He must be made out of muscle—typical—because my barstool barely wheezes out a patheticsqueakwhen I turn toward him. At least he’s dressed today. Green shirt. Black pants. Big frown. He has that air of surprised impatience that beautiful rich people develop in their early twenties, after they’ve graduated from whichever Ivy League their parents paid for and get red-carpet-rolled into a world built just for them. Life is predictable for this man, and when it’s not, he frowns.
“Yes. I’m leaving.”
I sound as annoyed as I feel. He isn’t asking because he actually wants to know what’s going on with me, or if I’m okay, or how hard it is to not slip back into being an angry foster kid, screaming internally about how unfair life is. Arthur Bianco doesn’t want to know how it took my adoptive family’s backwoods Buddhism and morning meditations for the troubled girl to grow into a mostly unflappable adult. No, he just wants to make any woman with a pulse pay attention to him. He’s like the obnoxious student a teacher sits you next to in an attempt to make the boy nicer, sacrificing your education for his.
A quiet, average woman like me not unraveling at Arthur’s attention must be a blow to his ego. It was much more endearing when the bartender was trying to get to know me.
Speaking of. My eyes flash to where she’d been seconds ago, seeking out solidarity, only to find that she’s vanished. Traitor.
Oh well. I take a deep breath. “You know Max Black?”
“Your business partner.”
“You called it. We were dating.”
Arthur’s eyes narrow. “Weredating?”
“As of this morning, we’re not.” I wrap my hands around my coffee, seeking out the dull warmth. “And according to the LLC registration, I didn’t own one half of Black & Graywood like I thought I did, so he’s fired me from the business I’ve spent years building, too. Ergo the leaving.”
Anger sparks across Arthur’s face. “What the fuck?”
Not the most eloquent wording. But, perhaps the most accurate. “Yeah. I called Ignition. They confirmed what Max said—I’m done.”
Arthur’s brow furrows, and his mouth officially flips to a tight, agitated frown, all his irreverent, exasperating humor from earlier gone. “No. They can’t get rid of you like that.”
“Apparently, they can.”
“It isn’t fair.”
“Welcome to the life of the non-rich and famous.”
Arthur stares at me, his pupils reedy thin. A muscle in his cheek flexes. “Why did he break up with you?”
“Ah, another common-people problem. He was cheating on me. With Sarah. The super pretty blonde woman? Not that I’m trying to fight in the brunette-blonde wars. Just, like, damn.” I blow out an uncomfortable breath. “Plus, I have what’s known as a difficult personality, which probably goes without saying. I guess Max decided he wants to date someone less grueling?”
Arthur mumbles something Italian under his breath that, judging by his sour expression, is a word I don’t want to know anyway. “I can’t believe her,” he says after switching back to English.
All morning, total devastation has been like a next-door neighbor, knocking and waiting on my porch, peeking in the windows; I’d hoped that if I ignored how close it was to me, it might go away. Now the emotions I’ve been running from punch me square in the stomach. Hearing the icy disappointment in Arthur’s voice is affirming, but painful. Someone else knows what happened to me today—sees the emotional whirlwind twisting inside me, waiting for everything to hit, how much I’ve lost, how my life will never, ever be the same, and it was completely out of my control—and they think it sucks. Sure, this sympathy is coming from someone who probably treats his girlfriends infinitely worse than this, but hey.
“She doesn’t know he was cheating. At least there’s that.”
I wait for Arthur to smile at my sparkling gallows humor, or to start drinking now that he’s confirmed that I’ll be out of his hair as soon as possible. But he does neither. He just looks at me.
“Max is going to keep making the documentary?” he asks.
“Sure seems that way.”
“Then you need to stay,” Arthur says. “Here. You have to stay.”
My eyebrows lift on their own accord. “Excuse me?”
“We could work together.”
“On?”
“Ruining the movie.” He slides from his barstool to the one next to me, and then he’snext to me, intense and determined and so much taller than me that I have to lean back to meet his wild eyes. He’s close, wide, animated as he talks. “Do you know what a reserve driver is?”
“Like a backup quarterback?”
