Pretending to Be Us Page 19

  “This way,” I told my dad, “we could at least release the version of ‘Admit You Want Me’ that has Lucy in it rather than Darcy.”

  My dad shrugged. “That’s the least compelling part of your plan.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “Did she put you up to all of this?” my dad asked.

  “Lucy? No. She won’t talk to me. She feels so bad about what happened that she won’t even talk to me. This was my idea. Mine alone.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Interesting.”

  “Why is that interesting?”

  “I figured she came up with all this. It sounds about as plausible as pretending to be a princess on a major Hollywood film.”

  I bristled. “I came up with this myself,” I told him. “But maybe it was Lucy that taught me how to do it.”

  “Lie?”

  I’d finally lost my patience. “No. To do whatever it takes to get what I need,” I told him. “To get what’s really important. Did you know her family got evicted from their house because she wasn’t getting her paychecks anymore? She’s literally homeless. She did all this to save her mom and her sick grandmother from being on the street, and it didn’t even work. But that didn’t stop her. She went back and kept fighting Darcy, even though she had to get bullied and put down every day. She got demoted to Darcy’s assistant and she just took it because she thought there might be some way, any way to fix this. Her plan didn’t work out, but mine will. If she can be that determined, then so can I. Between the two of us, we might just stand a chance.”

  He stared at me dumbfounded. I rarely lost my patience or composure, and almost never with him. I also wasn’t ordinarily prone to monologuing. Apparently today was my day for lengthy outbursts.

  “You really love her, don’t you?” he asked. His expression was no longer so skeptical.

  I sighed. “Yes. But I’ve probably ruined everything.”

  God knew how I was going to convince Lucy that what she saw on the couch wasn’t real. God knew how I was even going to find her. She could be halfway to Timbuktu by now. Or Stockholm. She could be anywhere in the world and I’d have no way of finding her.

  My dad looked at me and smiled. “I have faith in you,” he said eventually. “You seem to be almost as good as she is at scheming. But for what it’s worth, I’m going to help you. Not because I like Lucy, mind you. Because I care about you.”

  Great. That was one thing down. The easy part. Now all I needed was a way to find Lucy, and a way to convince her that I loved her and could fix everything.

  41

  Lucy

  One Week Later

  “Okay, let me read this back to you, so I'm sure I’ve got it right,” I told table four. They weren’t listening to me. “You want two grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids, add tomatoes, sub carrots for fries, with milk. One on gluten free bread and with vegan cheese. Then for the adults I have one Shiner Bock, two hamburgers cooked well, add bacon, and extra French fries. Is that right?”

  The adults were busy scolding their children. They were arguing with the two kids who were attempting to stand up on the booth seating. The mom waved me off dismissively and used the same motion of her hand to swat the butt of one of her kids. I got it. She was probably exhausted. I shrugged and headed off to table three’s grumpy old man. I hoped I had it right, but not that badly. I knew by looking at the pair of two-year-olds that the kids were going to make a huge mess and I was going to have to clean it up. And they would probably forget to tip.

  “I want more iced tea but no ice this time,” the grumpy old man told me. “And more saltine crackers.”

  He’d come in and ordered nothing but iced tea and a cup of soup, which was long gone. The saltine crackers were free.

  “Of course,” I told him, figuring he was just old, lonely, and on a fixed income. He was kind of a jerk, but he was probably just hungry and couldn’t afford to order anything else. I smiled at him as nicely as I could. “One second.”

  “Make it snappy,” he said. “Or I won’t tip you anything.”

  “Will do!”

  Fuck you too, old man.

  I’d felt bad for him before, but given that even a thirty percent tip on a cup of soup was approximately fifty cents, I wouldn’t bust my ass over rudeness. I was past that now.

  The Sunshine diner was officially the third worst place I’d ever been unfortunate enough to work. The worst, by far, was for Darcy. The second worst was that time in college I’d worked at a call center over the summer. Both of those had involved getting yelled at on a daily basis. Here it was a once-every-three-or-four-days thing. That was still a lot, but everything is relative.

  It paid the bills. I’m not going to pretend that going from being an almost-princess-slash-movie star back to zero was not hard. It was the world’s biggest ego blow. But my second round as Darcy’s assistant and Peter’s betrayal had reset my standards. Just being able to go to work without feeling like the world was about to end was an improvement.

  I was just busing table six when I became aware that someone was standing behind me. You know that feeling like you’re being watched? When the hair on the back of your neck stands up? I felt that. Somehow, I telepathically knew who it was. Maybe I could, like, subconsciously smell his pheromones or something. Because when I turned around and found myself face to face with Peter, I wasn’t surprised.

  It did hurt though.

  It hurt like hell.

  He looked like, well, like the leading man of my dreams. Even in a damn hoodie and jeans, he might as well have a spotlight on him. He didn’t blend in. Not at all.

  For one, he was much taller than the average diner patron. At five ten I’m really tall for a woman, but Peter is still several inches taller than me, somewhere around six foot three. Plus, he had to keep himself in tip-top shape physically so he could play whatever heart-throb action role needed him. His size alone made him stand out.

