Elle
“Reality is a cunt, isn’t it?” Rin singsongs as I finally climb the stairs to Maple House that evening.
Gant wanted nothing more than to corner me after our last class. I wanted nothing more than to disappear, and I’d managed to do so right into the girls’ dorm before he could get a hold of me.
It’s nothing he did or didn’t do.
It’s all on me.
I tried. I failed. And now I had to face the stark reality that getting noticed on stage for the midterm production was at an all-time zero. At least there was always the Christmas play.
But the thought doesn’t console me. I tried to be realistic. I told myself that my improvements weren’t enough for a major role. So then why do I still feel so let down despite all of my pep talks?
Because it’s more than the scouts, you wanted to impress.
You wanted to be Gant’s princess.
Maybe it’s a good thing Mum didn’t remember the auditions because if she did, she’d be texting or calling me and the last thing I want right now is to talk to anyone. Not Gant. Not Mum. And least of all fucking Rin.
“You would know,” I snark back.
Rin only smiles wider as I reach the landing, and I willingly follow her into her room. The last thing I want is for anyone to see us together. I’ve had a shit-enough day as it is. I don’t need anyone prying into our strained dynamic as the cherry on top.
“What do you want?” I ask tiredly when the door shuts.
I think more than disappointment, what I feel is tiredness like all the sleepless nights from Jarett’s nightmares, all the private lessons, all the swim sessions, all the fantasising about Gant has finally caught up to me, ringing in every bone and muscle fibre and pore.
“A check,” she says cooly. “You used Gant for lessons. You’re markedly better and now the auditions are over and you’re still a flop, so what are you waiting for now? Him to get bored first?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The video.” She snaps. “I don’t film all this shit for free. Send it into Beaussip so we can get paid for the footage and you can get your one up on Gant before he one-ups you.”
I sink onto the edge of her bed, ignore her incredulous look at the sheer audacity of my ass touching her precious mattress and hold my aching head in my hands. It’s suddenly throbbing, just like my kneecaps. My ankles. My toes. Like every single part of me.
I have to contend with the fact that I won’t get scouted and that I’ve abused my body, pushing it to its breaking point all in vain. And now I have to sink back into the reality that Gant and I were merely on an interlude that’s soon eventually going to come to an end.
We’re just in limbo.
“Or did you forget? Don’t tell me you got comfortable because he isn’t being a dick to you again. Yet.”
I glare up at her. Her voice is like a damn gong ringing in my ear. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“So? Are you waiting to finish falling in love with him so it can hurt worst when he fucks you over? Because that’s what he’s going to do. He’s just waiting for the right time.”
“I don’t love Gant.”
“Really?” She arches her brow. “Is that why you kissed him in the audition? Yeah, I saw it. Your cute little moment. It was quick. Gant’s back was to us, but I saw it, and maybe someone else did too if they were standing at the right angle.”
I let out a breath. Fuck.
“You were so swept up in the moment that you forgot you were in a room full of students who think Gant still has a target on you. Keep it up and you’re going to lose your leverage. The whole point of sending the video to Beaussip is to out Gant. To prove that he wants to do far more than just torture you. How do you expect everyone to be blindsided if you keep having these little romantic moments in public with him?”
“You think I don’t already know that?” There’s no snap in my tone. Just pure brokenness and tiredness and Rin can obviously sense it because she shoots me a serious look before sinking onto the bed beside me.
I’m so fucking tired. I just want to lie back and fall asleep for an eternity.
“Elle. Prince Charming is somewhat real. Well, in that there are wealthy, handsome men like Gant. But Cinderella isn’t. You can’t ever be Gant’s princess because you’re a popper. A servant. A commoner. What? Do you think if you keep being nice to Gant, he’ll be nice enough to make you his girlfriend? You think he’ll take the little bitch who leaked his mum clapping cheeks to the entire world to meet daddy in the Hamptons for spring? You think grand pa pa will allow you to become an Auclair? He won’t even let you on the estate.”
That gives me a spurt of energy. “Are you insane? I don’t want to marry Gant, much less meet his family.”
