Chapter Eight
AVA
“ I s that what you’re wearing?” Tiffany asks in the reflection as she applies her mascara in Orla’s bedroom mirror. She gives me the once over as I rub my hands over my skirt.
“What’s wrong with it?” I’d chosen a shimmery blush crop top that left my shoulders exposed and had sheer sleeves. Pairing it with a high-waisted skirt in the same shade and finished with some over the knee boots, I thought I was looking like the perfect combination of hot and classy. Not wanting to go overboard, I’d loosely curled my hair, and my only jewelry was a pair of silver hoops and a simple silver chain belt.
“Nothing…don’t you think it's a little plain?”
“For fuck’s sake Tiffany, she looks gorgeous.” Orla strides in, still in her underwear, holding a bottle of chilled champagne that she uses to top up our glasses. “What’s your damage tonight? You’re being bitchier than usual.”
“I just think she needs a little sparkle or something. That’s all. I didn’t say it looks bad.”
“She doesn’t ‘look bad’, she looks drop dead gorgeous.” Orla raises her brow and lets her gaze move over me freely. “You’re going to have to stick your tits out more to get attention tonight, Tiff.”
“God, it’s not a competition, Orla.” Tiffany rolls her eyes and straightens up, checking out her outfit in the mirror as she sips on her drink. She was wearing some sort of silver sequined minidress with silver chains at the back.
Orla places the champagne down on a small side table and starts pulling on her deep purple halter neck jumpsuit with black beading all the way down the V between her breasts, “Then stop competing. And just be nice.”
Crossing my legs, I sit back on Orla’s bed and gulp down my drink. It was going to be a long night, and we hadn’t even left Orla’s apartment yet. Chad, Jeremy, and Orla’s semi-regular hookup, Lewis, were meeting us at The Blue Caterpillar in an hour for cocktails and dancing. Since I hadn’t gone out with them to celebrate Chad’s promotion, and I didn’t have work for the next three days, I had no excuse this weekend to skip a night out on the town.
“Fine, I won’t have an opinion in the future.” Tiffany huffs, red painted lips pouting before she vanishes into the bathroom and closes the door behind her.
Orla walks over and flicks one of my curls. “You look hot, don’t let her get to you.”
I lift my glass and let Orla pour me another one. “I’m not, it’s just…does she seem mad at me lately, or is it just me?”
Tiffany and I had been friends since college, meeting during a yoga workshop on campus where we discovered we lived in the same dorm building. We’d had our difficulties over the years, but it was beginning to feel like I could never do anything right. I had the wrong job, the wrong outfit, I didn’t come out when I had work the next day.
Orla’s mouth twists. She was always the calm, cool one who hated drama. “I never have a clue what’s going on in her head. She’ll come out and say what’s bothering her eventually.”
“Uber will be here soon, bitches!” Tiff yells through the bathroom door.
Orla shares a look with me, sighing gently as she tries to motivate herself too. “Let’s do this!”
T he cocktail bar was exactly the sort of thing I’d expected when I’d read online that the Volkov twins were opening a club. It was classy, all differing shades of navy and gold. The tiles behind the bar were dark and glossy, reflecting the refracted light from the overhead gold cage filled with glittering butterfly fairy lights. It was shadowy and intimate in a way that felt almost sensual and sexy. Chad has managed to save us two sofas tucked away in the corner of the seating area, on the opposite side of the dancefloor. Here the walls were a deep navy color with a gradient that gradually fed into white at the top.
“Isn’t this divine?” Tiff giggles as she sits in Jeremy’s lap, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly. “The Volkov’s clearly have great taste.”
“You look gorgeous.” Chad gets to his feet to give me a kiss, hands wrapping around me to squeeze my ass. “I’ll go grab us some drinks.”
Tiff leans in, glancing over her shoulder in case one of the Volkov’s might be lurking. There’s too much background chatter and the steady bass of the music for her to whisper as she says, “I’ve heard they like to share their sexual partners.”
“Kinky.” Chad chuckles as he slides a tray of drinks down on the table.
“I also heard they like to fuck one another.” Tiffany’s eyes glitter, and I can tell she’s already pretty tipsy.
Chad pauses for a moment, before laughing. “Incestuous. Okay… very kinky.”
Orla tilts her head as she salutes with her glass. “And illegal.”
“Spoilsport.” Tiffany laughs. “Don’t ruin my fantasies.”
“Awh baby, am I not the star in your fantasies?” Jeremy faux whines as his hands move up the exposed skin on her back, fingers intertwining with the chains.
Tiff just sighs, “Anoushka Volkov is my fashion idol, have you seen her handbag collection? And her shoes?”
She makes an almost orgasmic noise that has us all laughing.
A few drinks later, after we’re coming back from the dance floor, Chad pulls a little shimmery holographic baggie from his pocket and wiggles it.
“Yass!” Tiffany cheers as she snatches the little bag up and starts pouring it out onto the glass table.
Jeremy’s grin is wide as he rolls up a hundred-dollar bill and offers it to Tiff first. She leans in and sniffs up the neat white line Jeremy has made with his credit card. Tilting her head back, her lips spread into a slow grin before she gets to her feet, leaving Jeremy to inhale his share.
“Want some?” Chad asks, nudging me with his shoulder.
