Your Big Break (10 page)

“There's no need to be,” I quickly reassure him. “Everything's fine! Erin loves you very, very much.”
Now, if only it were true!

“You really think so?” he asks.

“Absolutely.”

Brady steps up to the cash register and places
High Fidelity
on the counter. A salesgirl rings up his purchase and drops it into a bag.

“Thanks, Dani, you've really helped me out,” he says.

Then, holding up the Barnes & Noble sack, he adds, “In more ways than one.”

9

Starbucks Redux

I dial Erin Foster-Ellis's cell phone the second I get out of Barnes & Noble. It rings four times and voicemail picks up. I leave a brief message: “This is Dani from Your Big Break Inc. Call me as soon as you get this!” A few minutes later, I dial again. And again.

After seven tries, she finally answers.

“Hello?” She sounds annoyed.

“Erin, this is Dani from Your Big Break Inc.—”

“Who?”

“Dani, from Your Big Break Inc.!”

“Oh!” I hear the recognition in her voice. “Danielle. Right, now I get it. Did you just call me?”

“About ten times.” I sit down on small ledge outside the building.

“That's a tad rude,” she says. “Sometimes when a person doesn't answer her phone, it means she's busy.”

And sometimes a person might be a heartless shrew
. I don't say this, of course. Instead, I say, “I've got to talk to you immediately.” Come hell or high water, I'm going to convince her not to dump Brady Simms.

“So talk.”

“Not over the phone.” Am I becoming like Evan Hirschbaum, demanding in-person meetings? First my brother, and now Erin. “Can you meet me somewhere tonight?”

“It's awfully late.”

“It's only nine o'clock,” I argue.

“I guess I could spare a few minutes.”

“I'll be quick, I promise.” I feel desperate to fix her relationship with Brady. As if patching things up between them will somehow patch things up in my life. “I'll come out to your house.”

“No,” she says. “That's not necessary. I'm spending the night in Back Bay.”

“Back Bay?” I repeat. Back Bay is a trendy little area of downtown Boston.

“There's a Starbucks on Newbury Street,” she says. “It's next to—”

“I know it,” I say, interrupting her. I know every single Starbucks within a 100-mile radius. I often joke that my real office is a coffee house. If they made frequent-drinker cards, I'd have earned enough points to open my own store. “I'll be there in fifteen minutes,” I promise, snapping my phone shut. It's funny. Earlier tonight, I told Brady that I'd first met Erin at Starbucks. Now here I am, going there to meet her.
Does that make my lie the truth?

 
 
Newbury Street is just a short walk from Barnes & Noble. I hoof it down Mass Avenue for a few blocks, then cut over to Newbury Street. Even though I make it in less than ten minutes, I arrive to find Erin already waiting, a tall latte in hand. I spy her through the window as I walk inside. She's decked out in another Prada outfit, different from the one I saw her in earlier today. It's been only a few hours. I can't believe she's already changed clothes.

I'm about to walk over to Erin's table when a Starbucks staffer flags me down. “Tall iced nonfat mocha!” she shouts, waving the drink in the air.

Erin stares at me as I make my way to the counter.

“Haven't seen you in a while, Dani,” the barista says as I pay for my drink on my Starbucks credit card. “What's it been? Four or five days?”

I hear Erin laughing in the background. “Sounds like somebody has a little coffee addiction,” she quips as I walk over to the table. “Good for you for ordering nonfat,” she says approvingly. “You definitely don't need the full.”

I ignore her snide comment. We've got important business to attend to. “You can't break up with Brady,” I announce, sitting down across from her. “I think—”

“I can do whatever I want,” she cuts me off. “Thanks for your concern.”

I fold my arms across my chest and stare at her. “I saw Brady at Barnes and Noble.”

Erin takes a few sips of coffee before answering. “How'd he take it?”

“He didn't. I couldn't.”

Erin wrinkles her brow. “You didn't tell him I want to end things?” She squints at me. “I thought you said you would take care of it.”

Here we go
. I take a deep breath and look her straight in the eyes, defiantly. “I couldn't go through with it. As soon as I heard about his father's death—”

“Oh. That.” She wads her napkin into a ball and shrugs her slim little shoulders. “He passed away a few weeks ago. He was in his early sixties, I believe.”

“And you left out this information because . . . ?”

She crosses her long legs. “I didn't think it was relevant.”

“You didn't think it was relevant?” I ask incredulously.

Erin narrows her eyes. “Honestly, Danielle. I don't owe you an explanation. So Brady's father died of colon cancer a couple of weeks ago. It's tragic, but it doesn't really have anything to do with our relationship. The two are completely unrelated. That's his family life. I'm not involved in that.”

“What do you mean you're not involved in that?” I ask. “You've been dating the guy for two years! How can you not care about what happens to his family?”

“Family's overrated,” Erin says, waving her had dismissively. “Only saps care about that kind of thing.” She pauses. “You act as though losing your father is a big deal.”

I want to punch her.
How can she say a thing like that?
Losing your father is a
huge
deal.
My God, I ought to know. . . .

I don't say anything, and Erin continues: “Brady's a grown man; he'll be fine.”

She's unbelievable. Why any man would want a shallow girlfriend like Erin is beyond me, but Brady obviously sees something in her that I don't.

“Don't you kind of think dumping Brady right now would be”—I pause, choosing my words carefully—“insensitive?” I feel so bad for him. I don't want to do this. I don't want to ruin his world.

“The timing's not great, I'll give you that.” Erin takes another sip of coffee. “Did you get to hear any of Brady's writing?” she asks, shifting topics.

