Chapter 7 #2
“You should be angry. He could have fucking killed you,” she says, and I flinch. “Sorry. I’m still angry for you.”
“It’s okay,” I say. The reminder that he could have strangled me to death isn’t great but pretending it didn’t happen won’t do me any good either. “Physically, I’m fine. I’m safe here while I heal mentally and figure out where I go next. The sadness will fade with time. The anger…I don’t know.”
“How are you doing with money?” she asks after a few beats of introspective silence.
“My cash is low,” I admit. “I haven’t pulled any more out, yet.”
“I got a name from Luke. A finance guy that works with the stupidly wealthy. He’s evidently a pro at this sort of thing.”
“This sort of thing?”
“Moving money anonymously. Like, for celebrities who want to make sure their home address can’t be tracked back and whatnot. Luke talked to him, he said he’d help out,” she says.
Luke is the designer she works for. He’s hired me for a few campaigns over the years. I always found him to be a sweetheart. Straight forward about his vision, but never boorish like so many other designers could be.
“I’d appreciate the help. Pierre probably doesn’t have access, but I don’t want to risk that he does and can see the location of an ATM I take money out of.”
“Better safe than sorry,” she says. “There’s no way he’ll just, I don’t know, move on and leave you alone?”
“I can hope. He doesn’t give up easily, though.”
“He can’t think you’d take him back after this,” she says incredulously.
“Of course, he can.” I swipe at the few tears that spill over. “I always went back. Every time I thought I was strong enough to walk away, he’d lure me back.”
“Oh, Louisa,” Juliet says. “I didn’t mean…fuck, I don’t know how to not make it worse for you.”
“You haven’t made anything worse, Jules. You’ve given me a safe house. How can you think you’ve done anything but help?”
“Because I haven’t been here an hour and you’re already crying.” She downs what is left in her wine glass.
I grab the bottle and pour more in for us both.
“This time was worse than all the times before,” I say. “But it started years ago. I hid it. For him. His career and reputation. For my own career, and my own shame.”
“How did you hide it so well? I mean, your body is your business. How did nobody see?”
“The bruises, you mean? He was careful. In the beginning, when things first turned physical, he’d make sure anything he did to me wouldn’t show.
Shoving things into my mouth, for instance.
Knocking the back of my head against the wall.
Maybe that would leave a knot that I could explain away to whatever stylist might notice, but it wouldn’t be obvious.
Eventually, he tracked my schedule, knew what types of shoots I had coming up.
I think he even took notice at where I bruised easiest and the spots that healed quickest. If he hit me square in the stomach, I’d tend not to bruise there. So, it was a favorite of his.”
“Oh my God,” she cries softly, swiping at her own tears.
“By the end, he didn’t care about all of that, as much. I got a few concerned looks from MUA’s, but they all valued their careers as much as I did mine. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to keep the secrets of the people who keep them employed.”
“I hate that,” she says, lying back and staring at the clouds that dance past. “What a fucked-up world this is.”
“It’s not all bad,” I tell her after I hum a little agreement. “It’s nice here.”
“In Stowaway?” Her face scrunches up in disgust.
“You grew up here; you’re supposed to hate it.” I laugh, and she smiles back.
“True, true. At least you have a nice neighbor.”
“Grady’s been great,” I agree, feeling her gaze on me.
“I didn’t know you blushed,” she teases.
“I don’t,” I say, playfully tossing an olive at her, which she swats away into the sand. “It’s not like that, anyway. He’s kind. I’m not used to it.”
“It could be like that. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with you having a harmless fling.”
“The thing is, I don’t know how to tell if it’s harmless or not.”
Juliet reaches over to take my hand in hers. That unfamiliar human touch I’ve craved so much. You don’t realize how much you need something until you’re deprived of it. Touch. Tenderness. Kindness. Love.
There’s a lot I missed out on as a child. These were some of those things. It’s possible that’s partly why I didn’t recognize the problem when Pierre started pulling them away from me, too.
For now, I’ll enjoy my friend’s fingers entwined with my own. The sense of comfort and security it brings. Much like when Grady held me, it makes me less alone in the world. Even if for a short time. If I learn nothing else from this, at least I’ll know how to savor the small moments.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” Juliet says. “I’m also glad that you are. You look good in her house.”
“Will you tell me about her?”
“God, she was the greatest,” Juliet says, rolling to her side to see me better.
“My mom was a teenager when she got pregnant with me. My father was some tourist kid, here on a weekend away with his parents. When I was about two, she ran off with some other random guy. Left me with Irma, who never blinked twice about raising another child.”
“I never knew why you grew up with your grandmother,” I say.
“We both kept some secrets,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“She let me be me. There was structure but not so many rules. She encouraged me to try everything. Violin, dance, volleyball, pottery, anything and everything that was offered. But she never gave me a hard time if I didn’t enjoy it and wanted to quit.
She always told me I’d recognize what was mine when I found it. ”
“I like that.”
“Me too. I’ve tried to live by that, you know? Letting go of things that don’t feel right, even when it’s been hard. I’m not always successful, but I like to think she’s proud of me for figuring it out when I do.”
“Of course, she’s proud of you. You’re wildly successful, smart, independent, and kind.”
“You forgot gorgeous,” she teases.
“The most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Big compliment coming from a bona fide supermodel.”
“By whose definition?” I can’t help the laughter that bursts out.
“Mine! Back in the days of Linda Evangelista and Paulina Porizkova, you would be. Things are only different now because of social media. You still have a huge following there. I don’t know if you look.”
Linda said once that she didn’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day.
She got both praise and backlash for it over the years.
I wonder how her critics would feel if they knew how much the top-tier models make these days.
Despite the smoke Juliet is blowing up my ass, I am not a top-tier model.
Though, I made much more than ten thousand a day on many occasions.
Truth is, most don’t make all that much.
I was a hard worker, but so much of it has been luck.
“I don’t. Not at my own accounts, anyhow. I check his to try and keep track. It’s hard to sort what’s real and what’s for show, though.”
“I’m starting to think everything about him is phony,” she says.
“Mostly, it is,” I say. “But I don’t want to talk about him. Or how he frightens me too much to take my own money. Or that all my possessions are locked up in his stupid house.”
“It is a stupid house, isn’t it?” She giggles, the wine now kicking in.
“It looks like a Transformer,” I say through laughter. It was a big concrete monstrosity that Pierre loved only because it was designed by a famous architect and he liked to drop that tidbit, as if it made him a better person for living in it.
“Oh, God, it does!” She laughs harder, snorting a couple of times, which makes me laugh. “He’s so proud of it, but it’s like you’re bracing for it to lift off at any minute.”
“How can someone who takes such gorgeous photos have such horrible taste?” I ask the question about him, but it fits me too. If I were to Google my name, there would be pages and pages of beautiful pictures of me, but I ended up with the ugliest of men.
“I had a man like that, once,” she says.
“Before I knew you, but back in New York. His name was Levi. That should have been all the sign I needed. I’ve never known a Levi that wasn’t an asshole.
He was a textile merchant and could find the most amazing fabric, but I rarely saw him in anything but a tracksuit. ”
“You don’t even wear jeans. How did you manage to date a guy in sweats?”
“What can I say? He had a great dick.”
“I miss that,” I say on a sigh. “Pierre was below average and quit caring about my needs years ago.”
“I wanted to murder him before that nugget of knowledge. But now, I want to make it a slow, agonizing death.”