Fuck. Not now.
I couldn’t talk to Beau Walker. I was filled with so much unchecked vitriol, I needed a priest. I needed an exorcism.
When I didn’t respond, he continued, “Hey, I’m sorry about the way the Redwood meeting went.”
Don’t sweat it. You have plenty of other buyers. Buyers who didn’t try to turn your product into government surveillance software and then turn my career into fire kindling.
“Honestly, I think you dodged a bullet,” I said, not knowing at the time that it would be the last clearheaded thing I said for days. Possibly longer.
“I’m glad to hear you say that. Listen, I was calling to check on my shirt.” He chuckled.
If I had been in any other state of mind, this would have been charming. But poor Beau didn’t know he had dialed into the seventh circle of hell.
“Your shirt? You’re calling me about a shirt?” My anger was so white-hot I was almost numb. Beau must have been stunned silent by my tone, because the line went quiet. It was entirely possible he had already hung up as I yelled, “It’s a shirt, Beau! It’s fine. Everything is fine.”
After another beat of silence, he finally said, “Are you okay, Este? You sound—”
“Me? I am great. I’m—thriving actually. So young and free and full of goddamn potential Natasha Bedingfield should write a fucking song about it. Everything’s—I’m—” My voice cracked, and I had to bite down so hard on my lip I thought I tasted blood. When I spoke again, my voice was steady—or at least as steady as it could be. “How are you, though? Probably cold without that shirt. Was it your only one? Is—is that why you’re calling?”
I was talking nonsense, like the anger was leeching every brain cell from my body until I was drunk on despair. I wanted to tell the whole world to fuck off, burn every bridge, and disappear into the ether. But despite being ready to hard-reset the universe, I couldn’t tell Beau to fuck off. He wasn’t part of the whole world. In my mind, I had already set him apart. He was something else.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. It was too humiliating. My brain kept tripping between what I could and shouldn’t say until everything came out in disjointed ramblings.
“Este, can I come get you? Where are you?”
“I—I’m going to get myself out of this on my own. And I’m not worried about doing that at all. I’m independent and smart. Sisters doing it for themselves, like R-E-S-P-E-C-T.Fuck.I’m A-OK. I’m prettyandsmart.” The memory of Simon kissing my knee made me feel so stupid, and Iwasstupid, because the next thing my half-melted brain spit out was “And I’m a great lay. I bet you didn’t know that.”
Jesus, Este. Hang up the phone.
The words keep coming, though. “So I tell you what, I will get your shirt dry-cleaned—another thing I am supercapable of accomplishing because I have time and a car—and I’ll get it returned to you. Actually, maybe I’ll buy you a new one. Or ten new ones. Text me your address and I’ll send you a baker’s dozen. Okay?”
“I don’t really want the shirt back, Este. I just wanted to talk to you. I—”
“Okay, great. I guess that’s settled then. Have a nice fucking day, Beau Walker.” And then I disconnected the Bluetooth, panting like I’d fully lost my mind.
I didn’t remember the rest of the drive home. The mental postmortem didn’t begin until my ass hit the sofa in my Venice apartment, frozen bottle of tequila in hand. And even then, it was hard to separate facts from emotions. My blood was boiling with some pernicious blend of disappointment, humiliation, remorse, and something else I couldn’t place.
Shock, maybe.
I’m not supposed to fail.
When my parents were alive, flipping through flash cards at the dinner table, my life was buttressed by ambition. They’d shaped me on the promise that achievement was the foundation of everything, so when they died, I braced myself with control and a refusal to fail.
Living with Delia, I remained studious and hardworking, only leaning occasionally into her fun-loving, bourbon-soaked doctrine. All in the name of making my own life.
So then why am I in a free fall?
I sat on the couch, staring at nothing and trying to get my brain to replay the last few hours, but it patently refused. Like some deeper part of me was determined to save me from myself.
Did I tell James to shut up? Did I tell Beau Walker that I was good in bed? Future me will have to solve these mysteries.
For now, I could only sit there, wondering how someone so sure of herself could unravel so quickly.
Chapter 19
Five Days Before the Hurricane
“Este,” Nora whines. “This is insane.”
