Chapter 4 Remy
REMY
“Hold it right there,” Ariel’s voice barks at me through my cell.
I’m sitting on a bench in Central Park, phone pressed against my ear, sweat pooling between my breasts inside my sports bra from my morning jog. The sun is beating down on the back of my neck, so I stand up and turn my face towards it instead.
“Let me get this straight,” Ariel continues.
My roommate and best friend is still visiting family and not due back for another week, but I didn’t know who else to speak to.
My mom is wrapped up in her new boyfriend, Pedro.
My dad has… well, I can’t even remember which girlfriend he’s currently with.
Not that I could speak to my dad about this even if he wasn’t reliving his misspent youth, going to music festivals, dressing like a young Mick Jagger, and dating women young enough to be his daughter.
“You had sex twice,” Ariel is still talking, “he hasn’t spoken to you since, and now you want to pull a sickie so that you don’t have to see him. Am I missing something here? Like the part where you fucked yourself without any input from your incredibly wealthy and undeniably hot boss.”
I suck in a deep breath. It sounds different when Ariel says it, and I can almost see her with her hands on her hips, dreadlocks trailing down her back, big brown eyes narrowed with disbelief. It’s worse than that though; I was taking the softly-softly approach.
“I’m thinking of quitting.”
“Oh no you don’t, missy.” Ariel has adopted the stern tone she usually saves for when I let someone walk all over me. Her words, not mine. It happens regularly given my intense fear of confrontation. “Did he, or did he not, say that you’d bewitched him?”
“Yes, but—”
“Good. For a moment there, I thought that I’d imagined the phone call where you told me that he fucked you on the sheepskin rug.”
“Ariel!” I smile at a woman walking a white poodle that has a serious amount of attitude.
My friend is on a roll now though. “Did he also tell you, in Gaelic, that you’re his? ‘Ariel, it was so sexy I almost came in my panties’.” She repeats what I told her the following day, in a perfect imitation of my voice.
“Well, yes, but—”
“And do you, or do you not need the money from this gig for that little debt called a student loan?”
“Yes.” This time, I don’t even bother with the ‘but’. I sense that she isn’t done talking.
“So please explain to me why you would walk away from a job that pays well. A job, I might add, where the boss is an adonis if your description is to be believed, because he hasn’t lured you into his private elevator and jammed the mechanism so that he can fuck you undisturbed on your break.”
Now there’s an image.
I mentally shake myself. “I don’t want it to get awkward.”
“Remy, the only one making this situation awkward is you. Have you seen him getting flustered whenever he looks at you?”
“Well, no. But that’s because it didn’t mean anything to him.”
“Girl, men who want to walk away and forget it ever happened do not use words like bewitched or speak in fucking fantasy language.”
I chuckle. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Course you wouldn’t. You wasted your youth on a self-appointed prince charming who wouldn’t know a Gaelic word if it bit him on the ass.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Take my word for it. This Bash guy wants you.”
I want to believe her, I really do. But… “He has a funny way of showing it.”
“He could’ve sacked you though, right?”
“I guess.”
“It’s what any boss would do if they crossed a line and didn’t want to face the consequences. It’s what I would do if the roles were reversed.”
“That’s because you’re ruthless.” I laugh, but I feel the tension easing from my shoulders just a little.
“Which is exactly my point. The guy owns a casino for fuck’s sake. The stakes are a little higher for him than they are for the barista in the local coffee shop.”
She has a point. Why am I so bad at this?
“Do you think I should speak to him?”
“Too needy.”
“Find a way to bump into him on the casino floor?”
“Jeez, Remy, remind me to have a word with your mom when I see her. Didn’t she teach you anything about men?”
“No.”
Looking back, I think that my relationship with George let her off the hook.
She was never the same after Danielle died, and she and my dad were already starting to drift apart like ships sailing to different destinations.
Maybe she was too self-absorbed to consider that George might not be right for me.
Or maybe she was relieved that she didn’t have to worry about me the way she worried about my sister.
“Help me out here, Ariel. I can’t even look at him without my knees wobbling. How am I supposed to have a meaningful conversation about what happened between us?”
“Who said anything about meaningful conversations?” I can’t see Ariel, but I know her well enough from rooming with her to recognize mischief when I hear it. “You say he hasn’t thought about you since he fu—”
“Yeah, I’m in the middle of Central Park. I don’t want to think about it right now.”
