Wreck the Halls: A Novel

Melody sat down across from Beat at a small, square table that was positioned up against a window overlooking Tenth Avenue. When they arrived at the employees-only lounge, an assistant had been waiting to hand Beat two paper cups of coffee and guide them to their seats. Beat placed Melody’s drink in front of her, turning the cup until the little drinking spout on the plastic lid was closest to her. It was an unconscious move that made Melody’s pulse sprint like a child chasing down an ice cream truck.

Asking Beat to speak privately had taken all her courage.

The meeting had been ending. The premise of The Parents’ Trap was preposterous. Invasive. Ridiculous. Obviously Beat had been caught off guard by the nitty-gritty details and had no intention of entertaining the idea any further.

Curiosity continued to weigh heavily in her gut, though. And Melody found she couldn’t get back on the train to Brooklyn without satisfying it.

Needing a moment to gather up another supply of courage, Melody sipped her coffee, watching Beat watch her. A gust of wind blew through her stomach and disorganized everything at the way he regarded her mouth closely, sitting very still while she brought the cup to her lips, as if he wanted to make sure he’d positioned the cup perfectly to meet them. When it did, because of course he’d judged it correctly, a muscle slid high in his throat and never seemed to come down.

He could still make a person feel like they were the only one in the room. It was his superpower, wasn’t it? It drew people to him. It wouldn’t hurt to remember that.

It also wouldn’t hurt to ignore the way his sculpted lips suctioned the spout of his coffee cup lid. Or the sheen of moisture he licked away when he set the drink back down. But it took her a moment to find her voice because it was lost somewhere among the pandemonium of her hormones, which hadn’t been this noisy since the last time they’d been together. That wasn’t to say Melody hadn’t been with men sexually. She’d experienced pleasure with men. But the bond, the trust she needed to feel truly fulfilled, it never materialized. She was only ever one solitary figure copulating with another solitary figure. There was never a sense of partnership or belonging. What would touching Beat be like? Being touched by him?

You’re never going to find out.

He almost definitely had a girlfriend. She was shocked he didn’t have a gold band on his finger, this wildly handsome, successful thirty-year-old who happened to be kind. Kind! Who was kind anymore? Such an outdated and underrated quality—and Beat Dawkins had it.

“Mel,” he said now, shrugging off his jacket and twisting to hang it on the back of his chair, a tidy region of obliques shifting beneath his white dress shirt. “I’m so embarrassed that I brought you all the way out here for nothing.” Nothing? She would have driven to the opposite coast just for the coffee date. “Please believe me, I wasn’t aware of the twist.”

“No, of course you weren’t.”

Her confidence relaxed his shoulders, but the strain around his eyes, the tension she’d noticed immediately upon walking into the meeting, remained. He wasn’t a carefree sixteen-year-old anymore.

“I hope you didn’t have to take a day off work . . . ?” Beat prompted.

“No. I have a project at home that I’m working on, but I’ll make up for lost time tonight.”

“What kind of project? I read in an article a while back that you work in rare books.” A frown marred his forehead. “I just realized that most of what I know about you comes from articles.”

“Same.” Or your Instagram captions. Which were usually just a location and date. No pithy one-liners or inspirational quotes, as if she needed more reasons to like him. “I’m restoring a Judy Blume book—Superfudge. An original printing from 1980. It’s weathered a few spills and the binding is weak, but it’s a beautiful specimen.” She couldn’t keep a dreamy sigh from escaping. “I’ve sort of made young adult literature my specialty.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I lived inside of those books growing up. I want to take care of them, the way they took care of me.”

His expression remained thoughtful, maybe even a little troubled until he coughed into a fist, seeming to mold his mouth into a smile. “Do you work with a magnifying glass attached to your head?”

“I work mostly from home. Sometimes that’s all I wear.”

Beat choked on his sip of coffee, and flames climbed Melody’s cheeks.

Does this window open so I can leap through it? “Another drawback of working from home is a glaring lack of social skills.”

