Chapter 23
Helena
I couldn’t just be partying every night, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do, and at least if I was going to events and talking to people, I didn’t have to think too much about…
well, anything. Estelle met me at the doors to the building, dressed in a jumpsuit that was effortlessly cool, a bright pink lip that popped, and I looked like I’d crawled out from a hole.
I wondered if Julie would still describe me as the go-to for when someone wanted a picture of an unattainably attractive woman.
“You look hot, babe,” she lied.
“I think I’ve looked better.”
“Well, we’ll see how you feel after a drink or two.”
“I’m not binge drinking every night,” I said. “One drink tonight, tops.”
“Ever the responsible one, babe. Okay, are we going, or what?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Stellie… what are you hiding?”
“I killed a man.”
“Well, of course you did. But what else are you hiding?”
“I invited a cutie to this event,” she laughed into her hand. I groaned.
“I’m not looking to flirt my way out of this…”
“You don’t have to flirt! But if you do flirt, I’m happy for you. Let’s go.”
She was insufferable. But I knew that. I followed her into the building, where we took the elevator up to the rooftop.
It was a stylish place, very elegant and classic, half covered and half out to a rooftop terrace with a stunning view of the Empire State Building all lit up against the night.
Pretty busy place, too, which, as much as I didn’t want to give Estelle credit—I hated how she was always right in the end—it was what I needed right now.
I followed her to the bar, where she asked for a rum and Coke, which was a generic drink but just made me think how it was Julie’s favorite, and a Moscow mule with a light pour, and I sipped the drink gratefully when she gave it to me.
“Where are your friends?” I said, resting against the bar and scanning the crowd for familiar faces.
“I think they should just be arriving now,” she said, slipping her phone from her purse. “Let me go meet them at the doors too. Grab a spot at the railing to hang out.”
“Bossy.”
“Love you, babe,” she said with a nudge, and she was gone before I knew it.
I held our drinks—she hadn’t even touched hers, but she was always bouncing from one thing to the next—and I pushed out to where it wasn’t actually too busy by the railing.
Stood there leaning against the sleek glass barrier, sipping my drink, looking up at the city skyline around us, and when I saw a figure leaning against the rail with me out of the corner of my eye, I glanced lazily over and almost dropped my drink off the side of the building when I saw her there.
Julie Branch, the absolute last person I wanted to see. Wearing her suit, hair and lashes done, just like when I’d first met her, at a rooftop party just like this.
“Hey,” she said, and she went to rest one elbow casually on the rail, banging on the corner of it instead. “I was—ow—shit.”
My stomach twisted up on itself, a red-hot sensation bubbling up in my face, and I pushed off from the railing. “I’m not talking about this right now,” I said, and her face fell, turning after me.
“Helena—wait, I was—”
“We already did this. I’m not having another conversation.
Go have your life back in Missouri, and I’m not…
” I didn’t even have a conclusion for that thought.
I just marched away, storming back towards the entrance, and I only got into the covered terrace before I realized I couldn’t just walk out with drinks in hand.
Estelle had probably planned that. Dammit, the rum and Coke was for Julie, wasn’t it?
I was drunk on spite, because I stopped and knocked back the rum and Coke just so she couldn’t have it, downing the whole thing in one go like an animal, and I set it down at the end of the bar and started on my own drink. I looked like an alcoholic.
A man sidled up next to me at the bar, a guy with a red suit who looked like he thought he was hot shit. “I respect a girl who knows how to party,” he said, leaning against the bar next to me with his hands in his pockets.
“I’m leaving,” I said, and he smiled.
“Where you headed next, princess?”
“Helena, wait,” Julie’s voice said from behind me, and I cringed, downing the entire rest of my drink too and setting it down. My stomach turned unpleasantly, and Julie got in between me and the door before I could make a break for it. “Please—I need to talk, it’s about Jewel—”
“Go away. I told you to leave,” I said, my voice ragged. The man who had sidled up saw his moment, because he stepped in between me and Julie.
“Give us a little space, little missy,” he said, and I scowled at him.
“Hey—fuck off. Touch her once and I’ll break your arm.”
He shot me an incredulous look. “Do you want her here or not?”
God, that was the question, wasn’t it? “I don’t want you here, that’s for sure.”
