SWNOVELS A Deal With The Devil: Chapter 5
Hayes is just getting downstairs when I arrive the next morning. It’s his in-office day: consult, filler, consult, Botox, consult…all day long, in fifteen-minute increments. He appears to have prepared for it by drinking large quantities of alcohol and getting little sleep. I’m only three days in, but I already expected nothing more.
“You look terrible,” I tell him.
“Was judging me on the list of your job duties?” he asks, pressing his fingers to his temples as he slides onto a barstool. “I can’t quite recall.”
I set two Advil next to his coffee and slide him the schedule. One of these days I’m going to attach a pamphlet on functional alcoholism.
“You saw the message from your, uh, new lady friend? Keeley?” I ask.
His eyes remain on the schedule, but he nods. I still can’t believe he gives these women his assistant’s number. It’s wrong in so many ways.
“So, there’s really no one who gets your number?” I probably sound more exasperated than I should, given that he’s called me judgmental every single time we’ve spoken.
“No one,” he says, “and I mean no one. Not the President. Not the Pope. Not even my own mother.”
A startled laugh escapes me. “You’re not serious? About your mom?”
He lifts one tired brow at me. You’re being judgmental again, that brow says. “If she calls, just pass me the message. But have a nice little chat with her if it bothers you.”
“Excellent. I’ll use that time to work on my British accent,” I reply. “Top o’ the morning to you, guv’ner.”
My accent could use some work. I sound like a pirate on a children’s cartoon.
“No one has said that in England for, roughly, a century.”
“Throw another shrimp on the barbie. Oy, the quidditch pitch is in a right state, innit?” I cock my arm and swing it jauntily, as if I’m Captain Jack Sparrow, leading the boys in song.
There’s a small twitch of his mouth, a flicker of that dimple I’ve seen in photos. “I hope you’re not auditioning for the part of a Brit anytime soon.”
“I’m not auditioning for any part, obviously. I was living the dream as a bartender, and now I’m living the dream kicking women out of your bed and, I hope, conversing at length with your mom.” He’s already gathering his stuff, preparing to forget me for the day. I wish I hadn’t derailed the conversation about his mother with my juvenile attempts to make him laugh.
“I know it’s none of my business—” I begin.
He sighs heavily. “That seems unlikely to stop you.”
“What happened with your mom?”
He regards me long enough that I’m certain he’s about to tell me to fuck off, but shrugs instead. “She threatened to cut me out of her will if I didn’t break up with my girlfriend,” he says. “I failed to comply. Clearly, an error of judgment on my end, as my mother turned out to be right.” The word girlfriend hits me like a hammer. I never dreamed I’d hear him utter it, unless in jest.
“You had a girlfriend.”
I’m waiting for the punchline, but instead he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Believe it or not, I was a serial monogamist most of my life. I have, obviously, seen the light on that one.” I hear a hint of regret in his tone, see it in the lost look in his eyes, blinked away as soon as it appears.
How do you go from being a serial monogamist to being…Hayes? What has to happen to change someone that dramatically?
“And she really cut you off?” I ask.
He shrugs again, as if it was meaningless.
“I was already out of med school at that point and didn’t need her money. But then I moved here, near my father, and she never forgave me for it.”
I kind of hate his mom a bit too, now. “I guess I don’t have to ask which parent you’re closer to, then.”
A shadow passes over his face. “You’d think so,” he says, rising to leave, “but that’s because I haven’t told you what my dad did.”
He walks out and I find myself left with a small ache in the center of my chest. To look at him, you’d think he has every last thing a man could want: looks, wealth, women throwing themselves at him right and left.
But he also has a despicable mother, a father who may actually be worse, no siblings I know of, and a girlfriend he gave everything up for…one who is no longer around. Who does he turn to when things go wrong? Where does he spend holidays? He seems to keep himself so busy there’s barely even time for him to wonder if his life feels a little empty without any family. If he was anyone but Hayes Flynn, seducer of a thousand shattered actresses, I’d wonder if that wasn’t the entire point.
The small, sunny office next to Hayes’s kitchen is my happy place. Or might be, if I didn’t have to do my job.
Today, as always, I sit with the schedule open on the laptop in front of me, sinking further and further into my chair as I listen to rich, beautiful women list their flaws. It’s disheartening at best. Money, in my view, only seems to have bought them more time to discover what they hate about themselves, leading them to call in near tears lamenting crow’s feet and lines above their upper lips. There’s nothing wrong with plastic surgery, but what bothers me is their desperation, their sense of urgency, as if nothing else matters. I make their appointments wishing I could instead say look, it’s gorgeous outside, you can do anything you want. Stop weeping to a stranger about the symmetry of your nostrils.
When the calls are complete, I print invoices, then rush out to make his purchases for the day: a razor sold at a ridiculously overpriced store on Melrose, crisps and Marmite from a shop in the San Fernando Valley.
By the time I get back to my studio—which is a glamorous name for a room the size of a storage unit, and with about as much natural light—I’m exhausted.
I make a cup of ramen and finally settle down to what I consider my real job. The one I appear to be incapable of.
The first hundred pages of the book flew from my fingers. Aisling and Ewan are young lovers who’ve climbed through a hole in the wall separating fae from humans. It’s supposed to be temporary, because Aisling has a younger brother to care for, but the wealth and opulence of the fae kingdom is more compelling than they expected. When Ewan refuses to leave—having changed in ways he doesn’t recognize—Aisling has to save him from himself and get back through the hole before it closes for good.
I didn’t realize, at the time, that I was writing about me and Matt, that the small ways he changed when we got to New York bothered me far more than I was willing to admit. I was too busy being horrified by the fact I was writing it at all. In my masters of fine arts program, we were expected to pen things that were dreary and very real, like a day in the life of a secretary thinking of killing herself, or five people stuck on an elevator together, slowly unraveling. Writing a fantasy romance at night was my most shameful secret for a long time, and the thing I enjoyed most. Now that I’m supposed to write it, I no longer want to.
When the words fail to come, when I find myself thinking just give up, I close the laptop and change into running clothes. I don’t love running at night in LA, but it’s necessary. My frustration with the book is often too much to bear, and running is the only method I’ve got to shove it away.
I take the winding beach path leading from Santa Monica to Venice, dodging panhandlers and drunk tourists the entire way as I mull over the story. Why can’t I finish it? The book dies at the point where Aisling is supposed to step up and save Ewan from himself, and I can’t seem to move past it.
I increase my pace until my lungs burn and my legs are heavy. Would things have been different if I’d stayed behind to finish my degree? Would the book have come easily? Would Matt have taken me for granted a little less than he did?
Except Matt had his first big role in LA and wanted me here with him, and I’d just gotten the book deal and needed time off anyway. The choice seemed obvious to me at the time.
Like Hayes, I moved here to be close to someone who didn’t deserve me, and I gave up things that mattered for a person who’s no longer around. I guess it makes sense that he leads his life as if nothing in it truly matters.
I’m starting to feel the same way about my own.