  But even if he were regular sized, he was just so damn pretty. Nobody looks like a movie star in real life. Except Peter. He was perennially closeup ready. The dark green eyes that literally had their own fan club on Facebook stared at me expectantly. It occurred to me, belatedly, that we’d been staring at each other for a while.

  “Are you here to eat?” I asked him. “The hostess is over there.”

  He frowned at me disapprovingly. “Lucy.”

  That’s all he said. Lucy. As if it were a silly question to ask. Which I guess it probably was. Do movie stars eat at nasty, greasy spoon diners?

  “What?” I said, pretending we were casual. It was less painful. “It’s not the worst place. The food is kind of middling, and I’d avoid anything that involves fresh produce because I can promise you it isn’t that fresh, but--”

  I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence because he kissed me. He put his mouth on mine and shut me up. His hands wrapped around my waist and pulled me up against his chest and I gasped into his lips. My heart raced and heat flooded me from fingertips to toe tips. All the remembered passion from our time in Avignon came rushing back in an instant.

  I forgot my sentence.

  It was a Hollywood kiss.

  There’s always that one kiss in the movies that makes everything okay. Right at the climax. The one kiss where the hero kisses the heroine and she realizes without a shadow of a doubt that she loves him after all and that everything is going to be okay. There was a kiss like that in ‘Admit You Want Me’ right at the end. Right after Eva tries to throw Will out of her apartment. Afterwards they reconcile and have sex. Roll credits. The end. Happily ever after.

  If my life were a movie, this is where my Hollywood kiss would be. Peter would reveal that it was his evil twin I saw kissing Darcy. He’d whisk me away out of this stupid diner, and we’d go off to live in a palace. Darcy would be our servant. I’d go on to star in a billion Oscar-winning films.

  But my life wasn’t a movie, or if it was, it wasn’t a romance.

  “Hey!” som
ebody yelled. It sounded like the grumpy old man from table three. “Waitress! I need some napkins over here. Quit making out with your boyfriend and help me clean this up!”

  Peter and I drew apart. He bristled on my behalf, but I shook my head at him and hissed, “Don’t.”

  “I need to talk to you,” he told me. “I’m not leaving until I do.”

  I shook my head at him and felt my long braid bobbing back and forth like a whip. This couldn’t happen right now. Over his shoulder, I could see the grumpy old guy had indeed spilled his iced tea. At the kitchen door I could see my boss, the manager, poke her head out and take in the commotion.

  “I have nothing to say to you, and nothing you can say to me will do anything,” I told him. “We’re done. There’s nothing you could possibly say that will make me forget what I saw with Darcy.”

  I had no idea how he found me. I’d done everything I could to fall off the radar. To hide from him. Apparently, I hadn’t done nearly enough.

  “Waitress!” the grumpy old man yelled again. “I know you can hear me!”

  “When do you go on break?” Peter asked.

  “Never.”

  “Where can I find you after work?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “You have to talk to me,” he insisted. “I have a plan.” He stared at me in obvious frustration.

  “I don’t have to do anything, and I don’t care about your plan!” I told him, raising my voice. “Look, I really don’t care. Not about the stupid movie and not about you. I was never actually interested in you,” I heard myself saying out of desperation. I wouldn’t be made a fool of, or lied to, or fired again. There was no other choice for me but to attempt to drive Peter away. “I only pretended to like you because I was trying to keep the wool over your eyes. I’m not in love with you. I never was. I never will be. And I don’t give a shit what you think you have to say to me now because my life is in the fucking toilet and I’ve got nothing left to lose. So just go let Darcy ride you into the sunset and don’t feel guilty about me. I’m better off without you.”

  I stomped off to deal with grumpy old man’s iced tea and saltine cracker emergency. When I came up for air again, Peter was gone.

  “He looked just like what’s his name,” I heard one of my tables saying when they must have thought I was out of earshot. “You know the one? From those movies you love.”

  “From the Agent Danger Saga?” her companion asked, shaking his head at her. “Peter Prince?”

  “Yeah!” she said excitedly. “That’s the one! That was the guy.”

  “Those movies are amazing,” the guy said, shaking his head appreciatively, “but why would Peter Prince be here?”

  “I don’t know...” she trailed off uncertainly. Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think she’s somebody?”

  “Our waitress?” he laughed. “No way. She’s nobody.”

  Ouch. That stung. It was accurate, but it still stung.

  I mustered up my courage and walked over to drop off their check.

  “You know, that guy you were yelling at looked a lot like that movie star,” the woman said as I was leaving. “Do you know who I mean? Peter Prince?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t really like movies.”

  42

  Lucy

  Two Weeks Later

  The ‘sold’ sign in our front yard was more surreal than a David Lynch movie. Especially considering that we’d been thrown out just two weeks before.

  “What do you mean someone bought it?” I asked my mom as we both stared at the sign.

  My mom looked a mixture of sad and relieved. “I know. It wasn’t what I expected either. It had been on the market for so long. But then, all of a sudden, we got an above full priced offer. Even though we were right about to lose everything because we were behind on our mortgage, this offer comes in.”

