Chapter 10
Julie
The bar was a sleek, upscale lounge-style place with a terrace that had a view of Central Park, which meant I was scared for my life what they would charge for a drink.
Estelle met me by the polished wood bar that was probably worth more than my life and probably had more history in this city than I ever would, but she was oblivious to my crisis, because of course she was.
She was dressed more casually than me, in a sweater and shorts, but I guess when you were hot, you could get away with wearing anything to any occasion.
She raised a hand with a classic French-tip manicure in greeting as I approached.
“Cassandra,” she called, a reminder of how I was not, in any way, shape or form, supposed to be here. “Over here. Hey. How’s it going?”
“Hey,” I said, leaning against the bar next to her, trying to look as effortlessly cool as she did. I bumped my elbow on the corner of the bar top, and I pretended it didn’t hurt. “Tired. Been working late nights and early mornings, but… city that never sleeps, you know?”
She sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you about Hellie. You’re going to encourage the worst parts of her.”
She really shouldn’t have been talking to me about Helena. Just not for the reason she thought. “Well, if you want someone to convince her to take a nap, I am currently ready to worship at the altar of naps, so maybe I’m the exact right girl for the job.”
She grinned, flashing teeth. “Huh.”
“Huh, what?” I’d said something weird.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Let’s grab drinks. Where do you want to sit?”
I was like a kid at a candy store with a big city view at night. I tried to play it cool, though. “Let’s take the terrace, get some fresh air. I’ll sleep on the table if we’re in a dark room.”
She laughed. “Good call,” she said, and she turned to the bar and ordered a cocktail, glancing down at a laminated menu card, and I followed her gaze and had a heart attack.
When she gestured me up to the bar after her, I played it casual and said just a soda water for me, giving Estelle a knowing look like it was just because I was too much of a lightweight to have a drink right now, and not because I’d have to take out a fucking mortgage to get a drink.
In short order, we were sitting out on the terrace with her colorful layered cocktail and my poor-person’s drink, and she leaned across the table and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “So, feeling more comfy, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s a nice chair.”
She grinned wider. “Good to appreciate the little things, but I more meant you’re not so nervous tonight.”
Shit, I was an idiot. Well, I guess the etiquette lessons were working. Or maybe I was just too tired to second-guess myself and panic. “Oh, uh, yeah,” I said. “Well, hard to be nervous when I’m in such a nice chair.”
“Try not to sleep in it, babe.”
“I’m not making promises. So, uh… something up with Helena?”
Otherwise known as the woman I was not supposed to be thinking of.
Kingmaker had even dropped me a line to ask me if we could meet at Tasty Slice tonight and talk the plan from here, and I’d lied and said I was too busy handling music work tonight.
If he knew I was breaking from the plan to go talk to Helena’s friend about her, he was going to kill me and chop me up in the back of Tasty Slice, because I was sure there was some dark secret about why their pizza was so good, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was murder. Maybe Tubman’s tub served double duty.
But Estelle was oblivious to this crisis too, and she sipped her drink as her expression turned pensive. “So, you know about her family. A bit controlling.”
“Linyue, her father, the pressure from Shanghai. I hear it’s ramping up with the parent brand hitting some roadblocks. Linyue laid into her on Saturday morning, didn’t she?”
She gave me a cautious smile. “She’s been keeping you up to date with a lot, huh?”
“Oh, uh, not really. We haven’t texted since Saturday, when she told me that Linyue had, uh, reminded her where her focus was supposed to be and she told me we probably wouldn’t be crossing paths again for some time.”
“She told you that?”
“Um, yeah. I mean, I’d messaged her about whether things went okay with Linyue, and that was what she said.” I felt myself flushing nervously, not sure what the deal was with the interrogation.
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“You are married, right?”
“I’m not—” I put my hands up, bumping the table and nearly spilling my drink. “I’m not hitting on Helena. Jesus.”
She gave me a skeptical look. “Let me see your text exchange with her.”
“Th-that’s private.” My face was molten-hot now. Shit, anyone could tell I had a crush on Helena at this rate.
“You didn’t answer the question. You were super weird about your husband on Friday.”
“I was just… nervous to be attending the place by myself.” I scratched my wrist, which was suddenly impossibly itchy. “Nothing weird there. Just a normal… husband.” I cringed.
