Chapter 9
“If you tilt your head to the side and squint your eyes, it looks like two people fucking on top of a burning building.”
“You need to get your eyes tested.”
Khloe tilted her head to the left and squinted her eyes nearly shut. “My mistake, it’s two people banging on the top of the Eiffel Tower.”
“Remind me, why did I bring you with me again?”
“Because you love me.” Khloe batted her eyelashes with a shit-eating grin. “And because without me you wouldn’t have any entertainment for this joke of an engagement party, which I still can’t believe you agreed to plan.”
“Too late to back out now.”
“It’s never too late to tell your family to go and do one,” she said. “My offer still stands by the way. I’ll happily tell your demon of a mother and Maya the fastest route to the closest, tallest building they can jump off.”
This wasn’t the first time we’d talked about this, and I doubted it would be the last.
Ignoring Khloe, my best friend and roommate, I walked toward the back of Nirvana Gallery to check out the stage area the owner had set up.
Khloe understood to a degree the relationship I had with my family, and how no matter how much I tried to fight against them, they managed to break me down into submission with that freaking contract.
Maybe I was a fool for not looking deeper into the contract, but Fernando gave me less than twenty-four hours to sign it. Not to mention, I naively didn’t believe my own family would screw me over.
It’s why Khloe hated my mother and stepfather. Truthfully, they weren’t fans of my best friend either, likely because she wasn’t scared to stand up for me and call them on their bullshit.
“Is this stage big enough?” I asked, diverting the conversation.
“Considering the size of his ego, I doubt the entire city of New York would be big enough for him,” she scoffed.
“Unfortunately, we are pretty limited on the stage size, not sure if I could get one as big as the whole state. Though I could make some calls and see if I can get one the size of Rhode Island?” I joked.
“The stage is fine.”
“We could always close off part of the dance floor. I’m aware he has a thing about performing indoors.”
“Tough shit, he doesn’t have a choice.” There was no shying away from the sharpness in her voice. “He’ll do what he is told or else he’ll have me to answer to.”
“How’s it going with him anyway? Things any better?”
Khloe’s nostrils flared. “When you say better, do you mean do I still want to slice his ball sack off and shove it so far up his ass that he can taste his own unconceived children?”
I swallowed the laugh threatening to escape.
No one, and I mean no one, got under Khloe’s skin the way her current client did. Khloe worked for a PR company that managed musical talent. Pop stars, rock stars, boy bands, divas—you name it, Khloe had worked with them.
She was, without a shadow of a doubt, the best of the best in her field.
Her job solely involved damage control, stepping in when a talent’s reputation was on the brink of blowing up in their face.
She fought tooth and nail for her job, starting as her boss’s personal assistant and working her way up to being one of the most sought-after people in the company.
Over the years we lived together, I’d never seen her lose her cool with any of her clients.
That was until she was assigned to look after none other than Benjamin Gates.
“The sooner my contract is over with him, the better,” Khloe said. “He is beyond help. I’ve tried everything.”
“His bad boy reputation isn’t an act, then?”
“Fuck no, he is rotten right to his fucking core. It’s like he gets a kick out of being a difficult bastard.”
Boy oh boy, had that guitar-slinging country singer buried himself deep under Khloe’s skin.
“Maybe he is being difficult because he doesn’t want to lose you.”
“Trust me, he wants rid of me as much as I want rid of him,” she said bluntly. “The second the contract expires in August, the sooner he is someone else’s problem.”
The slight tinge of red on her cheeks told a different story.
Hiding my smile behind my engagement party binder, I spotted the late as per usual Mal Juniper—the third act to our friendship trio—walking into the gallery with coffee.
“I come bearing peace offerings for my tardiness,” Mal greeted us with a cheeky smirk. “There’s even a cinnamon soy latte with a double shot of espresso for you, Khloe.”
“Your offering of peace in exchange for forgiveness is under consideration,” Khloe stated, taking her latte. “Expect my answer within five to seven business days.”
Mal shook his head and rolled his pale blue eyes. “I look forward to receiving your correspondence.”
I grabbed my coffee. “The day you’re on time is the day pigs learn to ice-skate.”
“I don’t think that’s quite how the saying goes,” Mal chuckled. “But yes, I’m sorry. The latest intake for the swimming team were late to start practice.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’m just glad you came,” I said as I looked around the gallery and envisioned exactly what Maya wanted.
