The Billionaire and the Virgin (Billionaires and Bridesmaids #1)(68)

“Are you sure? You’re just so . . . thin.”

Marjorie had heard that a few times over the last month. She’d lost a few pounds, unable to eat in her misery. And on a tall frame like hers, even a few pounds showed. “I’m fine. I just . . . was hurting for a while. I’m better now. I promise.” She hoped it sounded convincing.

Bront?’s concerned expression didn’t diminish. “He used you. I hate that. I wish I’d been paying more attention and not so caught up in whether or not the roses were the right shade of red.”

She waved a hand at Bront?’s concern. “It’s in the past. And I don’t know that he did use me. Sometimes I think he did and I fell for it, and sometimes I rethink our conversations and wonder.” She shrugged, picking up a pillowcase from a box and unfolding it. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. I can’t support the kind of man that he is and the business that he runs. I thought he was someone different. The truth . . . wasn’t what I thought. He’s someone I’m not sure I could ever be comfortable with and not question who I am.”

“You know,” Bront? said, opening the closet and fetching Marjorie’s pillow off of the hideaway bed. She crossed the room and handed it to her friend. “When I first met Logan, I didn’t know he was a billionaire. I just thought he was the manager of the hotel. I was a waitress, right? So when I found out he was a billionaire, I freaked out. I didn’t know if I could handle dating someone that was rich. Not just rich, but obscenely rich. And the more I fought against it, the harder it was for me to come to the realization that I was the problem, not him. It was my perception of what a billionaire would think of me, not the reality of what he felt. Could that be the same here? Is it a class thing?”

Marjorie shook her head. “It’s not the money. It’s that his business is set up to prey on girls with low self-esteem and to serve them up to men for money. I can’t respect someone that does that. It doesn’t seem right to me. Maybe I’m being overly moral or prudish, but it’s how I feel.”

“Plato said, ‘People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person, or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.’”

“That’s right,” Marjorie said. “I’m avoiding a growth-stunter.” At least, she was pretty sure she was. In the daylight hours, it was easy to hate Rob and all the ways he’d lied to her. At night, in her lonely bed, it was . . . not so easy, and she sometimes had regrets.

Regrets that Rob was who he was.

That she was who she was.

Mostly, though, she regretted not tackling him and dragging him to bed sooner. Which was probably the wrong thing to regret, but there it was. Out of all the things to miss, she missed his smiles and his gentle caresses the most. And that made her an awful person, didn’t it? Because she should have been thinking about how he lied to her, and how he profited off of women with low self esteem, and mostly, she just missed him.

“Just as long as you don’t avoid the people that nourish you,” Bront? said with a smile, bringing Marjorie back to the present. “And you know I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to.”

“I know.” Marjorie stuffed the pillow inside the pillowcase. “But I think for a while, I’ll just throw myself into work.”

“Now that’s music to my ears,” said Bront?. “I’ll be sure and give you plenty of it, then.”

***

Marjorie settled in to life in New York City slowly. Some things about the city were amazing, like the vast variety of restaurants and the subway tunnels that allowed you to get anywhere and everywhere without a car. She loved the shops and the museums and Central Park most of all. Some other things in New York City took a lot of getting used to—like buying groceries from a corner store instead of a supermarket, and the sea of taxis, and the endless, endless swarm of people. She’d never seen so many in one place in her life. She walked next to them on the streets, shared cabs with them, and heard them through the thin walls of her apartment. No one in New York City was ever alone, it seemed.

And yet with all the people in the city, Marjorie was intensely lonely. Maybe she was dumb and being a moony virgin, but she missed Rob. The time she’d spent with him made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt before. It was like someone had finally seen her—the real her, under all the layers—and was fine with all her parts.

Maybe that was why, after so briefly being part of a duo, it was so hard to go back to her normal solitary life. Why she wasn’t completely satisfied with spending her Friday nights at bingo with Agnes and her friends. Why going to a yarn store and picking out a new pattern was no longer all that exciting when she didn’t have anyone to show her creations to. Why lying in that small, twin bed that folded out from the closet felt like a death sentence.

She missed kissing. She missed hand-holding. She missed Rob’s laugh when she told a corny joke.

She missed Rob.

He was her first real love, and she’d fallen fast and fallen hard. It was going to take time to get over him, but the misery would eventually end.

But in the city full of thousands and thousands of faces, she could have sworn she saw Rob everywhere she went. It bothered her. She’d hear his laugh, and turn around and see no one there. She’d see a shirt that he’d worn and follow the owner, only to find it on the back of a completely different man. Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she’d seen a dark-haired man that looked just like him get into a cab.