all accounts across the Internet and on TV, not nearly as good as you’ve been.” His voice was absent of its usual playful tone.
A-ha, she thought. So this was going to be an interrogation call.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“Nothing. It just looks like you took my advice to heart.”
“What advice would that be?” She glanced at Anna to see if she was listening to her end of the call. She appeared to be ignoring her conversation, though, and was focused on smoothing the bottoms of her feet.
“To call Cory. I got back to New York, and the next thing I knew, you were one-half of Hollywood’s hottest new couple.”
“Oh, that advice.” She felt Anna tap her foot and lowered it into the water, raising her other foot up to the edge of the sink. “Yeah, it was a good call on your part. That wasn’t what made me go out with him, though, so keep that in mind before you go patting yourself on the back too much.”
“What made you call him and go out with him, then?”
“He called me, actually. I thought I deserved to go out with someone who might treat me well for a change.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. She watched Anna pick up a nail file. After a minute, Jesse spoke. “Are you trying to say something, Em?”
She considered her answer. She could bring up him leaving her place without saying goodbye on the night of his show, along with the fact that he hadn’t bothered to return her texts or voicemails until after a photo of her and Cory kissing had been splashed across the Internet, or she could be nonchalant. High road, she thought.
“I think it’s water under the bridge at this point.” The chair stopped its massaging motion. She reached for the remote control with her free hand.
“What is?”
Yeah, right, she thought. Jesse may have been a lot of things, but dense wasn’t one of them. “Your disappearing act the night you stayed over. You were gone when I woke up.”
“I had an early morning band meeting. It’s when we broke the news to Travis.”
Typical, she thought. As always, he was ready with an excuse that he probably thought she couldn’t fight him on.
“You could have said goodbye,” she pointed out.
“I know. I just figured you were cool enough to know that I probably had somewhere to be. Like I said, it was early. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
Just as she’d expected, he was trying to put it back on her, to make her protest that she was, in fact, cool enough to not think twice about him leaving.
“You know, you were right that night at dinner,” she told him.
“About what?”
“You and me.”
“Remind me what I said?”
“That we never would have worked,” she answered.
“I didn’t say that.”
Of course you didn’t, she thought. “Really? What did you say?”
“I said we were on opposite sides of the country. I thought we talked about this.”
She looked up at the ceiling. “I’m not going to argue semantics with you, Jesse.”
“Well, good. I didn’t call you to argue.”
“What did you call me for, then?”
“To say hi, and to see how you are. Friends can do that, right?”
“Yes, friends can.”
The meaning of the emphasized word wasn’t lost on him. “Okay look. If you’re in a bad mood, I can call you back later.”
“Why do you think I’m in a bad mood?”
“Seriously?” he asked.
“Never mind. Let’s just drop it and start this over.”
“Sounds good to me,” he replied, but he made no effort to change the subject.
She tried to keep the impatience from her voice. “So clearly you know what’s new with me. What’s new with you?”
“We signed with our new manager, Bailey,” he answered. “He already has us hooked up with a few meetings with some people in L.A.”
Meetings in L.A. Great. She hoped that didn’t mean he wanted to see her while he was here.
“Are you coming back soon?” she asked, already trying to come up with an excuse for why she wouldn’t be able to see him while he was in town.
“We’re going to be moving there, actually.”
She felt her grip on her phone loosen and could hear Jesse still talking as it dropped into her lap. She picked it up again and brought it back to her ear.
“Moving here?” Not good. Not good at all.
“Yeah. We had an interesting turn of events after our Viper Room show. A few people Bailey knew were there and things started moving. So we’re