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“Yeah. But then you could’ve told me not to come.”
“Why would I tell you not to come?”
She stared at me with that skeptical/confused look I’d gotten so used to seeing on her face whenever I said anything remotely nice to her. “You got your suit fitting yesterday.”
“I did. That’s what you wanted, right?”
She looked away, then met my eyes again. “I just wanted to say, face-to-face… If you’re just doing all this to screw with my head, I’d like you to please stop.” She said it so damn earnestly, without animosity, I knew she was serious.
I reached past her to unlock the door and pulled it open. “Come inside.”
She hesitated, but then stepped into the concrete entranceway of my building. The security guard on duty nodded at us and I led her to my elevator at the end of the hall. I had the penthouse, so. Private elevator. I opened the door for her and as soon as we were alone in the elevator, she looked at me uneasily.
“I am not trying to screw with your head,” I told her.
“But you don’t like me.”
I selected my words carefully. “I don’t like who I thought you were for four years.”
“Which was?”
“A woman who didn’t call me because when she found out who I was she decided I was beneath her.” We’d reached my loft and when the elevator opened, I slid open my door, waiting for her to step through. She did.
Then she followed me towards the kitchen. “The only reason I would’ve thought you were beneath me,” she said carefully, “was because you played me.”
I dropped my keys on the bar and turned to face her. “So, you hate me because you think I played you when I met you in a bar and pretended I didn’t know who you were.”
“Did you?”
“How many times are you really gonna ask me that?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe until I start believing your answer.”
I picked up a metal cocktail shaker and went over to the fridge to start pulling together ingredients for a lime margarita. “I did not know who you were, Jolie. You told me your name was Julie. I believed you. Or at the very least, if the name was fake, I figured the rest of you was legit. I had no idea you were Margot Vola’s daughter. I had no reason to think that, and I definitely didn’t stalk you into that bar.” I carried a lime, a bottle of lime mix, and the shaker full of ice over to the bar and set it down in front of her.
“So…” She watched me pull out a bottle of tequila and set it on the bar. “You were actually interested in me?”
“Why else would I buy you a drink and come talk to you?”
She watched as I went digging under the bar, looking for the bottle of Triple Sec. “And… all the stuff we did that night in your hotel room… You did it because you actually wanted to?”
I put the Triple Sec on the bar and looked her in the eye. “I guess you haven’t figured out by now that I don’t do anything unless I want to.”
She watched as I dumped salt onto a small plate.
“It’s just… I’ve been looking at it through a certain lens for four years,” she said. “And it’s colored all my memories of that night. All the things you did, and said… I thought you did them to humiliate me.” While she spoke, I cut the lime into wedges, then swiped one of them around the rim of a glass.
“You think I’m a terrible person, is that it?”
She hesitated. “Sometimes your own family seems to think that.”
True enough. I tapped the rim of the glass, sticky with lime juice, into the salt, then sat the glass on the bar.
“That’s a very nice salt rim,” she said uneasily.
“What doyouthink?” I asked her. “Surely you do think for yourself.” She watched me dump tequila and Triple sec into the shaker with the ice.
“I don’t know what I think anymore. Sometimes I feel like… I still haven’t met you yet.”
