Chapter 5
Tommy
While dinner last night was a stuffy, formal affair with our dishes served to us at the table and everything pre-portioned, breakfast this morning is much more casual.
There are extra tables scattered around the dining room, and a buffet-style spread of fancy offerings is making my mouth water.
There’s a whole station just for juices; watermelon juice, mango juice, kiwi juice, juice blends, protein-infused, vitamin-enriched, blah blah blah. And that’s just the juice.
Dinner had blown me away, of course it had.
But mostly in a ‘what the fuck is on my plate’ kind of way.
I had to copy Kira because I didn’t know what that food even was.
But this… As I follow a sleepy Kira toward a table, both of our plates piled high, I feel less like ‘what the fuck’ and more like…
more like I’m angry and jealous and gleeful and greedy all at the same time.
My head spins with it and my fingers tingle like my body is trying to tell me to grab what I can and run with it, but I have to remind myself I’m allowed to eat all of this, no need to run away with it.
I’m in a room with so much food in it, I can only compare it to being inside a grocery store, but all this food is free.
The breakfast taco station, the fresh eggs and bacon being made in front of us, the whole table full of breads for toasting and oddly colored jellies–it’s all free for the taking.
No, even better, I’m getting paid to eat it. It’s almost worth the two grand I’m going to have to shell out to Brian for that shit poker game.
I pull out Kira’s chair for her, and sit next to her just in time for Lexie to join us with her own plate. A staff member comes and drops lattes on the table for us, which the girls grab and sniff deliriously like they’re huffing fumes.
“Why are you two so tired?” I ask with a grin as they slurp their caffeine.
“Stayed up late,” Kira complains weakly. “Dinner went long.”
She wasn’t wrong. By the time we went to bed–especially them, with their hours of skin care–it was almost one in the morning. I’d run into Brian and Janessa in the library shortly after that, and finally fell asleep an hour or so later, tormented by thoughts of Young-gi and Bruce.
I had some seriously hot dreams. And since I have a problem with cumming, I’m fucking frustrated today. I wasn’t lucky enough to just get off in my sleep, which is one of the only ways I can cum without my brain getting in my own way.
“You look like you slept well,” Lexie comments, narrowing her eyes at me. “I’m jealous.”
I snort a laugh, because I was just thinking about how well I didn’t sleep. “Both of you look like you just got off a movie set. I’ve never even seen half the products you used on your faces this morning. Don’t come at me just because I’m not hooking myself up to a coffee I.V. bag.”
“That’s a popular hangover cure, you know,” Lexie says around a sip. “Not caffeine, obviously, but the I.V. bag. Some electrolytes, some pain killers, some hydration, and bam, hangover gone.”
I wrinkle my nose at the thought. I’m learning more random tidbits of rich people lore every day, and finding out that they don’t even have to suffer through something as humbling as a hangover like the rest of us poors is kind of annoying.
A few of the summit attendees join us at the table, and I let myself sink into my persona.
Tommy Claremont keeps his sarcasm to himself, and isn’t always trying to add to the conversation.
Tommy Claremont is so in love with Kira that he’s happy to just sit next to her and listen to her talk. It’s not a hard gig.
The door to the dining room is shoved open too hard and Brian storms in like a rain cloud.
He’s looking rough, and I hide my smirk behind my cup because there are clearly no I.V.
bags for him here. With the two idiot brothers in tow, they claim their own table and demand that the staff bring them not just coffee but also their food.
“I wonder where Janessa is,” Kira murmurs to me.
I softly pat her hand on the table to comfort her, and shrug. “No idea.”
I keep my mouth shut about what happened in the library.
It’s no one’s business, and not my story to tell.
But before Kira can speculate, Janessa floats into the room like an angel in baby blue.
She’s got that smile on again, the slow and seductive one that makes her look like a supermodel with a secret.
Without a care in the world, she makes herself a plate while Kira, Lexie and I discreetly watch her.
She glances at Brian’s table, raises a brow at them as if she’s surprised and mildly amused by their hungover state, and casually joins us.
“Good morning,” she says sweetly, a twinkle in her eye.
But now that she’s closer, now that I’ve seen behind her mask, it’s like none of it fools me anymore.
