Karen to read this one?” Scott asks. “I thought it might be right up her alley being all ‘Desperate Housewives’ and what not.”
Angie almost chokes on the Diet Coke she’s drinking. She laughs, saying, “We are talking about Gavin’s wife, Karen . . . my friend and former sorority sister . . . the very same one who only bothers to read a magazine if there are tips on how to reduce wrinkles or prevent split ends?”
We all share a laugh. I’ve known Angie since college. She and Karen became inseparable when they rushed the same sorority. After graduation, however, reality struck most of us who understood the value of a hard day’s work, a group Karen never aspired to become a part of. Angie showed a lot of promise and Scott and I quickly brought her on as our assistant as soon as we started the company a few years later. She’s been with us ever since, almost four years now. I think Angie now qualifies more as my friend than Karen’s, but even I don’t have the balls to tell Karen that.
Karen couldn’t be more different from Angie now. We got married right after graduation and she proceeded to make a career out of being a social butterfly. I was so busy working my way up as a production assistant that I never even noticed how she truly lacked ambition to do anything in life besides garner a fashionable entourage. But our life works for us. She stays out of my business and I stay out of hers. It’s kind of like the way we were back in college—friends who keep each other grounded while living our own lives. Only now we have sex. Occasionally.
“No, she didn’t read it,” I tell them, waving the bartender over. “What’ll it be guys?” I raise my eyebrows at them awaiting their drink orders.
“Oh, no,” Angie says. “You’re not getting me drunk again on the road. Hangovers and airplanes do not play well together, especially when the flight from Chicago to L.A. is not a particularly short one. I’m calling it a night, boys.” She leans in and gives us each a hug before exiting the hotel bar to go up to her room.
“Scotch and soda for me,” Scott says to the bartender. Then he looks at me. “I’ll puke on a plane. Doesn’t bother me.”
I laugh at him as I order my own drink and we turn our barstools around to peruse the area for Scott’s next conquest. “What about that brunette over there?” I motion to the woman sitting at a table in the corner of the bar playing with her phone.
“Nah, she looks desperate,” he says.
“How can you possibly tell that?” I ask.
“She’s been checking us out since we got here. Clearly she’s here alone. Too easy a target,” he says.
That’s Scott Carlson for you. Always up for a challenge. As if being the starting quarterback on his college football team wasn’t enough, he has to have the bad boy look that all women swoon over with his spiky hair and tatted up arms. It’s amazing that we ever get anyone to take us seriously in the film production business. I guess that’s why I get to take point on a lot of the public appearances. Makes our company seem a little more clean-cut.
“Okay, how about the one at the end of the bar with the big teeth?” I nod over his shoulder at an attractive woman.
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” he says, turning around to check her out. He quickly turns back and says, “Too old.” He shivers. “After Gretchen, I swore off anyone over thirty.”
I raise my eyebrows at my thirty-one-year-old partner.
“What?” he says, holding his hands up in surrender. “You only live once, man and I’m not getting any younger. Not all of us can still be in our twenties, you know.” He slams back the rest of his drink and motions for another. “Hey, that reminds me, I got some ‘save the date’ thingy from Karen the other day. She’s really doing this one up, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “Why the hell is she sending out ‘save the date’ cards anyway? It’s a birthday party, not a wedding,” I groan.
He laughs when I chug the rest of my drink. He says, “Your wife isn’t happy unless she’s spending your money on some kind of extravagant event is she?”
I nod my head at him. “Let’s just say she’s very fucking happy these days if my empty wallet is any indication.”
“You two are the most functional dysfunctional couple I know,” he says.
I can’t argue with that logic. I notice a few women walking into the bar. “What about one of those?” I raise my chin in their direction.
“What is it with you and brunettes?” he asks. “If I recall, your wife is a blonde. You married Barbie for Christ’s sake.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Dunno,” I reply. “I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for them.”
The bartender puts another round of drinks down, sending a piece of paper floating off the bar onto the floor. Scott reaches down to retrieve it. He stares at it for a minute while a smile spreads across his face. “Yesssss,” he hisses, pointing to the paper. “This is the one. This one will be squirming under me before the night is out. And look, she’s even a brunette.” He shoves the flyer in my face.
