Check, Please (Book #2)

Twenty-Eight.

Despite what I'd said to Dr. Fersan, I actually did plan on celebrating Thanksgiving with my family—well, one family member, anyway.

Michael had invited me over once a week since moving into a condo two blocks away from the Santa Monica shoreline, which he described in no modest terms as a massive upgrade from the seedy studio loft he'd been renting before. And, considering the fact he'd previously been living in an apartment complex owned by a drug dealer, I had no doubt that was true.

Without giving him a reason, I'd declined stopping by his place for months, though I promised I would eventually. That was why I knew there was no way to get out of joining him for Thanksgiving when he asked me what I was doing to celebrate—that is, unless I really wanted to look like a prick. Besides, it wasn't as if I had anywhere else to go, so I figured, why not?

Granted, Sophie had told me that I was welcome to join her and Parker at her dad's house, but that sounded even less appealing than spending the afternoon with Mike. Meeting people's parents was awkward enough without being the third wheel at what would otherwise be an intimate family gathering, especially because I knew how eager Parker was to impress Sophie's father. A year ago, I never would've imagined that I'd be turning down an A-list celebrity's invitation to hang out, but life was strange like that.

Michael had put me in charge of picking up the turkey and I listened to the fifteen-pound bird roll around the floor of my car while I pulled onto the ramp for the 10-West. Signaling to merge onto the freeway, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the roads were clear.

It's a Thanksgiving miracle, I thought to myself before pressing down on the accelerator and settling on a speed somewhere between seventy and eighty—fast enough to feel like I was moving, but too slow to draw a cop's unwanted attention.

I hummed as I sailed along the empty stretch of road, wondering what Michael and I would talk about while the turkey roasted in the oven. Because Parker still worked in Michael's office on the days that he didn't have class, I'd already heard most of the gossip that my brother would be able to tell me without breaking any confidentiality clauses.

Let's see, I thought. We could talk about sports, but that was probably risky seeing as we no longer rooted for the same professional teams. What else was there? Other than our last name and the friends we shared from the fraternity, we didn't have much in common, a fact that I'd always been aware of, though it seemed particularly obvious today.

Listening to my phone's GPS, I pulled off the highway ten minutes later and continued cruising towards the address that Michael had texted me. It was strange to see the streets around the Promenade deserted, and when I pulled up to a red light, I stared at the vacant area where Gemma's favorite farmer's market usually set up. I shook my head, letting my thoughts drift back to Michael in an effort not to think about her.

What most people didn't know about my brother was that he'd had dug himself into thousands of dollars of debt in order to finance the appearance of being a successful talent agent. The day after he graduated, he'd leased a mid-range BMW and put three designer suits on his nearly-maxed out credit cards. He lived on instant noodles for months while he slowly paid back his loans, though he stubbornly insisted that the expenses were necessary. After all, according to him, clients didn't want to sign with someone who showed up to meetings in a decade-old Camaro, and the pricey clothing apparently helped him overcome any skepticism about his age. Michael insisted that image was everything in Los Angeles, and he was certainly the master of putting on a front; at the very least, I never knew what he was thinking.

Truthfully, I couldn't say if his scheming had paid off, or if he was just good at his job, but it was hard to argue that Michael hadn't made it. His career had taken off in the last eighteen months and no matter how hard he tried to deny it, he largely had Sophie to thank for that. Even I was smart enough to know that without the commission she brought in for him, there was no way that he would've been able to afford his new place, or the souped-up Mercedes he'd bought for himself after she signed on to last summer's biggest blockbuster.