“As a matter of fact, I did. Brady read a showstopping poem about his father. His
late
father.”
Showstopping
might be stretching it a bit, but I've got to work all the angles. “Brady said you were the one who encouraged him to take that poetry workshop,” I say.

“You and Brady-boy did an awful lot of talking tonight,” Erin notes, raising her eyebrows. “A shame you didn't talk about what I paid you to talk about.” She smiles in a patronizing way and looks around the coffee shop. “I suggested he take that poetry class because I wanted to have Thursday nights free.”

I wince. “Erin, can I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask. I don't know if I'll answer.”

“Is there anything I could do to convince you to give Brady another chance? He seems like a nice guy. I mean, he only started this whole teaching thing a few weeks ago. Maybe he'll find out he doesn't like it.”

Erin smirks. “It doesn't matter. I'm not interested.”

“Even if Brady went back to being an attorney?” I ask.

“Even then. Look, Danielle, I'll be honest with you—it's over between me and Brady. There's someone else. There has been for a while.”

“Someone else?”

“A TV producer for PBS. I met him a few weeks ago. In fact, I'm going back to his place as soon as we finish up here.” She eyes her watch.

Back
to his place. “You just came from there?” Now I know why she was in Back Bay tonight, instead of Beacon Hill.

“Not that it's your business, but I stay over at his place most nights.”

So that's what's going on. She's cheating on Brady. During our consultation this afternoon, I'd asked her, point-blank, if there was another man. “Why did you lie when I questioned you earlier if there was someone else?”

“My God, you're nosy!” she snaps. “What other details do you want to know? If I'm sleeping with him? Because I am. And I haven't had sex with Brady in three months. Happy now?”

Looks like getting Erin and Brady back together is out of the question. There's nothing I can do to help him, no way to make things right, and I feel horrible. Lower than pond scum. I'm about to get up and leave when something occurs to me.

“Here's what I'm thinking,” I begin. “Brady's going through an extraordinarily bad time right now—maybe you could hold off on breaking up with him.”

“Hold off?”

“Yeah, wait until things settle down.” I hang my head. “He's going to be crushed if you do this to him right now.”

“And he won't be crushed tomorrow? Next week? Next month?” she demands.

“Obviously, he's going to be crushed no matter when you do it. But dumping him right now is like kicking him when he's down.”

She yawns. “Honesty's the best policy.”

“No, it's not. Not always. There are times when you have to do things—dishonest things—to spare someone's feelings.”

I can tell by her facial expression that she doesn't agree. “Look, I'm going to end things with Brady. I've already decided that. What difference does it make if I do it sooner or later?”

“You've got to wait this out, give him some time to heal. He's just gone through a major loss. The last thing he needs is to face losing you.”

“I don't know.”

I swallow hard, gathering up my courage. “Please, Erin. You mean so much to Brady. It would destroy him—literally destroy him—if you left right now.” I'm pleading, begging even. But I can't let her go through with this. For once in my life, I want to do something nice for somebody. “Can't you stick it out one month?”

“One
week
. I'll give this one week.”

I make a counteroffer. “Two weeks.”

She shakes her head. “Nothing doing. One is already pushing it.”

I square my shoulders. “You give two weeks' notice when you leave a job. Why not give two weeks' notice to leave a boyfriend?”

“I've never had a job,” she informs me, looking bored.

“Then think of it as giving him one week for every year you've been together,” I say. “It's the least you could do.”

“No, the least I could do would be to give him
no
notice.” She chuckles. “But I'm not a monster.” She thinks it over. “What the hell. I can wait two weeks. I can't promise I'll be a faithful and devoted girlfriend, but I'll hold off on shoving him out the door, so to speak.”

That's not great, but it's better than nothing. I feel better. One less broken heart on my conscience. “Thanks, Erin.”

“I've got two conditions.”

“Okay.”
This should be good
.

“I want you to handle everything—
all
the details. After I dump him, I don't ever want to see or speak to Brady again.”

“Of course. I can't guarantee that he won't try to contact you at some point down the road, but I'll do my best to stop him.”

“Good.” She sounds pleased. “Now, for my other condition. And this is non-negotiable.”

Uh-oh
. I get the feeling she's about to play hardball.

“You have to knock seventy-five bucks off the price.”

“Seventy-five bucks!” I exclaim. “That's like a sixty percent discount!”

“Sixty-five percent,” she corrects. “And that's my offer, take it or leave it.”

“How about twenty-five dollars?” I suggest.

“Nope.”

I'm going to have a tough enough time convincing Craig to discount this at all, and I know there's no way he'll go for seventy-five dollars off. But, frankly, I'm too tired to put up a fight.

“All right.” I sigh. “Seventy-five it is. That brings the price down to thirty-five bucks.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

We shake, and I'm about to respond when Erin throws her head back and laughs. “You're not much of a negotiator, Danielle.”

I shrug it off. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“Yes, I do.” She smiles. “But I'll let you in on a little secret.” She lowers her voice to a mock whisper. “I'd have done it for fifty.”

10

Gretchen Guy-Getter

“You wanna tell me what this is about?” Sean asks as we sit down in a booth at Chili's the following day.

I pick up my menu and thumb through it. “After we order.”

My brother rolls his eyes but agrees. A few minutes later, after a waiter has brought us soft drinks and taken our food orders, I begin. “Okay, the reason I've asked you here today is, well, it's complicated.”

“Dani, you're going to have to speed this up,” he says, tapping his watch. “I can't afford to listen to some two-hour story. I've got a lot of stuff to do today, you know.”

I lean back against the booth, settling in. “I thought this was your day off.”

“It is,” he says, slurping his Coke.

“Then what's so pressing? Is your favorite TV show on right now or something?”

“No,
General Hospital
doesn't start until three.”