A uniformed security guard stepped in, a man with a lean build and sharp eyes. “Everything okay over here?”
The man in the red suit gestured to Julie. “She was just harassing my friend—”
I spoke over him, gesturing between him and Julie. “He was yelling at my date.”
“What?” He threw his hands up, stepping back. “You know—forget it. I don’t fuck with crazy assholes anyway.”
The security guard looked between us. “All good?” he said, and I sighed.
“Thanks.”
He nodded, stepping away. Estelle was right, because I did feel differently after getting a drink or two in me, which I should not have done. How childish did I have to be to shotgun two drinks just so Julie couldn’t have one?
I sighed, turning back to where Julie held herself smaller this time. The surging feelings had melted out into something else, and now I was just… tired. Deeply tired and crushingly sad, like the weight of the past couple of days had hit me all at once.
“He didn’t touch you or anything, did he?” Julie said, and I shook my head.
“No. Just tried to invite himself along after me if I left, or else I’d be out of here, leaving you high and dry to plan your flight back to Missouri and…” I rubbed my forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. What’s… are you okay? Did you get into a hotel?”
“Yeah. Payment went through. Debt paid. Set up in a hotel room for now. Um… are you good? You look a little dizzy.”
“I’m not good at shotgunning drinks.”
“Let’s sit you down.”
“I should buy you a replacement drink.”
She laughed nervously. “It’s not important. Let’s sit you down,” she repeated, and I was sitting down before long, at a high table by the railing, where Julie struggled a bit with the high chair across from me.
“You have your suit again…”
“Kingmaker dug it out of a dumpster for me. I got my stuff back, mostly. The landlord shoved it all into a couple trash bags, flung them into a dumpster a few blocks down. But Kingmaker’s got, uh… trash… contacts.”
“How did you even find him?”
“Imagine the sketchiest flyer you’ve ever seen. Now make it sketchier.”
“And you responded to it.”
“I’d just hit rock bottom,” she sighed. “My girlfriend who hadn’t really been seeing me anyway had dumped me, and it made me realize I was just some fucked-up loser who’d been promising she’d have a big break soon for the past two years, nothing to show for it, living in a laundry closet, doing delivery driving to make ends meet. ”
“When you say laundry closet…”
“Literally.” She took her phone and pulled up a picture, sliding it across the table to me. “Feel free to swipe. I collected old pictures of my stuff in the space for the Housing Court. Guess I might as well level fully with you now. This is who I actually am.”
Jesus, she’d been living in a prison cell.
My chest constricted painfully as I looked through the pictures—a small, windowless room, no obvious ventilation, grimy with a dirty, threadbare mattress on the floor.
I wanted to believe there was a shower somewhere else, but the body wash and washcloths over by a laundry sink with a drain in the corner made it pretty obvious what her living situation was like.
Thinking of her going back to that at the end of every long day, her body starting to fail in the way it had been, and she got—what, a cot and a sponge bath? The fact that she’d even done half of what she’d done while living like this wasn’t… well, I didn’t think I’d have been able to.
“At least the housing authority caught the slumlord in the act,” I said icily. “This is disgusting.”
“Eh. I doubt it. He’s smart and has been doing this a while. He argued I was squatting, and the housing authority probably doesn’t have the resources to follow up and figure it out one way or the other, so he’ll drag it out until it gets buried.”
“If you’d told me earlier what was going on in your life, I’d have helped.”
“Why would you have?” she laughed, rubbing the back of her head. “If you found out at some other point that I’d been lying about my job, my life, my name, would you have been happier about it then?”
I frowned. She shrugged.
“Look, I’m not here to talk about me, I’m here to talk about you. Linyue’s putting you on leave?”
“I should have guessed Estelle was doing something like this.”
“What are you doing now? I know the Jewel work was really good for you…”
I snorted, looking away. “I was dumb and bored. There’s no romance in tech startups and that whole… everything.”
She leaned over the table, and my heart dropped when she took my hands, looking me in the eyes.
“You,” she said, “are too good to let go to waste thinking like that. You’re smart enough you’ll do something good, and I want to make sure whatever you’re going to bring to the world isn’t going to get swallowed up by you forgetting how much you love your dreams.”
“I don’t—”
“You know this feeling isn’t you.”