Chapter 11 Chi
Chapter 11
Chi
I’m definitely going out tonight.
There hasn’t been a question of it since I began discussing it with Andy. Nothing he says makes any sense, and I’m not going to listen to his bullshit reasoning anymore. He doesn’t own me, as much as he seems to wish he did, and he also doesn’t understand how I live.
He’s going to have to get used to not having a say in the things I do. I’m not his. I can’t be his, even if I wanted to be. And in just a few short months, that will become even clearer to the both of us. Might as well jump start the process.
I decide to wait a bit longer after dinner to leave, so that when eight o’clock comes and goes, Andy will think I’ve listened to his instructions and stayed in. I go downstairs and have a quick dinner in my regular clothing, and then go back into my bedroom and rotely put on the dress I’ve chosen for myself.
The dress is dark red and tight; I haven’t actually worn this since I was a teenager, complete with the hyperactive metabolism and all. But it suits me tonight. I want to be sexy and dark, like the blood-sucking fiend I am. I want the very vision of me to ruin someone for life — to make someone want to do anything to obtain me. But no one ever will, of course. Not even the man lucky enough (or unlucky enough, really) to find himself married to me.
I head out at 9 p.m., without looking back. Once I get to the guard house at the edge of my property, I speak with the authority of a mafia queen who is heir to her father’s throne. “I’m going out,” I tell the head guard in Japanese and they follow me without question in their Escalades.
I feel just the spark of an uneasy twinge in my gut as I head away from the mansion, the wind caressing the hair from my face gently as I get closer to the club. I have nothing to worry about, of course. I know that. Even Andy knows that. But there’s something about doing this right now — going against what he’s explicitly told me to do and knowing he won’t be happy about it when he finds out —- that significantly reduces the excitement of going out.
I really don’t usually give a shit about what people think of my habits or if they agree with my choices, but I’m not looking to upset Andy or do something he doesn’t like. Still, he really can’t tell me what to do. I may never even see him again once I get married off in Japan.
Something clenches tight in my stomach as that thought goes through my brain. I take a deep, centering breath and look at myself in the mirror again. I look fucking good. I’ve worked my way from scrawny teen to toned, filled out 20-something. I get my full eight hours every night. And we are all young and beautiful for such a short time in our lives. I’m just doing what everyone else wants to do at my age.
In the end, I’m just doing what I have to do to get by in this life. I’ve had this itch I’ve been dying to scratch since my father told me we needed to get my life moving in the right direction. The direction that has been laid out for me since before I was born. I knew what he meant then, and Daiki confirmed it yesterday; I’ve been running out of time for a while now. My fun is just about over, so I’m going to fill the days I have left with as much of it as possible. I’m going to do what I do best, and I won’t allow Andy to overreact and ruin my last few months of freedom.
I don’t even look at the doorman as I walk up to the entrance. I don’t look at anyone. The fact that Chichi Yan is here is far better for the club’s image than the club is for mine. It’s funny, honestly; even though I have so much more money than anyone else who walks through these doors tonight, I won’t be paying for anything unless I decide to get a bottle of Johnnie Blue or something. I don’t even have to ask; they will know my favorite drink, and they won’t let a moment go by without shoving a glass into my hand.
And as I start my night, that is exactly what happens. I feel myself drinking more than usual, but I’ve gone toe to toe with the best of them, so for a tiny Asian girl, I have a surprisingly high tolerance. I find a couple of Barbies and their various Ken dolls that I haven’t seen since my pool party a few weeks ago, and I pretend that I find their dumb jokes funny.
After a while, their jokes are actually pretty funny. The Ken Dolls don’t look so bad anymore, either. The bar is starting to get a little crazy. There’s yelling and streamers and gold confetti. Someone bends my head back and feeds me a cherry. At one point, one of the many Barbies, Sasha, has a heart to heart with me about how Ena, the newest pregnant chick in their squad, doesn’t deserve to have a baby and won’t be a good mother. I think she gets offended when I say that none of us bitches will be a good mother, and she ends up drifting away just a moment later.
