Elle
He’s letting me leave in just a towel. In front of everyone.
He always said he’d kill anyone who looked at his pretty pussy, yet his father had and he’d done nothing. I snort and then chuckle uncontrollably. I look pathetic in the lift’s metallic walls as I sink, plunge, to what feels like the end of everything.
The lift’s doors slide open, but I don’t slide out as my manic laughter subsides and stark reality settles in as I peer into the lobby. I’m in a towel, with no underwear and nowhere to go but in a strange ride-share with racks of money anyone could steal, and how would I defend myself? Bart Auclair seeing me naked is all I can take for one day. I couldn’t add in half the city if a breeze or fistfight caught me.
Rin. Rin stole that key to Bae’s unit, directly below Gant’s. She must have.
Quickly, I hit the number one button three times, and slowly, the lift rises again. When I slide into the empty hall, there are only two doors, offset on opposite sides. Gant’s unit takes up the entire ceiling above, so which one ‘just below’ is Bae’s?
I open my contacts and do something for the first time ever. I call Rin.
“Come to the hallway,” I say before she can breathe a confused ‘hello’ . “I’m here. With the money.”
Not even a half minute later, Rin’s bewildered face pops out from the left unit, but she quickly retreats, wary of surveillance cameras. I on the other hand don’t give a fuck if Bae knows we’re trespassing. I don’t think I’ll ever give a fuck about anything else again. Not after my fake boyfriend’s father saw me spreadeagle.
“What are you — ” She eyes my towel, the duffel bag drooping on my shoulder and my dead expression. Her mouth snaps shut, and she steps aside, allowing me to walk past her into the flat.
There’s barely any furniture as I stumble into the living room and sink to my knees because suddenly my legs can’t support my weight any more. Rin disappears, and when she returns, she hands me a long-sleeved turtleneck. Clearly, it's one of Bae’s, who never even showed his ears.
When I pull it over my head and free my long red hair from the collar that’s tall enough to cover half my face, Rin doesn’t ask me any questions. She doesn’t even dig through the duffel bag for the money she’s desperately wanted for weeks. Instead, she rummages around the kitchen, banging pots and pans and cooking something as I stare unseeingly over the balcony at the glittering city below.
When she comes back, something sweet and savoury fills my nostrils, breaking my trance. I stare into the black bean paste noodles for the longest time as Rin eats quietly beside me. On the counter, there’s a wrapper and a marker. She scribbled the number four across the packaging, no doubt to replace it later.
Something about that breaks me a little more as we watch the lights with the money-filled duffel bag between us. With each bite, the lights grow blurrier and saltier.
“It doesn’t feel like it now, but you won,” Rin says finally, when the noodles are long gone and the incessant pinging of my phone with Beaussip’s divided comments has faded into the background. “You beat Gant Auclair.”
Hale’s earlier words echo in my mind. ‘What’s the point of playing if not to win?’ I should be riding high. I knew Gant didn’t love me, just like I knew Jaime didn’t. Hadn’t I drilled that into my head during my hospital stay? I knew our reunion wasn’t real. It was just a game, and I won. I’m a winner.
I crumple like a loser onto Rin’s makeshift bed of blankets, and eventually, she crumples beside me, pulling the blanket over us.
My hysterical cries grow louder until I eventually stop stifling them with the pillow. I just ugly cry my heart out because I still have a stupid fucking heart. The heart I thought he ripped halfway out the night of the play. I thought I’d finished cutting it out myself by drilling truths into my deluded brain because for as many times as I’ve called Gant delusional, I’m even more so.
My head grows heavy and stuffy like it’s loaded with cotton as I hyperventilate, yet Rin never says a word. She doesn’t tell me to calm down or to breathe as another hour rolls by. She doesn’t tell me to shut the fuck up so she can get some beauty sleep or that only pussies cry.
The blankets rustle, as her socked toe pushes against my bare foot, the minimal amount of contact and support she can offer. Yet, her calm energy flows through me, and though I still hiccup until my swollen eyelids seal themselves shut, I don’t feel entirely alone.
◆◆◆
I was wrong yesterday when I left the women’s bathroom with that green folder, convinced it would be my last time in this cursed building. Today is my last day, and in some sad, pathetic way, maybe I’d stayed in the hopes that he’d come looking for me. But he hadn’t come to Bae’s flat in the early hours with a sixth sense that I was there. And when I woke up, I was still immersed in my nightmare-turned-reality.
