40
Your Dream Guy
TJ
Jude holds the phone like a cross-examiner holds damning evidence. His eyes are steel—no, guns—and they’re aimed right at me.
My neck prickles. I have no idea what he’s getting at, but when he shoves the phone near my face, I groan.
The shot of Walsh and me is a neon Vegas billboard advertising all the misunderstandings in the world.
“I can explain,” I say, and with those awful words, I sound like every cheating jackass in history.
With a twist of his lips that’s not a smile, Jude gestures to the living room. “By all means. You have the floor. Don’t leave out a tawdry detail.”
Holy shit. I’ve never seen him like this. “I wanted to tell you last night about the deal.” Wow. That sounds bad. Even though last night my plan seemed brilliant.
He arches a doubtful brow. “Did you now? Were you going to tell me, over, say, sushi and bowling? Was that your plan?”
“Yes, but it all came together quickly. I didn’t even sign the term sheet until this morning.”
He tilts his head. “Awww. Did you sign it while I was sleeping? So fitting, since you’ve hidden the whole bloody deal from me. You fucking knew on Monday morning when you were talking to your agent. You said I’ll believe that when it happens.”
I shake my head. “We were talking about the Amsterdam thing.”
“Right.”
My chest caves. “Jude, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just didn’t think it would amount to anything, and once it came together, I wanted to tell you.”
“That’s awfully convenient. But oh, hey, did you know they fucking backburnered my project for yours?”
A black cloud of regret swirls over me. “Shit, babe. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“Don’t babe me. You brought them a project pretty much identical to the one they wanted to talk to me about. You brought them Christian Laird. You knew he was part of the project they were talking to me about developing. But you swooped in and gave them a queer rom-com. You probably already adapted the book for film and TV. Oh, except yours has two Americans and zero Brits. Thanks, TJ.”
I grab at facts to try to explain this to him. “I didn’t bring them Laird.”
“Well, he’s on it. Funny how that works.”
This looks so bad. But it’s not, and I have to prove it. “A few weeks ago, my agent told me my publisher was pursuing him to narrate my audiobooks, but he didn’t think it would happen.”
“Well, what do you know? It happened. You got Laird. I got nothing.”
But this isn’t a zero-sum game. “That’s not how it works.”
“Oh, really? I thought Hollywood wasn’t your thing. On Sunday, you literally said, Not everyone’s goal is to work in Hollywood. It’s not mine.” Jude makes my words sound so damning. “Care to revise that now, stud?”
“It wasn’t my goal. I swear. It all happened so quickly.”
He rolls his gorgeous blue eyes. Today, though, they look mean. He’s never looked mean before. “So you finagled this deal with a Hollywood A-lister at the center of it at the same time you were busy reuniting with me. Romancing me like one of your heroes, in fact. My God, it’s all so obvious in retrospect. You were playing a part the whole time. How did I not know you were such a good actor?”
Jude doesn’t pull punches. He hits hard, square in the jaw, and I’m reeling. “I told you why I did that, and you did the same thing.”
“Hardly to the same degree. Plus, the next day, we made an agreement. No bullshit. And what did you do? You fucking bullshitted me. I told you about my meetings. I told you about this project. I told you about Laird, and you pretended you understood. You gave me that whole comparison is the thief of joy shit.” He shakes his head in pained disbelief, more hurt than angry, and I hate that he feels this way.
“That was all true.” The sun keeps rising, casting bright rays through the open deck. The warmth feels all wrong. A hurricane should hit the beach right now. “I didn’t come here to do anything but see you.”
He’s unmoved. “Your one-way ticket? Right, sure. Oh, and didn’t you tell William you were here for business?”
I groan, scrubbing a hand over my beard. “Jude, I didn’t know if you wanted me to say anything about us to William.”
“Us? What does us even mean to you—except when it’s convenient.” He snorts bitterly, not hearing a word I’m saying. “Everything you say is so fucking convenient you could have scripted it.” Jude turns that spotlight on me only it’s cold now, a search light rather than a warm stage light. “It all adds up to the fact that you used me.”
I hate the look on his face. The hurt in his eyes. The anger in his voice.
I edge toward him like he’s a wounded animal who’ll bite if I touch him wrong. “I didn’t use you. I would never use you. I wanted to tell you last night. I wanted to share this with you and get your opinion.”
He brings a hand to his heart. “That’s so sweet. But hey, why not get my opinion on, oh, say, Sunday night, when you courted Webflix at my play?”
Does he not get it? “Oh, that would have been classy. Hey, Jude, congrats on your amazing performance, and oh, by the way, I met a Webflix exec during intermission, and isn’t that cool?” I stop to take a breath. “I didn’t want to steal the limelight from you.”
“Well, guess what? You did anyway, TJ.” His shoulders relax, and his expression softens and I feel a glimmer of hope that we can fix this horrible misunderstanding. “But if you’d been honest with me from the start, this wouldn’t matter. You could have told me.”
“I wanted to celebrate you. You deserved it; you worked hard for your show,” I say, imploring him to see that.