He laughed, one of his hands traveling across the table to squeeze her wrist. “You just caught me off guard.” A moment passed. Then very, very briefly, his thumb slipped beneath the cuff of her blouse and swept smoothly over her pulse, lingering for a heavy second before he abruptly pulled away.

Beat cleared his throat hard, shifting in his chair.

Melody couldn’t move at all. That itty-bitty touch had turned her thighs to jelly. If she tried to cross her legs, she would slowly topple sideways like an underbaked cake.

Did Beat touch everyone like that? Was it a perk of his undivided attention?

“Um.” Don’t be awkward. She hunted for something to say. “I’m not totally without a social calendar. I’m on a bocce team.”

He leaned forward, amused. “Are you?”

“Yes. We are the opposite of undefeated. We’re defeated. But being on the team forces me to take off the magnifying glass hat and talk to actual people, instead of books.” She dried her sweating palms on the tweed material of her skirt, hoping he couldn’t see. “Actually, that’s where I met Danielle. She was lying in wait for me outside of the bar after a match.”

His smile faded. “I’m sorry. About all this.” He started to pick up his coffee, but hesitated. “Are the bocce games at night?”

“Yes.”

“Do you walk home alone? At night?”

“Yes. I do. It’s perfectly safe.” She paused to think. “I do have coworkers who live in the same direction. I could probably wait and walk home with them. But I just want to . . .”

“What?”

“Get out,” she murmured. “I just have to get out of there. Get away. You know?”

She expected him to be confused by her admission or change the subject. But she should have known not to underestimate him, because he only looked . . . relieved. “Yeah, I do know, Mel. Toward the end of the night, everyone’s filters are off and people start asking uncomfortable questions. Or they ask me if I’ll FaceTime my mother.”

“Or they take selfies without asking,” she breathed.

“Endless selfies.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Even my friends that I’ve known for years—and I love them. I do. But this feeling never goes away of . . . wondering if they’re just in it for the clout. I keep my guard up.”

She got the sense he was underselling that last statement. Was Beat very guarded now? He hadn’t come across that way at sixteen, but a lot of time had passed.

“Yeah. It’s exhausting,” she said, finally.

They looked at each other across the table. For the first time in a long time, Melody was devoid of the tension that came from being out in public. Just being outdoors. This was safe. She was with someone who navigated the same waters. Mostly. Hers had been a little more treacherous. At least, she thought so. Who knew what his experience was like?

No one knew but Beat.

“So, just to be clear . . .” He looked down at his coffee cup, then back up at her, his gaze a touch sharper than before. “No boyfriend to walk you home, Melody?”

His use of her full name made her toes dig into the soles of her boots. “No.”

He swallowed.

Stop reading into every little movement he makes.

“What about you?” She did her best to sound bright, casual. “No girlfriend or—”

“No.”

How? That was what she wanted to ask. Instead, she crossed one leg over the other and dug her fingertips into her kneecap. Just to redirect some of the pressure in her chest. In her stomach. The overall effect of being around this man. “Our last match of the season is just over a week away,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady. “I would invite you to come watch, but . . . for one, I would rather you didn’t witness my sheer lack of athletic ability. And two, the both of us together in public . . .”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “It would cause a stir.”

“A big one. Us doing anything together would get a lot of attention and . . . I kind of thought we were on the same page about not wanting so much attention. Which is why I wanted to speak to you alone.” She watched his face carefully. Closely. “Why did you want us to take this meeting in the first place, Beat?”

His chin jerked up a notch. When he might have spoken, his jaw only clenched down.

“There must be a reason. We could fill an ocean with the requests we’ve gotten for reality shows and reunion attempts and interviews. Why this one? Why did you entertain it?”

“I’d rather not get specific, Mel.”

That was it. He didn’t continue.

And despite her odd sense of kinship for him, this was where she needed to let the subject drop. Her imagination might be telling her something different, but in reality, they weren’t friends. They weren’t close. Another fourteen years might pass before they even crossed paths again, so she definitely didn’t have the right to press him for an answer.

But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Maybe it was the sense that he was struggling and doing his best to hide it. Or maybe she had inherited some of her mother’s stubbornness. For whatever reason, Melody took a deep breath and pushed a tad harder.

