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“So when's the big day? What do I have to wear as your maid of honor?”
I wrinkled my nose. “He said it was going to be soon. I don't actually have a lot of say in it. He's taking me out to a quote-unquote specialty boutique in like an hour or something to pick out my dress and, uh. Underwear.”
That got Sadie's attention. “He's picking out your underwear?” she said. “What kind of marriage is this going to be?”
I glared at her. “The exact sort of marriage you'd expect from someone who wanted to buy a wife.”
She shook her head. “You can't even cook,” she said. “He could have gotten a much better wife from Russia. And she'd be, like, way hotter.”
“Yeah, fuck you, too,” I said. “Now you're definitely not going to be my maid of honor.” If I was even allowed to have one. Waters hadn't mentioned anything about friends or family yet and it was making me uneasy. I'd never been the sort of girl to dream about my wedding or pick out my bridal colors when I was thirteen or whatever, but I would have expected a little more leeway in the planning. As far as I knew, it was being 'taken care of.' And since I didn't really feel like a bride, I had to admit that it was kind of a load off my mind to just let things happen instead of struggling to assert myself in the face of... well, in the face of Anton Waters.
Sadie stubbed out her cigarette and got up. “Well, just make sure you don't forget the little people when you're rich and on the cover of all the tabloids, okay?” Sadie was one of my artsy friends as opposed to one of my bar friends, though she worked with paint and 'mixed media'—meaning trash she found in Central Park.
“Sure,” I said. “You wanna be one of my hangers-on? I'll be taking applications through the honeymoon.”
“I'd love to,” she said. “But you have to promise, or I'm leaking this to everyone we know.”
Fear drove through me and I sat up. “Sadie!” I said.
She held up her hands and laughed. “I know, I know. This was all in confidence. I promise. I just have to not get drunk between now and when you get married.” She appeared to think about this for a moment. “So it had better be in the next twenty-four hours.?
??
“Ugggh!” I said. “Out. Go to work.”
“Right,” she said. “Not all of us are lucky enough to marry money.”
“Out!”
She laughed as she exited my apartment and closed the door behind her, leaving behind the smell of cigarette smoke and her thick, heavy perfume.
I sat down on my futon and closed my eyes, trying to relax. Usually after I saw Sadie, I felt better about things.
This time, it didn't work. I still had that gut clenching fear crouching inside me. I sat up and took a few deep breaths and thought about calling my mother. I hadn't spoken to her yet, and I didn't know how to broach the subject of my pending nuptials. She still hadn't told me she was sick, but I could hear it in her weary voice whenever we spoke. The distance between us seemed to have yawned into a chasm almost overnight. Ever since my father showed up at my door, I hadn't been able to talk to her like I usually did, even though we had always talked, ever since I was a little girl. My father's constant betrayals had pushed us together, and she was my dearest confidant—or at least she had been.
Now she didn't even know I was getting married, and I found I didn't want her to know until the last second. Anton Waters was a rich jackass, just like my father. In fact, he was even more of a rich jackass. I couldn't bear the thought of her thinking I was making the same mistake she had—she was the one who had told me to flee our toxic household and not look back—and I couldn't even tell her that I was the one paying for her chemo treatments, since she didn't want me to know about them...
Shit. This was all my father's doing. He had a knack for screwing everyone else up just by existing. If he hadn't been such a shitty person none of this would be a problem.
I rubbed my hand over my face and sighed, glancing at my phone. Only about thirty minutes until I was due out front for the car and I hadn't even had a shower yet. I knew I should get up, but I couldn't. I sat on my futon for probably ten more minutes before I finally found the motivation to stand up, and then I had to rush through a shower and makeup before throwing on clothes—less theatrical than my prostitute get-up I'd tried over lunch three days ago—and clomping downstairs to find the car already waiting for me and Zachary standing by the back seat, looking bored.
“Sorry,” I said. He just smiled and opened the back door for me.
Anton Waters was already inside.
I hadn't seen him since he went down on me in the restaurant where we'd met to discuss our prenuptial contract. In persuading me to sign it, he'd ducked under the table and, hidden by the table cloth, fucked me with his tongue and fingers, wringing an orgasm from me that had been so powerful I'd screamed in front of everyone, even our waitress. The poor girl had been unable to look at me for the rest of the lunch, which Waters had insisted on eating through to the last course while I sat there, humiliated and horny.
Yeah. Horny.
That was the problem. I'd liked it just as much as I'd hated it. Who knew I was such a freak? Not me, and certainly not any of the boyfriends I'd had. Maybe they had been the boring ones.
And now Waters sat in the back seat of the car, reading something on a tablet and completely ignoring me. Fear and excitement danced together in my chest, whirling around and around until I couldn't tell one from the other. Lifting my chin, I clambered inside. Zachary shut the door after me, and I crammed myself in the corner, half-fearing, half-hoping Waters would slip across the seat to join me.
He didn't.
In fact, he didn't even speak to me. He was too busy frowning at the iPad in front of him, and when I dared to peek at it I found it was full of small type. Some report or other.
Ugh. Just like my father, though he'd dragged his briefcase and his stupid Wall Street Journal around with him all the time—when he'd bothered to be home, that is. Even when he was home with my mother and me, he wasn't really.
