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It shouldn’t be so fucking hard to hit send on a text.
But as it turns out, turning over a new leaf is harder than I thought.
My text is written out, sitting idly in the chat bubble, the arrow green and waiting for me to send it, but my thumb keeps hovering over it, resentment coursing through me. Toward myself, and my brother, who the text is made out to. I’ve wanted to try mending things since our father’s death.
The problem is I just don’t knowhow.
We’re both stubborn, we’re both hotheaded, and we both don’t like to admit we’re wrong. So we stay at this impasse, and I keep ending up in this same moment, sitting in my parked car, finger hovering over the screen as I try to send the same text message over and over.
Let’s celebrate your engagement,it reads.
Ever since he proposed to Nyla, it had felt like the right moment to try to build a bridge between us. There had been a small bridge before their engagement, though it was more of a poorly constructed rope bridge neither of us wanted to cross. Don’t get me wrong, IadoreNyla. I think she’s great for Kieran, and it’s not an issue withheras much as it’s an issue withme.
Because I know mending things with Kieran meansapologizingto Kieran, and I’m just not ready for that yet.
Giving up, I exit my messages, turn off the engine, shove my phone in my pocket, and get out of the car. I’ll send the text another day.
Midnights in Malibu towers before me, six floors of pale old brick glinting in the baking summer sun of sunny SoCal. What was once an old banking building is now mine and Gia’s club. I have to hand it to Gia for embarking on such a risky endeavor, and by the grace of her own stubbornness, making itwork. The club’s name scrawls across the exterior in elegant font, the sign lighting up electric blue at night. I enter beneath it as I step into the silent morning of the club.
The massive space is jarring when it’s empty, small tables against the edges of the room, the bar lining the entirety of one wall, and Gia’s double decker stage on the end for her dancers. Some of which she poached from my old club, the one I left Marcus to contend with after my sudden departure from overseeing it. Marcus was difficult, and if Gia hadn’t approached me with this business idea nearly a year ago, I would have still left. I’d already been planning on dropping it anyway.
Speaking of difficult…
Long legs adorned in skintight leather pants saunter out onto the club floor.
Talia.
Her boots clack against the laminate as she makes her way toward the elevator that leads up to our offices on the fifth floor. Today, her short dark hair is pinned back on one side, showing off the sharpness of her jaw and the curve of her neck. She must be coming from the supply room down the hall from the bar, doing our weekly inventory. Arriving earlier than Gia or me most days, most of the time Talia works harder than the two of us. Gia was right to poach her from Apollo Sole.
I follow her across the floor, and she finally notices my footsteps behind her, peering at me over her shoulder.
“Good morning,” I greet her with my usual sardonic grin.
Talia narrows her black lined, long-lashed eyes, but says nothing in return.
She despises me, and I love it.
I watch as her long, white manicured finger reaches out and presses the button on the elevator, summoning it down to us, telling me Gia must be here already and up in her office. Once the doors open, Talia steps in, and I follow in after her, taking note of how she practically presses herself against the opposite wall, as if there’s not enough space between us already.
“Someday you could warm up to me a little,” I tell her, removing my sunglasses and folding them, hanging them from the neck of my plain t-shirt.
“I prefer to be cold,” she says, keeping her eyes on the moving light across the floor indicator.
“Then you live in the wrong place.” I stare at her neck. I can nevernotstare at her neck. Slender and graceful, the way she arches it to stare at me intrigues me. But it’s not just the shape of it that always catches my eye, it’s the small tattoo of a pomegranate tucked discreetly behind her ear. Marking the perfect spot to kiss. I catch the barest line of sweat from her hairline down the back of her ear. She must have been moving heavy boxes of liquor again, even though those jobs are meant for the bartenders. “You know, if you keep doing inventoryforthem, they’ll never learn.”
“They never do it right.” Talia crosses her arms. “Might as well just do it myself.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re domineering?”
“I prefer disciplined.” Talia looks back at me. “Anyone ever tell you you’re arrogant?”
“Only every day, sweetheart.” I give her my best smirk, which makes the vein at her temple pop, a sign I’ve made her mad.
This is my favorite game to play with her, one that happens daily. You would think she would be sick of it by now, sick ofme, at least enough to completely ignore me, but she engages in it, too. Some sadistic part of me has become convinced she likes it, especially if she keeps coming back for more.
I am arrogant, indeed.
I meet her burning glare and smile wider just as the doors ding open. Talia doesn’t hesitate to push past me, heading down the hall toward Gia’s office.