Eventually, we get invited to dance behind the bar. We spill club soda and alcohol everywhere trying to make drinks. “I fucking love cherries!” I scream, before someone squirts grenadine into my mouth with liquor I can’t even decipher at this point. We are wasting a stupid amount of top shelf alcohol and eating all the garnishes, and who gives a shit?
One of the Ken dolls grabs me and asks me a question, and I just say yes because I can barely hear him. He grabs my face and attempts to squish his mouth against mine.
Although this is what is expected of me in this atmosphere, and I never would have found it disgusting before, I smack him in the face. It’s probably harder than I even realize, and after he backs up in shock, he sticks his tongue out to show me the cherry stem he wanted to tie with my help. Oh my God, gross.
I pluck the cherry stem out of his mouth and put it in my own to tie it myself, showing everyone what I’ve done afterwards. I’m rewarded with cheers and another shot of grenadine.
I eventually start talking with one of the other Ken Dolls. They all have such straight white teeth, but his are the straightest and whitest I’ve ever seen. I touch one of his long, smooth bicuspids in awe. This is how I know I’m super fucking drunk.
“They’re so sparkly,” I hear myself say with a giggle.
“Yeah, well my family owns 1-800-DENTIST.”
I giggle harder, barely able to contain it. When I open my eyes to look back up at him, I realize he’s not kidding. “Wait… wha? Seriously?”
He cocks his head and smiles his award-winning smile again. “Yeah.”
“Ya know, you could probably sell them,” I say, trying to sound smart and astute.
He looks a little confused now. “Why would I want to sell my teeth?”
I definitely can’t allow myself to look stupid. I backpedal. “No, no, I’m not saying you would want to, just that you could.”
Now he’s amused by the way I’ve tripped over my words. “I doubt I’ll ever need to. Since, you know, my family is worth a couple hundred-million dollars.” He’s closer to me now. He’s going to kiss me with those perfect, beautiful teeth.
But for some reason, I don’t want him to right now. I am totally in my element; this is one of my favorite things to do. But as his face looms closer and closer, I realize that I can’t do it. For whatever reason, the thought of kissing this random guy makes me feel super uncomfortable, and then, to my eternal frustration, Andy’s face snaps into my brain.
“Aghhh!” I exclaim in anger and possibly self-disgust. What the fuck is happening to me? What the hell am I doing, thinking about Andy while dancing at the club?
Perfect-toothed-Ken-doll rears back a bit to look into my eyes and see what’s wrong. He doesn’t understand. Of course he doesn’t. I don’t even quite understand.
“What… what is it?” he asks uncertainly, looking around to make sure no one thinks he’s sexually assaulting me, I’m sure.
I feel like I need to give an answer ASAP, so I blurt out, “I want to do a shot!”
He smiles again, and now it’s getting annoying. I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to show off at this point. “I can get one for you.”
“No!” I say with a sly smile. “I want it out of… here.” I point to the spot on his button-down shirt where I think his navel must be. If I can’t kiss the guy, the least I can do is suck alcohol off of him.
“Yeah?” he asks, lifting his shirt up to reveal just what I expect every Ken doll in the club to have: a perfect washboard stomach. A little on the thinner side, but hell, so am I. At the very least, I appreciate all the work he must put in, and I approve.
Next thing I know, I’m telling everyone that shots are on me if they want to come up and watch the show. I pour the one I will be sipping myself, focusing on the near perfect canvas laid out before me, making sure not to look at his face. It’s just a stomach. A very nice, flat, stomach.
Everyone chants the word, “shot,” and this is what I normally live for. I just don’t want to think about the fact that this stomach belongs to a human being. A human being that I couldn’t give a shit less about. You love a nicely toned stomach, Chi. I clench my eyes as the fire of the alcohol hits my tongue. You love this. All those tight muscles, hard and taught…
Suddenly I’m yanked up harshly and my world turns upside-down. I realize a moment later that I am literally upside-down, the wind knocked clean out of me, bobbling around like a rag doll as someone races out of the club with me on their shoulder.
