Chapter 5 #4
“I’m kind of like you,” he said. “Though in my case I’m close to my family so I always have them to fall back on, which is lucky for me.
I love New York, but I love L.A. too. I like my job but I don’t love it.
I’m eleven years older than you are so I feel more pressure about the job.
I want to cover politics, not homicides, but I don’t hate going to work every day, and I figure I’ll get to where I want eventually.
I worry about getting complacent and too comfortable and not pushing myself hard enough. I try to watch out for that.
“I’ve had a couple of nice relationships with women I liked and didn’t want to marry, and we’re still friends.
I’ve never been madly in love or felt compelled to get married, so maybe I have a Peter Pan complex.
My parents think men shouldn’t marry till they’re thirty-five, so I have this illusion that I have time, but most of the people I went to school with have kids by now.
I definitely don’t feel ready for that. I’m kind of coasting along, feeling good.
Maybe I’m not ambitious enough, but California does that to you.
You get comfortable here and don’t push yourself.
But New York is so driven, it’s too much.
I have a nice time in my life. It’s all I need for right now,” he said, and he smiled.
He was in fact very normal, and she liked that about him.
He didn’t have any deep-seated damage, he was just a nice, smart guy who liked his family and had a good job.
“I have a lot to be grateful for,” he said, and she agreed, but she did too.
She had a roof over her head, she had found a decent job, and she was living with her sister and it seemed to be working out.
She hadn’t run out of money, although she had come close, and she was going to be able to pay her share of the rent with the job at Cedars-Sinai.
All her needs were being met. And now she had met a guy she liked.
He seemed respectable, he was fun, smart, and had an interesting job.
She thought being a crime reporter sounded fascinating, even if he liked politics better.
He was well educated, and his family sounded like a dream come true to her, compared to growing up with a father who had ignored her and overlooked her for all her life, and the sister from hell, although admittedly, Mickie seemed to have improved markedly since she grew up and left home.
She wasn’t even a bad roommate. Billie wondered what her sudden affair with her new boss would turn into.
It had taken off at jet speed, which was always Mickie’s style, but he sounded like a big-deal fancy guy to Billie.
She didn’t know why but she had a strange feeling about him.
He sounded so flashy and so showy from everything Mickie said that she wondered if he was for real.
But Mickie always seized the opportunities that came and made the best of them.
And Alex Addison sounded like the biggest opportunity she’d ever had.
Billie thought he was too old for her too, but Mickie didn’t care.
He had a gorgeous house, an expensive car, he was incredibly handsome, and he was generous with her. It was all she wanted for now.
The evening with Jason ended on a gentle note.
They sat in the lounge chairs at the pool for a while, looking at the sky over L.A.
He went and got a bottle of wine from his apartment after a while and poured them each a glass.
She’d had two margaritas at dinner, but the meal they’d eaten had neutralized them.
She didn’t feel drunk, just lazy and relaxed.
She felt slightly tipsy with the wine, but she enjoyed his company.
Jason seemed very grown-up, sane and well balanced.
She liked that he had such a stable background and wasn’t getting over some horrendous trauma in his youth.
He was polite and kind, intelligent, and attentive to her.
After half an hour he walked her back to her apartment. They both had work the next day.
“I really had a nice time,” he told her before he left. She didn’t invite him in. There was nowhere comfortable to sit, between the sagging couch and an equally ugly chair. Mickie had bought the barest essentials when she moved in.
“So did I.” Billie smiled at him, feeling shy for a minute.
She didn’t know if he was going to try to kiss her, and it seemed like too soon.
She was relieved when he didn’t. She had only met him two days before.
She was hoping he’d ask her out again. And he was smiling when he went upstairs to his apartment, thinking of her.
Billie wasn’t surprised when Mickie didn’t come home that night.
She would have been stunned if she had, and disappointed for her.
In the outfit she was wearing, her little sister was out to conquer the world, with an important new man at the end of her line.
Billie knew that Mickie would stop at nothing until he was addicted to her, and she knew just how to do it.
It was only a matter of time before she caught him and had him hooked.
Knowing her sister, the only question that remained in Billie’s mind was when.