His softer voice prevails again. “You had Sunday night to tell me. Monday. Tuesday. This wasn’t about last night. This is about you keeping secrets.” But then his anger builds a new head of steam. “You always keep all your stuff to yourself. You hold everything inside . . . until it suits you.”
“I was protecting you,” I explode. Because what the fuck?
“From what?” Jude matches my intensity. “Protecting my poor little ego because I can’t handle you being more successful than I am?”
If the shoe fits—
But I bite my tongue.
“Is that it?” he pushes.
I point at him. “Yes, this is ridiculous.”
“You want to know what’s ridiculous?” he demands. “Me opening up to you. Me trusting you. And you taking every bit of information and using it for yourself.” He jerks his gaze away, swallowing whatever emotions have a hold on him. “I’m such an idiot. Arlo did this to me. He got my agent, fucked him, and then . . .”
He breaks off and waves the phone at me, and he’s one step shy of an accusation I will never forgive him for.
My jaw ticks. I hold up a hand. “Think real hard before you say the next thing.”
Jude purses his lips like he’s holding something in. Good. He fucking better.
“And then after that, my career just—” He can’t seem to finish, and I know he’s talking about those years when he didn’t work. For the second time, I hope so hard that he simmers down, that he sees I would never do this to him. Maybe, just maybe I’m getting through. But then, he breathes out hard, his eyes darkening. “I’m going to ask one more time. Did you use me?”
I’ve had enough.
I’m not the bad guy and I won’t let him treat me like one. “I already told you what happened. You know I wouldn’t betray you.”
He scoffs. “Do I? I’m wondering if I ever knew you at all. And do you even know me? Maybe I’m not your dream guy. Maybe I’m not the swooniest man you’ve ever known. Maybe you’re not as far gone as you think.”
My brain goes eerily quiet. I freeze for terrible, stretched-out seconds as the world turns deathly silent too. I stare at Jude like he’s a math problem.
But I’ve already solved it. I just can’t quite believe the answer.
“Did you—?” I hiss, but I don’t have to finish. I know what he did. He knows what he did.
Jude blinks, eyes wide. Busted. “It was open. On your computer,” he says, scrambling. “When you showed me your book in London. I didn’t mean to.”
That sounds exactly like I can explain.
I back away from him, holding up a hand. “You read my journal seven years ago, but I’m the one hiding things?” I glance around at the living room couch where we crashed into each other the first night, then the deck where we made out under the stars, then the bedroom where we came together. Everything looks wrong, like this house is contaminated. “I’m leaving.”
I spin around, stalk into the bedroom, and throw my stuff together, slamming clothes and toiletries into my suitcase, yanking my charger from the wall, stuffing my laptop into my messenger bag.
A minute later, Jude crosses the creaky floor. “I’m really sorry. I can explain about the journal,” he whispers from behind me, sounding so contrite I nearly want to cave.
I stand my ground, though, and wheel around, fueled by his long con. “We’re kind of past explanations now. You shouldn’t have done that, and you know it. But you did it seven years ago and didn’t say a word—”
“But there’s a reason.”
“You’re past the grace period,” I bite out. “And yet you’re mad at me for something that snowballed over the past four days that I was going to tell you last night?”
I couldn’t write the shitstorm unfolding in front of me. There’s no coming back from it. And I peddle happy endings.
“I know. I’m an ass. I’m sorry,” Jude shovels his hand through his hair and tightens it into a fist as if reining in runaway emotions. He closes his eyes in pained regret. Like he wants the world to rewind. Yeah, same here, but life doesn’t work that way. When he opens them, they’re full of fear and sorrow and what I think is genuine remorse. “I just wanted this so badly, TJ, and it didn’t happen. I feel so stupid for this whole thing – wanting it so badly I blew up at you.”
But I feel foolish too.
Foolish for falling in love with him again.
Foolish for thinking he was the one.
Foolish for putting on rose-colored glasses with him. The one guy I thought would never hurt me has punched below the belt. The Jude Graham I knew would never have done this. But he’s now so clearly Jude Fox.
Even if he’s sorry, and even if I’m sorry, this fight is a sign.
Jude will always devastate me.
He’s doing it now and he’ll do it again in a week, a month, a year.
I can handle the hurt in this moment. But if he breaks my heart down the road, when I’m even deeper in love with him, it will wreck me forever.
I strip the anger from my voice. “I’m sorry too. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Sorry I handled this badly,” I say, then draw a deep, soldiering breath. “And I’m sorry that I can’t be in this with you.”
His lips part. He shakes his head adamantly, refusing to accept that. “What do you mean?”
His words are a plea, and it’s hard to resist. I want to drop everything, take him in my arms, and say, Let’s forget this happened.
But I’ve got to look out for future me, so I gird myself and do the hard thing. “This isn’t what I wanted when I came to LA. Goodbye, Jude.”
I grab my bag, leave for the airport, and I don’t look back.
Not even when he calls me a few days later and leaves a message asking to please talk. Not even when he texts begging for the same.
I don’t answer. I don’t reply.
We. Are. Over.