My phone buzzes, and my heart leaps in my chest, wondering if Gant’s summoning me back to hell. My fingers clumsily fiddle to draw my phone out of Bae’s sweatpants, but the manic rush shrivels and dies when I see that it’s not Gant’s name floating across the screen.
“Hale?” I answer.
“Where are you?” I can barely hear him over the club’s blasting music.
I check the time. It’s only three twelve in the afternoon. Why is the club open already?
“I…” I glance around the massive lobby. How could I tell him that I’m still at Gant’s penthouse after Beaussip’s article? Then again, if he’d seen the article, why is he calling me, his best friend’s traitorous slut according to the divided comments? “Hale, what’s going on?”
“Look, I need you on the floor tonight. It’s our reopening, and the back-to-black event is happening.”
“The what? ”
“The last big bash before Beaulieu reopens.”
I’m so confused. “Hale, I haven’t been at the club for over a week — ”
“We’ve been closed for a week for the roof repairs. Now we’re open.”
“Yeah, I got that, but… haven’t you seen — ”
“Beaussip’s article? Yeah. Haven’t you seen the new one?”
I pull the phone away from my ear and see Beaussip’s notification, I hadn’t noticed because I’d only cared about messages from one person.
Beaussip
We reached out to Gant for a comment about his former girlfriend.
Beaussip: Who’s to you now?
Gant hours later sends a blank screen.
Beaussip : Dead?
Gant: Do you see anything in that photo?
Beaussip: No. Nothing. Does that mean she no longer exists in your universe?
Gant: Precisely.
Blocked.
I put the phone to my ear with shaking fingers.
“It’s over. Gant’s done with you, which means I don’t have to worry about his antics, at least for tonight.” Over.
Done.
“But him being done with you doesn’t mean that I am.”
“It doesn’t?”
“We have a business arrangement. That doesn’t stop because your little game with Gant has. It was going to end eventually. You must’ve known that.”
I’m quiet for a long time, and Hale sighs.
“Look, , the blue-blooded world is different from our world.”
“Your world is different from mine, too.” I point out.
“But I’m in the middle. I can touch both sides to understand it. But you, you can’t play leapfrog and skip all those levels. You went crashing into Gant’s world, and now you’re crashing out. It’s just the way things are. Stay in your circle, and no one gets hurt.”
I pause, dread trickling through me. “Is that what you’re doing now? Staying in your circle?”
What had changed in a day?
“I’m doing what I do best, showing everyone the best fucking time they’ve ever had. Come to the club and I can show you too. I can make you forget everything for one night.”
Squeals of girls in the background seem to agree, but only one face comes to mind. Stassi’s . I’d only really seen Hale with Stassi, despite hearing of his past, and now, his past is resurfacing by the sounds of it.
Still, forgetting sounds irresistible…
“While you’ve been playing house, I’ve been branching out. I’m hosting a private event tomorrow night that’ll bring the club a lot of revenue. Maybe even enough to buy you out with profit if that’s what you want.”
I shift my phone to the other ear. I’d pressed it so hard against my skull to hear him that it's throbbing in tune with my heart. “Did the Beaumonts bring on this revelation? That you should stick to what you know?” I ask, remembering Alistair’s words on the cricket pitch, but is it Stassi’s coldness that drove the point home?
“They did, just as Bart’s arrival probably showed you yours. You don’t belong there, , but you can belong at the club. That’s the good part about places like Pierrot’s. Everyone, including all the freaks and rejects, is welcome. Work the floor tonight with Rie. Get your investment back, and figure out the rest later. Gant doesn’t want to play with you any more, but Libellule does, and you made a commitment.”
A commitment that’s trumping his friendship with Gant by associating with me? But what did I care? I wasn’t just shelved, I was given away. Besides, where did I have to go on my last night before Beaulieu anyway?
Not to Jaime and Jarett’s, and now that I had money, I could book a hotel, but the thought of being alone with my thoughts terrifies me. Rin’s leaving the flat because Bae’s flying into èze tonight, but even if she weren’t, I couldn’t bear being beneath Gant’s feet for a second longer.
“I’ll be there soon,” I say finally.
“You won’t regret it.”
I make it halfway to the exit when a voice stops me.
“?”