Page 21
Two months.
Two months since I stood up in front of the most powerful people in this city and fired back. Two months since a man in a wolf mask slid a ring onto my finger and told the whole room I was his.
The money I earned that night was good. It’s also almost gone.
Last week, the TV over the counter ran a two-minute story about a businessman from Howard Beach found in his own driveway. Every finger on both hands broken. No witnesses. No suspects. Darla changed the channel to a cooking show.
I didn’t sleep that night. I’m still not sure if it was fear. I’m not sure I want to know what else it was.
Kelsey texts me sometimes. She quit the agency the week after the masquerade and works the front desk at a dentist’s office now, and every message ends with a butterfly.
Mostly, I’m tired.
Not double-shift tired. Something heavier. Something in my bones.
I know what else it could be. I just haven’t let myself do the math.
“Hey. Focus, girlypop.” Jess snaps her fingers. “You told me about the night. You told me about the guy. You never told me the part that actually matters.” She drops her voice. “Was it good-good? Or rich-guy good?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Rich-guy good is when the hotel’s nice and he thinks you’re so impressed by his money you won’t notice he lasted thirty seconds.”
The laugh comes up out of me too loud, and it costs me. My head goes light. The room tilts half a degree before it settles.
Weird.
“He was not,” I say, when I’ve got my breath back, “rich-guy good. And how many rich guys have you even been with?”
Jess grins. Early twenties, Ohio-cute, zero shame. “Enough to know.”
Darla finally turns around, arms crossed, giving up on the coffee.
“Okay, fine.” I hold up one finger. “I’ll say this once, and then we retire the subject forever. The man ruined me. Every guy I meet now, I’m doing math in my head. ‘You, sir, are a six, and I have unfortunately seen a ten.’ It’s bad.”
“So find his number,” Jess says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
“Didn’t get his name.”
That’s a lie. I’ve told it before. Nobody in this diner is ever finding out whose bed I woke up in.
“I’d have gone through his pockets during his post-sex nap,” Jess says.
“That was the deal. No names.”
“Smart girl,” Darla says into the stack of clean mugs. “Some things are only supposed to last as long as they last.”
“The smartest,” I agree.
Smart girl.
The smartest girl in the world left a ring on a pillow and walked out a delivery door into the blue morning. She did the right thing. The only thing.
And for sixty-one days straight, she hasn’t stopped thinking about him.
His voice. His hands. The black mask above me. You take direction beautifully, still playing in my head at the worst possible moments.
I’ve been telling everyone here it was a fling.