“But what happens when you keep on like this and you’re in love with him weeks from now? You think you can just walk away so easily? Your mind may tell you it won’t go anywhere, but your heart won’t let you give up. Just cut the cords now. Save yourself the hell because dogs like Gant can’t learn new tricks and you’re wasting your time trying to train him with your understanding and decency. Learn when to put them down, Elle. If you ask me, it’s the humane thing to do.”
When I leave Rin’s room, I head to mine on autopilot.
I’m about to flop face-first onto my mattress and hope I don’t wake up for a full twenty-four hours when sniffles from Aria’s bed alert me that I’m not the first one back like usual.
“Aria?” I ask tentatively, creeping closer to the dark lump shaking on her mattress.
Her sheets smell like alcohol and when I pull her duvet back, I see they’re stained green, and an uncapped bottle of Absinthe is clasped tightly in her fist.
She’s even a bougie drunk.
We hadn’t bought absinthe on our trip into town. There was no way I could afford it.
Had she gone back to the liquor store alone?
As I try to take it gently from her grasp, she gazes up at me and in the moonlight, her blue-green eyes look downright haunting.
“Don’t believe it, Elle,” she says with a whimper.
“Don’t believe what?”
“Anything they say…those boys.”
I dry swallow, settling on the edge of her bed to listen. I don’t even have the energy to make my own spit.
“They get bored with you, Elle. They get bored and they toss you away.”
étienne? Has something happened again?
“And they don’t care. And you wonder how they could’ve cared so much before when they don’t give a singular fuck about you now? All the things you’ve done. All the things they’ve said. It doesn’t matter if it was real or not. Yet you torture yourself, mulling over every single detail, wondering if that was the moment you deceived yourself into thinking you were actually invaluable to him.” She shrugs and then laughs, but there’s no humour. “Imagine that? Being invaluable. So precious one day and a bitch on the side of the road the next. Games. It’s all just little games. We’re all just little toys for little boys. Until they’ve outgrown us, that is.”
When her eyes flutter back closed, I gaze at the little Gant doll on my pillow and remember the little Elle doll he has of me.
Just a toy.
Disposable.
I think of Mum -who’s yet to call me back- and the way Jarett used her up and tossed her away like trash every chance he got.
That’s what I feel like right now. Trash.
What”s weird though is that I’m ready to be put in the fucking garbage if it means I get a break from being, from feeling so fucking used up.
Because at this moment, it truly feels like nothing matters anymore.
Like nothing ever did.
Like nothing ever will.
The weekend dawns with new clarity.
Rin and Aria’s words hadn’t persuaded me. They’d guided me further down the path I’d already been treading along.
I can’t fall for Gant Auclair and I can’t waste precious time playing his stupid games anymore because where will they lead me? Other than straight into the discard pile come graduation because on what planet would the Auclair family ever accept a girl from bumfuck nowhere? A girl who leaked Gant’s mother’s sex tape? With her own father, of all people.
Ugh! I could kill Rin for putting those stupid thoughts into my head. Her points may have been valid, but I hadn’t thought of them before, and I hate that I’m thinking of them now. I’d only ever thought about Gant and I in a lust-filled context. I’d never even considered anything past that, like a relationship or a future and lately, my growing feelings for him have me daydreaming about what it could be like. But that’s just it. It can’t be like anything.
There are no future possibilities outside of Beaulieu’s walls. The real world is just beyond those iron gates and beyond the gates there is no Gant and I. So why am I allowing myself to slip into this little bubble with Gant now when I know it’s going to burst in less than a year? Hasn’t losing out on Cinderella’s role proven that? He and I are in two different leagues.
I need distance from him so I can overdose on reality again. And my stark reality is that I don’t need more cuddles with Gant in the forest. I need money.
I need a damn job.
I stare at my phone screen where the edited video of Gant sits staring back at me as an attachment to Beaussip’s email.
It’s been like that since Aria’s drunken spiel last night. I hit send and quickly shove my phone into my pocket. It’s done now. Everything. The interlude. Gant and I. All of it.
