Chapter 4FRAN
CHAPTER 4
FRAN
T hanks to a day full of shitty men, I’m late to work my shift at The Exchange, a bar in the lobby of a Wall Street building where I serve pretentious drinks to pretentious assholes who think it’s okay to playfully smack my ass and make lewd comments just because they tip so generously.
Dressed in my uniform, which is ultimately nothing more than a little black dress so short it should be illegal, I scurry through the dimly lit bar toward the back room, muttering an apology to anyone who’ll listen.
I place my tote bag into one of the lockers and grab a tablet and an apron, pausing to reapply a sweeping of red lipstick and make sure my bun is still as together as it was when I left my apartment.
I’ve been working at The Exchange ever since I was promoted to junior sales agent because, although it was considered a promotion, it came with a significant drop in salary. Working in sales includes the added benefit of earning a commission—something I’ve yet to experience—therefore my retainer at Carlton Myers barely covers my rent, so I needed to find something that would pay enough and that I could do in the evenings. A few people told me how much servers can make working in the right bars, and they weren’t wrong. On a good month, my tips from working at The Exchange cover most of my expenses. Apart from the occasional sexual harassment, it’s not a bad gig.
“You’re late ,” Vera, one of the other servers, teases as she brushes past me, leaving a cloud of sweet perfume in her wake. “You missed knock-off. I made three hundred bucks in tips!” She pulls a wad of cash from the pocket of her apron, theatrically fanning herself with the money.
Damn . Knock-off is always the best time for tips. It’s mostly men on a high after a successful day trading stocks or whatever it is they do down here, probably high on cocaine, spending cash like it’s going out of style, tipping big as a show of who has the bigger penis. It’s laughable, but as a server reliant on tips, I can’t complain.
I groan, throwing my head back. I swear, if I don’t make some decent money tonight, that puck slinging pain in the ass is going to pay for wasting my damn time at Allora. I’ll personally troll his social media accounts and tell all his adoring fans that he has a festering case of chlamydia and a weird goat fetish.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say to Vera. “Work was… work .”
She winces. “Ugh. Not Tadd drama again?”
“Don’t ask.” I wave a dismissive hand.
“Well, I have a casting call on Monday that might run late, so maybe you can cover for me?”
Vera and I have become close since working together. She’s from a small town in West Virginia. A model-slash-actress-slash-server. Her boyfriend is a DJ who has his own residency in a SoHo nightclub.
I never had a lot of friends growing up, so having Vera come into my life now, and the two of us complimenting one another like we do, was exactly what I needed after moving to a city where I didn’t know a single soul .
I smile. “Of course I can cover for you. I hope you get the gig.”
“Thanks.” Vera hands me a rolled up fifty from her wad of cash.
“No, I can’t, I?—”
“Take it!” She stops my objection, tucking the money into my ample cleavage. “We’re a team, remember?”
She’s right. We are a team. Working in a place like this, you have to be.
Grudgingly, I accept the cash, removing it from between my breasts and placing it into the pocket of my apron with a contrite smile. “Thanks, V.”
She flashes me a wink and continues back out to the bar. And, with a deep breath and a quick mental pep talk, I plaster on a smile and follow her out there, ready or not for round number two.
Two hours into my shift, my phone vibrates against my hip for the fifth time. I’m not sure what is so damn important, but a group of businessmen from Texas walked into the bar half an hour ago, and they’re tipping like crazy with every round we deliver to their table. Vera and I are tag-teaming, and I really don’t want her to have to cover for me again, but it might be Andy Hoffman. What if Robbie Mason actually wants to put in an offer?
Sneaking into the break room, I pull my phone from my apron and glance down at the screen to see five new text messages, all from an unknown number. Weird . I take a seat on one of the plastic chairs, gasping at the first message that displays on the screen.
Unknown: Hey, it’s Robbie.
What the ever-loving fuck is Robbie Mason doing texting me? I thought that’s what he had Andy for; I didn’t know I’d be forced to associate with the cretin.
Unknown: Mason.
I roll my eyes. No shit, genius.
Unknown: You’re seriously ignoring me?
God, even in text format he’s an arrogant jerk.
Unknown: K, well I guess you don’t wanna sell an apartment then…
Oh God! No. I almost hit the call button, but then I read the next message, and I pause.
Unknown: I have a proposition for you.
A what?
Sufficiently confused, and definitely not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to prove myself to Tony all while sticking it to stupid Tadd, I hit the call button, my pulse thrumming in my ear so loud it almost drowns out the sound of the ringing tone.
“Well, well, well, look who’s come crawling back…”
I swear, it takes everything I have not to hang up on his ass. But I’m reminded of my predicament; I need to sell this apartment, and the ass-face on the other end of the line really is my only option.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” he starts. “I’ll give you a full-ask offer, all cash, no contingencies, quick close.”
I squeal. I actually squeal . In fact, I’m so loud, I hear someone on the other side of the door drop a glass. I slap a hand over my mouth.
“Jesus Christ!” Robbie barks. “Are you done ?”
“Sorry,” I mutter, my mouth full of my own palm.
With an exasperated huff he continues. “I’ll sign the offer and you’ll have it in your inbox first thing in the morning… but ?—”
My skin pricks at the warning tone in his voice, and I sit up a little straighter, my stomach suddenly in knots. I don’t like the sound of that “but.” Buts are only ever bad. Buts suck. I swallow hard, waiting for the blow.
