“Blue, as long as I can take it home with me.” His eyes lock on mine. He raises an eyebrow. There is no subtlety in the gesture. He’s brazen. No one’s that brazen recently. Even the slimiest are more subdued of late, jolted by the sudden flare of the #metoo movement. But not Cole Power.
“I’m sure you know that’s not allowed.” I smile. “But if no one notices…” I shrug, allowing my spaghetti strap to slip from my shoulder.
“Perfect,” he says. His fingertips linger on my arm as he brushes my strap back onto my shoulder.
It takes every ounce of self-control not to recoil at his touch. “Thanks.” I bite my lip. “These dresses weren’t made to stay on.”
I cringe at the terribly cheesy line I’ve used an embarrassing number of times, but he swallows it whole, handing me a black card with a gleam in his eye. “Close it out and bring it back or I’ll forget it. And give yourself an extra five hundred on top of whatever this place usually charges.”
Wow, he is confident. Usually they don’t tip until they’re walking out the door—insurance you’ll give them your phone number…or whatever else they might want. At the computer, Lacey looks over my shoulder while I run his card. “Ooh, Blue label and an extra bottle of champagne, good one.” She flips a strand of her silky weave over her shoulder as she eyes him across the dance floor. “He likes you.”
“He’d like you too if you were standing in front of him,” I return.
She laughs, adjusting her boobs under her leather dress to show more cleavage. “Yeah, he’s not too picky. I did that already though, years ago. Coke dick.” She makes a face. “And he kept licking me and making comments about my chocolate skin I think he thought were compliments but were actually kinda racist.”
I laugh. “Yeah, he hit on me more blatantly than I’ve been hit on in weeks.”
“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” She winks. “Good luck.”
The knot in the pit of my stomach tightens. She’s totally right. What do I really think is going to happen? He’s gonna take me back to his place and tell me all about how his ex-wife murdered my mother? Then cop to wrecking her car into a tree and fleeing the scene of the accident?
No. He’s gonna take me home to screw me, then kick me out before the sun comes up.
My head swims.
While I’m not a sex worker like my mother was, I can usually separate myself from my body. But I won’t go there with Cole. It’s not possible. He turns every drop of blood in my body to ice.
I didn’t realize what a visceral reaction I’d have to him when I finally met him. I’m completely thrown. Every decision I’ve made in the past ten years has been in preparation for this moment, and now that it’s here, all of my plans seem so incredibly silly. Like something out of a spy novel. Who do I think I am, a Red Sparrow? Am I going to escort him out of the club to the flashing of the paparazzi, march right past the security guards and cameras at his luxury high-rise condo, and kill him?
I don’t have my gun on me, but I do have sleeping pills in my purse; I could crush them up and put them in his drink. It would be easy enough to slit his throat once he was asleep.
The thought makes me queasy. If I knew for sure he was responsible for my mother’s death, I could probably do it. I killed a deer once, hunting with Fred. He was so proud, he marked my cheeks with its blood and told all his friends how brave I was. I acted cool, but every time we ate venison that winter, I thought of the light fading from the buck’s eyes as he gasped for breath before Fred shot him in the back of the skull, spattering my camouflage pants with warm blood.
If I killed Cole, I’d not only carry that weight the rest of my incarcerated life, but I’d never find out what happened to my mother. And what of Stella? She’s likely more to blame for Iris’s death than Cole.
It’s too haphazard, too wasteful.
I follow the busboy to Cole’s table, where a couple of hot girls have taken up residence between the other actor and Cole. Cole pays them no attention, never taking his eyes off me as I pour two tumblers of Scotch neat, then pop the cork on the champagne and hand each of the girls a flute.
“Here.” Cole pours a glass of champagne and holds it out to me. “Sit.” He pats the leather banquette beside him.
I take the glass and sit next to him, suddenly realizing that any interaction I have with him infringes on my future ability to get close to him. I have a role in his life now, albeit a walk-on one, as the waitress at the Ninth Circle. I clink my glass to his, desperately trying to figure out how to extricate myself from the situation.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Nikki,” I say. “What’s yours?”
He laughs that throaty chuckle I’ve heard so many times on-screen. “Cole. Are you an actress, Nikki?” He leans toward me, his hair falling in his eyes. His breath is whiskey and smoke. “Or a model?”
“Neither.” It’s plenty dark, and he’s drunk enough maybe he won’t remember me at all. Surely I’m but a drop in the bucket of beautiful girls thrown at him every day.
“You should be.” He places his hand on my thigh, his fingers creeping beneath my skirt. “You have the face for it.”
I lay my hand on his. “Not here.” He meets my gaze, and a flicker of recognition passes over his face. He shakes his head as if to rid himself of the thought. “What?” I ask.
“Nothing. It’s just…” He furrows his brow. “You remind me of someone.”
My breath grows shallow; the noise of the room subsides. “Who?”