“Ready?” I ask Stassi, who’s still using her air curler. She’s offered to do my hair too, and I was more than grateful. I actually…looked beautiful. Not cute, not pretty, but beautiful, just like Gant always said.
Gant…
“Yeah,” Stassi says, unplugging the curler, but I don’t miss her quick glance at Aria’s bed. There’s no way she’ll be joining us in town today.
She’s in the nurse’s wing with mild alcohol poisoning, she’s passed off as bad fish from one of Zedd’s latest recipes. It was the first time I’d ever seen Stassi show so much softness and concern for her brother. She’d called him, explaining that Aria only said that because if she blamed the dining hall, it’d be too suspicious that no one else was sick. She’d wanted to reassure him that his cooking was the best. That he was the best.
I never saw Zedd show an ounce of emotion besides indifference or anger unless he was with Stassi. It’s hard not to smile from her bubbliness.
As we make our way to the trolley, we bypass the tiny infirmary behind the library.
On Stassi’s call with Zedd, he’d said that étienne was going insane, losing his grip because the head nurse wouldn’t let him visit Aria until she’d finished her IV and rested again. So he’d scaled the building and he’s beneath the covers with Aria now, sliding underneath the bed whenever a nurse comes to check on her.
“I don’t get what the hell is going on with éti, Ari and Rin,” Stassi says looking up at the window for the girls’ ward where Aria must be.
“I don’t think Aria does either,” I say. I’m not sure how much Aria has shared with her about what we’saw in the forest, and just like Stassi wanted me to guard her secret, I guarded Aria’s. Still, I just hope the girls can finally get over everything soon.
Just like I hope to get over whatever spell Gant’s casting over me once I leave Beaulieu’s gates in three, two, one…
***
If we thought outside was a dud, then inside is a bust with floorboards so damaged, my heels are a liability. There’s an unidentifiable odour clinging to the stale air and a general griminess that permeates the yellowing wallpaper and sticky-looking bar.
“AGH!” Stassi squeals, jumping up on a nearby couch as a mouse scurries across the floorboards.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” I say, eyeing the moth-eaten furniture. “You’ll probably contract scabies or pink eye.”
I was wrong about not having to worry about Jarret as a customer. This is definitely the sort of place he would frequent. He’d be right at home with all the vermin.
“I think the burger joint is a better idea than this,” Stassi says, hopping off the couch and eyeing the bartender, who doesn’t seem to notice us. Is she hard of hearing? She has to be seventy-five at least, with coke-bottle glasses and grey hair that’s tinted violet.
A lone patron stumbles to the bar from another door in the back. The bathroom maybe? He flops onto a barstool and puts his head down while the bartender wipes out a glass with a filthy rag.
“Let’s go,” I sigh, already upset with myself that I’d wasted forty dollars on the outfit hidden beneath my oversized coat.
“Be honest, Rie Rie. Do you think it’s that bad?” the male voice slurs.
“Even with my cataracts, there’s no getting around the fact that this place is a dump,” Rie Rie says with a heavy emphasis on the last word. “You said your family owns Perriots. I applied to work there at least a dozen times.”
“You never got a callback?”
“Can you believe it?” Rie Rie says, shaking her head. “That club’s absolutely beautiful though. Why don’t you just ask your mother for help?”
“She doesn’t support what I’m doing. I’m trying to be different. She thinks it means I’m trying to be better. She thinks I’m trying to be like all the other posh kids at Beaulieu.”
“Are you?”
The man sighs. “I just want to fit in with them.”
“I thought you were super popular. An Untouchable?”
Suddenly it all clicks. Hale?
I gaze over at Stassi, but she’s transfixed, and half-hiding behind the lounge’s wall.
“It’s not the same thing. Right now I run alongside the old money circles, but I’m not in the circle,” he says, drawing a circle on the sticky-looking bartop.
“And you’re new money, right?”
“Right.”
“And new money can never really get in the circle, right?”