“I have one condition.”
“You want the furniture? Another parking spot? What?” I rack my mind, wondering what strings I might be able to pull to give him whatever the hell it is he wants. But Marie’s already come down a quarter of a million dollars. It’s unlikely she’s going to want to move much more.
Robbie chuckles. Chuckles . I’m barely breathing, and he has the audacity to laugh. He is such an asshole. My teeth clench in an attempt to contain the vitriol threatening to spew out of me.
“On the condition that you—” he pauses suddenly, and I hear him clear his throat. “That you… pretend to be my… my girlfriend .”
I blink once, twice, three times, slowly processing exactly what he’s just said.
Shaking my head in an attempt to snap myself out of the daze I’m in, I snort. “Sorry, I think I just blacked out for a second. Did you just say you want me to pretend to be your girlfriend ?”
“Yes.”
“In exchange for buying an apartment from me?”
“Yes.”
I’m not sure what I’m pissed about most—the blatant solicitation or the fact that he’s so goddamn blasé about it. I shake my head again. “Um. Okay. Give me a second—” I pause, pinching the bridge of my nose, eyes squeezed shut. “First, are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“STOP SAYING YES!” I scream, my voice indignantly shrill.
I’m met with another low chuckle, and I almost throw my phone against the cement floor. In an attempt to collect myself, however, I take a deep breath in through my nose and out through my lips, but it doesn’t help one bit.
“Okay, second, have you lost your goddamn mind?” I can feel the blood rushing through my veins, pumping hard and fast, rising up my chest, my neck, my face heating with pure, unbridled rage. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I am not some… some hooker you can just?—”
“Okay, calm down,” Robbie interjects.
My jaw drops. “I know you did not just tell me to calm down .”
“First of all, I’m not expecting you to have sex ,” he says as if the sheer notion of sex with me is disgusting. Frankly I’m still too shocked by his proposition to take offense.
“Second of all—” He pauses, and it’s the unexpected hint of dejection in his tone that somehow pacifies me enough to at least hear him out. “The thing is, today when Andy told you I recently signed with New York, it wasn’t the whole truth.”
I wait for him to continue.
With a hard exhale, he does. “The truth is, I was released from my old team because I… well, because I got into a bit of trouble .”
Trouble? I quirk a brow, suddenly more than a little curious.
“New York is the only team willing to pick me up. Probably because they’ve sucked ass the last few years, and I can only assume they’re desperate,” he mutters. “But no other team will touch me. To everyone that matters, I’m a liability.”
I continue listening, silenced by the unexpected fragility in his words.
“The terms of my new contract are totally unfair, but I can’t lose hockey. It’s the only thing in my life I’ve ever been any good at. I didn’t finish college. I don’t have a degree. I’m useless at pretty much everything. Without hockey, I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”
“So, what does me pretending to be your girlfriend have to do with any of that?”
He hesitates for so long I’m forced to check the screen to make sure I haven’t been cut off, but then he talks. “My reputation is at an all time low. Half the officials in the league fucking hate me. They say I brought the game of ice hockey into disrepute.”
My eyes widen.
He sighs. “Anyway, my new GM told me that now is the time for me to prove that I’m not the bad boy of hockey that everyone thinks I am. And so… I don’t know… maybe if it looks like I’ve settled down, maybe they’ll stop giving me such a hard time.”
The tension in my shoulders eases a little in the wake of his confession. Frankly, I didn’t know Robbie Mason had a vulnerable bone in his body.
He continues. “And, I don’t know, I guess I just thought because you need to sell that place to keep your job, and I need a place to live… maybe we could help each other out, y’know?”
The more he talks, the more I’m listening. I mean, of course, it’s completely absurd, and the sheer thought of being in any way romantically linked to Robbie Mason, fake or not, is giving me a serious case of the ick. But the thing is, in a weird way, it kind of makes sense. Maybe with a fake boyfriend, Tadd might finally accept that I want nothing to do with him.
Before I can respond with anything, the door opens and Vera sticks her head inside, eyes frantically wide as they land on me. She motions back out to the bar, whispering loudly, “I’m drowning out here.”
I wave a hand, indicating to her that I’ll be right out.
“Hey, Robbie. I have to get back to work.”
“Work?”
“Yeah, I work nights at a bar downtown.”
“You have two jobs?” He’s clearly confused.
“Yeah.” I snort. “Have you seen what they charge for rent in this city?”
“But—but you’re rich.”
I actually laugh out loud at that. “Um, what?”
“You’re rich,” he says again as if it’s a fact.
“Uh, no, I’m not.”
“But you went to Belmont.”
“Yeah, because I was on an academic scholarship. Why do you think I was so high strung?”
A contemplative silence fills the line.
“Look, let me think about this, and I’ll get back to you.” I love how casual I sound, as if I’m not currently considering being the fake girlfriend of my sworn enemy in exchange for a signed deal sheet on a six-million-dollar apartment. It’s sordid and seedy and surely a breach of my fiduciary responsibility.
“Okay, well—” Robbie clears his throat. “I’ll be waiting for your answer, baby .” The way he says baby, all low and rasped, would almost be hot if I didn’t know firsthand what a disgusting bag of dicks he is.
“Gross,” I murmur.
His low chuckle is the last thing I hear before he ends the call and the line falls dead.