Now a Major Motion Picture Read Free Page B

at her phone—it was just after midnight. She ambled down the cobblestone blocks of Beale with one arm linked in Reese’s. David followed behind, cheerfully indulgent as their voluntary DD.
    The air was warm, but the breeze coming off the river had a slight chill in it—the faint hint of a fall that hadn’t yet appeared. Amelia shivered and quickened her step, lost in thought and oblivious to the cars and lights and people surrounding them. The clang of a trolley’s bell jolted her out of her daze, and she almost crashed into Reese, who stopped short at the curb to wait for it to pass. The long red-and-green car clattered by on its track, the driver dinging her bell every thirty seconds as a warning to preoccupied, and drunk, pedestrians like her.
    As they walked, Reese kept up a constant stream of chatter, but Amelia didn’t hear a word of it. Her mind skimmed over the conversation she’d just had with Katie, then the call from Andrew, and she realized suddenly the impact one would have on the other. She had no idea what kind of pressure would be added to her schedule now that a movie contract was in her future, but the prospect of returning to her old job seemed unlikely.
    She stared ahead at the trail of moonlight glistening over the broad, rippling expanse of the Mississippi and thought about her old job, her old life, comfortable as a broken-in shoe. She glanced down at the pewter heels that a few hours earlier had held such promise. Suddenly they were offensive—a symbol of everything she was giving up.
    As if in answer to her thoughts, her right heel snagged a jagged edge in the sidewalk. She lurched forward, avoiding a face-first plunge onto the concrete only because Reese squeezed her arm tighter, hauling her up yet again.
    “Whoa, Mel. You okay?”
    “Yeah,” Amelia said, feeling the full weight of the lie.
     
    * * *
     
    Fifteen minutes later, David inched his Land Rover over the jagged lip of Amelia’s driveway, and she cursed herself internally for not flipping on the outside light before she’d rushed out several hours earlier. She fumbled for her keys as she made her way up the dark steps. The house was a classic 1920s bungalow, deceptively small from the outside with a façade spanned by a deep porch with battered stone columns—a characteristic of its Craftsman roots. The original, arched front door was deliciously dinged and gnarled. She’d spent an entire weekend stripping layers of old paint and then staining it a deep walnut that matched the rest of the trim.
    Just before she put her key into the lock, she heard the faint whoosh of a window being rolled down. She turned to see Reese’s head leaning out of it, her hair a blue-white glow in the light of a nearby street lamp.
    “You all right?” Reese called out.
    “Yeah, I’m fine,” Amelia said with a surprised laugh, pausing as she slid the key into the deadbolt. She opened the door and turned to face them before crossing the threshold into her dim foyer. “Thanks for the ride.”
    “Oh…kay,” Reese said, watching her in a way that made Amelia feel discomfited. “I’ll call you in the morning.” She didn’t roll the window up until David had shifted the hulking vehicle into reverse and eased it back down the narrow drive.
    Amelia kept the smile pasted on her lips and repeated the words in her head.
    I’m fine.
    She tossed her keys with a loud clatter into a pottery bowl on one end of the long wood bench in her entry and kicked out of her shoes, wishing she hadn’t picked a night like this to break them in. She raised one foot and tugged up the leg of her dark skinny jeans, wincing as she surveyed the glaring, red blister on her heel. She remembered Reese’s comment in the bar. Oh well, at least they looked damn good. She took in a long, slow breath and rubbed her eyes. The same could be said for her life right now. It looked damn good on the surface, the sources of friction visible only to her.
    She walked into her living