“You can get close enough to break into an old money family, but it takes years and careful planning. The first step is to own a successful business, but not just any business, businesses deemed worthy. Ones they can associate with. Publicly.”
Rie Rie looks around, her thick lenses flashing. “And you think this dump would fit?”
“I know it won’t. It’s just a stepping stone. A fast cash grab before I sell it to get the capital for something worthy. Still, if I do it just like Perriots, it’ll take me ten steps back. Perriots is just too trashy.”
“And that offends your mother because it’s her trashy business that even got you into Beaulieu in the first place?”
Hale deflates. “I don’t think my mom herself is trashy. She just… can’t separate herself from the business. She is Perriots and I…I don’t want to be.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Rie Rie says, putting down the glass. “Why do you want to penetrate the circle?”
“If I ran in better circles… I could have a better shot.”
“At what?”
“The only way to truly integrate is with a fuck ton of respectable money, but also a fuck ton of time.”
“Hence the old part.” Rie Rie nods.
“Right. But there’s a faster way. Tying your bloodline in. And you can only tie it in if you can get halfway into the circle first.”
“With the money and respect.”
“Bingo.”
“But…. you want to marry into the circle? You’re only bloody eighteen.”
“The perfect age to start thinking about future connections. It’s different for blue bloods. They already have engagements planned by twenty, executed by twenty-three, and the deals are often sealed before twenty-seven. Especially for the women. Don’t look at me like that. You were married at eighteen.”
“Twice.”
“Exactly.”
“But I thought I was in love.”
“All nine times?” Hale snorts.
“Two of them were to the same man, so only eight count really,” she says. “And then two died, so I have two less ex-husbands. So really it’s just…five. I think.”
“I don’t think it works like that, Rie.”
“But why? Why do you want to marry into their circle? Just so you can rub shoulders? Who cares about the class part so long as you’ve got the money, and you’ve got the money?”
“I don’t care about the class at all. I do care about wealth and I care about wealth for my future generations, but that isn’t why. It’s just because they care about the social status stuff. I…I just have to become worthy, classier, so it’s a possibility.”
“I don’t get it,” Rie Rie shakes her head. “All this talk about circles, and I feel like we’re just speaking in them.”
“Yeah, well, my friends don’t get it either. Of course, they don’t. They’re already bluebloods.” He sighs. “I thought that they, of all people, would help me out. But they don’t believe in me either. A bunch of turncoats.”
“I had a turncoat once,” Rie Rie says thoughtfully. “You could wear it on either side. Plaid, or solid.”
“What am I going to do? I need like fifty minimum to get this place looking even halfway decent and the opening’s next month.”
“We could have an event.”
“An event?”
“I’ll just get my tits out,” she says, shaking her shoulders stiffly. “Solved.”
“How on earth do you think your tits are going to make us fifty grand in one day?”
“Fifty grand! I thought you meant fifty bucks.”
“Be serious right now, Rie. You couldn’t get us fifty bucks.”
“I did last night.”
“That was a fiver. In Monopoly money.”
“Damn,” Rie Rie sighs, continuing to make the glass even dirtier.
“Haley?” Stassi asks, taking a tentative step closer to the bar.
When he whips around, his eyes are bloodshot, his normally immaculate, tousled brown hair dishevelled, as is his collar and wrinkled suit. He must’ve slept in it.
“Stassi?” His fingers fly to his hair and rake through it.
“Stassi?” Rie Rie whispers way too loudly before fixing his collar and trying to smooth out his wrinkled blazer.
“What are you—” He freezes, his eyes flying to me before narrowing. “What are you guys doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Stassi says. “What do you mean you need money for renovations…don’t tell me you own this place?”
Hale looks sheepish before holding his hands out and feigning pride. “All mine.”
Stassi shakes her head. “You bought a club, and no one told me?” she asks incredulously. “Zedd didn’t say anything. You didn’t say anything.”
Hale’s smile falters and he drops his arms, sticking his hands into his pockets. “Would you scream from the mountaintops that you owned this place?”
Stassi looks sympathetic, but Hale avoids her gaze and turns his eyes back to me.