Her low chuckle reaches me through the handset. “Worried about hard nipples and wet patches in your panties?”
My cheeks are suddenly hotter than they were a moment ago, and I peer around the park to see if anyone is staring at me like they heard every word.
No one is.
“Anyway, back to the advice you were about to offer me.”
Silence. Then, “Sorry, I was still picturing the naked adonis on the sheepskin rug with his ass in the air.”
“Ariel!” This is how a lot of our conversations go. I try to be serious, and my best friend follows her instincts in whichever tangent they take her. Sometimes, I wish I could channel my inner Ariel and go with the flow, but I guess I’m too highly strung.
“I thought it was obvious, my gorgeous na?ve friend. You want him to notice you and whizz you back up to his swanky apartment, yeah?” She already knows the answer—I haven’t stopped talking about Bash Murray since the night I spent in his guest room. “So, make him notice you.”
“O-kay.”
“Wow, please tell me you’re still following the conversation.”
She takes a breath before diving straight in because this is Ariel’s forte. Advice. Nurturing. Straight-talking when required. She’s a girl’s girl, who won’t stand back and watch her friends being treated like shit by anyone. But especially not by a man.
“Get out on that casino floor and flirt your little ass off.” She must cover her cell with her hand; I hear her muffled voice talking to someone else, and then she’s back. “I guarantee he’ll notice that.”
“But… we’re not allowed to interact with the guests. I’ll lose my job over it.”
“The same job you’re willing to quit because you fucked the boss?”
I laugh. “Technically, he fucked me.”
“Technically, you’re a grown woman who would be a fucking catch but has no idea of her worth. So, go flirt with the bartender, or the pitbull—”
“Pit boss. And no.”
“The concierge then.”
“Too far away from the casino.”
“The head of security?” she suggests.
“Bash’s stepdad.”
“Wow, Remy, you know more about this guy’s fam than I know about Tristan.” Tristan is her on-off boyfriend; they’ve been seeing each other for the past three years. “You’re practically married.”
“Slight exaggeration, but I hear you.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“Go to work and flirt with… someone.”
“Louder for those at the back.” Ariel is persistent if nothing else.
“I’m going to go to work and flirt.”
A guy in a dark suit and reflective shades looks at me, and I flash him a smile. It feels wrong, but I get a buzz when he salutes me, even if he does keep right on walking.
Putting it into practice, however, is a different matter.
The pit boss is in his late 40s, with graying hair and angry eyes.
I get that running the casino floor is probably stressful; it’s fast-paced, high-staked, and the clientele is the kind that would know how to sue, and win, if you stare at them for longer than three seconds.
But the lines around his mouth suggest that he forgot how to smile long before he took on this role.
He’s a definite no-no.
The security team is out of bounds. They carry guns, and Terry probably already knows about me and his stepson. I want to get noticed, not escorted off the premises for messing around with Bash’s feelings.
Okay, so I’m a fawn when it comes to most things in life. A people-pleaser. I’m still putting Bash first even though he has avoided me for the last three weeks. Maybe Ariel is right. Maybe it’s time to man up.
I notice Bash during my shift on the poker table. He’s watching me. My heart twitches and flutters like it got stung by a wasp, and I lose concentration for a second. It’s enough for the pit boss to intervene and replace me with Fran, who mouths ‘sorry’ as she takes over.
“Break. Now,” the boss growls in my ear before scanning the floor for anyone else who isn’t bringing their A-game tonight.
The bartender I collided with the night that turned my world upside down, smiles as I pass the bar. He’s cute. Jet black curls, brown eyes that would melt even Ariel’s hardened heart, broad shoulders. He also wears a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand.
Like, he looks about my age and is already married.
How does that happen to people? I can barely make my own bed in the mornings, and I know how to cook pasta, but toss a raw steak my way, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Not that I can afford to eat steak. Or even enjoy it when someone else is paying, but the thought of walking down the aisle in a stiff white dress and saying, “I do,” freaks the crap out of me.
“Everything alright?”
For one heart-stopping moment, I think that Bash followed me to the staffroom. But it’s Tom, the bartender.
“I’m fine.” I smile. “Thank you.”
“Here.” He comes closer and hands me a can of Diet Coke. “You look like you could use the caffeine.”
“That bad, huh?”