I grab it and look at the picture. My heart lodges somewhere in the vicinity of my throat as my head wraps around the image. Flashbacks of my sophomore year at UNC cloud my vision. Suddenly, I become unstable on my barstool and find myself grabbing the counter for balance.
It can’t be her.
I scan the flyer for a name and that’s when I see it. The name that has haunted me for years. I look back at the picture. That face. That smile. Those unforgettable eyes. It’s her. The only woman I’ve ever loved. The woman who broke my goddamn heart.
Baylor Mitchell.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, closing my eyes and crinkling the paper in my hand.
“Dude, don’t ruin the picture,” Scott says, pulling it from my clutches. “If I can’t get the girl, I can at least use the picture to rub one out.” He smooths out the flyer on the counter.
“Not this one,” I say, picking it up so I can study it again. It says she’s speaking here at the hotel.
Tonight.
I quickly look around the bar as if she might be in here this very second.
She’s doing a book signing after. She’s an author. I remember that she studied journalism back in college, until she left school. Until she left me. But, an author . . . wow. And by the looks of it, a pretty well-known one, too.
“What the hell, man?” Scott asserts. “Give it back.”
I brush his hand away. I can’t tear my eyes away from hers. They are exactly as I remembered. Pale brown, hazel almost, with flecks of blue and green. I swear those eyes would change color based on what she was wearing. In this picture, she’s wearing blue and her eyes look aquamarine. She looks happy.
How can she look so happy after what she did to me? I wonder if she married that asswipe, Chris. If she did, she didn’t take his name.
“Dude!” Scott says. I look at him and he’s got his hands out, palms up, silently asking me to fill him in on whatever he’s missing.
“I know her, Scott,” I say. I close my eyes and my head shakes back and forth as I struggle not to remember that fateful day. “She ripped my fucking heart out.”
He looks at the picture incredulously. He points at her face. “This girl?” he asks. “I thought you didn’t have a heart, Gavin. That’s what you’ve always said. That’s why you say you and Karen are perfect for each other.”
“I used to have one,” I say. “A long time ago, until . . .” I find it hard to even say her name after all this time. “Until Baylor kicked the shit out of it and rendered it useless.”
“Oh, shit! Really?” he says. He motions for a round of shots. “How is it we’ve been friends for six years and you’ve never mentioned her once?”
While staring at her picture, I throw back the shot that was just placed in front of me. She has barely aged. Maybe the picture was Photoshopped. She’d be twenty-six now, but she still looks like that co-ed I ran into at her freshman orientation. Her hair is longer and straighter than it was back then, but she’s still gorgeous. Flawless. Perfect. I slam my glass down on top of her picture and immediately regret it when the ink runs.
“I don’t talk about her,” I say. “Not since the day she left.” What I don’t tell him is that even though I haven’t ever spoken a word about her, she is the only woman I’ve ever dreamed about.
Damn, that makes me sound like a real bastard, not dreaming of the girl I married.
“Well, maybe you should talk about her,” he says. “You know, so you don’t blow a gasket, or worse, cry like a goddamn baby right here at the bar.” He laughs.
“Fine,” I say, still mesmerized by the now-smeared face of the woman who was my whole world eight years ago. “But you better keep ‘em coming.” I lift my empty glass and Scott calls the bartender over.
Then I start talking.
Chapter Two
Eight years ago . . .
“Would you hurry up, Gavin?” Karen says, dragging me along the sidewalk that leads to the quad.
Why the hell did I agree to help her and her sorority sisters at freshman orientation again? Oh, right, I remember. Because I could very well end up with a fresh list of eighteen-year-olds’ phone numbers burning a hole in my pocket.
“Jesus, Karen, it’s not like the banquet is going anywhere,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to slow our pace. “If you were that worried about being late, why didn’t we leave fifteen minutes ago?”
