Chapter 41
WINNIE
“Champagne? Mimosa? Hard liquor?”
“It’s ten in the morning, Carolina.”
“The only way I’m surviving this engagement party is shit-faced drunk,” Carolina declares as we arrange the cupcakes with Mount-Etna-green-colored frosting that I’d had to toss three batches of before Laura was happy with the color.
The Rainstorm Bar and Restaurant is at the top of one of Fitz’s many towers.
“How much of this city does that man own?” Carolina asks as she helps me move tables away from the window.
“Thirteen percent,” I tell her.
She whistles. “No wonder everyone and their mom sucks up to him.”
“Or flirts with him. Fitz didn’t offer to have me come home with him. And he was definitely flirting with Kathy, right?”
“Yikes. Someone is paranoid. I see the way he looks at you. He’s so into you,” Carolina says soothingly.
“Maybe just for sex, but not to actually date.”
“He’s been taking you on dates, unlike Kno—”
“Shhh!” I grab Carolina and drag her out onto the roof deck. “I didn’t tell you this yesterday, but in Knox’s house I found—”
“Proof! Can we finally hang the bastard?”
“No. Well, yes, but no. He still has my photos.”
“He has pictures of… ohhh, those photos.”
“God, I’m so stupid. I never should have sent them to him.” I pace around the deck.
“You were young and dumb.”
“And then he gets with Kathy anyway.”
“Hey, at least you know you live rent-free in his head. He’s jacking off to photos of you. He never got over you even after all these years.”
“That’s the Carolina brand of toxic positivity we know and love.” I adjust the centerpiece on the table. “God, I’m not going to be able to be in the same room as him, knowing that he still thinks he’s entitled to me after the way he treated me and used me and dumped me for my own sister.”
“Ladies!” Loony Laura parades out onto the deck, tottering in white stilettos with big shiny bows on them.
“It looks so good in here. It’s so nice of Fitz to let us have the engagement party here on short notice.
I mean, wow, Winnie, you really hit it out of the park with that one,” she says, her bleached teeth in a grimace of a smile.
“You got the one-in-a-billion-dollar man.”
She starts rearranging the centerpieces. “Look at you, setting everything up yourselves. Men. Of course he didn’t tell his staff to stay and do it.”
“Well, this was sort of sprung on them last minute, and we’re not paying to be here, so I don’t want to take more of their time,” I explain. “The restaurant staff has to prep for dinner—they do the restaurant service for the hotel downstairs.”
“I’m sure you’ll tip them very well. But seriously, Fitz is their boss. They have to do what he says. Now, go tell them to do their job before the men show up,” Laura orders, pointing like we’re kindergarteners. “We have to have this party in motion when they get here.”
“Like I don’t have this engagement party under control,” I complain as Carolina and I head back inside. “Did you see her messing with the decorations?”
Carolina and I are making sure the grazing table is perfect when we hear Laura yelling at a poor cowering bartender about the color of the signature cocktails he’s making.
“…and you need to be serving the appetizers,” she’s barking when we rush over.
“Laura, it’s buffet style, remember? You said you didn’t want servers because you wanted it to feel more casual, like a party Taylor Swift would throw in her house,” I cut in.
“Yeah, this is a casual rooftop engagement party. Easy elegance.” Carolina hypes her up while I apologize to the servers.
“This is Fitz’s restaurant,” she shrieks. “Calm down. You should have a better level of service than this.”
“It’s one of many. It’s not even his nice one—it’s, like, a step up from a sports bar.”
“Sweet! Meatballs!” The hockey players high-five each other as they pile into the restaurant. They are in their best athleisure, while the WAGs are all dressed to the nines.
Kathy has her smile plastered on as she serves out meatballs and cheese dip.
“Is Fitz coming?” Laura snaps at me. “I don’t think they should be eating if he’s on his way.”
“I don’t know…”
“What do you mean you don’t know? How do you not know where your own boyfriend is?”
“What the hell is her deal?” Carolina whispers to me.
“She’s Loony Laura. Of course she’s acting like a lunatic.”
“There he is!” Laura holds her hands up and starts clapping as Fitz enters the restaurant. “Let’s all give Fitz a big round of applause for letting us upgrade to this fabulous spot. And I just want to say, baby—” She turns to her fiancé.
I tune out the lovey-dovey language.
“Sorry I’m late. I meant to come earlier to help you set up.” His arms circle me briefly as he leans in to kiss me.
“Don’t worry about it. I did not expect you to come. There’s no need for both of us to go down with the ship. Besides, I didn’t need Loony Laura to jump you in the bathroom or something and drag you off.”
The team’s photographer snaps photos as Fiancé dips Laura into a kiss.
“Ah, young love.”
“Nothing like watching a new WAG come out of the oven.”
The other WAGs crowd around Laura, trying hard to keep the jealousy off their faces.
After getting a front-row seat to Kathy’s gilded cage of a WAG life, I’m pretty sure at least a few of them wish they had Laura’s disposable income. Or at least, I know Brinley does. She’s anxiously hovering around Knox, trying to get him to engage with her.
He turns away from her and stares at me. I feel sick, feel naked. I can feel him superimposing the nude pictures of me over my body.
I want to hide behind Fitz, sic him on Knox, and demand he fire him if he really loved me.
Get a grip. Knox is a nobody. He only has power if you give it to him.
I tighten my arms around Fitz’s waist.
He leans in to whisper in my ear. “When is this party over so I can take you downstairs to my office, bend you over my desk, and fuck you?”