She tented her fingers on the table. “So, what I’m getting from this is that you and your husband are separated, or maybe just in a really complicated situation with your relationship on thin ice, and you’re exploring your attraction to women.”
“I’m not, um…” I scratched my head. I was not pulling off a lie that I wasn’t interested in Helena.
I was already maintaining a truckload of lies, but Houdini himself couldn’t have pulled off that trick.
I sighed, slumping against the table. “If you’re asking if I’m attracted to Helena, yes, of course I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to do anything about it. ”
She narrowed her eyes, slowly digesting it, before she seemed satisfied, sitting up taller and kicking one leg up over the other. “I get it, she’s hot,” she said. “I even made out with her once.”
“Uh. You did?”
“Yeah, I was curious if I was gay, so I asked. I wasn’t. Turns out. I mean, if I’m not into her, I’m not into any women.”
“Uh, a, uh…” That made it sound like Helena was gay. I wasn’t surviving the night. “A lot of women try that with her?”
She laughed. “You would not be the first to explore your feelings about girls with her. Or the last. That’s what happens when you’re hot, openly bisexual, and a little flirty in a very straight industry.”
Oh, god. Maybe I’d just throw myself off the terrace.
One day I’d get to a luxurious high-rise view without being two steps from throwing myself off it.
I fussed with the straw in my drink just to have something to do with my hands.
“I can… see that. But for the record, I’m not, uh, looking to explore.
I mean, I already know very well how I feel about girls.
No confirmation needed. So I’m not just looking to use Helena to experiment. Or anything else.”
“Still not gonna let me see your text exchange, though, huh?”
“I-I said it’s private.”
“But you weren’t flirting?”
If Helena was bisexual and Estelle hadn’t been kidding that she liked to flirt, then I guess there was an obvious explanation for why her messages felt flirty.
The only problem was that that explanation was Helena was flirting with me, which wasn’t much of an explanation at all, now, was it?
“We weren’t flirting,” I said, after way too long a pause.
She squinted at me, and I flushed. “Okay, it did feel a little flirty! But I was just… matching the cadence of how she spoke. It doesn’t mean I’m trying to do anything with her! ”
“Uh-huh.” She gave me a once-over. “You’re cute, and I could see Helena going for someone with your energy, but I need to know for sure that, if I do get your help with Helena, you’re not going to get her involved in an affair.
She’s dealt with that kind of thing before and it was not pretty for her, and she does not have the space for that right now. ”
“Has she?”
“Mm.” She softened. “It was a whole thing. This girl she was working on a big project with, she had a boyfriend but told Helena the whole oh, he won’t mind if it’s with another girl thing, all I’ve always wanted to try it, show me what it’s like.
Then she did a full one-eighty after the fact, accused Helena of pressuring her into it, threatened to make a big scandal out of it, and this bitch held it as blackmail over her for, like, almost a full year.
She dropped it after her boyfriend dumped her, so I’m assuming it turned out the boyfriend actually did mind it if it was with another girl, and she decided to get out of trouble with him by saying Helena made her do it.
Either way, it was awful. Helena spent so long after that happened being so careful to even be seen being friends with anyone. ”
“Ew. That sucks.” I swirled my drink slowly, ice cubes clinking.
“I kinda get that. This one girl in college kissed me and then very obviously regretted it because she was kinda popular and I was kinda a loser, and so she got all her friends to hate me, so then I stopped dating for a while. I mean, that’s not really comparable and you also didn’t ask. ”
She laughed. “You’ve got bad luck with relationships, huh?”
“Ah, yeah. You could say that again.”
“All right,” she said, relaxing, leaning sidelong into the railing with her drink in hand. “I’ll trust you. But don’t let me down, okay? Even if Helena does flirt with you, I am counting on you to be the more mature party and turn her down.”
Turn down Helena fucking Warrick? Sure, yeah, I could do that. I could also fly and shoot lasers from my eyes. Casual. “I will,” I lied. “I’ll be good. I’m not about to implicate anyone. So, what’s the deal with Helena?”
Her face fell. “Ever since everything on Saturday, Helena’s been in a rough spot. She’s really overworking herself, and she’s given up on everything she actually wants to do and is just locked in on doing as Linyue says. She’s been like a drone. I’m worried about her.”