  “Who bought it?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine that anyone wanted our house. It was a mess. The electrical was all copper that needed to be redone, the plumbing was iffy, and the whole thing needed a six-digit asbestos abatement. I was pretty sure the roof was shot too. It was the epitome of a fixer upper.

  A crazy thought that maybe Peter had bought it flashed through me. He wasn’t really that crazy, right?

  My mom shrugged. “A real estate development company.”

  “What was the name?” The idea that it could be him filled me with a mix of hope and dread. It couldn’t be him though.

  “Palczynski. Palczynski Properties. I remembered because it was a weird name. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who owns the house now. This is good, Lucy.” My mom’s expression turned into a small smile, but I knew it was bittersweet and she definitely cared. “This way we can move on,” she continued. “We won’t make a ton of money from the sale, Lord knows the mortgage company is taking almost everything, but it’s enough to rent a nice place and afford a security deposit. It’ll provide us a little cushion. That’s all we ever really wanted.”

  After all the bad luck, we’d finally gotten a piece of good luck. All it had taken was most of my sanity and the only man I’d ever loved. The past few days had been hard. Really hard.

  At the moment, I was looking for another job. The little diner that I’d been working at was not a good fit. I’d gotten my butt squeezed a few times too many and the tips were crap. But the waitressing gig was only a stopgap anyway. I knew I’d never make enough to stay afloat in Austin’s expensive market with just tips. It was time to bite the bullet and accept that I’d be going back to secretarial work.

  “Are you going to interviews tomorrow?” my mom asked, reading my mind.

  I shook my head. I should be, but it was hard to get an interview in this town. Especially when your resume had a bunch of gaps on it like mine did lately. It wasn’t exactly like I had a great reference in Wallace Prince or Fantasy Pictures. I was surprised neither of them had taken out a hit on me.

  “I’ve got a few things I’m working on, and a couple of leads, but I don’t have anything lined up yet,” I admitted. “I’ll find a job soon though. I always do.”

  It wasn’t generally a good job, but there was always work out there somewhere. I’d find it. I’d do whatever it took to keep us afloat. Selling the house would give us some safety net for a while, but it wouldn’t last forever. Mormor was getting older and so was my mom. We’d probably need to move somewhere with a lower cost of living soon... probably somewhere I’d hate.

  We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Like I always seemed to lately, I started thinking about Peter. He’d become my default thought. I sniffled, wondering how long that would last. If this is what being in love is like, I was pretty sure it wasn’t for me. Maybe I’d just be celibate for the rest of my life. This feeling was more than I could bear.

  “Are you sad about Peter?” My mom asked. “You haven’t mentioned him.”

  I stared down at my shoelaces like they were very interesting to avoid looking my mom in the eye. The left ones were untied.

  “I miss him.” My voice was small.

  I’d broken down and told my mom everything. The whole story. All about being Princess Lucia and going to Avignon and falling in love and everything. It felt so good to tell her the truth. She’d listened to everything and then just opened her arms and let me cry.

  I’d cried myself out at this point. There were no tears left. In fact, I was probably dehydrated. But at least I wasn’t throwing myself the world’s most pathetic pity party anymore. It was time for me to move on. Okay, that was a load of bull. I would never move on from Peter. But at least maybe I could pretend that I was moving on. Because all the constant crying was making my mom worried and wasting a lot of mascara.

  “You could call him, you know,” my mom suggested. “Just give him a piece of your mind.”

  My mom was convinced that Peter was the world’s crappiest guy. In her mind, I was blameless, and he was the villain for pretending to care about me and then kissing Darcy. It
was nice to have someone so firmly in my corner, but I knew it wasn’t a real view of the situation. In reality, I deserved exactly what I got.

  “I don’t have the heart,” I replied. “I think I just want to put everything behind me.”

  “Then come with me to the closing next Friday?” she asked. “It’s going to be hard for me to say goodbye to the house. Your dad wanted us to have a house of our own. He just hadn’t lived to see me buy this one.” He’d died when I was a kid.

  “At least he won’t have to see us lose this one.”

  “Will you come to the closing?” my mom asked, looking somewhat teary already.

  I nodded. She was right. It was going to be strange to say goodbye to our little house. It wasn’t much really, but it was ours. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”

  My mom had spent all her savings to buy it, hoping that it would give us the stability we’d never had before. We’d moved all over the country and she’d moved all over the world looking for a good life. Unfortunately, we were still looking.

  43

  Peter

  Just like I’d hoped, Lucy came to the closing with her mom. I’d bought the house for the sole purpose of luring Lucy onto neutral ground. And thankfully, it had worked.

  When she saw me sitting at the conference table with my attorney and realtor, Lucy turned a color I’d never seen before. It defied the color spectrum and it didn’t look good on her. I could tell she was two seconds from running.

  “Lucy, we have to talk,” I told her in front of the lawyers and everybody. “You didn’t see what you think you saw with Darcy. It wasn’t what it looked like. I love you.”

  She backed out of the room, bumping into her realtor and then dodging her mom and careening down the hallway to avoid me. I followed her, naturally. The other people present watched us with varying degrees of confusion and interest, but no one said anything. Lucy went into the women’s restroom to try and escape me, so I followed her in and locked the door behind us.