32. Meg
32
MEG
A ccording to Steven, Kevin was about to step into the role of Byron’s head of security, and he was getting a jumpstart on preparing for the big promotion, making him unavailable to drive me home.
Obviously, I ranked somewhere below, say, getting a crash course in saving Byron from nail-biting situations like attending parties and art openings. But whatever.
Was I coming off as bitter? You bet. I wanted the details on how things went down today with the GenZ Za freak. And since I’d excommunicated Byron from my existence, Kevin was the only person to fill me in. Meaning, now I’d forever be in the dark.
Which brought me to my current situation.
A woman named Letitia was driving me home from Belmont Manor. Talk about no-nonsense. If a revolution kicked off, Letitia would be leading the rebels and marching us to victory. Steven sure didn’t hire any softies.
She gave me one look and left me to mope all by my lonesome self.
So, that woman you saw sitting in the back of the Navigator nursing a strong Bloody Mary was me. Nothing said I was coping like drinking alone and doing what any self-respecting woman would do…looking up Voodoo dolls and coping mechanisms for crushes gone wrong.
I topped off the Bloody Mary with a teensy bit of vodka and a few drops splashed where they shouldn’t. Shit, did plush leather stain? Scrubbing the drops made the leather look funny. Oh well.
Why look up coping mechanisms, you ask. Let me explain.
As you already know, my first two days as a kick-ass contract lawyer conquering the world, and subsequently nearby planets, and then the Universe, were not exactly going as planned.
And by not exactly , I mean, not even close. Not by a stretch of the most creative imagination.
This was me, Meg Belfiore, the one everyone turned to when they needed a shoulder to cry on. The one who had it together all the time…or at least most of the time. Now, here I was, stuck in the middle of an emotional rollercoaster, and I had no one to talk to and only one person to blame.
Byron Belmont.
Not to repeat myself, but that man was a monster.
A sexy, gorgeous monster I wanted to devour from his feet up, and then slowly nibble and lick my way around his--
Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.
That was the second Bloody Mary talking.
Since the cocktail was softening the edges of my suddenly complicated world, I was now looking with startling clarity at exactly how everything had gone south. And I was going off the deep end.
I had a crush on a coworker I hated, then liked, considered having a fling with, then hated again. All in less than two days. That had to be a record.
If this whole fiasco had been an Olympic sport, I’d be standing on the podium with the gold medal around my neck, with the Star-Spangled Banner bringing tears to my eyes.
This all felt too crazy to be real. Or maybe, and this was just me batting ideas around, these were the early signs of going totally insane.
Or, worst-case scenario, I was trapped in the claws of a giant crush, crammed full of lust, while the logical part of my brain had set sail for an extended vacation to the Caribbean.
Though, some things actually went pretty damn well the past two days. Not many, but a few. I got a nasty troll off Pops’ back, somehow impressed Roman with my contract law skills, and got rewarded with a black Amex card.
Which should make me super happy, right? I should be dancing on the clouds. Yet, none of that could fill the inexplicable emptiness I felt inside.
So, naturally, I did what any completely rational, sane person would do in this situation. I was marching my ass straight to a psychic. I needed answers about my life, about my future, really about anything.
I’d never been to a psychic, and not that I thought anyone could actually see the future, but I was desperate. And I just needed someone to tell me everything was going to be fine.
Someone other than Mom.
From what I understood, a psychic was like a hope dealer. They’d give you one little nugget of hope for the right amount of cash. And sometimes, that was all you needed to keep going. So yeah, I was willing to fork over whatever I needed for a scrap of reassurance that just maybe I wasn’t completely screwed.
My most important question would be if Isabel was coming back. And if possible, could I be provided with the exact date of her return.
Isabel had been in my life for as long as I could remember, and she was my soul sister, my ride-or-die, and I knew if ever, God forbid, a body needed burying, she’d help, no questions asked.
Wait, scratch that, Isabel would definitely have questions. Who? Why? And why so messy? Although, she’d immediately accept that it was justified, and that, naturally, it had to be an asshole who’d totally deserved it.
And as the two of us shoved said asshole’s body into the hole we’d meticulously dug, she’d preach about a less messy way to kill because blood is impossible to clean. And that you only had to spill a glass of red wine on a floor to see how the color red soaked right through the carpet into hard-to-see gaps and cracks.
She’d even have a suggestion about easier ways for an asshole to meet their demise, which was via a strong cup of Columbian coffee, with a yummy French pastry laced with copious amounts of Peruvian arsenic. Like the United Nations of murder plots.
Undoubtedly, all the talking of pastries and coffee would lead to us getting hungry, and her suggesting she’d make us dinner and dessert once the hole was filled, and the murder and subsequent burial were behind us once and for all.
That was a soul sister forever.
The Navigator stopped at a red light. I met Letitia’s gaze in the rearview mirror. She looked at me with the scrutiny of a homicide detective. The kind that made you nervous even if you knew you’d done nothing wrong.
“Everything okay back there?” she asked as if she couldn’t see me wallowing in despair of my own volition.
Now she decided to chat. When I was on the fast track to getting sloshed.
“I’m on my third Bloody Mary in twenty minutes, what do you think?” I volleyed back.
She shared a look of camaraderie. “It’s a man, isn’t it?”
I snorted. “Is it that obvious? Although, I’d use the word man very loosely here.”
“Oh! Did he cheat on you?”
“No.”
“Did he steal from you?”
“No.”
“Treat you badly?”
“No. Actually, he was treating me too nicely.”
Imagine if confusion had a face. Now, imagine our warrior Letitia here trying to untangle that mess of an exchange.
I tested another angle. “It’s hard to explain?”
