Viola
Saskia is extremely good at yoga. I’m good too, but she’s better. It’s like watching a vicious swan on fucking steroids. She’s done yoga for years, however. I haven’t. I don’t tend to cultivate habits, so I never developed a love or a need for yoga. Running is more my thing.
I might need to run for my life one day.
So it’s definitely more my thing.
With that in mind, I suppress my competitive urge to perform every position perfectly, and be content with just listening. We’re at the back of the class. Saskia on the mat beside me, in one elegant pose after another, relaying everything she knows about the illustrious Joseph Duke.
By the time she’s finished, I’ve mastered downward dog. I also know what position Joseph sleeps in, what he eats and drinks, what his typical day looks like, and who he speaks to on a daily basis. After class in the juice bar, Saskia also gives me a virtual tour on her phone of the venue, and runs me through the guest list.
It will have to be enough.
It’s a good job that I’m great at what I do.
“Lor will pick you up at eight,” Saskia says after yoga, as her driver takes us home.
“We live in the same house,” I say.
“You know what I meant.” She throws me a look. “What are you going to wear?”
“A dress?” I say, without fanfare.
“What kind of dress?”
“I don’t know. A black one?” Black is my go to color. My immediate concern is how I’m going to kill her adoptive father and get away with it, rather than the lack of appropriate evening wear in my wardrobe. As though she can hear my thoughts, her brow knits into the perfect frown. “You do know we’ll be at The Salinger, don’t you?”
I give her a blank look.
“The most exclusive, sought after hotel in the whole of London right now?”
I frown at her. “And?”
She sighs as the car turns into the road the frat house is on and parks up in front of the main gate. “I’ll send someone over.”
Saskia’s someone is her personal stylist with an array of expensive, designer dresses all in my size. I pick the least offensive and shoo the haughty bitch out of the frat house before I slice her prettily adorned neck open.
From what I understand, Dino and Jude are also going to the engagement party. I bump into them downstairs, both looking extremely fuckable. Dino’s sparkling blue eyes match the royal blue, single breasted suit jacket over a light shirt that he’s wearing. Jude in a gray blazer, white shirt with skinny black tie, seems broader somehow.
Dino takes in my expensive dress and the understated jewellery that isn’t mine, and scoffs. “Tell me again why you’re Lorcan’s date and not ours?”
“It’s Saskia’s engagement party,” I say, by way of explanation.
“Since Lorcan has you all to himself tonight,” he says. “Then I call dibs for Sunday.” He glances over at Jude who’s prone on the sofa. “Saint, you want Monday?”
“Fuck no,” Jude snaps.
I’d rather stick a knitting needle in my eye than go to this atrocity of an engagement party, but we don’t all get what we want.
I grab my coat and purse, and leave before I look for a fucking knitting needle. I wouldn’t put it past Saskia to have some stashed away in the bedroom she uses when she stays here.
In the limo on the way over to The Salinger, Lorcan hardly looks at me. He’s engrossed in playing with his silver cufflinks, and staring out the window. He’s wearing a dark gray, almost black, suit with a crisp, white shirt, jade green waistcoat, and a thin silver tie. It brings out the cut glass color of eyes.
When he finally does look my way, I can’t decipher his intent. “She got you to wear the Oscar,” he says, as his gaze sweeps my figure from top to bottom.
“The Oscar?”
“Oscar De La Renta.”