Page 143 of The Homewreckers
“Yeah,” Hattie said, sheepish. “Sorry I didn’t call you back. I fell asleep on the sofa almost as soon as I got home, and by the time I dragged my butt to bed and saw you’d called, I figured you’d be asleep.”
Her account of the previous evening wasn’t a lie, Hattie rationalized. She was just choosing to omit the part where Mo had joined her in the bed, before she accused him of betraying her and kicked him to the curb.
“It’s okay,” Cass said. “Sucks, though. You should have heard what Mom had to say about that Jada Watkins bitch. Child, please!”
“Nobody messes with Zenobia’s girls, right? So, what’s going on inside?”
“Trae must have stayed late finishing the kitchen floor, and if he wasn’t such a man skank, I’d tell him how great it looks. Hate to say it, but everything in that kitchen is perfection now. The island, those brass ship’s lanterns, all of it. The glue’s dried on our nautical charts, so I hung the mirror when I got here this morning, and the electrician is in there hanging the sconces as we speak, so we can check that off the list. The backyard has been sodded. No more septic tank of doom. We have landscaping! And the carpenters have started tearing apart the old dock house. They’re moving right along.”
“That’s awesome, Cass,” Hattie said, walking into the living room.
“Mo got here even before I did,” Cass said. “He was asking if I knewwhere you were. He wants to shoot you and Trae talking about the kitchen this morning. Lisa’s waiting to do your hair and makeup.”
Hattie frowned. “There’s nothing on the call sheet. I was supposed to do a walk-through with the Realtor, Carolyn Meyers, to talk about what price we want to list the house for.”
“Did you check your email this morning? Mo sent a revised call sheet at one thirty-twoA.M.Guess he had a sleepless night.”
Hattie bit her tongue.
Lisa had Hattie’s hair up in hot rollers while she applied Trae’s eyeliner and mascara. The silence in the room was deafening.
“Not much longer now, huh?” Lisa said, glancing between the two stars. “Two more days?”
“That’s what I hear,” Hattie said.
“I’m really gonna miss this gig,” Lisa said. “And Savannah.”
“Where are you from, Lisa?” Hattie asked, mostly to fill the silence in the chilly space.
“Originally? L.A. But there’s so much film work in Georgia now, my boyfriend and I moved to Atlanta a couple years ago. He’s a sound engineer. I wouldn’t mind staying right here on Tybee. That’s the one thing I miss about California. The beach. Do you guys think the network will order a second season of this show?”
“I don’t know,” Hattie said.
Lisa looked at Trae, who merely shrugged.
The RV door was flung open and Leetha poked her head inside. “Ten minutes, y’all.”
“I’m ready,” Trae said. Then, he bolted.
“Seems like things have kind of cooled down between you and Trae, huh?” Lisa asked.
“Yes.”
“Hey, uh, I saw that nastyHeadline Hollywoodpiece last night,” Lisa said, removing the rollers from Hattie’s hair. “I can’t stand that Jada Watkins. And I really hate those garbage extensions she wears. They need to fire whoever’s doing her hair.”
She patted Hattie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about any of that stuff she said about your father. Nobody cares about shit that happened twenty years ago. Hell, my father did way worse stuff than that. One time he set fire to my stepmother’s mobile home. While she was inside!”
Hattie gave a half-hearted laugh. “Thanks for the pep talk, Lisa.” She peered in the mirror. “Am I all set? I gather Mo’s in a mood, and I don’t want to be late for my call.”
Lisa picked up a tube of lipstick. “Let me give you some color on your lips.”
They were on the third run-through of the kitchen scene, and tempers were on edge.
“Come on, guys, this is flatter than day-old seltzer,” Mo snapped. “You’ve gotta pretend to like each other—at least while the camera is rolling. Give me some energy here.”
“It’s a kitchen floor,” Hattie said. “NotThe Last Supper.”
“Yeah, it’s only a fabulous one-of-a-kind hand-stenciled, hand-painted floor that took me eighteen hours of backbreaking work,” Trae countered. “And don’t forget what this room looked like before I waved my magic wand. It was dirty, dark, cramped.…”
