Once Friends Read online

  Chapter 2

  Two Months Later

  Sonja Hester sneezed as Ms. Jenkins said something about Sonja’s grandmother being too busy with her rich friends to stop by and make sure Sonja did a better job managing the apartment complex. It was the cats. Sonja was severely allergic and Ms. Jenkins had what felt like a million of them skirting, slinking, and lounging throughout the unit. Six minutes ago, Sonja had shown up to her tenant’s unit with a snake to unclog the toilet. Every second spent inside the cat-infested domain had been pure torture.

  Sonja took a break from craning the snake to look down. Through watery eyes and past her itchy nose, she saw something white and furry snaking between her ankles.

  “Ms. Jenkins, you know I’m allergic to cats.” She sneezed again.

  Ms. Jenkins waved dismissively in her direction. “You have hay fever, that’s all.” The elderly tenant swiped the white fluffy cat from off the floor and draped the creature around her neck. “You should take better care of yourself and this complex.”

  Sonja stared at Ms. Jenkins with her mouth agape. She wanted to scream. She was sick and tired of jumping through the high maintenance tenant’s hoops. At least once a week, it was something. Last week, Sonja had snaked a plush kitty toy out of the bathtub drain. Before then, the air conditioner wasn’t working until it miraculously did. Before then, the oven wouldn’t turn on until again, it miraculously did. Holes mysteriously appeared in the walls. And something was always leaking.

  Sonja knew the problems were self-inflicted, and she could prove it! But proving it had never done her any good. Her grandmother, who owned the property, was always on Ms. Jenkins’s side, which Sonja found extremely odd. Apparently they had known each other for a long time, but she wasn’t quite sure they were friends.

  Sonja used the back of her forearm to swipe the sweat off her forehead. “How many cats do you have now anyway?” Her blood boiled as she tried to count them but became overwhelmed once she reached eleven. “You know according to your lease, you’re only supposed to have two pets and you had sixteen the last time I knew the damn number for sure.”

  Ms. Jenkins touched her chest. “Watch your language.”

  Sonja wanted to blurt something far worse but knew if she did that, her words would get back to Gran and she would’ve been made to sound like the bad guy.

  “And I’m giving these lovely creatures a home. Only a vile person would consider displacing them.”

  Sonja’s glower fell on the fat and pretentious animal stretched around Ms. Jenkins’s neck. “Well could you at least lock them away while I’m here?”

  Sonja didn’t think the woman’s eyes could expand wider. “I will not imprison my darlings in their own home.”

  Sonja sneezed again. Her itchy nose and eyes were running like a fountain. “Listen, Ms. Jenkins… ah-choo.” Her cell phone rang. “Shit!”

  Despite Ms. Jenkins’s melodramatic gasp, Sonja pulled off her gloves, snatched her device off the back pocket of her jeans, and answered the call.

  “Hello?” she barked, still using the back of her arm to wipe the wetness from her eyes and nose.

  “Is this Miss Sonja Hester?” a woman asked.

  Sonja averted her burning eyes from Ms. Jenkins’s scowl. “Yes, this is she.” She sneezed again.

  “You’re being rude, young lady,” Ms. Jenkins grumbled, then muttered something about Lorraine, who was Sonja’s grandmother, needing to do something about Sonja’s unprofessionalism.

  Sonja shook her head and allowed her feet to speed walk through the living room and out the front door.

  “I’m calling from Mike Gillespie’s desk.” The woman paused as though she was giving Sonja time to recognize his name.

  Now that she was outside, Sonja took a deep breath. Her symptoms immediately diminished, which pissed her off even more. That was it. Her grandmother had to make a choice. If Ms. Jenkins stayed, then Gran would have to hire someone else to run the complex. She had it up to here with the crazy lady who didn’t think it was odd to sport cats around her neck.

  “Mike Gillespie would like to know if you could attend a meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “Mike Gillespie?” Sonja asked sharply. She sniffed and swiped her nose.

  “Mike Gillespie from AMTA. He represented your screenplay, Pact of Lies,” she said as if casting out hints.

