“Abby!” Nick yanked the soggy slip of paper off my dress with a drunken grin, “you left the price tag on!”
* * *
“No—it’s not funny! It’s actually not funny at all! And if you keep laughing, I’m going to shank you with my stiletto!” I shoved him into the town car and clambered in behind—my wet dress clinging to my legs. “Straight home—Bobby.”
The driver glanced back with a professionally restrained smile, and pulled away from the curb. When Nick started talking again, he discreetly rolled up the partition.
“You’re going to shank me?!” he asked with a dripping smile.
“I’m from Brooklyn,” I replied flatly. “Why? What do they do at boarding school?”
“We stab, Abby. We stab.”
I shot him a withering look.
“Well not everyone can be as pretentiously poetic as you.”
With another word, I swiveled away from him, looking down in dismay at my once-perfect ensemble. Not only had my princess dress become some kind of body-suit, hugging onto me like a second skin, but my perfectly coifed curls hung in limp tendrils down my chest. I was Cinderella alright. If Cinderella had gotten dunked in a mountain stream.
“Sorry about the car, Bobby,” I called through the partition. “I’ll get it serviced for you in the morning.” My voice dropped several accusatory octaves. “Right after I write the Reverie a rather exorbitant check...”
“You can just say it, Abby.” Nick took off each of his shoes and emptied them into the car with a look of supreme patience. “No need to be passive aggressive.”
Oh yeah? Then I’d show him ACTUALLY aggressive!
“You EAT lobster!” I cried. “You eat lobster ALL THE TIME!”
“But I never had to actually SEE them before, Abby!” Nick’s voice rose with self-righteous indignation to be just as loud as mine. “Not their FACES!”
His eyes grew wide as he remembered. A drunken shudder ran through his body.
“It was like they were screaming,” he concluded darkly. A look of absurd seriousness shadowing his face. “And only I could hear the screams.”
I glared at him for a moment, before crossing my arms and turning back to the window in a sulk. “You could not hear the screams.”
“I could hear them.”
On the other side of the car, Nick was glaring out his own window—just like me.
“Oh yeah?” I countered petulantly. “What did they sound like?”
“...you wouldn’t understand.”
Chapter 4
By the time we got back to Nick’s penthouse on the Upper East Side, he was passed out on my lap. He’d tried several times to undress himself—seized with the sudden intoxicated fear that he’d ‘catch his death of cold’ in the heated luxury vehicle. But thankfully (and with a little impromptu help from our driver), those fears had been put to bed.
I played absentmindedly with his wet curls as we pulled up against the curb.
This was another place that had shocked me the first time I saw it. Yet another glimpse into the world of the rich and powerful that had stopped me in my tracks.
Now? I knew the name of every bell-boy and receptionist. I knew which days to get the mail so that Nick wouldn’t have to see the more disparaging headlines about himself. I knew which things he was allergic to, and which chefs he preferred in the kitchen. I even knew the employee passcode to the service elevator to sneak out his various overnight guests so they wouldn’t run into one another on the stairs.
Yes—this place no longer had any secrets from me.
In a strange way, it almost felt like home.
“Max,” I rolled down the window a crack when I spotted Nick’s bodyguard, “can you help me over here?”