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I was an heiress to money. Old money. New money. A fuck-load of money. More money than I could spend in a lifetime.
I had a trust fund. If I so wished, I didn’t have to work a day in my life. Conventionally or not.
Of course, I did not wish for that. To have a meaningless life where I didn’t contribute anything. So I created charities, helped run them. I donated my time. I’d tried a bunch of different careers, created my own jewelry line, walked on the runways at a few fashion weeks, worked as a translator for Uncle Sam for a hot minute.
Nothing stuck. I had the freedom to quit jobs as I so wished, an unthinkable luxury for most people. But I hadn’t found my passion yet.
So I did my charity stuff and worked as an interior designer for my mother’s properties. I planned parties for friends and sometimes celebrities. And yes, I shopped, got facials, traveled the world and sunned myself on yachts. And got into all sorts of trouble that required ambassadors and phone calls to be made in order to secure extraction. So I was busy. I made sure I was busy. Made sure I gave back to society as much as I could, made sure I was always moving so I didn’t think too hard on the fact that I didn’t have a purpose.
But lately, my mind wasn’t on an existential crisis of any kind. It was on one man. One night spent with one man and the radio silence that followed it.
Sure, I could’ve turned up to his house and seduced him just like he did me. I was not a woman to sit by the phone and wait for a man to call. But, as shameful as it was to admit, I was used to men chasing me. Working for me.
I was a fucking prize.
And I’d thought Karson was going to chase me. Just a little bit. Hence why I ran away with a prince, secretly hoping that the villain might drop in and whisk me away. But that shit only happened in Disney movies. And in Disney movies, the villain wasn’t whisking the heroines away for a delightfully nasty fuck session.
The prince was still in the picture. I was stringing him along. I wasn’t proud of it. But he also had matters to deal with at home, and I couldn’t break up with him via text. That would be rude. I’d wait until he flew across the world to see me to break the news. Or I could take a trip to Bhutan. But then I might end up imprisoned in a palace if he didn’t take the word no well.
There was a lot of shit swirling in my mind.
Which was why I was sitting in my favorite bar, drinking my favorite drink—dirty martini, two olives—curled up in the corner, hiding from the world. Skyline was the semi seedy bar that I went to while going through a crisis, or if I wanted to drink alone without bumping into anyone I knew. The martinis were excellent, and strangely enough, they made an excellent fucking cheeseburger.
The décor was from the seventies, the clientele was mostly in their seventies too.
Not much couldn’t be solved sitting in the corner booth, getting a buzz on while stuffing my face under the dim candlelight. But a half-eaten burger and three martinis were proof that there were some things that couldn’t be solved with booze and red meat.
In situations such as these, I usually would call my girlfriends. They each offered their own unique set of advice, comfort and expertise. Each of them had counseled me in the various crises I found myself in.
But the problem was, as dramatic as a lot of my crises were, they were all shallow, superficial, fantastical.
The prince I was dating wanted to make me his princess, but I wasn’t attracted to him.
The governor I was fucking would only continue fucking me if I wore his ring and committed to him for as long as it took him to get the presidency.
The Russian spy I had tangled myself up with had the CIA tapping my phones.
That kind of thing.
Each of those stories were interesting, on the surface, at least. But that’s all they were, surface. I never cared about the men in question, and I didn’t lose a moment’s sleep over them when they were gone. My sleep was precious.
It’s what they expected of me, my friends. The flighty heiress falling in and out of lust but never really committed enough to fall in love. Not really deep enough to fall in love.
It’s what I expected of myself. It’s the identity I had carefully crafted over the years. It was comfortable. Safe.
And talking to them about these feelings I was having … it would’ve made it real. Serious. Really fucking dangerous. I wasn’t ready to shatter my whole sense of safety in such a way.
So instead, I was drinking martinis on a Tuesday afternoon.
I would have continued drinking into Tuesday night had a shadow not descended onto my table. I didn’t look up because I knew it was him. Could feel him all around me. Could smell him.
I didn’t ask how he found me. Such a question was much too obvious and cliché. I wouldn’t put it past him to have some kind of tracking chip in me. Though that was unnecessary, all he needed to do was hack into my phone. I was sure he knew someone able to do that.
I leaned back in my chair, my eyes slowly grazing up his body. I had only ever seen him in that black suit or completely naked. It was an odd thing, to know him so intimately in some ways and for him to be such a stranger in others. There were many dark places inside of him, I realized, sipping my martini. Deep and foreboding. Endless even.
And that made me uncomfortable. Because every part of me was bathed in light, everything was smooth, beveled edges, everything had a bottom.
I hated him in that moment. For making me feel so inferior, even if it was all in my head.
