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“Everything okay?” I asked, not bothering to say hello either.
“No, it is not,” she said. “I got into a car accident earlier, and the Sentra’s totaled.”
“Was everyone all right?” I asked. I meant, were you high, and did you kill anybody?
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just ran off the road and hit some construction stuff that the stupid city workers left there. Can you imagine that? Just leaving concrete tubes and jackhammers and shit everywhere? It totaled my car!”
“It was on the side of the road, Ma. Not in the road.” I sighed. My mother always had a problem, and someone else had always caused it. I don’t think I’d ever heard her say she was responsible for one thing that had gone wrong in her life, not ever.
“So where’s the car?” I asked.
“I left it there.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at a bar,” she said. Of course she was. I knew my mother. She was going to have a few drinks and tell the cops she’d been at a bar, drinking—after she’d totaled her car. They’d never be able to prove that she’d been drinking before, too, although they would expect as much. The cops knew my mom, and my mom knew the cops.
“Did you call anybody?” I asked.
“No. That wouldn’t have been a great idea,” she said. That was as close as she would come to admitting she’d been drunk earlier. “So I’m just in here for an hour. I’m gonna have a couple of drinks and then I’ll call them.”
“They might find you before that, Ma.”
“Whatever,” she said. She was muffled for a bit, and I heard her lighting a cigarette. “Hey, I talked to the clerk at Tommy’s center. She said you’d paid ahead through August. Business must be pretty good, huh?”
“It was a one-off. There’s no more money,” I said, bristling. I was disgusted that my mother was happy I was making money as a prostitute. I was even more disgusted by her tone—the one that told me she was going to be asking me for some of that money soon. “I gotta run. Be safe.”
“Have fun,” she said, and it made my skin crawl.
James came in then, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Who was that?”
“No one,” I said, and I meant it.
* * *
James had on another dazzling suit, this time with a lavender tie. “What should I wear?” I asked, going through the racks of designer clothes in my closet. I wasn’t used to this many choices.
“That dress you had on last night worked for me,” he said, grinning.
“I’m pretty sure that’s dirty,” I said and smiled back at him. “Plus, I don’t want to wear anything that’s going to have us going at it under the table again. I don’t think your mother would approve.” I pulled out a conservative grey sheath and showed it to him. “What about this?”
“It’s fine,” he said. “But we’ll still probably go at it. It doesn’t matter what you wear. I know what you look like underneath—and I like it.” I went to him and kissed him on the lips, dropping the dress onto the bed. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me back, hard, and that wasn’t the only thing that was hard.
I ran my hands over him, relishing the feel of his enormous, sculpted chest, but then I stepped back. “Too bad we don’t have time for that right now,” I said innocently. “You have to be photographed for your New England Brides Magazine spread.”
He sighed raggedly. “This f**king wedding.”
I started to put the grey dress on. “I don’t know—I’m enjoying it so far,” I said, and I meant it.
He came and zipped up the back for me. “I am, too. And that was the last thing I expected.” He ran his hand gently down my back, sending shivers through me.
His phone buzzed, and he grabbed it, reading the screen intently. “I have to deal with this. Sorry,” he said, and started quickly tapping out messages on his phone. “But we have to get going, too.”
I put on some metallic sandals, lipstick, and a bunch of bangles. Then I grabbed his hand, leading him to the elevator and out to the car while he dealt with his business. It was beautiful outside, and Kai was waiting with a friendly smile. James was holding my hand while he barked into his phone. It all seemed so normal, so natural. For one moment, I imagined that this was my real life, and I was his real girlfriend.
It was perfect. It was absofuckinglutely perfect.
He was on his call during the drive to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where the photo shoot was taking place. I took the time to look at my phone, worried that my mother had managed to end up in jail.
