Strong, silent, and polite—the no-bullshit type. I would be jealous of Judith if it wasn’t totally fucked up. Her father was a standup guy, and I wondered what kind of person I would be if I’d had someone to look up to.
Rob knew his daughter better than I did, so he agreed that keeping our arrangement a secret was in everyone’s best interest. Lying to her wasn’t ideal, but we both knew that if Judith found out I was helping them by paying her father’s way into an experimental treatment program for people with advanced cancer, she would throw a fit, accept the offer nonetheless, then let it eat at her conscience.
I’d had Dan find the experimental program, because I didn’t want Brianna to know anything about Jude she hadn’t volunteered herself. Since Robert wasn’t doing incredibly bad for someone with stage three cancer, he was easily accepted into the trial—after a large donation to the clinic.
Getting help from me was going to mess with Jude’s sense of integrity. She was fiercely independent, and I didn’t want this gesture to have the aftertaste of quick fucks and sardonic office whips. Besides, it wasn’t solely about Judith. I wasn’t a heartless prick. Helping Robert was my way to atone for what had happened to Camille.
I’d taken a life, what was the harm in trying to save one?
Robert didn’t ask me many things that weren’t related to the treatment he would be provided. He didn’t ask me, for instance, my motivations for helping his daughter in the first place. And so I spared him the story of our first meeting, in which an hour after I’d bought her drinks, my tongue was already rimming her crack while my fingers plunged into her pink, soaking wet pussy. I didn’t normally eat ass, but hers was too sweet to pass. At any rate, I did not consider it a compliment worth mentioning to her ill father.
We arranged that a cab would pick him up twice a week for the treatment, all expenses paid by me. As far as Jude was concerned, this was an experiment he’d been offered by the insurance company they were now a client of through her employment at LBC, free of charge. It wasn’t farfetched, and this way she wouldn’t have to worry about paying me back or think I was expecting something in return.
This was not about getting my cock sucked, although, truth be told, based on the way she’d looked at me the evening I hung out with Emilie last week, it hardly seemed she’d mind paying in that dubious currency.
After we talked shop, Rob and I ended up chatting for another hour. It wasn’t like I had a ton of things to do on a Sunday when I wasn’t in Florida visiting Maman. It turned out we had a lot in common. We both thought Shake Shack was overrated, that the Rockefeller Christmas Tree should be illegal (or alternatively, that tourists should be illegal. But one or the other had to go for the sake of the city’s citizens’ sanity), and that the Yankees were the best thing to ever happen to our NYC.
On the subway, making my way back to Manhattan, I sorted through my inbox on my phone. An email popped in from my father, and everybody in the office was CCed.
It was a reminder for an invitation to a gala in the Laurent Towers Hotel next weekend. The original invitations had been sent weeks ago. Of all things, we were celebrating the #MeToo movement, raising money to be donated to several women’s shelters across the country. LBC had put the spotlight on #MeToo, relentlessly chasing stories about sexual assault and gender discrimination since the movement had exploded. My father prided himself on taking a stand, while at the same time taking advantage of his position to coax women into his bed. The list of former and current employees he’d slept with was longer than War and Peace, and just as disturbing. His moving Judith to our floor was a blunt way of trying to get both into her dress and under my skin.
I’d blow his cover in a second if it wasn’t for the fact that at this point, he was recovering from his fourth heart attack, newly divorced, and too tired to fight back. I liked my wars fair and didn’t need another death on my conscience. I was waiting for him to quietly step down from his position so I could assume it and cut my ties with him permanently.
I RSVPed to the stupid event and bounced my foot, looking up for a distraction. The woman in front of me—late twenties, good looking in a corporate-wallflower, champagne-blond kind of way—smiled at me from behind her hardcover Oprah’s Book Club novel. I didn’t smile back. I wasn’t looking for a hookup for hookup’s sake. I wasn’t a player—whatever the fuck that meant—and, unlike some, I didn’t treat fucking as a national sport.
My one-night stand with Judith had been one of a handful. I usually spaced them out to every other month or so—just enough to keep my sexual appetite and libido sated without having to worry about my dick falling off from an unknown disease. At any rate, I’d fucked Jude not too long ago, and would be going for round two soon, if it was up to me.
The woman tucked her book into her bag, got up from her seat, and walked toward the doors, waiting for them to open. She shot me another look, this time wistful.
“Taken?” she mouthed.
I nodded.
“All the good ones are.” She stepped outside.
I should have thought about Lily when I confirmed my status. She did, after all, walk around with a ring that cost considerably more than Judith’s apartment—a family heirloom that should have been given to Camille.
But all I could think of was the girl who’d yelled at me last week at the bar, then sought me out with her green-brown eyes and wouldn’t let go of my goddamn thoughts, long after I got back to my apartment.
And into my shower, where I’d fisted my cock and imagined her smart mouth wrapped around it as I came all over my dirty blond tiles.
The hashtags #CharityGala and #MeToo stared back at me from the cream banner as I entered the event, celebrated on the massive rooftop terrace of the Laurent Towers Hotel. Sleek pink and peach carpets, roses spilling from sculptures like rivers, and long tables covered in velvet black tablecloths—no matter how much money my father was going to raise here, it wouldn’t cover half of what this evening had cost.
I wore a tux and a scowl, Lily trailing alongside me in her gold chiffon dress that managed to have too much fabric yet still expose the better half of her tits. Not that I cared. I knew Lily was screwing around, too. I wasn’t a hypocrite, and I was about as possessive of her as I was of the piece of human turd I’d nearly stepped on as I walked into work yesterday morning, exiting the train. I didn’t want to bring her, but even I recognized that we needed to show some kind of united front. Plus, it was a good opportunity for me to check in on her family, most of whom I actually liked quite a bit.
“Your parents okay?” Our arms were locked together, but I stared straight ahead.
“They miss you.” She couldn’t even answer a simple yes-or-no question.
“Your sisters?” I ignored her pleading tone. I missed them, too. But spending time with them like nothing had happened was impossible.
“Yes, Scarlett and Grace are doing all right.”
“And Madelyn?” There was a lot of estrogen in her family. Her father was surrounded by three daughters, a mother, and a wife.
“My grandmother is peachy. She really wants you to visit her. Said she’ll even make your favorite pie.”
“I might,” I rasped, meaning it. Madelyn Davis was a fucking rock star.