Billionaire With a Twist 3(3)
I couldn’t let it go now. “Come on, Paige, I’m not stalking him or anything. I’m not going to show up naked declaring my undying love. I just…I just want to know how he’s doing.”
I must have sounded really pathetic, because Paige admitted, “Well, I did run into him at a charity auction. It was the one for the victims of hurricanes, to raise money for housing.”
“He looked—” My voice nearly cracked. “He looked okay?”
“He looked fine,” Paige said quickly. Too quickly.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing!” Too quickly again. Then, “Almost nothing. It’s not important, honestly it’s not. Can you just trust me on that, Ally?”
Visions of Hunter looking lost, his clothes worn, his frame wasted, dashed through my head. What if he was drinking? What if he wasn’t eating? What if he was—
“Paige,” I warned.
“It’s nothing.” She sighed. “It’s just—he had a date with him.”
Had I felt crushed before? I felt now like all the air had been forced out of my lungs in a single punch. I felt smashed as flat as a sheet of paper.
I was going through hell, but apparently losing me wasn’t even a blip on Hunter’s radar, not if he was carousing around town with a beauty on his arm. “Oh.”
I’d meant it to come out noncommittal or even disinterested, but apparently my cracked and bleeding heart showed right through, because Paige backpedaled quicker than a cyclist coming across an alligator dozing on a bike trail.
“Maybe it was a work friend,” she offered quickly, in a voice so bright and chipper she might have stolen it from a Stepford wife. “Or he might have been putting on a brave face. You know how guys are. They can’t admit when they’re hurt. Especially when they’re business hotshots, they think the tiniest scratch will have the sharks circling.”
“Yeah, sure.” It sounded reasonable. But I knew it wasn’t the truth. “Thanks anyway.”
Then we shared an awkward silence just long enough for me to look around my apartment and reflect on how quickly and effortlessly my entire life had gone to shit.
“Mom finally broke the news to Dad that both daughters ruined their chance with the most eligible bachelor below the Mason-Dixon Line,” Paige said finally. I could tell by her voice she was trying to lighten the mood. “I think he was mostly disappointed that he wasn’t going to be getting a discount on bourbon anytime soon.”
Great. Now I was disappointing even more people. Just perfect.
I changed the subject. “So, how’s Sergei? Is he still in the picture?”
Paige hesitated just long enough for me to intuit that she was debating letting me switch the focus of our conversation, but eventually the bait of being able to talk about her own life pulled her in.
“No, not really. We’ve been chatting, meeting up for coffee, that kind of thing. And we kissed a few times. But, well—” I heard the rustle of her long blonde locks as she shook her head, and I could just see that pensive sad expression I knew she’d be wearing. “I’ve realized that Sergei is what I really wanted when I was twenty-four, but now that I’m older I feel like…like I just can’t be looking back at the past like that. I want something real. Something that’s going to last.”
That was Paige, smart and sensible even in her rebellion.
“So, what’s the future hold?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted, “but I’ve been getting awfully restless lately. New York, maybe. The art scene there has always been amazing. And if my party planning ever gets off the ground, who knows? I might have to city-hop for a while, go where the work is.”
“Well, if you need a stepping stone, there’s always room on my couch.”
Paige made grateful noises, but I knew she wouldn’t be taking me up on my offer.
Paige had seen my couch, and she knew that there was only room on it for me and my self-pity.
#
The reality show had ended hours ago and there was never anything remotely interesting on at this time of night, but I knew that turning the TV off would only fill the apartment with a terrible silence that I couldn’t face. So I was flipping through channels, trying to find something that wasn’t a congressional hearing or an infomercial for a food processor that sliced, diced, and also organized your socks or some shit.
And then the Douchebros’ ad came on.
“Oh, baby, oh—” Creaking springs and lustful moans gave way to the sight of a barely clad, barely legal blonde sucking eagerly at the neck of a Knox bourbon bottle, held directly at the crotch line of a smirking male model.
I wasn’t sure what I was more disgusted with: the objectification, or how insultingly unsubtle it was.
“Yeah, swallow it,” the man urged. “You know you like the taste.”
She murmured happy agreement, but then there came a whimper of pure need from the floor beside the bed, where multiple near-nude supermodels lay entwined. “When’s my turn?”
The man looked straight into the camera and winked.
KNOX BOURBON, said the letters slapped up over his face as the audio cut to a poorly sampled hip hop track. EVEN GOOD GIRLS SWALLOW IT.
I let the remote fall out of my hands, horrified. Distantly, I heard the sound as it hit the floor.