We’re treated to a sexy little lift of his chin. “Sure. I can do pretty much anything.”
A roomful of women watches Eric when he says this, absolutely taking his word for it.
Finally, Amelia covers her ears. “No way this won’t end badly.”
“She’s right,” I say. “I appreciate it, but I’m going to have to keep it more zany hijinks and less criminal mastermind.”
Steph throws one of Morgan’s ducky washcloths in my direction, and the group files out of the bathroom, leaving me to finish up and ponder revenge alone. Climbing out onto the bath mat, I look up, and through the steam on the mirror, I see something hanging on the door behind me.
Carter’s suit.
I smile at my reflection. Zany hijinks it is. He does call me Evil, after all.
If I’m going to the dark side anyway, I might as well do it right.
chapter sixteen
carter
It’s been two days and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what Evie said to me.
“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
I lie: “No.”
Michael Christopher looks up at me from across the table at Creme de la Crepe. “Yes, you are.” He nods to Jonah. “Doesn’t he always do this?”
Jonah nods.
I look between them. “What do I always do?”
“Obsess over something someone might have said, or the possibility that—heaven forbid—someone might not like you. You’ve been like this your entire life. Maybe that’s why you’ve escalated this thing with Evie. She doesn’t like you and so you make sure it’s because of something you’ve done, rather than the possibility she might not like you as a person.”
Ow. That hits me right where it hurts. “No, she was pretty clear: she used to like me, but was glad to find out who I really am before we got too involved. Essentially: I’m a prick.”
“You’re not a prick,” Michael says, and waves a spoon in front of Morgan, trying to divert her attention away from basically every other moving thing in the restaurant. “You’re just dumb.”
“Don’t lie to him, MC. He’s a total prick,” Jonah says, and I glare at him. Aside from a few texts to set things up for the photo shoot, Jonah and I haven’t really talked since I found out about his little money situation. I invited him to join us for breakfast so I could go over the details for Friday and reiterate how important it is that he not fuck this up. So far all he’s done is stare at his phone and make wisecracks at my expense.
It’s nauseating to think how much I have riding on my brother here. Brad thinks I brought him in because I have some sort of master plan, which means that if Jonah screws up and the shoot is any flavor of diva, there’s no way Brad won’t find out. There would be no coming back from that. The new contract will be Evie’s and I’ll be on a plane back to my parents’ house.
“He’s not a prick,” Steph says to Jonah. Apparently she caught this last bit from him as she was returning from the bathroom. “Why would you say that?” It’s heartwarming to see both MC and Steph sticking up for me, but let’s be real, I deserve at least some shit for the other day with Evie.
“You’ve been quiet today,” I say to her. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just . . . you know. Work,” she says, repeatedly stabbing her ice water with a straw.
She seems off, but when I look at what she’s eating, who could blame her? Her husband is shoveling down the Oh La La—an enormous plate of waffles smothered in Nutella, strawberries, bananas, and mango—and she’s having egg whites with sautéed spinach before she heads to yoga. Yoga. As if that’s not bad enough, she’ll essentially be doing it on an empty stomach.
I think I’m only now realizing how hard it must be to be a woman. Too thin or not thin enough. Do your job flawlessly, but don’t show up any of the men. Speak up, but don’t be bitchy. Smile. And then you have people like Brad totally playing into it.
I rub my finger along the side of my water glass, watching the condensation drip onto the napkin underneath it. I’m feeling like a dick for playing into it myself.
“Do you ever have one of those moments when something seems like a good idea, and then you realize later that you are in fact a total fucking moron?”
Michael doesn’t miss a beat. “Every day.”
Jonah looks up from his phone again, as if the topic of my failures is the only conversation worthy of his attention. “What did you do?”
I jab of piece of sausage with my fork. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Come on,” he says. “In case you haven’t noticed, my life is in the toilet right now. I’m a total fucking moron, give me something here.”
His honesty catches me off guard. “It’s just a series of really stupid things that snowballed,” I tell them, “and now I’m legitimately afraid to go to work on Monday.”
Steph coughs.
“Okay . . .” Jonah says.
“Let’s see, where to start,” I say. “I guess we could go with when our boss knocked Evie’s breakfast into the trash because he’s a sexist dick, and I just sat there and watched. Or when I let her sit through a meeting with two of her shirt buttons undone. Two very important buttons,” I clarify.
“She didn’t tell me about that,” Steph says, and her expression is a little terrifying.
“How were the tits?” Jonah asks, bringing it all back to the important issues. “Nice?”
Before I can reach across and smack him, Steph does it, then turns to Michael. “Did you know about all this?”
“I . . . heard that . . . something . . . untoward had occurred,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “I told him it was wrong. Very wrong.” He gives me a stern expression that says he’ll murder me in my sleep if I so much as hint at the truth.
Steph groans. “I knew about Jonah and the weird Dan Printz situation, and that you’d flaked out on the meeting with the retreat coordinator.”
“I—”
“All of that is professional stuff between the two of you. But playing into Brad’s sexism? That makes me angry at you, Carter. It’s hard enough for a woman to be taken seriously in this business and seen as a person with a brain and not an object. Men get passes for acting like it’s 1960 and every woman in the office is their secretary. Evie will have to be smarter, faster, and better at her job than you are, for possibly less money and a whole lot less recognition, all while appearing totally grateful for it.”
I want to crawl under the table.
“That’s exactly what I told him,” Michael says, nodding feverishly. “That it undermines her credibility. Didn’t I tell you that, Carter? If I had a shame bell I would follow him around. Very disappointed in you.”
“I felt trapped,” I say. “If I said something, would she have been more embarrassed? Plus she would know I was looking at her boobs.”
“Which you were, I’m sure,” Steph says.
“Well, yeah. Because they’re great.”
She reaches across and smacks me this time.