  “Oh, right. The last time I spoke to you, you told me I was no longer being represented by Mike.”

  Four years ago, she’d submitted a screenplay to a contest, and as third place winner, she received agency representation. Sonja had met Mike Gillespie once. It was pouring rain on that Monday morning, which was the worst time to drive from where she lived to Century City. Regardless of the surface street nightmares, which ranged from the average fender bender to the worst kinds of collisions, Sonja had been in a good mood. As she inched along with the rest of traffic, she dreamt of stardom and proudly telling her grandmother that she could no longer manage the complex and all of Ms. Jenkins’s crazy demands.

  As she pulled into the parking garage in her yellow Volkswagen Beetle, Sonja had felt she was at the start of something big. She wasn’t just some poor soul there to interview for a hapless assistant position, as she had done for years after graduating from college. Nope. She was the talent—the bread and butter and blood that fed the whole operation and kept the agency alive. She was confident and nervous up until the moment she met Mike Gillespie. The guy was probably five inches shorter than her, his hair slicked back with a greasy-looking substance, and when he spoke, it was though his words were racing each other. For all of two minutes, he stared at her chest as he said something to the effect that he’d call her if something came up but don’t count on it and ended with “good luck.”

  She had been crushed. And from that moment forward, she vowed to abandon her dream of being the next Charlie Kaufman. Mike Gillespie had been one Tinseltown asshole too many.

  “What does he want?” she said with a serious lack of enthusiasm. She stretched her neck to ease the stiffness.

  “He and others want to meet with you. Should I pencil you in for tomorrow at eight thirty a.m.?”

  Sonya wanted to laugh bitterly and tell the assistant to let Mr. Gillespie know he could drown in toilet water for all she was concerned, but then Ms. Jenkins appeared in the doorway, stroking the fluffy white cat she was wearing around her neck. Suddenly Sonja wanted to get as far away as possible from the scene she was watching.

  She turned her back on Ms. Jenkins. “Sure,” she said, wishing she hadn’t given up smoking because boy, did she want a cigarette. “Why not?”

  The assistant said thanks and that she’d see her tomorrow. As soon as Sonja clipped the phone onto her back pocket, she regretted her decision to meet with the creep of an agent. And just like that, she changed her mind. Whatever meeting Mike Gillespie was having would have to go forth without her. The douchebag.

  “Are you finished with your call?” Ms. Jenkins asked.

  Sonja sighed sharply. Her eyes were no longer watery. She had stopped sneezing. Her nose was no longer running. And that tight pressure at the front of her face was gone. She didn’t feel like subjecting herself to more misery, so she spun around and glared at the woman who had become her worst enemy.

  “Either you put those cats away or you can wait until I call a plumber to come fix your toilet. Your choice.” Sonja folded her arms, letting Ms. Jenkins know that she meant business.

  “I will not imprison my lovelies,” Ms. Jenkins said and set her jaw.

  Sonja could already hear her grandmother giving her hell for the choice she was making at that very moment. But for the first time ever, she turned away from Ms. Jenkins and headed back to her office. Her head was spinning and she felt as if she wanted to barf. She had never walked away from Ms. Jenkins’s demands, and now her tenant was yelling something about how sorry she would be when Lorraine heard about this.

  Sonja wanted to get back to unclogging the cat lady
’s toilet, but she had made a decision to leave and there was no turning back. She would let the chips fall where they may.

  As soon as Sonja made it back to her office, she called Hector, the plumber, who said he could fit her in but he couldn’t get there for another three hours. And just as she expected, the wait for his arrival had been a low-grade nightmare. Ms. Jenkins called her desk every fifteen minutes or so. Of course she wasn’t going leave her apartment and walk up the stairs to the manager’s office. The fact that the woman wouldn’t walk up the stairs had something to do with arthritis or sciatica or fibromyalgia—she had used all three as excuses to make Sonja jump through her hoops.

