I have a job to do. I AM the job.
My mother’s life could be at risk, and so could anyone’s who has contact with me. My father could take anything I’m interested in, just like that. Just to prove that he can. Just to try to own me. Doesn’t matter if I want to layer my princess in fucking jewels when she’s lying all sated and sweaty right next to me. Doesn’t matter if I want to go back and watch those eyes go dark when I fill her, over, and over, and over. Doesn’t fucking matter what I want. Only what I have to do.
Swiftly I pull the back off the phone. “Can’t happen to you.” I start pulling the phone apart. “It can happen to anyone but not to you. Whoever she ends up with, there’s a ninety-nine point nine percent guarantee he’ll be better than you.”
I pull off the battery of my permanent cell phone, remove the SIM card, the wire cage, until I’ve got dozens of little pieces in my hand that will ensure I will never get another text from her and will ensure she never again hears from me.
Until I come to collect on behalf of the Underground.
SIX
* * *
FIVE GOING ON SIX
Melanie
Five days after Greyson . . .
“So, he’s out of the picture?” Pandora asks today as I organize the pricing PDF file for one of my clients.
I bury my face in my hands. For a second, I want to pretend Pandora isn’t here, breathing over the top of my head, her angry concern like a little cloud with thunderbolts over us both.
Five days.
Five long, awful days where all my hopes have dwindled to nothing, all my fantasies have gone black, all my expectations have become nil.
And here’s Pandora, worried and angry on my behalf, probably happy she gets to have a good excuse to be a bitch today.
“Yes,” I finally grit out. “He’s fucking out of the picture. I hope you’re thrilled.”
I pull my phone out just to show her how textless it is.
She looks at the barren screen, grunts, and shakes her head and drops down on her chair. “Scumbag,” she says.
“Dick.”
“Asshole.”
“Scumbag!”
“I already used that,” she points out.
“And as quickly as the bastard used me,” I mumble. Literally, the disappointment piles up by the hour, and a fresh wave hits me as I tuck my phone away. Never have I felt like I’ve misjudged a situation as much as I did ours—his and mine. It’s officially Friday. If the guy wanted a date, you bet your ass he’d have called before today.
I’m so hurt I can’t even understand why I’m so hurt. Maybe because I thought he was different, and he turned out to be just what Pandora said. I hate it when she’s right and I’m wrong.
I especially hated her being right this time, when I really wanted her to be wrong.
Thank god she’s sitting down quietly at her desk and I’m not hearing any I told you sos. If she even starts, I will hit her as hard as I want to hit myself right now for being such a fool.
“I’m so done with men,” I burst out when I find Pandora’s silence equally as annoying as the stuff I know she wants to say. “I don’t need them to be happy. I’m going to get a dog. God! I just remembered I probably can’t even afford the luxury of a little dog anymore.”
“Stop buying shoes,” she chides.
Sighing because I’m not going to explain to her I owe more than a pair of shoes, I click on my search engine and navigate to the online advertisement of my car. A picture of my Mustang stares back at me—with a bright red number on the top and a big FOR SALE sign. It’s all I have, and still not enough to cover what I owe. Like me. We’re both not enough.
For the first time in a week, my reality crashes down on me. Hard.
I have no more hazel eyes with adorable green flecks to make me feel hopeful and expectant. I have no more texts to look forward to. I have a car to sell, a debt to settle, and a whole lot of misery to deal with.
My grandma, before she passed, always said the best way to feel better was to focus on someone else and do something nice for them because you weren’t the only one with a problem.
I look at Pandora, thinking of all the times she’s been called a bitch in this very office, and I reach out and tug a strand of her onyx-colored hair, saying, “All that black hair is so drab. You should make a change too, add a pink strand to all this soot?”
“Fuck you, I hate pink.”
I roll my eyes and tell the heavens—okay, Nana, I tried!—then get back to my computer to stare at my car. Whoever dried it while Greyson dried me did a great job—Brain, please focus on my Mustang.
It took me a full day to get the perfect images when the sun hit my car at just the right angle. It’s so pretty I can’t believe it’s been several days and no callers.
What if I get no callers?
The stress starts creeping up me like a big ole whale choking my windpipe when Pandora rolls around in her chair to face me. “Come on, bitch, talk to me!” she cries. “What made you think he would even be more than what you always get? He gives you a ride when your car won’t start; you go to a hotel. What do you even know about him except that he apparently fucks you stupid and now you’re not the Melanie I know? Where’s the smile, where’s the spark? You’re acting like me and I don’t like it.”
I fling my arms up high. “He said he’d be in touch . . . he came back to give me a ride home and I read more into it, which was a mistake, all right—my mistake. Believing him. Believing he was different or that we had some special . . . connection. God, I’m so lame, but I bet that’s no news to you.”
“Fuck him, Melanie.”