“Is that…are you offering me coke?” I can’t help the way my brows raise as I look at the man who claims to want to be my husband.
Casual drug use has never bothered me the same way it might others. I’d done an art degree, spending a year on an exchange program in Europe—there were drugs, sex and art like I’d never seen before. I also knew that the finance world Chad and Jeremy existed in often used recreationally too. But I was a prison officer, and Chad knew the risks to my job.
“It’s White Rabbit,” Tiff says, sitting in the space on the other side of Chad. “It’s, like, cleaner and safer and all that shit.”
“I’ll have to pass.” I hold my hands up in a mock surrender. “Regular drug tests at work. Sorry!”
“Boohoo, you whore.” Tiff chortles, her hand on Chad's thigh as he leans down to snort some.
“Orla, you in?” Tiffany yells to where Orla and Lewis are making out on the other sofa, a knotted tangle of limbs.
Orla’s eyes lock with mine before they narrow at the table and she waves off Tiff. “You know that’s not my jam, Anderson.”
I may have met Tiffany in college, but I’d known Orla since I was a teenager. And what Tiff didn’t know, what nobody knew besides a select few, was that Orla’s mother had been an addict. Drink and the occasional smoke were the extent of Orla’s vices for a very good reason.
Another hour passes and I find myself checking the time on my phone, wishing the night would pass faster while Chad and Jeremy get louder and drunker until I’m struggling to enjoy. Chad sits next to me with a round of shots, pressuring me to drink two before he nuzzles into my neck, begging me to take a little White Rabbit just to ‘try it’.
“Look, you do what you want but I don’t want to. Stop pressuring me,” I hiss, trying to push him away as he plants messy, wet kisses on my neck.
“Is it really because of your job? Because you can quit as soon as you say yes to marrying me, I mean, you can stay home and look after our babies. Don’t you want that?” His words are slurred and sloppy, just like he is and swallowing a noise of disgust, I get to my feet.
I can’t breathe when he’s wrapped around me like an octopus. Can’t think. I just need…just need space. I need to not be pushed and pulled and coerced into doing something I don’t want to.
Pushing my way through the crowd, which seems to have swelled in the last couple of hours, I find a staircase and follow it until I’m standing on a balcony overlooking the dance floor.
My hands tighten on the rail as I watch my boyfriend and friends below me. Is this really what I want my life to look like? Are these the people who make me happy?
“Why you look so sad pretty woman?” An accented silky voice says behind me, and I turn, about to tell them to mind their own business, but my words don’t come out. I would recognize that face anywhere, even without the long white hair elegantly tied back in a ponytail. “A pen for your thoughts?”
Anoushka Volkov lights up her cigarette, before she takes a seat on the couch and crosses one leg elegantly over the other, leaning forward and resting her elbow on her knee. She’s wearing a pair of high-waisted trousers with silver buttons. Her top is a waistcoat with nothing underneath it, but as she shifts, I get a glimpse of what looks like black tape covering her nipples. In her other hand, she holds a red crystal adorned clutch with the initials AV in silver clearly visible. It doesn’t surprise me she used to be a supermodel, with a face and a body like hers.
Frowning, my alcohol addled brain tries to piece together her words. “A pen…do you mean…penny?”
“ Da. This.” She waves her hand, expression bored as she takes a toke of her sweet-smelling cigarette, before blowing out lazy smoke rings. You’re not supposed to smoke inside clubs anymore, but I guess the rules don’t apply when you’re the owner.
I rub my head awkwardly. “Oh, I’m not…I’m not sad. Just a little drunk.”
“Is that your boyfriend?” Her glacial blue eyes narrow as she looks out to the dance floor below. Chad is dancing with Tiffany and Jeremy, with Tiff sandwiched between the two as they laugh. Has he even realized that I’ve gone or is he too out of it?
“Hmmm, yeah.”
“Do you love him?”
I blink. “What? That’s a strange thing to ask…”
“It is easy question.” She blows more smoke rings, the little clouds evaporating into the air.
Did I love him? He was good to me. Had a good job, was responsible, and wanted to settle down. Loved me. Wasn’t that enough?
Anoushka clearly doesn’t think so, her expression unimpressed. A bodyguard I hadn't noticed earlier steps forward from the shadows to whisper something in her ear and offer her an ashtray. She nods, and he melts away into the darkness once again.
“Hmmm, I think it is time to eat the bullet, no?” She clicks her tongue and waves her hand again, looking oddly terrifying, like a ruthless queen overseeing her court. “If my boyfriend did not notice I was gone, did not care and I could not say if I loved him easily—I would end it.”
It seemed so simple when she said it like that, but it wasn’t that cut and dry. We had four years of history together and I owed it to him to keep trying. I was the one holding us back with my wavering.
I offer her a weak smile. “I think you mean bite the bullet…”
“Perhaps.” She shrugs, looking unbothered as her cigarette rests between her red lips. “But I could make him eat it. If you wanted.”
“Do it with your whole heart, or not at all. Da? ” She gets to her feet and I realize just how tall she is, and how perfect her skin is up close as she hands me a back business card embossed in gold. “Call me. I will shoot the shit.”
As she walks away, I flip the card over, moving my fingers over the raised texture as I let her words sink in. “Wait! You…you mean chat, don’t you? Just chat, right?”
She looks back over her shoulder as the corner of her mouth lifts into a smirk.