“There’s only one reason to do this . . . and it’s money.”

He closed his eyes.

Bull’s-eye.

“Okay.” Sympathy tunneled right through her chest. “You don’t have to tell me the finer details—”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Mel. I can’t.” He shook his head. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, because there is no way in hell that I’m going to attempt to reunite Steel Birds on a live stream, where I can’t control”—he seemed to bring himself even again with a slow breath—“how it affects you. I won’t do that.”

Melody’s entire body throbbed like one giant heartbeat. “I’m . . . I’m the reason you won’t do this. What’s holding you back is . . . me?”

Beat’s chest rose and fell, his hold tightening around his coffee cup.

No. No, she couldn’t be his reason for turning down the chance at a million dollars. It had to be about the media attention, the lack of privacy. Right?

Regardless of his reasons for saying no to Danielle, if he’d come this far, he must really need the money. Badly. Could she let herself be one of the reasons he turned it down?

She might not know this man well, but she knew him enough to be positive that he hadn’t made the decision to take this meeting, to consider this offer, lightly.

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It wasn’t her place to ask.

She couldn’t simply turn her back and walk away, either. Not on this man.

“What if you said yes? Just . . . hypothetically.”

He was already shaking his head. “Mel. No way.”

“Hear me out.” Visions of cameras chasing them, snapping photographs, calling out uncomfortable questions about her developing body, made Mel squirm in her seat. Still, she didn’t let it deter her. “Let’s say you agreed to do the show. Agreed to reunite our mothers while the world watches . . .” She let out a breath. “You’d never pull off a reunion.”

He started to say something, but she cut him off first.

“Not without me, at least.”

Beat did a double take. “Excuse me?”

“Even with me tagging along, the chances of a reunion are less than one percent. But if we were giving it a real, honest-to-God shot . . .” Here she was, considering an idea she’d long thought was impossible, absurd, so she couldn’t help but laugh. “My mother wouldn’t even let a Dawkins through the front door of her house. Which, by the way, is a commune of no-account called the Free Loving Adventure Club, according to her most recent update. In the by-God wilderness. Imagine trying to reason with a rebellious rocker turned nudist turned possible cult leader who shuns civilization. On a live stream. I mean, you seriously need backup.”

Beat’s hand shot across the table and grasped her wrist, cutting off her amusement. “Melody. I’m not putting you back in front of a camera. You know how shitty they treated you.”

“You made it bearable. You . . . knowing you were out there on my side made it bearable.” She’d waited years to tell him that and it was like releasing a boulder from her chest. “What you said that day changed things. Or it got the ball rolling. And anyway, I’m megahot now,” she deadpanned. “It’s different.”

He didn’t seem to grasp the joke, his forehead only wrinkling in confusion. “I’m sorry I brought you here. It was a bad idea. I’ll get the money . . .” He trailed off with a curse, slowly releasing his hold on her wrist. “I’ll get it another way.”

“Wait. I’m not done.” This time, she closed her fingers around his wrist and pressed down tight—and something unexpected flared in his light blue eyes. Was it . . . was that lust? Not attraction or interest. Lust. A flaming hot flare of it shooting across the sky of his face.

Whatever it was, the effect was so potent, Mel needed a moment to catch her breath.

“Um . . .”

Unsure where the impulse came from, she dug her nails into his wrist ever so slightly.

Beat expelled a harsh exhale.

The unexpected quickening in her belly made her let go of his wrist like it was on fire.

He closed his hand around the spot, twisted, and dropped both hands into his lap, his breathing a little shallower than before. Or was she imagining that?

“What were you going to say?” he prompted after several heavy moments.

Melody did her best to focus. “My mother. I was going to tell you . . .” Her throat started to tighten up, making her voice sound slightly unnatural. “Growing up, she was always traveling. A free spirit to the bone. Now, I see her even less. Only once a year. She comes to New York on my birthday and takes me to her favorite old thrift shop on St. Mark’s Place and the venues on Bleeker where she got her start. She decries how the rich have ruined New York City, we have dinner at a bar that’s too loud for conversation—and then she’s gone. It’s a whirlwind and I barely get in a word edgewise with her, but . . .”

