2. Pearl
" I t was virgin pussy, wasn't it? Bet she was tight," Larry the Creep said.
"She was a bet, and yeah, she was tight, so it made up for…you know, how she looks," Rhett claimed, "Now pony up, assholes, hundred bucks from each of you."
I stood by the pool where Rhett was saying vile things about me to anyone who would listen, my hands clutching a copy of Grapes of Wrath, a book I was going to give him as a gift because we'd bonded on our love of Steinbeck.
After this point, the nightmare always changed, transforming from reality into dream-like surrealism. Sometimes, he'd see me and laugh. Other times, I'd struggle to open the door and walk into the room. There were times I'd run and run and run until I collapsed. Sometimes, I'd wake up and cry.
Seeing the man who stole both my virginity and my innocence sit across from me in a meeting room was nothing short of a waking nightmare. But what made this worse than a nightmare was the fact that Rhett was not just my first love; he was also my first introduction to cruelty.
I was humiliated—as anyone would be—to find out that my first time having sex had been nothing more than the result of a bet. Rhett had won three hundred dollars from three of his friends who he’d made a bet with—and then the whole school and everyone who was anyone in our age group in Savannah found out. Ultimately, to Rhett, that was what a sixteen-year-old’s innocence was worth—three hundred measly dollars.
Now, you may say, that happened fifteen years ago, Pearl; get over yourself. But how do you get over what derailed your life? Because after he announced to his friends that he had had the chubby girl—and hadn’t even had to roll her over in flour to find the wet spot—my life in Savannah became miserable. I went from fat to foolish in minutes. It got so bad that I had to leave my city and home. Rhett went from jock and straight-A student to Harvard to fame as a finance guru.
It was in that capacity that I had to meet with him in a professional setting. After high school, I'd left Savannah and gone to study at Stanford. I mean, what else was a girl with no friends going to do in high school but study all the time?
After I graduated, I worked in LA for some years. When my Aunt Hattie's friend Nina Davenport wanted to hire a Director of Finance for her architecture and design firm, Savannah Lace, I decided to come back home because no matter what, Savannah was still the place where I felt I belonged. Though right now, I wasn't sure if I hadn’t made a big fat mistake, almost as fat as I used to be.
I'd been back for two weeks, and it had been a shitshow.
It started with having to hear everything about Rhett Vanderbilt's engagement to Josie Vance: high school mean girl, blonde Barbie; you get the picture?
Now Aunt Hattie was certain that marriage wouldn't last. Josie was on her second fiancé, but this was Rhett's first walk down the proverbial aisle. I'd seen the engagement photos. They looked so cute together—an ideal couple. When narcissism meets assholery, you know their children were going to be fucked up.
Hattie was my mother's third cousin by marriage, and as was the norm in the South, she was also Rhett's aunt as she was his mother's sister. After what happened with Rhett, she sort of adopted me. She was the one who told me to get the hell out of Dodge and go to university far, far away. She'd been there for me more than my mother or brother ever had.
My father had passed away when I was nine years old, so he thankfully hadn't had to deal with the rumors and innuendo of Fat Pearl, fondly called Bumblebee (there was once a Halloween costume that Mama insisted I wear) had foolishly set her sights on Rhett Vanderbilt. He'd done what he was supposed to, taken advantage of my stupid ass, and discarded me in public. As these things always went, it was the girl's fault. She was the fool, the slut, the whore. The boy? Well, he was just doing his duty, sticking his dick into whomever let him.
"If you grind your teeth any harder, I think there may be none left for you to chew your food with," Layla Warren, my boss and the Chief Financial Officer at Savannah Lace, whispered.
I grinned.
Layla knew my history with Rhett; in fact, she and our CEO, Nina Davenport, had checked with me if I was okay working with Rhett's financial consultancy firm. As Savannah Lace was growing, we had to navigate new financial regulations and overhaul our systems and policies to stay compliant. This was where Vanderbilt Finance stepped in. Rhett had built a company that specialized not only in wealth management and financial consultancy but also in helping businesses streamline their processes, policies, and systems to ensure they conformed to ever-evolving regulations. Vanderbilt Finance wasn’t just about managing money—it was about creating stability, efficiency, and long-term success for companies like ours.
"I'm just listening to all the fabulous things Vanderbilt Finance is going to do for us," I remarked.
Rhett, who had been talking, paused. "Do you have a question?"
I smiled broadly, even though it hurt to see him in places I'd thought had healed.
