“What?” Her eyes widen in horror and she reaches up to wipe her mouth. “Do I have crumbs on my face?”
“No, I just—” I pause, putting myself together. I’m developing a crush and I’m not sure what to do about it. “Let me know how I can be helpful tonight.”
Gratitude washes over her expression. “Oh. I will.” She glances across the room. “We need to get her to relax. She looks like a bomb right now.”
I follow her eyes across the room and we both take a deep, steadying breath. This is what we’re here for, right? Joe may be impossible to keep in the dark because he’s going to be with them unguarded on the bus for days on end, but here we have some control.
But I don’t know how to fix the tense mood in the room. Let me wrestle with the constantly changing world of city and municipal building codes. Let me navigate the complexities of engineering licensure or give me an impossible element to make possible in a final design. But handling emotions like this? Between two people I hardly know and who, quite frankly, probably shouldn’t be married anymore, let alone telling other people how to do it? I feel as useful as a leaf blower in a kitchen.
Thankfully, though, Carey knows how to manage Melissa’s proximity to combustion. She carefully makes her way over to the other side of the room. Beside Melissa, Carey looks so tall, but she bends, making herself smaller, speaking in a low, soothing voice.
Jesus, how many times has she had to play this role? For a beat, I’m mad about it—mad that Carey is only in her midtwenties and already having to be an assistant, usher, peacekeeper, travel agent, and who knows what else.
I feel intensely useless. Having no training in this sort of mediation, I am simply a body standing in the middle of a room. Trying to think like Carey, I walk over to Amy and make a show of looking at the schedule. She’s more than happy to explain everything again, and I’m able to keep an eye on Melissa and Carey. They’re not close enough for me to catch everything they’re saying, so I get only a bit of Carey’s murmured, “… okay? … great crowd out there.” And then Melissa’s soft, “… but the reviews. How am I supposed to … blood, sweat, and tears and—”
“Does that all make sense?” Amy asks hopefully.
I turn my attention back to her. I have no idea what she’s said. “Perfect. Thank you for all your hard work putting everything together.” I glance across the room, horrified to see Rusty chatting up a pretty young clerk. “Um, if you’ll excuse me for a second.” I gesture to my boss. “I’m going to just …”
“Oh, of course!”
He doesn’t look at me, still smiling winningly at the twentysomething brunette, but is aware of my presence because he reaches out to pat my shoulder and offers a lighthearted “Hey, Jimmy Jams.”
I let this one slide and smile at the woman. “Could you excuse us for a second, please?”
Her cheeks warm to a bright pink, and she nods before rushing off. I lean against a stack of shelves.
“Rusty.”
This earns me an innocent blink. “What?”
“You know what.”
“She’s a nice kid,” he says, waving a hand. “A big fan. I was just indulging her.”
Does he do this to drive Melly crazy, or is he genuinely unaware that flirting in front of his wife is always a terrible idea but especially now?
“Well, let’s focus our attention elsewhere.” I lift my chin. “Looks like Melly is having kind of a rough day.”
He gives me an easy shrug and pulls out his phone to check messages. “You get used to it.”
“Rusty.” I wait until he looks up at me again. “This is where you need to get involved. Her feelings are hurt, and she’s having some insecurities. She’s upset. You need to go help calm her down.”
“I doubt I’d be very useful here.”
“But at least appear to be engaged with your wife?” I tilt my head over to where Joe has just walked in and is introducing himself to Amy. “For this week, appearances matter. To anyone else in the room, you come off as totally uninterested in whatever’s going on with her.”
“What do you expect me to do, Jimmy? Pretend like everything is fine and we’re”—he has the nerve to motion between us—“not both here completely against our will?”
Against our will? I take a deep breath. Rusty is here so he can continue to live the sweet life and drive around the lake on his custom Jet Ski. I’m here so I can keep my job and not get evicted.
“Do you want people to figure out that you two are in trouble?” I ask him, growing desperate the longer Melissa is panicking by the window and Rusty appears completely unconcerned. Amy and Joe are still here, but another woman has entered the room and is watching Melissa pace and vent to Carey about bad reviews.
“She should know not to look at those!” Rusty hisses to me. “Reviews always get her back up, and they aren’t even that bad! She knows better.”
“Not helping,” I growl.
With an irritated exhale, he makes his way over to his wife. She looks initially like she’s going to blow up at him, but a glance over his shoulder clues her in that they’ve got an audience, which seems to be the one thing that pulls Melissa Tripp back into the right state of mind. She allows herself to be coaxed into the sturdy comfort of Rusty’s hug.
Carey looks at me. I look at her. It feels like we both finally let out a long, slow breath. But the calm is shattered by the sound none of us wanted to hear today.
“Hello to my two favorites!” Stephanie Flores has that husky sexpot voice, and when the former Miss America sashays into the room, completely oblivious, a chill swallows us all. Rusty closes his eyes and lets out a groan that seems to lament the inconvenience rather than the depth of his regret. Is it really possible that Rusty didn’t bother to give Stephanie the heads-up that Melissa knows about their affair?
She walks over, embraces a board-stiff Melissa first, and then kisses Rusty on both cheeks. Carey and I stare at the three of them like we’re watching a grenade with the pin pulled free. The room is filling with people with Instagram and Twitter locked and loaded on their phones, and who’d love to drop that they’re hanging out backstage with the Tripps!
To her credit and my unending shock, Melissa manages to slap on a gracious smile and let out a thrilled “Stephanie! Oh, my goodness, what are you doing here, silly? What a surprise!”
Carey sidles up next to me, tucking her hands beneath her crossed arms. “Holy shit. This is bonkers.”
“It’s like watching a car sail off a cliff,” I agree.
“I was really hoping the shit wouldn’t hit the fan at the second tour stop,” Carey hisses, glancing to where Melissa and Stephanie chat like they’re old friends catching up after months, instead of secret enemies who saw each other less than a week ago. “What is she doing here anyway?”
“She doesn’t know that Melissa knows,” I remind her. “In Stephanie’s mind, she’s just one friend popping in on two others. Not a—”
“Backstabbing asshole?”
I glance down to see her already smiling up at me. My blood heats at her proximity and the glint in her eyes that I know comes from being exhausted and stressed but translates as fuck-it-all mischievousness. Holy shit. I like her.