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I freeze. “Neil?” I say lamely. I can’t fathom Neil cheating. Especially not on her. Except…I think about the way his eyes linger on other women. How we all think it’s innocent. What we see from the outside isn’t what’s always happening on the inside.

“I know what you’re thinking. Everyone says he adores me.”

But she doesn’t know what I’m thinking. Everyone said Simon and I seemed like a great couple too.

“Everyone said that about Eli, too.”

My stomach twists way too hard at the thought of Eli adoring Kelly. Then I register the implications of what she said.

Kelly sees my expression and shakes her head. “No, Eli never cheated. I never worried about that with him, and you don’t have to either. ‘Loyal’ is the man’s middle name. Even when things are already dead.”

I want to ask her why she thinks that about Neil, but her jeweled, perfectly manicured hand reaches out and pats mine, and I realize this conversation is over.

“Don’t squander him like I did, Reese. Just promise me that.”

Then, in a burst of Chanel and suede, she’s gone.

CHAPTER12

Eli

TRACK:Joan Baez, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

I’m startled from my spreadsheet by the muffled sounds of Joan Baez. My heart leaps—it’s the ringtone I set for Reese. One that never goes off.

I pat my breast pocket, then remember I threw my phone in my desk drawer an hour ago after I was sick of staring at it, checking for texts from her.

I swipe the answer button, my heart thumping like a teenager getting a call from a girl for the first time.

“Hey,” I say, casual. I think. The fuck is wrong with me?

“Eli. What are you doing right now?”

The truth—Making a deathly boring spreadsheet to track expenditures across the hotel’s departments to distract myself from thinking about you—isn’t exactly a chill answer, so I clear my throat and say, “You know. Work.”

“So you’re upstairs?”

I stand up. “Yes. Why? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. But there’s a woman here who isn’t.”

My first thought is Kelly, and that sends a confusing jumble of thoughts through me. But there’s something about Reese’s tone. It almost sounds like she’s smiling.

“What’s going on, Reese?” I get nervous about being kept in the dark. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my siblings would make plans without me, because they said I’d make them too elaborate and get us caught. I wasn’t the daredevil like Jude, but I’d definitely get too into things. Spend all day building an elaborate command fort in the woods when all the rest of them wanted to do was play hide-and-seek.

It also reminds me of when Kelly used to come home with her lips pinched tight, playing this excruciating game where I had to guess what the hell I’d done wrong, feeling like an idiot for not already knowing.

“Remember Cindy?” Reese says, sparing me.

“Cindy?” It takes me a minute, then it comes back to me. Cindy Harkness, from Ohio, one of theChef’s Apprenticecontestants.

“Thank You Mom,” I say. Cindy is a single mom from Ohio, who goes out of her way to thank everyone and everything. As in everyone she meets. And everything she touches. She says she does it to teach her daughter about gratitude.

“Yes. She just got eliminated.”

“Oh shit.” We’re only a couple weeks into filming, and I’ve been keeping my distance so as not to get in the way. But even though we know two people have to go each week, it’s always a shock when it happens.

I’m not surprised Cindy’s one of the early ones though. I met her that first day of filming, when they shot Cass’s, Jude’s, and my intros—the only time we were on screen. When they introduced me to her, she was whispering it to the colander next to her. I heard her say it again after someone bonked into her by one of the prep stations. Like Reese said after we met her, gratitude is important. But Cindy is gratitude on steroids.