“You’d be surprised at how many people lie just to have something to talk about. I know better than to trust you. I don’t even know why I’m considering this.”
“Because you know it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. I work in public relations for a casino. Trust me. I’ve heard some shit.”
“Nothing compared to what a reporter hears.”
“You got me there.” I nodded.
“I hope you don’t think you can charm your way out of answering the hard questions and providing receipts,” she challenged.
“For a little one, you damn sure are feisty. I hope you don’t think you can take me.”
“Excuse you, I’m not all that little anymore. Plus, you know they say the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
“You wanna show me how much you can take?” I asked her.
“See, I knew better than to take you serious!”
“I’m just messing with you. Just in case you decide to back out, after tonight, I’m sending out a memo that all press comes to me for the time being,” I said, winking as I left her table.
Saying that I got an hour of sleep was generous. I kept my eyes closed for at least that long as I tossed and turned. It wasn’t that I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to. Every time I started to drift, there was that smile. Every time my subconscious took over, I could see his face.
Reed had no business trying to dredge up feelings that had taken me years to suppress. His calm, controlled confidence made me sick. I wanted to push him up out of my face if he didn’t want to answer my questions straight. His smug ass came over antagonizing me by looking good as hell and trying to weasel his way back in my life. I needed him for the interview, but I didn’t know if I could trust him.
I couldn’t believe he would try to rearrange the things that I spent too long putting back together. My life, my heart, my sanity were all left in tatters when he was done with me. I loved Reed with my whole heart. He was the sweetest and most charming person I had ever met. He was almost sickeningly sweet, which should have been my first indication that he was a damn fraud.
We met late one night in the library. It was probably like two in the morning, but we were both there. Of course, I was there. The library was my second home. He was stressed out about a paper, and writing happened to be my thing, so for three nights, I helped him work on his paper.
Once he turned his paper in, he didn’t come back in for a week. When he finally showed up, it was to show me that big, pretty smile, give me some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies he made for me, and tell me that he’d gotten a B on his paper. I would have been disappointed in a B, but Reed was proud, so I let him have it.
After that, he came back every few nights to chill with me. He felt like I was a stick in the mud because I would rather focus on my education than partying on a Friday night. That didn’t stop him from giving up his party hoping to watch old movies in my dorm room. He even made sure to bring snacks. I showed him how to make a struggle meal with ramen and a bunch of love, and he showed meShaft.
Reed quickly became my favorite person outside my sisters. Most guys I ran into in college only wanted sex. Reed made me feel like he was different. He told me that he respected the fact that I was saving myself for the right guy. Although he introduced me to the pleasures of oral stimulation, he never pushed for more. Imagine my surprise when his mom revealed that he had been engaged the entire time. He didn’t even try to explain himself or apologize. What was there to say, though?
Reed might have consumed my thoughts for most of the night, but I was still up bright and early. As usual, by eight, I had eaten, gotten dressed, and was sitting in front of my computer creating my next masterpiece. If Reed really wanted to do this the right way, it could be huge.
The opportunity, as he called it, sounded too good to be true. I wasn’t playing with him, though. He might have thought using someone he considered familiar would be an easy way to get some good press, but I was serious about the integrity of my work. Reed might have thought I would take it easy on them because we had history, but little did he know, I was asking for everything.
He claimed to be an open book, so there shouldn’t be an issue with providing transaction records, player activity logs, and other things that would help to paint a clear picture. I wouldn’t ask for anything that I didn’t need access to. I knew there was a lot of sensitive information involved. It shouldn’t take breaking the law to get a clear picture of the way things worked.
Something about Cashville still didn’t sit right with the public. My bias against Reed made me lean to the side of guilt, but it wasn’t about me. I would give him a chance to prove his innocence. I couldn’t believe I was actually going through with it.
For the past ten minutes, I had been staring at the email that was sent to my work email. Reed made it his business to send an email with his phone number attached. It annoyed me that I would call him. Some parts of me didn’t trust that I could control myself around him. That part kept me from dialing the number.
“Stop looking at that damn number and call him, girl. This is huge for your article. I honestly don’t know why you didn’t think of it yourself. You went to college with the owners,” my sister Hope fussed as she plopped down next to me on the couch.
“One of them hated me, and the other broke my heart. I never cared to see either of them again.”
“Nick did not hate you. He felt like you took his friend.”
“Well, his friend proved us both wrong.”
“How long has it been, Faith? You gotta get over it one day. Y’all were kids.”
“Who said I wasn’t over it? Just because I dread the idea of being in the same room as Reed Fuller does not mean that I have not forgiven him. I would go as far as to say the fact that I had a fairly cordial conversation with him last night proves the opposite,” I mentioned.
“Talking to him don’t prove shit. He’s offering you an in. You would be a fool not to take it due to a childhood break up.”
“It wasn’t a childhood breakup. We were in college. I was twenty-one years old, and he was just as grown.”