She throws me a look like I’m stupid. “Angie’s hair wasn’t done yet. We couldn’t possibly have left one minute sooner.” She smiles over at her friend mumbling something to her about men being incapable of understanding.
Karen and her sorority sisters. Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with them. Oh, right, it all goes back to the phone numbers of the aforementioned eighteen-year-olds. Being in a sorority might suit my friend’s pretentious upbringing, but it also benefits my own penchant for a different flavor every week. That’s me. Just call me Baskin Robbins . . . only with far more than thirty-one flavors. I can’t be faulted for my philandering ways. I blame it all on my father. I came to the conclusion all on my own. No need for high-priced shrinks.
He and Karen are like two peas in a fucking pod. Sometimes I think she’s his long-lost love child. I love my father. Well, maybe love is too strong a word. But like most politicians, he can be a downright prick sometimes. To me, anyway. To everyone else he is Congressman McBride, loveable former judge and family man. I’m not sure how my mom has put up with him for more than twenty years. He’s got his head stuck so far up the asses of so many government officials that I’m not sure where he ends and they begin. And although my dad convinced me to major in Political Science, I refuse to jump on board with his brown-nosing antics. Most of the time. Well, when I’m not around him. Or his colleagues. Or his friends. Okay, so I pretty much fake who I am all the time, too. But, only because I learned from the best.
He will not, however, dictate who I date. Karen. That’s who he wants me to date. Of course he does, she is the daughter of his friend and fellow narcissist, Joel Thompson, whose family owns one of the largest oil fields in East Texas. The Thompsons are a very influential family and my dad would just love it if I married into that. Which is, of course, why I won’t. Karen and I have always been friends, ever since my parents moved into the house next to hers in Fort Worth when I was five years old. And by houses, I mean mansions on neighboring acreages. As in, when we wanted to play, one of our nannies would have to drive us to the other’s yard.
But she is the reason my dad ultimately allowed me to attend UNC instead of some Ivy League school. Fortunately for me, Karen’s dad, with all his millions, wasn’t wealthy enough to buy her way into Harvard or Yale, but had enough connections here at UNC to get her accepted with her less-than-stellar grades. Fine by me. Plus, we have a way better men’s soccer team here than any of those high-priced schools. Not like my dad would ever thank me for earning a scholarship or anything. That would be beneath him.
“Gavin, would you quit eyeing all the freshman girls? There’ll be enough time for that later,” Karen says, continuing to pull me along by my elbow.
I hadn’t even realized I was doing it. I guess it’s an unconscious habit for me now. Watching girls. Picking out my next one-night-stand. Karen likes to tease me about it a lot, but underneath it all I think she’s jealous. I think that deep down, she wants me, but would never admit it to me for fear of my rejecting her. She’s smart about that, anyway. I like her, but I don’t want her. I’ve never wanted her. She’s got the rockin’ body and face of a model, and I’d totally screw her if she weren’t my friend, but she’s not girlfriend material. Not that I know what that is exactly, since I’ve never met a girl I’d label as such, but I know it’s not Karen.
We come flying around the corner of Murphey Hall and I smack right into a girl, causing her to fall as everything spews out of her backpack all over the sidewalk and bushes.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “I’m really sorry. Are you okay?” I look down at the stunned girl. She’s looking up at me with these luminous eyes that are brown or blue, or maybe green, I can’t really tell in this light. Her caramel-brown hair is pulled up into a ponytail with strands sticking out every which way like she wasn’t even looking in a mirror when she did it.
“Walk much?” she says up at me.
“Gavin, we’re already late,” Karen squeals back at me, walking ahead and not bothering to give little Miss Chameleon-eyes a second look.
“You go on ahead,” I say. “I’m just going to help, uh . . .” I look down at the girl who is still sprawled out on the ground beneath me. Normally, this might cause my pants to get tight, seeing a beautiful specimen literally lying at my feet. But there’s something about her, and I don’t even consider her a conquest. I have this nagging urge to protect her.
“Baylor,” she says.
I cock my head and draw my brows at her. “Huh?” I ask.
“My name. It’s Baylor,” she says in a soft melodious voice that resonates somewhere in my chest.