“Okay, then,” she said, as the light turned green. “Good luck with all that then.”
Since it was almost 7 pm I asked her if she would be a solid and drop me off at my sister’s beauty salon, which was close to Madame Gizalda. I knew it wasn’t protocol, but for all her toughness, Letitia seemed to embrace my womanly challenges and said, No problem .
When I bid her farewell, she quickly slipped the last three vodka miniatures from the bar console into my bag.
Drink up, girl," she whispered, leaning in with a conspiratorial look. “Tomorrow it will all be better, you’ll see. I’m still a little confused by your kind of trouble, but I feel you, okay?”
I almost hugged her. But thank the gods for small miracles, I didn’t. Even if professionalism had long since packed its bags and left for outer space.
By now, the Bloody Marys had taken the wheel, and I was one miniature vodka away from doing something really stupid.
Like texting Byron.
And telling him that even if he sucked as a human being, I’d still be all over him, peeling off each layer of his clothing and exploring every inch of his scrumptious body, savoring it bit by delicious--
“Hey, Sis!” Mimi chirped as I pushed through the door of the beauty salon, snapping me out of my mental decline. “Look everyone! My sister, Meg, is here!”
She whirled around like a ballerina in a hurricane, flashing her dimpled grin and proudly presenting me to her co-workers as the crown jewel of the Belfiore family— the Belfiore who managed to graduate and become a lawyer, no less.
I straightened up, scavenged for every last sober cell still working, and flashed my best smile. The one we all kept in reserve for moments like this. The one that presented me as composed and very together, while my insides were screaming for help.
The response was a chorus of ooohs, and aaahs, but it was Mimi’s face, bright with pride, that had me all misty-eyed.
Once the clamor died down, she grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back, away from everyone. “What’s going on?” she wanted to know. “You look... I don't know... funny.”
Right. Funny . There was a good word for this whole debacle.
A bulb went off in her head. “Oh shit, you were fired! What did you do? You didn’t have that job for two days…”
Imagine my outrage. “Go straight for the dystopian scenario, why don’t you. First off, I wasn’t fired. And secondly, why would you presume it was me who did something wrong?”
“Because it’s you, and you’re very good at doing you?”
“Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
My sarcasm was lost on her. “You still look down though…what happened?” she asked.
Even if we were blood-related and as close as any two sisters could be, we did not have the kind of relationship where I could share what was going on in my life behind the scenes. That’s where Isabel filled the gap. She’d commiserate and help me finish a bottle of wine.
Mimi was the sensible one, the kind of girl who didn’t need a sweeping romance or fireworks to know who she wanted to walk down the aisle with one day. Just a quiet, solid certainty. And that certainty had a name…Joshua Moore. A good man who only had eyes for her.
He was the manager at Pops’ Pizza Place, and Pops’ only hope of continuing the legacy since none of his daughters were into running a pizza joint.
Joshua and Mimi’s relationship was as steady as a rock, and they seemed like they would truly stick together through thick and thin. Everything my kind of fleeting relationships weren’t. If you could even call them relationships.
How did I explain to her that while I swore up and down that no man could ever shake my sense of self…Byron stormed into my life and made that a lie.
Through the vodka haze, I decided now was not the time to spill, and the less I said, the better. An interrogation was the last thing I needed. “It’s just work stuff,” I lied. "Nothing I can’t handle.”
Not that she believed me, but she nonetheless flashed a grin that could outshine the sun. “It's cool if you don’t want to talk about it… but hey, just remember, you've got three outfits from my closet to choose from for taking care of that Elio jerk. So, that's gotta be something to be super happy about, right?"
“I thought it was five.”
“Oh, did I say five?”
“Wow, how do you not remember this, Mimi? It was only this morning. If you don’t believe me, ask Mona. She’s my witness.”
Mimi’s voice softened. “Give me a happy smile, and I'll bump it up to six.”
So, I smiled, thinking we’d reached the pinnacle of our conversation, and from here on out, it was just going to be loving sister talk.
But no, she was just getting started. “And we’ll make sure these six outfits are perfect for your fancy job. No shredded jeans, no Jessica Rabbit dresses. Seriously, we have to stop making you look like a scandal just begging to happen. Your appearance needs to match your qualifications. Especially at the place where you currently work.”
What I really needed was another miniature vodka. “I’m not going to Belmont Manor anymore. So, I can wear pajamas all day if I want.”
This time, Mimi’s smile slipped right off her face. “What do you mean? I thought you said you weren’t fired—”
“Oh, stop it. It’s not that complicated. I just decided to work from home now. Except for in-person meetings. Then I’ll go there. If I must, and only then. And maybe the library. But only the library.”
Mimi stared at me like I’d just told her I was joining a cult. “Wait, so you’re going to sit at home, all alone, all the time? What about your cute coworker?”
“What about him? He’s a douche canoe.”
“Really? How bad? Give it to me like on a scale from one to ten.”
“A hundred?”
“Pity…he’s gorgeous. And rich, right?”
“Filthy.”
“But not rich enough to overlook the douche canoe part.”
I cocked my head, getting impatient. “Given what you know about me, what do you think?”
“Never.”
“Bingo.”
All I wanted to do was get away from this conversation, away from the urge to find a shoulder to cry on. “Oh, look at the time! I have to go see Lady Gizalda—”
“It’s Madame Gizalda…but sure go ahead,” Mimi chimed. “I hope she can talk some sense into you.”
“That’s not what psychics do. You pay them to lie and give you hope.”
This time Mimi grinned mysteriously. “Believe what you want, but this one is different, you’ll see. I’m finishing up here, so I’ll wait till you’re done. We’re having dinner tonight at Pops’ Pizza Place to celebrate GenZ Za shutting down.”