  Instead Sonja finished some paperwork and paid some invoices. By the time Hector arrived, her grandmother hadn’t called yet, which relieved a lot of Sonja’s anxiety. It took him an hour to take the toilet off the base and remove a wig Ms. Jenkins had flushed down it.

  Sonja rubbed the tension at the back of her neck as she listened to Hector explain how something like that couldn’t have happened by accident.

  “She’s loco,” Hector concluded while spiraling his finger around his ear.

  He was right. And Sonja had been off her rocker for tolerating and accommodating Ms. Jenkins for as long as she had. So after Hector left, she picked up the phone and called her grandmother. It was time to have the talk.

  “What is it, darling?” Sonja’s grandmother asked impatiently.

  Before calling, Sonja had rehearsed an argument for putting limits on Ms. Jenkins’s power, but now she couldn’t remember it. Sonja shifted nervously in her seat. “Has Ms. Jenkins called you?”

  “Yes,” her grandmother said nonchalantly.

  Sonja was taken aback by her grandmother’s casual tone. “She called today?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “About the toilet?”

  “Yes, Sonja, is that all you wanted to ask?”

  Sonja quickly sat back in her armchair. “And what do you think about what she had to say?”

  “Didn’t you call a plumber?” Gran asked.

  “Yes,” Sonja said leadingly.

  “And now the toilet’s fixed?”

  “But she stuffed a wig down it. On purpose.”

  Gran huffed impatiently. “Is there anything else?”

  Sonja scratched the back of her head feverishly. Hell yes, there was something else! She couldn’t take it anymore. Something had to be done about Ms. Jenkins. Immediately.

  “Gran, listen, Ms. Jenkins doesn’t pay rent, yet she’s the tenant I service the most. She’s rude. And she purposely breaks shit just so she can torture me.” Oh goodness, she was whining and that never worked to sway Lorraine Hester to rule in her favor.

  “I’m not evicting her,” her grandmother bluntly stated.

  In the past, her grandmother’s tone would’ve been enough to make Sonja drop the entire conversation and just deal with it, but only one deranged tenant stood between her and her job being tolerable. She heard Regina, her grandmother’s executive assistant, mention that they had three minutes before their conference call with T Corp.

  “One moment,” Gran said to Regina. “Sonja darling, you’re calling me with problems and complaints, but I can only support you if you bring me solutions.”

  Sonja tried to sit farther back in her chair, but she had already pinched it against the wall. “I want to evict Ms. Jenkins.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Is that all you have for me?”

  Sonja clenched her teeth and groaned inaudibly. “Okay, then I need to hire an assistant and a full-time handyman.”

  “Now that I can sanction. Put it in writing.”

  Sonja jerked her head in shock. “Really?”

  “Don’t put this on me, darling. I’ve been waiting for you to ask for what you want. You often behave as if I haven’t taught you anything.”

  Sonja grimaced. “What do you mean?”

  “When life gets difficult, you either give up or run yourself ragged trying to control the chaos instead of asking for help. So you asked for help and I’m giving it to you. Now, I’m late for my conference call. Goodbye, my love.”

  “Bye, Gran,” she barely said.

  After her line went silent, Sonja sat with the phone against her ear as thoughts raced through her mind. Was that who she was? Someone who didn’t ask for what she wanted? Someone who settled? Someone who ran away from difficulty? Was she the person who had given up on her dreams because, except for managing Ms. Jenkins, it was easier to be the mayor of crazy town?

  Instead of putting together a budget request report and commencing the search for a handyman, Sonja went back to her apartment and collapsed on her bed. There was a rumor in her family, one that Sonja strongly believed, that the Hester women were cursed to never find love. Sonja’s older sister Elaine, who she called Laney, always accused Sonja of using that silly curse as a crutch to justify giving up on love.