“What’s with the coat?” He pauses, his eyes trailing to my fishnets, peeking out at the bottom before a shit-eating grin spreads over his face. “You’re here to audition.” It wasn’t a question.
I’m about to protest when Stassi nods. “Yeah, she is. She’s been practising bartending, haven’t you, Elle?”
I look at her like she’s insane as another mouse scampers into a corner and Rie Rie pours bright green dish soap into a shot glass before tossing it back.
“That is not absinthe,” she mutters, turning the bottle around in her hands, hopelessly trying to locate the label. I doubt she can read it, regardless.
What’s with everyone and Absinthe around here?
“You know she can’t, Stass. Gant would kill me.”
Stassi smiles. “Exactly. Didn’t you say they were a bunch of turncoats?”
Hale stares at me, his expression flickering from dismissal to appraising curiosity. “They didn’t want to chip in with the club, not because they can’t but because they don’t want to. They have no faith in me.”
“I have faith in you,” Stassi says, and Hale’s fingers twitch before he reaches for her and pulls her in front of him, hugging her from behind. His calculating eyes never leave me though, even as he drops a kiss to her forehead. Stassi seems so comfortable in his arms, but I’d never seen them touch before. Ever.Is it because Zedd’s always lingering around?
“You’re the only one that ever does.”
My heart flutters at their cuteness as Stassi grabs his forearms and tilts her head back to stare up at him. “And now you need to have some faith in us.”
“Us?” Hale and I ask in unison.
“We can help you,” Stassi says. “With a brand new employee,” she points to me. “And the renovations—”
Hale’s hold on her slackens. “I don’t want your money, Stassi.”
A hurt look flickers across her face. “I know you wouldn’t, but that’s not what I mean. Elle grew up poor and who has a better fashion sense than me? I’m sure together we can come up with a plan on a budget.”
“I’m standing right here,” I say, before turning my attention to the dingy walls.
“I know,” Stassi says cheerfully, oblivious as Hale rocks them lightly. “Elle, didn’t you tell me that you renovated the dance studio at your old school?”
I had. In fact, I love DIY projects and I’m sure I could get the place sorted for far less than fifty grand. Maybe fifteen because of the roof repairs. Then again, I didn’t know what elaborate vision Hale had in mind. “I did and for a lot less than fifty grand.”
I can already see the wheels turning in Hale’s head.
“What’s your budget?” I ask.
“Twenty grand, give or take.”
Rich kids. He had twenty grand, and he was moping over it?
I bite my lip and watch a moth flying helplessly around a lamp. “But there’s no way I’m helping with the renovations if you’re not going to hire me.”
He nods to the bartender. “Rie Rie take a break. I want to see her mixing skills.”
“Me too,” Stassi says, taking Hale’s hand and leading him towards the bar. “I’ll have a Bellini.”
“No, you won’t,” Hale says, seriously guiding her onto a bar stool.
Her smile falters. “Why not?”
“You’re not eighteen yet.”
“Hale, youknow I’ve drank before.”
“But not at my bar.”
She frowns. “A-are you being serious? You’re just like Zedd.”
As Rie Rie slips into the back, I take her position.
“I’m nothing like your brother,” Hale says seriously, and the two exchange a look for so long I have to clear my throat to remind them that I’m still here.
Hale’s eyes snap to mine. “Let’s start off simple. I’ll take a Jack and coke. Get her a Shirley Temple.”
“Hale!”
He leans in close to Stassi’s ear, his voice so low and measured that it even sends a shiver down my spine.
“If you keep acting like a petulant child, I’ll put you on my lap like one.”
Stassi’s eyes grow wide, her lips falling open as she stares at Hale’s profile, but he’s looking at me. “While I’m working on that, mix up a Whiskey Sour, Manhattan, and a Negroni. They’re popular. Can you handle all of those?”
“Can Rie Rie?” I ask pointedly. Thank goodness for Aria’s most popular drink list. I could sneak on my phone and double-check the Negroni recipe while he was busy visually tracing the outline of Stassi’s lips, breasts and the curve of her neck.
