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I swung around. “What?”
“Handsome, very clever, but essentially, yes, a cunt.”
Perhaps that was how they referred to jocks in Sweden, I thought. But the look in her eyes seemed to suggest otherwise.
Summer was still laughing.
“What’s going on, Dad?” she asked.
“Evie quit,” I said.
She dropped her fork. “What?”
I hadn’t thought about her reaction. But her eyes filled with tears and I could see she was about to cry. The nanny moved in to comfort her, then looked at me and mouthed the word “Cunt.”
Later, when I was upstairs, working on my laptop, Summer came in to say goodnight.
Her eyes were rimmed red and swollen. “Get her back, Dad,” she said. I got up and gave her a hug. I didn’t need to ask who she was talking about.
I knew.
“I will, sweetheart. I will.”
Chapter 21
Evie
I am standing in the amusement park, feeling my heartrate quicken as the queue moves to the front of the line. Any minute I’ll have to hand over my ticket and step into the little steel box, strap myself in and go hurling through the air.
Why am I doing this again?
I am going through the motions, but my heart is beating fast, then I look back and see Luisa standing at the back, in the crowd, holding out a thumbs up. I try to smile and wave back. My mouth is so dry.
This morning, in our apartment, Luisa asked me what I was doing that day and I said I was going to take Mrs. Fuentes to the hairdresser.
“Why?”
“She needs someone to take her,” I said with a shrug.
“They have people there to help her, you know?” Luisa said incredulous.
“One of the care givers, Carl, is sick and she needs someone to take her because her vision is bad, she’s got, like only ten percent sight, I think.”
Luisa stared at me. “You have a business degree, girl! Can’t you see you are seriously overqualified for this job?!”
“It’s not like they’re paying me,” I mumbled. It had sounded like a good idea at the time, to help the old ladies at the senior center manage their life, but Luisa’s reaction was making me wonder if maybe she was right.
“Look, I get it, they’re nice, right? It’s like being with your granny or something? But they are old people and you are young. You need to do young things, hang out with young people!” Luisa said.
I shrugged. The few friends I did have were working during the day.
“I’ve got the day off,” said Luisa. “I was going to go do my nails, but let’s do something together instead.”
“Like what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Something young! Something fun!” Her eyes started twinkling. “Let’s do something you’ve always been too scared to do.”
Oh, my God. It sounded terrible. She was going to push me off a mountain or something. I really didn’t feel like that. I thought of something Tate had said to me in LA, when I pretended to be his fiancé. We’d spent quite a lot of time together while having dinner with Trevor and Star, or waiting for Summer at the house. We’d talked, for once, not about work or apps or technology but about the things we liked and didn’t like. Tate said he wasn’t scared of anything, except boredom perhaps. I remembered thinking that I was scared of so many things, from heights to open water, wild animals to pitch black darkness. I told him about my fear of rollercoasters then and he’d shaken his head like he’d never heard of anything so absurd.