  Sonja stared at the French doors that led to her small patio overlooking the backyard garden. She didn’t have to get up to cherish the view—it was burned into her brain. The complex was certainly a stunning piece of property. Her grandmother had bought the first apartment building on the ten-acre estate in the eighties. It had white stone walls with a red tiled roof and a big limestone bowl-shaped fountain surrounded by cobblestones in the courtyard. Six years later, her grandmother made a deal to buy an identical building next door. Then she purchased the two mini-mansions behind the two structures. Next she acquired the appropriate permits to combine all four properties into one. That was when the major renovation occurred, which included landscaping the grounds to feel and look like paradise.

  Sonja walked to the French doors. No wonder she had let herself remain lost on the estate. She admired the cacti and the Mediterranean plants, such as Phormiums, agaves, Cordylines, flax lilies, lavender, and red bottlebrushes. For more color, there were birds of paradise, lilies-of-the-Nile, and an array of colorful roses. Islands of palm trees were surrounded by white rocks. It was daytime now, but at night, the plants were all lit by lights placed decoratively through the foliage. She could’ve hidden in the beautiful world of the complex forever and the thought of doing that made her stomach feel queasy.

  Sonja turned away from the beautiful grounds and faced her closet. The door was open and the first thing her eyes fell on was the navy dress suit she’d bought for job interviews. She hadn’t worn it since giving up on her dream of being a screenwriter. Unfortunately she had to start from the dreadful bottom. When it came to Hollywood, those who knew somebody—close friends or family members who were already in—had the best chances of climbing the ladder and making it to the top. A face came to mind, one she hadn’t seen since she was fifteen years old. Her old best friend Jay West. He was a big-time movie star, but she would rather eat nails than ask him for a lift up.

  She breathed in deeply through her nose and held it. Tomorrow, she would make that eight thirty a.m. meeting. She was one hundred percent sure Mike Gillespie would treat her as though she should be so grateful he’d invited her to grace his presence that she should lick his boots. He would be rude of course. Sonja forcefully released the breath.

  Nope.

  She couldn’t let the fear of rejection win. Sonja stopped painting a future that incited dread and decided to use her grandmother’s words to help her face life’s uncertainties head on. Tomorrow at eight thirty, she would be there, and only then would she know what would happen next.

  Chapter 3

  Sonja had hardly slept at all. So many times while lying awake in her dark room, she’d had to talk herself into waking up at six o’clock to get dressed and brave Thursday morning traffic in order to make Gillespie’s mystery meeting. Even while stopping and going west up San Vicente Boulevard, she had to fight the urge to turn her car around and inch her way back home.

  But she didn’t turn around. She made a right onto Avenue of The Stars in Century City, then another right, and drove down the ramp into AMTA’s vas
t underground parking garage. The last time she had taken the drive down the incline and stopped at the security booth, she had been proud to announce to the guard that she was Mike Gillespie’s new client, even though he hadn’t asked. This time she silently took the ticket from him.

  “Who are you here to see?” he asked to her surprise.

  “Mike Gillespie,” she mumbled.

  The guard grabbed a clipboard. “Your name?”

  “Sonja Hester,” she muttered.

  “One second.” He ran his finger down a list.

  All Sonja wanted to do was flee the scene as she waited for the guy to do something in the booth. She thought maybe Douchebag Gillespie had changed his mind until the guard stepped out, smiling.

  He gave her a nametag with Sonja Hester written on it. “This is for you.” He pointed toward her right. “Park over there in the yellow section next to the motorcycle. Once you’ve parked, take one of the elevators which will be right in front of you. You’ll need to scan the back of your badge against the red light on the wall for the doors to open. Once you’re in, hit L and you will be taken to the lobby. Reception will be expecting you.”

  Sonja could hardly believe what she had just heard. For some reason, it sounded as if she was receiving special treatment. But why?

  Sonja’s head felt floaty as she followed the guard’s instructions to a T. The elevator doors slid open, and a young woman with dark hair and porcelain skin gazed at her from behind the receptionist’s station.

  “Welcome, Miss Hester,” the receptionist said with what appeared to be a practiced smile.

  Sonja wanted to smile back, but all the curiosity plaguing her brain wouldn’t let her. “Um, I’m here to see Mike Gillespie.”

  “Right, you’re here for the meeting.”