I looked down. “I was worried she’d come out of it like that…”
“Yeah. I could just see it in her eyes when I met her after that. She didn’t even want to go look at cute new shoes. Do you know how bad things have to be before she won’t go look at cute new shoes?”
“Bad, I’m guessing.”
“Bad. So,” she said, brightening, “that’s where you come in. She went to this Galley launch party because she wants to get into the startup space, and you’re the one who connected with her the most from that place. So, help me get her spark back?”
I blinked. “I’d… love to, but I have no idea how I’d even do that.”
“Well, you were there, so I assume you had a good reason to be,” she said, wrongly. “What’s your tie-in with the industry?”
“Oh, uh, you know… I’m friends with Krysten Adesina, founder of Jewel.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Jewel, the app?”
Shit, she knew the app. I was on the spot now. “Familiar?”
“Yeah, it’s what my company does scheduling with. That’s how I got the invite, anyway, my boss has a friend who knows the founder, and he knew I’d be interested, so… I guess we’re only a few degrees of separation apart.”
“Funny, that,” I said, feeling a little delirious. “Big Apple’s a small town sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, as if I wasn’t just saying bullshit. “Well, that’s perfect. I had a feeling you’d be the right person for the job. Do you talk to Krysten a lot?”
“I’ve actually got a meeting with her tomorrow afternoon. Something you want me to pass along to her?”
She reached across the table and swatted playfully at my arm. “Houdini with the magic tricks,” she said. “That literally could not be more perfect. Tomorrow afternoon is great. Helena tends to be flexible in the afternoons. Take her with you.”
“I but the huh?” I said, which was a real choice of a sentence. She beamed.
“Take Helena with you. I’ll tell her there’s a prospective client who wants to work with her on something, and she’ll show up, and bam! It’s Houdini and her founder friend.”
“Oh, uh.” I scratched my head, and my neck, and my wrist. Why was my wrist so fucking itchy? “I don’t know…”
“How come?”
Well, for one, because Helena knew me as Cassandra, and Cassandra was connected to Krysten, which meant she was probably connected to Jewel.
For two, because the meeting was to talk about my pitiful self maybe being allowed to do something connected to the company maybe, now that I’d backed up my groveling the tiniest bit, and I didn’t want Helena to see that.
For three, it was because I’d have a heart attack and die if I saw Helena.
“Well, it tends to be pretty exclusive,” I said.
“Hard to just walk into these kinds of things. But I’ll ask Krysten. ”
“Helena’s really smart. Everyone assumes she’s not because she’s just a hot model, but she’s really clever and good with the business side of things, because she’s grown up doing it.
She’s already got a personal connection to Jewel and the ecosystem, so even as a contractor, she’d be a really good asset. ”
“I-I will for sure pass that all along,” I said, my face hot.
I mean, I could see the logic. Helena was smart, and she was good with people, so she was definitely in line with what Krysten wanted.
A better person would help her get into that position.
But Jewel was my only lifeline, and I couldn’t fuck it up.
But god, I wanted to see Helena again. And god, I wanted to be part of the reason she could pursue what she wanted. Even if it ruined my life in the process.
“Do you not trust her?” she said, and I shook my head a little too hard to pass off as cool.
“No, I do! I do. I definitely do. I’ll talk to Krysten, for sure, but I’ll…
I just don’t think she’ll be thrilled about that.
But even if not, I’ll talk up Helena to her,” I said, blabbering now.
“You know, play the long game if nothing else. I’d already mentioned Helena to her at the party, about how…
perceptive she was. Read right through a person. She’s good at that, isn’t she?”
She smiled sweetly. “She really is. But sometimes she’s just a bit too trusting… lets people take her for a ride. As you know.”
“As I—know?” I said, my throat tight. She waved me off.
“You know, the whole story about the girl who slept with her and…”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, Krysten’s not trying to sleep with her. I mean, I assume she’s not. I mean, she could if they wanted to. I don’t think that’s on her radar though.”
Estelle laughed. “Need a drink, babe?”
I hung my head. “I was doing better for a little while there.”
“I really owe you for the help. I’m so relieved it’s you, honestly. The connection to Jewel and everything. You’re a lifesaver, Cassandra.”
I wished I had a stronger drink. Like horse tranquilizer, maybe.