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“Wrong,” she deadpans. “When I leave here, I’m moving back home to Arkansas because I can’t afford my rent in DC anymore. This trip was my last hurrah. But now, I’m going to die.” Her chest rises and falls rapidly as she tries to catch her breath after that diatribe.
I ask her the question that’s been on the tip of my tongue.
“How could you not know that your boyfriend had someone else in his life?” I hear a voice in my head say, Not now, she’s in the middle of what she believes could be her deathbed confession. But, the woman I’m looking down at, that I’m listening to—that woman is smart and damn perceptive.
So, I double down when she doesn’t respond right away. “Really. How could you not have known?”
“I ask myself that every day,” she responds miserably.
“You seem like an astute person,” I muse.
“Then you’re clearly not,” she says with disdain.
“Thanks, that’s nice,” I say dryly.
“Haven’t you been listening to my story? Don’t you see the parallels?”
“Parallels?”
“Yes. He fucked me on the down low, but basically said I was too low class for him to be seen with in public. You wouldn’t even fuck me. And you made it very clear that even if you could lower yourself to being with me, I was too cheap to do more with than that,” she says without any recrimination at all in her voice. “I must be the world’s biggest kind of fool. I keep meeting and liking the same kind of guy,” she says.
“Hey, I am not the same kind of guy as that asshole,” I say.
“What says you’re not? Certainly not the way you spoke to me. I mean, you being out here on this ledge is nice. But considering how it’s your fault and all, you leaving me alone out here would make you a pretty evil son of a bitch, so … I’m not sure that I can see any real difference between you and my boyfriend of five years except he kept his sense of superiority hidden for much longer than you did.” She lays this indictment on me with the force of a sledgehammer.
Swish would be so disappointed in me right now, and there’s nothing worse than feeling that certainty settle down on my shoulders.
“Anyway, all I’m saying is, clearly, I have a type. With Nigel, all I lost was my job. You’re about to cost me my fucking life,” she says.
“Don’t say they actually fired you. Didn’t you have a contract or something?” I ask, ignoring her melodrama.
“I know you only date heiresses, so you wouldn’t know much about jobs and employment like the rest of us working stiffs,” she snarks. She’s making a joke, but a lash of shame strikes me right in the center of my chest when I remember the way I spoke to her.
“Most of us who have jobs are what’s called at will. I can quit whenever I want, and they can fire me for any reason. They found their reason and fired me,” she says simply.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I left. They offered me money to sign a nondisclosure, something saying I wouldn’t sue them for wrongful termination. I was tempted. That money would not have gone begging.”
“So, you signed it?” I ask.
“Hell no,” she says like it’s the stupidest question she’s ever been asked. “Of course not. I would dance naked on a pole in Little Rock before I took their hush money. I’ve worked too hard to let them drag my name in the mud. That is my story. And I’ll tell it if I want to,” she declares.
“So, have you?” I ask.
She sighs loudly. “No. Because it would destroy what’s left of my career. No one would ever hire me again. But, I hope they spend the entire three-year statutory period looking over their shoulders for that lawsuit. They’re playing games. I’m playing for my life. I have one shot to escape the future that I was born to, and I’ll be dammed if they take it from me,” the lioness on the ledge roars.
Goddamn.
She’s sexy as fuck when she’s angry. Her voice is strong. There’s no fear. No apology.
“Nigel made sure to stop by my office on my last day and tell me how sorry he was that things didn’t work out. He told me that I should lower my ambitions. I had a great body, a decent face and amazing hair. But my pedigree was all wrong. ‘Stop punching above your weight, find your kind,’ he said.”
“Shit. He’s a proper asshole,” I say.
“He’s worse than an asshole. He’s a hemorrhoid. Useless, painful, and rotten on the inside,” she says with real scorn. “My kind are hunters and trackers. We’re keepers of tradition. We’re salt of the earth. I refused to feel ashamed of that.”
My dick gets hard. Like her words are her mouth and they’re wrapping themselves around it, sucking as hard. Just how I like it.