She blinked back the moisture that tried to coat her vision.

Beat didn’t appear to be breathing.

“I always think, this is the time I’m going to impress her. Or she’s going to finally be interested in my life. She’s finally going to see me. And every year, I’m wrong.” This was the first time Melody had ever said these words out loud and they sunk in her stomach like great big stones. One year, in her early twenties, she’d even taken guitar lessons to try and impress Trina, but when her mother actually arrived, Melody didn’t even tell her about the biweekly classes she’d been taking. She was too afraid to find out that even learning to play “Rattle the Cage” on her acoustic Gibson was underwhelming. “She goes back to her nudist colonies or her adventurous friends and I just . . . wait for next year.”

“Mel . . .”

“Sorry, just let me get this out.” She waited for him to nod. “I’ve been working on myself for a long time. Independently. I’ve been going to therapy. Lately, I’ve started venturing outside of my comfort zone and I think it’s time. Finally time to stop the visits in February. They just make me feel terrible. Inadequate.” She took in a breath and released it slowly. “I have nothing to lose here, Beat. My relationship with Trina either needs to change or . . . be paused for a while. Moneywise, too. In which case, a million dollars would go a long way to achieving some independence. Finally.” Thinking about that made Melody feel a little light-headed. She’d been living with Trina’s wealth for so long. “Maybe The Parents’ Trap is the only way to shake up my relationship with Trina enough to elicit a change. And if it doesn’t work, at least I’ve done something new and scary. I’ve pushed myself. I tried.”

Something brushed her kneecap beneath the table and when she realized it was his fingertips, she almost swallowed her tongue. “You shouldn’t have to pull a stunt to make her see you.”

“It’s easy to say that when fate gave you the elegant philanthropist mother.” Melody shrugged and attempted a smile, tamping down the urge to fan herself. “Fate gave me the wild child. She requires explosions.”

He remained still. “Do you really want to do this or are you inventing a reason to say yes?”

Melody appreciated him asking, because whoa, this was moving very quickly. When she woke up this morning, she did not expect to be agreeing to a live reality show before lunchtime. But truthfully, she’d been stuck lately. Stuck between this world of solitude she’d built after years of being raked over the coals by the press and the need for something more.

There was more out there for her.

If not a solid, healthy relationship with her mother, then a better sense of who she was supposed to be, instead of a side character who had been shoved into a claustrophobic box by the media. And underneath it all, there was Beat. A chance to spend time with Beat. He’d become a fairy-tale figure in her head, but he was a real human being.

“Do you need me to do this show with you, Beat?” murmured Melody.

Beat shook his head. “I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on you, Peach.”

Thwack went her heart. The nickname he’d given her at age sixteen came seemingly out of nowhere, yet it felt like he’d called her that a thousand times. Maybe because she’d replayed those gruff consonants so often over the years.

“Do you need me?” she asked again.

He didn’t answer right away. “There isn’t a single other person in the world I would ask.”

A ripcord released and pleasure flooded in from all directions. “Then, okay,” Melody said. When Beat only continued to look at her in an unreadable way, she picked up the last beignet, ripped it in half, and handed him one side. “I don’t usually share food. Don’t get used to this.”

His lips jumped. “Noted.” He tossed the confection into his mouth and chewed, the world spinning behind his eyes. “One more thing, before we go put Danielle out of her misery.” That gaze captured hers and held. “If the cameras and the attention—any of it—become too much, you have to tell me, Mel. I’ll shut it down so fast, they won’t know what hit them.”

Her mouth turned drier than a saltine cracker. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good.” He exhaled roughly. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“Me either.” An involuntary smile played around the edges of her mouth. “Can you imagine if we actually pulled it off, though? Brought Steel Birds back together for a reunion show? The world would lose their collective minds.”

“It’s never going to happen.”

“Never,” she agreed.

Still. When Beat stood up, grinned, and offered Melody his hand, nothing felt impossible.