“Morning,” Kira says hesitantly.
“Let’s go get ready for the next event,” Lexie says to Kira, clearly excluding Janessa.
The ‘other woman’ plays it cool and joins the conversation of the others at the table, but I feel her eyes on us as we leave.
I glance back, expecting her to be watching me and nervously worrying about me gossiping about what happened in the library, but instead, her wistful gaze is on my hand, linked with Kira’s.
********
Apparently, the only way to convince rich people to do something as equal-opportunity as going outside is to make it ridiculous and out of touch.
Instead of something normal like cornhole or even something I expected for rich people like golf, we’re out here with archery equipment and rows of white targets planted on the wide lawn.
There’s a mimosa stand and everything.
Absolutely insane.
I look at the compound bow in my hands, then squint at the target Lexie and Kira are taking turns with.
There are tons of targets, all with varying degrees of difficulty based on the size of their bull’s-eye ring and their distance from the shooting line, but since I’ve never held a bow in my life and don’t know how to use one, I’m just watching the girls for now.
Standing there in the sunlight, on the most beautiful parcel of land I’ve ever been to, wearing the most expensive clothes I’ve ever owned, and feeling satisfied by a full breakfast, I’m hit by a funny thought.
It comes out of nowhere, and I startle Lexie and Kira with an out-of-place laugh.
They jump and look at me over their shoulders.
“Tommy?” Kira asks, like she thinks I’m losing my mind. “Everything alright?”
“I just remembered something funny, Kira darling, that’s all,” I soothe her anxiety, and she blushes when I peck her cheek with a kiss.
She bites her lip shyly and turns back around to watch Lexie aim.
I feel eyes on my back, watching from the porch of the house, and intentionally don’t look. I know who’s there.
Instead, I wander over toward an empty spot, one of the many lines spray-painted on the otherwise flawless, freshly-mowed grass.
Most of the ‘young leaders’ at the summit are focused on their own targets, but plenty of them are nursing drinks at the mimosa table and clutching their heads, portraying ‘hungover’ with just their body language.
Brian should be one of them, given his performance at breakfast, but he must’ve gotten something to help him out of his slump because he’s pulled himself together.
As I amble, my eyes are drawn to Brian as he struts around with his bow. I remember the violence of last night, the way I held him down, and I recall the funny thought.
I’ve held a lot of things over the years that I’ve used to hurt people.
A metal pipe, shoes, glass bottles, a bat, a heavy book, a pen, and my bare hands.
But, despite all the blood, I haven’t used a real weapon on someone since the day I killed the third and last man on my hitlist. It’s been ages since I’ve even held something that technically qualified as a weapon–I’ve never even flipped open the switchblade I keep in my boot, it must be rusted shut by now–and I always thought that if I did, I’d be fighting for my life.
But right now, I’ve got a weapon in my hands…and I’m cosplaying Robin Hood with hungover trust fund babies.
That counts as a funny thought, right? It made me laugh.
I look at the bow, considering it. I didn’t use a bow on the men I’d killed. I’d used knives, mostly. And gasoline. And a match.
When was that, like ten years ago now? No, eleven. God, it’s been that long?
I’d been fifteen when I finally killed the third man on my list. He was the worst one.
Don’t think about him, I command myself, playing around with the bow in my hands.
Pulling it up, copying Kira’s posture, drawing back the string and feeling like Legolas or some shit…
only to relax, let out my breath, and smile ruefully at the empty target several yards away.
I feel silly, like I’m trying out for a movie. I have no clue what I’m doing.
One of the targets further down the row thunks as it gets impaled near the center, and an obnoxious cheer erupts.
I tilt my head and subtly watch as Brian throws his hands up in triumph.
Janessa screeches and jumps with joy, clearly back to playing the good girlfriend, and his two lackeys jeer in a less-than-friendly way that they could do better.
Brian looks over toward me and sees me watching.
With an angry sneer, he grabs Janessa by the waist and swings her into a swooning kiss that she hesitantly allows.
She wraps her arms around his neck and returns the kiss, but I see the way her legs are tensed under her, and how tightly she’s holding on to him in case he drops her.
She doesn’t trust him.