“Stop,” I gasp out, trying to catch my breath. “Stop, my father—my father—”
“Shut the fuck up, Princess.” It’s just Andy. Wow, I must be drunker than I thought, and possibly even more scared than I want to admit, not to have realized it was him this whole time. Now I smell him — that crisp, minty citrus.
As I try to get my bearings, I see the gleam of shiny teeth in my peripheral vision and just know that what is about to happen will be very bad. Mr. 1-800-Dentist has gotten up and jumped in front of Andy and I, button-down shirt open, liquor running down his abs. I try to warn him, but I can barely catch my breath.
“Hey! Who the fuck are you, man? Doesn’t sound like she wants—”
Andy punches him right in that pretty smile of his, and he falls back. “My teeth!” I hear him cry, along with a chorus of gasps, but as anyone would expect, none of my ‘friends’ come to my aid. I’d imagine Andy has spoken to the guards about this, because none of them interfere either, and Andy simply walks forward without another word.
I’m frozen in shock for a full minute as Andy casually walks through the door with a billionaire’s daughter on his shoulder, and I only find my voice once the summer breeze finds the place where my dress is riding up in the back, just a bit too high for my liking.
I resume my kicking and punching. “Fuck you! Put me down, you asshole!”
He says nothing as he continues stalking along toward what I assume is the parking garage I used right next to the club. If I wasn’t so angry, the Terminator act would be hot, but as it is right now, it just feels pretentious and judgmental. My anger over this stifling display of casual male arrogance and oppression builds and builds, until it explodes out of me. I rear back suddenly and punch him as hard as I can in the ear.
“Ow! Fuck!” he says, stopping mid-stride and moving me down his body to try and get a tighter grip on me. As soon as I’m in range, I slap him across the face as hard as I can. He doesn’t even flinch. But he does finally talk to me once we’re face to face.
“That was really fucking stupid, Chi.”
“You’re really fucking stupid, Andy.” I almost wince at how petulant I sound. I try to follow it up with a nice, well-rounded threat to show him that I mean business. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You can’t just drag me around, you know. I can tell my men next time that—that you’re not allowed to touch me. I can make rules for how I am to be handled and treated. I could get them to…” I trail off, knowing that I’m not going to do any of this, and knowing that I probably couldn’t actually do it anyway.
“You done yet?” Andy asks coolly.
I might be done trying to threaten him, but I’m far from done. More words explode out of me. “You can’t tell me what to do. You understand me? I already have enough people I have to be perfect for, who I’m obligated to, and you don’t get to be one of them.”
I take in a ragged breath and notice that Andy’s eyes falter from mine, but I’m on a roll. “You have no idea, Andy fucking Scutari. No one wants anything from you except protection and brute man strength. But you can’t even comprehend everything expected of me. All that will be expected of me. And if I want to go to a bar and suck fireballs off some random guy’s hot abs, then so be it.”
I push him and he staggers back. It feels good, so I do it again. He puts up his arms and steps back on his own, as if in surrender, but I don’t stop. “You don’t get to tell me what to do just like the rest of them, do you understand me?”
“Yes! Yes. I understand you, Chi.”
I feel far too sober right now, as I realize what just flooded out of me, and the intense reaction I’ve had to what Andy has just done. Of course, he shouldn’t have handled this situation by embarrassing the hell out of me, grabbing me and forcing me out the door, but he also probably has no idea why I’ve spouted out most of the things I’ve just unloaded onto him.
He has probably done this at least partially out of jealousy, but even knowing that, I realize my anger isn’t only directed at him. In fact, I’m certain it’s coming from somewhere else. But I don’t want to delve into this right now. I never want to delve into this, come to think of it.
I’m sober enough to be embarrassed, but apparently not enough to stop my features from contorting into my very ugly cry face. I try to spin before he sees it, attempting to fix my lips turning down and my eyes filling with tears while I walk away.
He follows, his steps quickening behind me. “There was something wrong earlier! That’s why you did this!”
I laugh mirthlessly. “Yeah, it can’t possibly be because I just want to be a regular girl sometimes and have some fun. It has to be because something is wrong. That’s why I want to let off some steam, drink a little and dance. Maybe I’m just on my period or something, right?”