Laura’s eyes narrow in the middle of her fiancé’s lavish speech of how much he loves her.
“No,” she says, interrupting her fiancé midspeech. “We are meant to be, but we didn’t meet and fall in love in high school, not like Winnie and Knox.” My frenemy gives me a mean look.
I’m shocked.
“But it does mean I skipped that awkward send-nudes-to-the guy-you-like phase, right, Winnie?”
The WAGs all gasp and turn to stare at me.
“What?” Kathy stammers. The meatball spoon clatters into the pan and sinks into the sweet barbecue sauce.
“Yeah, Winnie and—I mean, you all are sisters. I assumed you knew,” Laura says, evil glint in her eyes, fake smile still slapped on her face.
“You sent my boyfriend nudes?” Kathy cries quietly.
“That’s not what happened,” Carolina tells Kathy.
“Did she sleep with him?” Kathy demands.
I can’t even look at Fitz.
“You were sleeping with him when he was with Kathy, though, right? Or did I misunderstand that?” Laura says to me, acting all innocent, like she’s just asking questions instead of dropping a bag of flaming shit in the middle of her own engagement party.
“No, that’s not—”
“Cheater,” one of the WAGs whispers.
“Is that who you really want to be tied to?” Laura addresses Fitz. “I guess since you do have that playboy reputation, it’s probably not a big deal.”
“Wait, you slept with her?” one of the hockey players says to Knox.
“She was skinnier then,” Knox sneers.
All the hockey players laugh at me.
I want to sink into the floor, keep on sinking till I’m back on the street and can get in my car and go home.
All the hockey girlfriends look at me in shock and surprise that someone who looked like me slept with a man who looks like their boyfriends.
Derision is the term.
It feels just like in high school—all the cool athletes and their chill-girl girlfriends laughing at me. Like, how could she think she’s one of them?
“Oh my god, you’re the person he was having an affair with! Those were your underwear at his house!” Brinley is furious. She grabs Knox’s arm possessively.
“This whole time, you were pretending to be my friend!”
“What the fuck?” Fitz finally says. It comes out in a quiet hiss.
If I was a lesser woman, I would break down in tears, and when I get home and was finally alone—well, not tonight because my life is imploding around me—I would cry into my ice cream. But not right now.
Fuck this. I am too old for this shit.
“No, Kathy, I did not help Knox cheat.”
“Do you believe that, Kathy?” Laura says.
Olive hugs Kathy and rubs circles on her back.
“He and I were together in high school. He didn’t want anyone to know he wasn’t with one of the popular cheerleaders.
Guess I actually wasn’t thin enough, and his mom didn’t think I was easy enough to manipulate, so then he started hooking up with you, Kathy, and promised me that you were just friends. Except that’s not what you were.”
Kathy’s lower lip trembles. “Winnie…”
“And he stole my underwear out of my house, which is a pain because they were not cheap. I definitely did not give them to him. Those are not ‘giving’ underwear. I had to special-order them from Canada.”
Knox is furious. “Don’t try to cover up what we—”
“It sounds like there’s no cover-up,” Fitz says, voice cold. “You broke into her house, stole her stuff, and now what? You’re obsessed with her? You’re stalking her? Am I understanding this right?”
“He didn’t break in!” Brinley cries, coming to Knox’s defense. “He was just there visiting his mom.”
“God save us from women who will give a man every benefit of the doubt.” Carolina throws up her hands.
“She’s standing by her man,” Laura says, hugging her fiancé’s arm.
“There’s clearly something there, though, considering he has her sexy photos,” Nolan states. “I mean, no shade. I think you’re kind of hot, Winnie, and you cook good.”
Behind me, I feel the anger wafting off Fitz. Laura doesn’t look too pleased either.
“Do you mean to tell me”—Fitz takes a step forward—“that you have pictures of my girlfriend in your house?”
The hockey players all scuttle back, leaving Knox clear in the middle of the room.
“Um, I—no, no, I don’t.”
“He does, like some pervert,” I tell Fitz.
“Toss him off the balcony,” Carolina demands.
“No!” Knox whimpers as Fitz advances on him.
Knox looks around in horror at his friends. Well, “friends.” None of them are defending him from their boss.
“The insurance I have on the team will cover your untimely death,” Fitz says simply. “You’re an accounting error.”
“Please don’t go to jail for him,” I beg.
Fitz grabs Knox by the collar as the hockey player babbles, muscles in his arm bulging as he hauls him up.
“Stay the hell away from her, or you’re never playing hockey again. Not for me, not for any team. Shit, you won’t even play beer league. You understand me?” He throws him back down on the floor.
“You all”—Fitz surveys the huddle of NHL players—“are nothing. You’re just widgets, expense-report line items. You mean nothing.
You are replaceable like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“Your millions are what I make moving money around daily. You have no power. You, your pathetic little lives, all exist at my whim. Do not fuck with me. You’re not puppies.
No one will care if I shoot you for biting the hand that feeds you. ”
He stares them down as they cower. “Now, I expect hockey players to self-police.”
They nod.
“So make sure this”— he jerks his chin to Knox—“doesn’t happen again. Ever.” Fitz gives them a toothy smile. “I’m trying very hard not to treat you all the way I was raised—collective punishment.”
He’s silent for a moment. With the jazzy music tinkling in the background, it’s unnerving.
“Don’t forget you are the least important of all the sports teams I own. Know your place in the world. She”—he points at me—“is higher in the hierarchy than any of you.”