Beautiful Lies

Chapter3:Just Dinner

Jayden was pacing when Eva got home, phone in one hand, the other dragging through his hair.

“Hey. Hey, I’m here.” She dropped her purse by the door and crossed to him, catching his hand to still it. “What happened?”

“ I might have lost the Montgomery account.” He said it fast, the words tumbling over each other. “Their assistant emailed an hour ago asking for ‘a conversation about the direction of the shoot,’ which is corporate for you’re fired, and I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what I did wrong, and I can’t…”

“ Okay. Breathe.” Eva pulled him down onto the couch beside her, keeping her hands wrapped around his. “Walk me through it. What did the email actually say? Word for word.”

He read it to her, and before he could finish she was already shaking her head.

“Jayden, this isn’t a firing email. This is a client who wants to talk about creative direction. That’s it. If they were dropping you, they wouldn’t ask for a conversation. They’d just tell their agency to send you a kill fee and move on.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. I’ve had this exact email from clients about wallpaper.” She squeezed his hands. “It reads scary because you’re reading it scared. Call them back. Ask them directly what they mean. You’ll feel ridiculous in twenty minutes.”

He stared at her for a long moment, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders, and then he laughed, short and disbelieving.

“How are you always right?”

“I’m not always right. I’m just very calm about being wrong.” She kissed his temple. “Call them.”

He did, right there on the couch, and Eva watched his whole body change over the course of two minutes. The tight shoulders dropping, the crease between his eyebrows smoothing out, until he was leaning back against the cushions with something close to a real smile.

“They loved the concept,” he said, hanging up. “They just wanted a longer lens for one of the shots. That’s it. That’s the whole crisis.”

“Told you.”

“You did.” He pulled her into his side, pressing a kiss into her hair, and for a while they just sat there, the panic draining out of the apartment.

“So,” he said eventually, voice easy now, almost lazy. “Where’d you even go tonight? You said your grandmother’s but you were gone a while.”

“Dinner. She wanted me to meet someone.” Eva shifted, tucking her feet under her. “Ethan Vale. CEO of Vale Corporations, apparently. Old family friend’s son. We actually met as kids, which I don’t even remember.”

“Vale.” Jayden said the name slowly, like he was turning it over, tasting it. “Never heard of him.”

“No reason you would have. Nana’s world, not ours.”

“Mm.” He was quiet for a second, still holding her, but something in his arm had gone a little stiller than before. “So what, she’s setting you up with rich CEOs now?”

“It wasn’t like that. It was just dinner.”

“Just dinner.” He said it lightly, almost teasing, but his thumb had stopped moving against her shoulder. “You didn’t mention it before you left. I had to find out you were gone an hour before I called.”

“I texted you where I was going.”

“You texted me you were seeing your grandmother. Not that you were meeting some guy.”

Eva pulled back slightly to look at him. “Jayden, it wasn’t ‘some guy’. It was dinner with Nana and a family friend. I didn’t think it needed a press release.”

“I’m not saying it did.” He smiled, easy again, the edge smoothing out of his voice so fast she almost missed it had been there at all. “I just worry sometimes, that’s all. You disappear for a whole evening, don’t call, and I’m sitting here thinking my career’s falling apart with no one to talk to about it. Maybe that’s on me. I don’t know.”

“That’s not fair. I didn’t know your account thing was happening. I couldn’t have known.”

“I’m not blaming you.” He said this time gently, both hands up now, with a harmless gesture. “I’m just telling you how it felt on my end. You know how your grandmother is. She’s always got an angle, and I worry about you getting pulled into it without realizing.”

“She really doesn’t have an angle this time. It was just dinner.”

“Okay.” He kissed her forehead, warm, unbothered, the whole conversation folding neatly back into calm the way it always did with him. “I trust you. I just like knowing where you are. Is that so bad?”

“No,” Eva said, settling back against him, his arm tightening around her shoulders again. The television was still off, the apartment quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and his steady breathing against her hair.

“I love you,” he murmured, into the top of her head. “You know that, right?”

“I know.” She closed her eyes, letting the last evening’s strange edges soften into the ordinary comfort of his couch, his arm, his voice. “Love you too.”