He catches up to me and spins me around as I try to rein in my emotions. I think I have a good handle on it, so I look back up into his face again. What I see there thaws something inside of me. Instead of the anger and harshness I expect, I see a fervent curiosity.
“Would you just tell me what’s wrong? Why are you acting like this?”
It’s too much. To see him acting this way — wanting to know the real reasons for why I’m upset, why I’ve lashed out at him, why I feel like I’m just a step from falling into quicksand no matter what I do — undoes any resolve my drunken self has to hold in my tears. I stay silent, but they break free of the little dam I’ve put up.
I expect Andy to have no fucking clue what to do with me right now. I’ve just run out to a dark, shady club against his wishes; punched, scratched, and kicked the hell out of him, and now I’m crying. I’m certain he’ll run off and leave me to wallow in my troubles, and that would be just fine. In fact, I’m praying that he will, because I don’t even think I have language right now to talk about how I’m feeling.
But he doesn’t run away. He gently pushes my hair out of my face and swipes a tear with his thumb, engulfing my cheek and chin in one huge hand. Now I can’t even try and hold them back, as I let out a small, silent, shaky sob and more tears leak from my eyes.
“Don’t cry, sweet Chee-chee. It’ll be okay.”
I can’t bear to look at him, so I stare adamantly at the ground. “It doesn’t matter if it will be. Whatever it is, I just have to deal with it. I always just have to deal with it.”
To my eternal surprise, he pulls me into him for a hug. I smell cool citrus and, despite my resolutions to never allow someone to break through my defenses enough to feel comforted by the mere presence of their scent, I realize that is exactly what I’ve done. The comfort of his body surrounding me, fitting me into him effortlessly, appears to be exactly what I need right now.
But I don’t want to be vulnerable. I push away halfheartedly and shake my head. “Yeah, I don’t think so. You’re not getting any after the way you’ve acted tonight.”
His face falls. “I’m not looking to get any, Chi. You feel like shit, and I don’t like it. I’m just trying to do something that might make you feel better.”
I humph, but my drunk-ass self suddenly decides it doesn’t want him to let go of me, no matter the vulnerability it shows. I sniff before stumbling further into him, and his arm comes up tighter to hold me.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he says quietly into my hair.
“If only you were right about that,” I whisper back, shutting my eyes against another wave of tears.
“I’m serious, Chi. I like what I do, but if I didn’t… there are other things for us in this world. Cas would get over it if I had to leave for some reason. We’re just tiny specks in the universe, baby. The world will go on without us if it has to.”
Against all odds, his words have taken part of the two-ton pressure off my shoulders. Some people would hate to hear that they are so unimportant, but for me, it’s a relief. It feels like I can wrap up into his words and disappear. Right now, I don’t want to feel the impending pressure of what my future holds. I just want to feel nothing for a while, instead of working so hard not to feel everything, all the time.
“I can’t believe you’re still here right now,” I mumble out, my voice barely audible, as if it means less when I say it so quietly.
“Of course I’m still here, Chee-chee.”
I sniffle into his shirt and sigh. Why does he make me so exhausted? “You say it as if it’s a given. As if… as if you’ll just always be around. As if you want to be here when I’m like this.”
He doesn’t move my face to his, just continues to drag his fingers lightly through my hair. “I do want to be here. There are a lot of reasons, but the main one, of course, is…”
I tense up. He can’t say what I think he’s about to say. I’m about to be married off, and no matter how much I’d like to just float away like a speck of dust in the universe, I know I can’t escape that fate.
“Because you’re super drunk,” he says, finally holding me at arm’s length and smiling into my face. “And I kind of like you, so I don’t want you crashing your beautiful face — I mean, Corvette — into a tree.”
I can’t help but laugh and punch his shoulder. He catches my fist and pulls me closer, stealing a kiss before I push away from him. “I’m serious about what I said before,” I tell him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not getting any tonight.”
He shrugs. “That’s cool. I don’t take advantage of drunk girls. It’s not my style.”
I punch him again. “Ow. Jesus, woman. You’re a lot stronger than you look.”
I lean into him and laugh, allowing him to escort me to the car.