I'd never let him know that seeing him now was devastating; that it made the hole inside me, the one he'd created bigger and deeper. I had been so young, so na?ve, and he'd destroyed all of that and then continued to do so years later.
Five years after he won his bet, he tried to apologize—though calling it an apology would be generous. It wasn’t your typical “ I’m sorry .” It was more like, “ I’m sorry, and you should be grateful I’m even bothering to say it .” When I didn’t immediately fall at his feet in forgiveness, he had the audacity to accuse me of being rude, as if I should've been honored by his half-assed attempt to excuse the mess he’d made of my life.
Because of Rhett, my trust issues were as massive and impassable as the Grand Canyon. Sure, I dated, but always cautiously, carefully—so carefully there was never even a chance of it becoming real. I had sex, but I was always careful that it was casual, primarily with men I didn't know well, without the lights on, and since I'd lost all that body weight—there wasn't a chance of someone making fun of my body.
That had come at a cost. My eating disorder was born from the humiliation Rhett caused. The fear of being judged—of being seen as obese—took root so deeply that I starved myself just to regain some semblance of control. For years, food felt like the enemy, every bite a battleground between guilt and survival. It took countless therapy sessions to unlearn those thoughts, to see food as nourishment instead of punishment, and to remind myself that my worth had nothing to do with a number on a scale. The journey was long and painful, but I’d fought hard to reclaim my life—and I wasn’t about to let anyone take that from me again.
But even now, when I got depressed or anxious, my first response was to stop eating. My life was a constant balancing act—and even though I played the part of the confident, size-six tough bitch, the truth was that when I looked at my body, all I ever saw was Fat Pearl. Body dysmorphia was a relentless, insidious voice in my head, always whispering that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t thin enough, wasn’t enough, period. Some days, I could silence it and drown it out with logic and self-compassion. Other days, it consumed me. Even after all the progress I’d made, old wounds still lingered beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to remind me they were never truly gone.
So, let no one tell you that wounds heal because some deep ones never do. Mine hadn't. But I was adept at masking. I wouldn't let people see me as weak. I wouldn't allow it. My entire life was about wearing armor to protect myself, to never be vulnerable again.
"I was just telling Layla how excited I am about working with your team," I lied. He wouldn't know I was lying because I'd played the game well with Rhett.
He came into my office before the meeting to ask me how I felt about Savannah Lace hiring his company. My response and demeanor were SoCal breezy.
"According to Layla, your team does excellent work, so I feel fine about working with y'all," I deliberately misunderstood what he was asking.
He cleared his throat. "I meant," he paused and took a deep breath, "I want to talk about what happened."
"When?" I asked, my affected confusion evident.
"Come on, Pearl, you know ? —"
"Are we talking about high school here?" I cracked my face to look amused.
He flushed. "Yes, Pearl, we are. What I did was…I regret it so much and ? —"
"Good God, you're still on about that?" I laughed with what he'd assume was humor. I waved a hand. "Let it go, Rhett. We're here to work together, right? So, that's what we'll do. I don't have a problem with it. Do you?"
"No. I just…I wanted to be considerate of your feelings."
"It's been fifteen years, Rhett; I can assure you that my feelings are not stuck in my sixteenth year."
He looked at me in disbelief. "I'm surprised. So, you accept my apology?"
"Have you ever apologized, Rhett?" I asked sweetly, then looked at my phone, which beeped and saved me from telling him I wanted to rip him a new one. "Is there anything else? Layla needs me for a minute before we meet."
Rhett shook his head, looking surprised. I loved seeing that look on his face because he didn't know what was up and down.
I walked out of my office door and called out for Rachel, Nina's EA, and Savannah Lace's receptionist. "Rachel, can you take Mr. Vanderbilt to the Jasmine Conference Room?" I smiled at Rhett. "See you in fifteen."
Now, Rhett looked at me speculatively, not sure what to make of me. I was an enigma to him. Aunt Hattie had said that I had surprised everyone in Savannah. In the past three weeks since I'd come back—I was seen with curiosity. I'd heard all the snarky remarks.
"She's the one who used to be overweight."
"Rhett Vanderbilt slept with her?"
"It was a bet, and she gave it away to him. She was a virgin."
"She's gorgeous, so why wouldn't Rhett want to go with her?"
"She used to be fat."
I hated how people felt that I was now acceptable, including my mother, because I'd lost a few pounds at the expense of my health. The truth was that I hadn't been obese, not even in the least. I had been a size twelve, which was the average size for women in the United States of America—but in Savannah society, where all the belles were working hard to fit into designer sample sizes their Mama picked up during Paris and Milan fashion weeks, I stuck out like a big sore thumb.