She wanted intimate but not too enclosed, with a rustic theme and a touch of class to match the perfect couple.
Daniel grew up on a ranch in Montana. I’d been there once while we were together, and it was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever visited. He moved to New York to study Agriculture with a Business focus, hoping to return to his family ranch and take it over from his father.
A life he had planned with me.
Maya, however, would never leave New York. Her modelling career meant the world to her, and much like our mother, she enjoyed living in the high society of New York. She valued appearances and status over family roots and ties, as Daniel once did.
Hence their theme. Daniel was the rustic to Maya’s class.
Thankfully, Nirvana Gallery was perfect, and the fact that I was on good terms with the owner, Violet Ortega, meant that getting the space at the last minute didn’t give me the usual migraine working on a short time frame did.
“No, tilt your head the other way,” Khloe’s voice drifted across the gallery. “And squint your eyes. Keep going. They need to be basically closed and then you’ll see it.”
“How in the hell do you see anyone fucking? It looks like one big blob to me,” Mal said. “I mean, do you see people screwing, Livi?”
I shrugged. “If I look really closely at it, it looks like two bears in a boxing ring fighting it out over who gets the last pot of honey.”
Mal and Khloe turned in unison to stare at me.
“The bear on the right is most definitely winning,” I hummed.
Khloe smirked. “And I’m the one who has to get their eyes tested?”
I hugged my binder tight to my chest. “You know what they say about art.”
“It makes no sense?” Mal looked back at the strange painting. “That it all looks the same?”
“Well, yes, that,” I laughed, “but it’s also subjective and mostly nonsensical.”
“While we are on the topic of nonsensical things,” Mal said suddenly, pulling out his phone. “Care to explain this photo?”
Like a pair of magnets, my eyes were drawn to the larger hand in the photo. The same strong hand that I clung to like a lifeline during my panic attack.
Freaking hell, that felt like a lifetime ago.
Elliott’s hand made mine look so much smaller. I tracked the length of the thick vein on the back of his hand that I may or may not have zoomed in on several times back in my apartment. The same vein that I knew for a fact travelled up his wrist and made me wonder if it travelled to his biceps.
When I had grabbed his hand for the photo, adjusting him like my own little puppet, it took all my strength not to slip my fingers between his for the photo.
It was hardly my fault that even hungover Elliott was downright handsome.
Khloe leaned in and gasped. “Oh. My. Fucking. God! That’s a man’s hand in that photo.” She grabbed the phone and studied the photo closely. “Most definitely a man, and it’s not Mal’s. This is a manly man’s hand.”
“Gee, thanks,” Mal muttered.
“Have you been keeping secrets from me, Olivia Garcia?!” Khloe exclaimed. “Because I swear to all that is holy, if you are seeing someone and haven’t told me, I will put my red socks in your next whitewash.”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Khloe’s lips curved into a smirk. “Oh yes, I would. Say goodbye to your favorite white jumpsuit because it’s about to be marshmallow pink.”
Only for the fact that Khloe usually did our washing, it was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
“Give me that.” I snagged the phone off her and handed it back to Mal. “And keep your hands firmly off my white jumpsuit or else.”
“Only if you tell me who this mystery boyfriend is, a boyfriend you didn’t even tell your best friend about.”
“I haven’t been hiding anything from you, I swear. The guy in the photo isn’t my boyfriend… well, not exactly.”
They both looked at me as if I had sprouted a spare head.
“It’s a long story that started with me in the emergency room having a panic attack and ending with me agreeing to fake date a very cute, and I mean cute in a so freaking fuckable way, doctor.”
“Back up,” Khloe said. “You walked into the hospital with a panic attack and walked out with a boyfriend?”
“Fake boyfriend,” I corrected.
Mal frowned. “The important question right now is, why do you even have a fake boyfriend?”
After explaining the whole situation, not missing a single detail from the dinner with Maya and Daniel to the photo I took of mine and Elliott’s hands, my friends fell into complete silence.
Which, for them, was a rarity.
The vibration of my phone cut through the pin-dropping silence of the gallery. Letting the two of them stew over my revelation a little longer, I checked my phone and groaned at the familiar sight of my mother’s number.
She had been calling me nonstop since I posted the photo.
I sent each of her calls straight to voicemail, and this time was no different.
Before I pocketed my phone, a string of text messages lit up the screen.
[Mamá:] Olivia, I know you’re ignoring me.
[Mamá:] For once, will you answer your phone.