“How good are you with design?” he asks once he’s downed half of his first drink and Stassi pouts into her Shirley Temple.
“I resurfaced the wooden floor of my old ballet studio because we couldn’t afford to have it done professionally. It wasn’t too hard.” I eye the wooden floor with its deep gouges. “We can get some wood filler and a buffer to resurface the floors, then varnish and seal them. I’d advise you to go for a dark colour to hide all the stains that are probably permanent at this point. As for the wallpaper, we’ll have to apply some hot water solutions to reactivate the adhesive and pray it comes off smoothly. Depending on the condition of the walls underneath, you may just want to apply a new layer rather than paint it.”
“Dragonflies!” Stassi pipes up. “You should put up some dragonfly wallpaper. A really dark one.”
“If the colour’s deep enough, it’ll help to make the place a bit darker overall. It’ll be harder to see the imperfections that way, plus it’ll set the mood better,” I say, blinking at the harsh sunlight streaking through the front window.
“Like a deep hunter green. Do you have uniforms for the waitresses yet?” Stassi asks.
Hale shakes his head and finishes his drink before reaching for the Whiskey Sour.
I shiver at the sight of him throwing it back so easily. I learned my lesson the other night after I’d passed out after Aria. I’d woken up in a puddle of my own vomit the next morning and I swore that I’d never mix dark and light liquor together in my stomach ever again.
“The quote from the seamstress was insane, though I’m sure it’s worth it. I like the vintage corset look.”
“That’s the vibe Elle went for. Show him yours,” Stassi says, shaking a hand at me. “It’s not the best quality, but in low lighting, it’ll probably suffice for the first few weeks while you work with the seamstress.”
Self-consciously, I slip the coat from my shoulders and Hale’s big gulp as he swallows half the whiskey sour lets me know that he approves.
“Damn.”
“It was less than thirty on sale. We can go back to see how many more they have left, plus that sage green will go great with the hunter green wallpaper,” Stassi adds.
Hale eyes me over the rim of his cup. “Gant would behead me.” But his tone is playful, mischievous.
“Gant won’t care,” I lie, grabbing the ingredients for the Negroni and averting my eyes from Hale’s. “The club isn’t his territory like Beaulieu. It has nothing to do with him.”
“You really don’t get it,” Hale says, sucking on the orange rind and Stassi watches his lips like a vulture. “Everything about you has to do with Gant.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Not anymore. Soon Gant won’t want anything else to do with me.
“Yes, it does. If I had a woman, I’d feel the same way. Everything she does concerns me.”
“I’m not Gant’s woman.” I can’t be. “I’m not even his friend.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re wrapped around his brain and seeing you here in that leotard where other guys can see you will tighten that grip and give him a fucking aneurysm. You don’t want to see him when he explodes.”
“You’d care that much if it was one of your girls?” Stassi asks quietly. “Working at a bar?”
One of his girls? I’d heard that Hale was a ladies’ man, but I hadn’t witnessed it much.
“No,” he says firmly. “Not one of my girls. My girl. My only girl.”
Stassi licks her lips and nods, breaking his intense eye contact to settle her gaze on the drink she was so disinterested in before. Now, she seems fascinated by it.
He’d have a fucking aneurysm.
Maybe it’ll be the perfect wake-up call that he needs to realise that I have another life outside of Beaulieu that he can’t control. That he has no right or access to. And neither do I to his. To his blue-blooded circle that Hale knows all about.
“So?” I ask Hale when he’s finished his Negroni. “How do I compare to Rie Rie?”
“No one can compare to Rie Rie,” Hale says.
“Damn straight,” she says, emerging from the back with a tray of apparently cleaned glasses. They look filthier than the ones on the shelf.
When she disappears, Hale leans in and whispers. “You have to listen out for her heels. You’re in.”
And I’m out when it comes to Gant.
I’ve played my last card. So come what may. It has to be better than more weeks of delusional bliss, followed by months of heartbreak that I never thought possible in the first place. Because I don’t want to fall in love with Gant Auclair.
I refuse to.