Chapter 3
Evelyn
I don’t know why I got paired with Melissa to share a hotel room.
She’s a wife and mother, and therefore we have fuck-all in common, and I’m a little pissed Addy chose to share a room with Hailey instead of me, her sister, as in related by literal blood.
But she also chose Hailey as her maid of honor and chief organizer for this weekend, so it’s clear where her loyalties lie.
It means I’m stuck with Melissa, who I barely know and have met only a handful of times before now.
I cast her a sidelong look across our room. “You don’t snore, do you?”
“I don’t think so . . .”
Which translates to me definitely sharing a room with a diesel generator in human form.
I throw open my suitcase on my huge bed and begin digging through the mountain of clothes I threw in late last night.
We’re pushed for time now if we are to stick to Hailey’s rigid itinerary, because we waited a whole hour in line at check-in before finally receiving our room keys and we’re expected to be back downstairs for drinks soon.
So, this is going to be a super quick turnaround, and I’m not quite sure just how glamorous I can become with the forty-five-minute time limit imposed on us.
Grabbing my cosmetic bag and my favorite little black dress that conforms to this evening’s dress code, I head for the shower.
I’ll give the Cosmopolitan its due—it’s the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in my whole entire life, and I’ve stayed in a lot of nice places over the years.
Our rooms are on the forty-ninth floor, overlooking the iconic Bellagio fountains next door and the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard, and we have the cutest terrace that’s perfect for relaxing with a margarita in hand if only it wasn’t a million degrees outside.
Sitting out on that terrace would be like trying to relax on the surface of the sun.
I’d take the damp, sweaty humidity of Florida any day over the dry heat of Nevada, so the terrace is cute but impractical.
It’s much nicer inside the room with the AC on full blast. There’s two queen beds with the most comfortable of mattresses (I tested them), a giant flatscreen TV on the wall, a welcoming seating area with a large couch, and the most luxurious of bathrooms. The floors are marble, there’s double sinks with ring light mirrors, and there’s a shower and tub.
It is perfect, as it should be given its eye-watering price tag.
Turning on the shower, I strip off and wrap myself in a robe as I wait for the water to run hot.
I sit on the edge of the tub and check my phone, but I’ve been so busy drinking champagne in the limo and whining about the check-in wait times that I haven’t even turned off airplane mode yet.
I let my notifications ping through and instantly wish I hadn’t when a particular name pops up in my list of messages.
Michael Montgomery: Do you have the money yet? I’m tired of asking.
There goes my good mood. It’s like all of my joy and excitement for the weekend gets sucked straight out of my body, replaced instead by an undercurrent of stress. And dread. And panic.
Because I’ve been hiding from Michael Montgomery all summer, but short of blocking his number and moving to Guatemala, there is only so far I can run from my debts. And I do have debts, because I may or may not have cheated on my final exams back in April . . .
Okay, fine.
I cheated.
For most of the last semester, I was struggling to focus.
Couldn’t absorb the material no matter how hard I tried.
It was like my brain had checked out, and I very quickly found myself falling behind the others in my classes.
Finals were upon me before I knew it, and I just needed a little help to get through them.
A friend of a friend put me in touch with Michael, who, for the price of a few thousand bucks, presented me with the answers for the exams in a neat little folder.
I don’t know how he gets his hands on exam answers, and I also didn’t ask any questions at the time.
I was just so desperate to see out the semester without failing and so relieved to have found a solution that I was prepared to pay anything, except I didn’t have that kind of cash spare.
I paid Michael five hundred dollars and promised I’d get the remainder to him as soon as I possibly could.
I clearly came across as trustworthy, because he agreed to this loose payment plan without much convincing .
. . Though that was four months ago now, and he has gradually been losing his patience with me.
The weekly reminders turned threatening after the first month, and even though I’ve been back home living with my parents in the safe coastal city of Boca Raton for the summer—where the only dangers I face are getting plowed down by a retiree in their golf cart or fighting a Lululemon Mom in Whole Foods over the last avocado—I haven’t been able to relax out of fear of Michael tracking me down.
Classes start again in a little over a week and I have no idea how I’m supposed to walk around campus without bumping into him.
Who knows what he’ll do when he eventually encounters me?
I really should have investigated Michael Montgomery’s side hustle of selling exam answers further before I solicited his services, because I have since learned that he may as well be the University of Florida’s resident mafia boss wannabe.
He has a terrifying reputation, and my friends keep begging me to pay him off before I regret it.
But I just don’t have the money.
I suck in a breath and message back:
I’m working on it, I swear. I’ll pay you as soon as I can.
My stomach twists when his reply comes only moments later.
Michael Montgomery: Not soon enough. I wanted that money months ago and time’s running out. How does an anonymous letter to your academic dean sound? Let the school know those perfect exam scores of yours aren’t as perfect as they seem?
I lock my phone and throw it on the counter away from me, staring at it across the bathroom as though it’s a grenade ready to explode.
If I get kicked out of school just as I’m entering my final year, my entire life will be ruined.
I’d need to wave goodbye to my childhood dream of becoming a registered nurse—not to mention I’d have to explain what’s happened to my family, and after the last year .
. . I just can’t break their hearts. I’m so close, only one year out from graduating and sitting my license exam . . . I can’t lose it all now.
Anxiously, I toy with my bracelet. It’s a simple gold chain, delicately thin, and permanently welded to my wrist—it’s impossible to ever remove it.
Both Adelaide and my brother, Theo, have the exact same bracelet.
Just before our grandmother was admitted to the hospice for her end-of-life care, her final wish was for one more day out spent with us grandkids.
We went by the play park she always took us to as little kids in strollers; grabbed ice cream sundaes for lunch down at the beach; stopped by Gramps’s graveside and laid some flowers.
As Theo loaded her wheelchair into the back of his car, she lit up with one last idea.
Grandma wanted each of us to have a tangible memory of her, and so we ended up at a boutique jewelry store, where we let her pick which style of chain she loved most. Her giddy laughter as the chain was welded onto her frail wrist is a cherished memory to me now, one of the final times I remember hearing that warm, soft laugh of hers, and Addy, Theo and I went ahead and each got the exact same chain to treasure forever, much like the love we shared with Grandma.
It was only a few months later that she passed in the hospice.
I think of my grandmother now, as I brush my fingertips over my bracelet, and wonder just how disappointed in me she would be.
Grandma was a very successful pediatrician who spent her entire career at the same practice, adored by her patients for her compassionate, comforting nature, and she was always my inspiration for entering the medical field.
I just wasn’t prepared for how much losing her last year would affect my studies—and out of panic and desperation, I made a terrible decision in order to save my education, and therefore my future.
“Evie?” Melissa calls out with a small knock on the bathroom door. “Would you like a wine out of the mini bar?”
“No!” I immediately answer, jolting to my feet and dipping a toe into the shower. “I can’t afford those crazy prices, but you go ahead.”
There’s no way I’m allowing myself to be extorted by the scandalous pricing of Las Vegas mini bars when I have much more important things to pay for, like saving my education.
As I stand under the hot, steamy shower, I stare blankly at the wall and think.
I need to get my hands on two thousand dollars, and fast. Despite being fully convinced that I’m going to win big on a slot machine in the casino, I can’t bank my entire future on a gut feeling. I need to be more proactive than that and—
My shoulders relax. Of course.
I’m in the best possible place I could be when it comes to making money in creative ways. There’s nothing but wealth in Vegas—specifically wealthy people.
I just need to find them.