“Think they’ll revoke your license for playing against the rules?” I joke, heading up the spiral staircase. Jackson follows me, carrying the blueprints.
“If they do,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder, “I have friends with three-bedroom penthouses.”
We lean on the second floor banister and look out the front-facing window. The street’s quiet, not unusual for a Sunday afternoon. Everyone’s still recovering from last night. We could barely get the doors closed at 3:30 this morning at Altitude, which suits me just fine.
“No way, dude. You’re on your own,” I say. “After Caroline moved out I swore off living with anyone,” I say. “Even you.”
“Your loss,” Jackson says. “You ever hear from her?”
A pack of goth teenagers cross the sidewalk, passing around a cigarette. A couple walking a dog peer into the first-floor window of Ogden’s, then move on.
“No,” I say. “I’m sure she’s too busy cheating on her new boyfriend to give me a call.”
“Shelby never liked her.”
“Shelby’s always been smarter than us.”
“For what it’s worth,” Jackson says, “she thinks Cassie is cool.”
“Cassie is cool,” I say. “She’s cool. She’s smart. She’s hot as hell. But she’s hiding something.”
“Her brother?”
“That’s some of it,” I say. “She says she doesn’t know where he is.”
“Do you believe her?”
Part of me doesn’t care if I believe her. It’s the part that is primarily concerned with going back to when we were interrupted this weekend and fucking her senseless on every piece of furniture on my office. The two mornings since our Friday night encounter, I have woken up with Cassie’s naked body on my mind, her perfect pink nipples, the inward curve of her waist, her long legs bent over my shoulders as I kneel between them. And if tasting her again or getting to be inside her in the near future means I need to suspend my disbelief in what she says, my cock is definitely okay with that.
But then there’s this other part of me that stops short at the thought that she’s concealing something. I’m trustworthy, she said when she convinced me to let her work at Altitude. But just because someone won’t steal your money doesn’t mean they won’t lie to your face. Ask Caroline.
“I don’t know,” I say to Jackson. “She told me she hasn’t been around for a while because she just got back in town from living in Europe.”
“Doing what?”
I shrug. “She wouldn’t say.” I turn away from the street, leaning against the banister on my forearms, bare in my t-shirt, except, of course, for my tats. A lot of the tattoos I got during the three years Caroline and I were together, but I had the sense not to ink her name. Or maybe I had a hunch. Foresight. A tattoo is meant to be permanent but with Caroline I realized nothing else is—not trust, not loyalty, not love. “Secrets, man. I’m over them,” I say. “And over women with them. It always blows up in your face.”
“Of course, the other night, seemed like you didn’t mind Cassie blowing up in your face.”
I bow my head and laugh. It’s a fair point. “I think a good time was had by all.”
“Except me,” Jackson says. “Which is why we’re making a stop by the hardware store after this.”
“Why?”
“To get a new knob,” he says. “From the look on your face when you talk about this woman, I have a feeling we’ll all be better off with an office door that locks.”
CASSIE
CH. 13
I had the whole speech ready in my head. I even practiced it out loud last night while I was making dinner, chopping tomatoes and cucumbers as I recited the lines, the sound of the knife on the cutting board like the percussion in the mad music I was writing: I won’t deny that I enjoyed our encounter Friday night, but I also won’t be punished for it. I’m good at keeping your books, you’re getting back every dime of your money, and you finding me irresistible isn’t my problem. So if you think I’m going to let you fire me without a fight, think again.
When I practiced, I paused after “irresistible” so that it could really sink in. I know it’s a little arrogant, but so is Ryder. I figured he might respect something he recognizes.
But when I walk into Altitude this morning, even in my very professional, serious, “I-mean-business” white, button-up shirtdress, I don’t feel quite as brave. Daylight has a way of doing that to people in a bar, I guess.