I hated it so much when people said, " You're so lucky to be so skinny ."
That wasn't why I was lucky; it was because I was alive.
When I was twenty, I nearly died. I didn’t like to think about it, much less talk about it, but the memory had a way of creeping up on me when I least expected it—like now, while I watched Rhett.
I lost so much that day by his pool—but what was the most insidious thing his words and actions had done was change my identity from being a slightly chubby girl to being…well, someone who fed herself the bare minimum while running on caffeine and self-loathing.
I’d gotten so good at hiding it, so good at smiling and insisting I was just “ too busy to eat ” or “ no,” that hungry ," I believed I was fine, even as my clothes hung loose on my shrinking frame and my reflection in the mirror became someone I didn’t recognize.
Then, one day, my body finally gave out.
"What do you think, Pearl?" Nina asked me, making me snap out of the past into the present.
"I think that we need a strategy that combines new hardware with the implementation of new policies—if we do one without the other, we're going to be playing catchup."
Rhett nodded and took a document from his colleague whose name I didn't catch. "That's exactly our recommendation as well," he smiled at me. "We've done quite a few such projects, and trying to implement new regulations without the right IT systems is going to create more issues and lend to policy violations."
He was good at what he did; I had to give him that. I worked with several consultants in my years as a finance professional, and he was one of the best—as was his team. They were on point and weren't trying to fleece the client or push projects to increase their billable hours. Well, even though as a teenager he had the morals of a worm, in business, he seemed to have integrity.
After the meeting was over, Rhett walked with me to my office. I wish he didn't. I needed to wrap my armor back on tight as it had come loose because of the impact of seeing him again, up close and personal.
"Aunt Hattie is very grateful that you're staying close to her," he said casually as I stepped into my office and glanced back at him, my gaze making it clear I was wondering: What the fuck do you want ?
"I'm the one who's grateful."
"Cash said you didn't want to live on the Beaumont Estate."
"Are we making small talk, Rhett?" I went around my desk and sat down on my leather office chair. I swiveled, my short bob curving around my face as I did.
"No, Pearl, I just wanted to say thank you for being there with Aunt Hattie."
"I don't need you to thank me."
He tucked his hands in his slacks and looked at me with keen eyes.
He was a handsome man. We were both around the same age—just past thirty, still figuring out who we were. He wore a suit well; I'd seen him around town, so I knew that, but today, he was in slacks and a dress shirt. The blue and white stripes made his eyes become a brilliant azure. His shoes had red soles—of course, they did—Rhett Vanderbilt was a fashion plate.
His hair was recently cut and was styled to be serious without being a servant to military precision.
It was his hands that I'd watched the most. They were big and manicured.
I remembered those hands even though I didn't want to. I remembered them touching my untrained body—coaxing an orgasm out of me, which surprised both of us.
"It doesn't always happen," he told me in awe. "I'm so glad it happened for you. And, fuck, Pearl, you look so beautiful flushed like this."
"Can we do it again?" I asked breathlessly.
"Let me try something."
"What?"
"I'm going to eat your pussy. I…I've never done that before."
"Before I forget, congratulations on your engagement," I trilled. "You and Josie make a lovely couple."
He arched an eyebrow. "Do we?"
"Absolutely. I always thought you'd end up together. She was so keen on you."
He looked confused. "Really?"
"Oh, yes, she was one of your floozies who often told me that…." I shut the fuck up. What was I doing? Why was I talking about the past? Why was I letting Rhett bait me into exposing old scars and scratching them open?
"Told you what?" he coaxed.
I shrugged lazily. "Doesn't matter, and I honestly can't even remember; it's been so many years. Is there anything else I can do for you? I have a meeting shortly."
Rhett nodded. "Yeah, me too. Ah, it's good to see you, Pearl. You…look nice."
"Well, I'm a size six now, so I fit right into Savannah society." I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice. I was nice looking now because I'd lost weight. No one cared who I was inside. No one cared that one time my heart had stopped beating, and I had technically died because I'd been starving myself because I couldn't look at myself in the mirror—I still struggled with that.
He looked hurt, and I wanted to throw something at him.
"I didn't mean that, Pearl. I…it's good to see you in a professional setting thriving."
"Of course you did. Now, if you'll excuse me." I tried to keep my voice light, but I knew it wasn't working. My therapist had warned me that going to Savannah would trigger me—that old struggles would resurface, and I'd known that seeing Rhett would be a test to see how far I'd come, if at all.