I turn back to Karen. “I’m just going to help Baylor here clean up her things. I’ll be right behind you,” I say.
Karen stands, arms crossed in front of her, staring at me from across the grass where she stopped. She looks at Baylor and rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. Then she turns to catch up to her sorority friends.
“So, Baylor,” I say, noticing how I like the way her name rolls off my tongue. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” she says, crawling around on her hands and knees to gather her things.
I join her on the ground and start handing her the stuff within my reach. I pass her a hairbrush and a notebook. Then I see it just lying there next to me and I wonder how I’m supposed to handle this. I could ignore it and get up, but then it would be so obvious right there in the middle of the sidewalk and I don’t want to cause her any embarrassment. I quickly grab the tampon and lean over to stuff it into her bag. She follows my motion with those incredible eyes and sees what I’m holding. The most adorable blush creeps up her suntanned face. She averts her eyes from mine and says, “Uh . . . thanks.”
“Gavin,” I say.
“What?” she asks, clearly still flustered from the tampon thing.
“My name’s Gavin.” I extend my hand to her.
She appraises it for a second before taking it into her own. When my large athletic hand touches her soft petite one, I swear to God a bolt of electricity goes straight to my dick.
Jesus Christ, where did that come from? It’s not like she’s flaunting her cleavage or swinging her ass at me. I mean, she’s wearing yoga pants and a t-shirt that says ‘Thing 2.’ I’m not even sure she’s wearing makeup. But, still, she has this natural flawless beauty. And by the way she’s staring down at the sidewalk, she has no fucking idea how gorgeous she is.
“Nice to meet you, Gavin,” she says.
I belatedly notice we are still on the ground, so before I release her hand, I help her up. Then I reluctantly pull my hand away and reach down for a textbook by my feet. I hold it out to her. “Journalism, huh?”
“Yup,” she replies. “It’s my major.”
“Ahhh, far more interesting than mine.” I make a slight gagging noise when I say, “Poli Sci.”
She looks me square in the eyes. “Why would you major in something that’s not even interesting to you?”
Shit. I’ve known this girl all of two seconds and she’s managed to literally bring me to my knees and has me questioning my entire future.
“Baylor! You alright?” I hear someone call out behind me. I don’t even have to turn around to know that I will hate whomever the voice belongs to. I can tell from his tone that he cares about her.
“I’m fine, Chris,” she says, brushing off the pieces of gravel that collected on her pants when she was on the ground.
The guy comes up beside her and places a possessive arm around her shoulders. Damn . . . boyfriend.
“Chris, this is Gavin,” she says. “He was helping me pick up my things.”
“Well, I should hope so,” he says. “Considering he was the reason you fell. I saw it from all the way over there.” He looks at me with no concern that I’ve got at least five inches and thirty pounds on him. “This isn’t the soccer field, you know.”
I shoot him my ‘WTF’ look. But, I get it. He’s not exactly a big person, and here I stand, a taller, more muscular guy. A guy he obviously knows is on the soccer team. A guy who was touching his girl. He’s marking his territory. I would do the same thing.
Wait . . . would I?
I never give a shit about the girls I date—or, more accurately—hookup with. So, why does this one girl, who has a goddamn boyfriend, have me thinking about marking her as mine?
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I try to shake away my thoughts. “I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was walking.”
“Baylor, we should get going. We don’t want to be late,” Chris says, pulling her away without even bothering to acknowledge the introduction she was trying to facilitate.
She doesn’t say goodbye. But as they walk away, she turns slightly giving me the sweetest look. An apology for her boyfriend’s rude behavior? A recognition of the electric touch we shared? I watch them walk out of sight and then I lean against the hard brick building behind me wondering what the hell just happened here.
As I stare at the ground, something shimmering in the sunlight catches my eye. I walk over to the edge of the bushes and pick it up. An empty keychain. It must be Baylor’s. It’s silver and is engraved with the picture of a zebra. I turn it over and read the inscription.
Be what nobody else can ever be . . . yourself
I stick it in my pocket.
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