“Just a girl I knew a long time ago. No one famous. But she was beautiful, like you.”
“Was she important to you?” I ask, acutely aware that at the moment my hair is long and blond like my mother’s once was, my eyes their natural blue.
For a split second his attention drifts, as though lost in memory; then he’s back. “No.”
I swallow the urge to strangle him, doing my best to hold my voice steady. “What happened to her?”
“Nothing,” he says. “It’s not important.” He downs his drink. “Let’s get out of here.”
I force a smile but can’t quite meet his eye. “Give me ten.”
I rise and shimmy across the dance floor to the computer, where I find Lacey typing away at her phone. I grab her hand and tug her through the door marked “Employees Only.”
“Need your help escaping,” I say, flinging open the door to my locker.
“Cole?”
I nod, pulling on my jacket. “He wants me to go home with him, but that’s not happening. I’m gonna get out of here before it turns into a thing. Can you close out my other tables? Keep the tips. Tell Marty I’m sorry.”
She nods. “No problem. We can split the tips.”
I shoulder my bag and give her a hug. “Not necessary.”
“See you tomorrow,” she calls as I push open the door to the alley.
But she won’t. I’m not coming in tomorrow, or next week, or the week after that. The Ninth Circle has served its purpose. Nikki Nimes is burned. It’s time for me to move on.
Stella
Friday, June 28
I awoke to searing pain and murky blue darkness. An indigo trellis of liquid reflection wavered on the ceiling above me, in sync with the hollow sound of water swashing against something solid. I tried to sit up, but the burning sword through my brain held me in place. I heard my voice cry out—strangled, weak.
A hand on my arm. A bolt of fear shot through me as I turned to face my assailant in the dark, my voice stolen by the breathtaking pain of movement. Her profile was outlined by the flickering electric blue, her eyes two pricks of light in the gloaming, but I’d know her anywhere. My blood froze in my veins.
Iris.
Her hair was pulled back, and she was wearing the same aquamarine dress as when I last saw her thirteen years ago, looking not a day older. Was she here to torture me from beyond the grave? I tried to call out, but her name stuck in my throat. Surely I must be dreaming. But the pain…
She rolled away from me to turn on the bedside lamp, and the room flooded with light. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
I was in my bed, next to Felicity. She was wearing a turquoise nightgown, her hair gathered into a short ponytail, and the eerie blue glow had been the effect of the light beneath the bungalow on the water through the glass floor, which she must have forgotten to turn off. I blinked at her, disoriented.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I closed my eyes, the vision still clear in my mind, Iris’s face grafted on to Felicity’s, so similar but for their coloring. I’d noticed a passing resemblance before but quickly dismissed it as my hazy, overactive imagination playing tricks on me. Now I tried to conjure up an image of Felicity without those bangs and the ever-present kohl liner around her eyes, picturing her tresses longer and blonder and her irises lighter…but my brain throbbed with the effort. Perhaps the differences were what made the imagined likeness so strong anyway.
“My head,” I managed. The agony of speaking released a shower of stars across my vision. I was soaked in sweat quickly cooling in the blasting air-conditioner, my heart sprinting like it was being chased. “What happened last night?”
“Tonight,” she corrected me, looking at the clock on the bedside table. “It’s four a.m.”
Mary Elizabeth uncurled from her post at the foot of the bed and gingerly approached, sniffing my clammy skin. The bungalow seemed to rock with the waves, churning in sync with my stomach.
Felicity must have been able to tell I was about to be sick because she jumped out of bed and rushed around to my side, where she grabbed the plastic garbage can next to the bed and held it up for me to retch in.
The retching did not make me feel better.
“Can you run me a bath?” I managed.
I stared at the wide woven blades of the motionless ceiling fan as she drew the bath, begging the room to stop spinning, the knife to stop stabbing.
Iris, here. So real I could reach out and touch her.
But she was long gone.
All of this unearthing of the past clearly wasn’t good for my psyche. But I had to keep it to myself. If anyone found out I was seeing ghosts, they’d throw me in the looney bin again. A health spa, they’d called it. Yeah, right. It might’ve cost an arm and a leg and had posh linens and a pool, but as far as I knew health spas didn’t come with shrinks, unlockable doors, and ninety-day sentences. I couldn’t go back there. I had to pull myself together.
The dreaded sense that something bad had happened lurked just out of reach in the shadows of my mind, but I was too weak to attempt to shine any light on it; I could taste the bile in my throat but lacked the strength to reach for the bottle of water on the bedside table. I focused on the sensation of Mary Elizabeth’s small, dry tongue licking my hand.
Felicity supported me from the bed to the bathroom sink, where I gurgled mouthwash and downed Tylenol with a glass of water before she peeled my sweat-soaked clothes from my aching body and helped me into the bath. The water was deliciously hot and full of bubbles that smelled of lavender. I sank into the silence beneath the water, holding my breath until I felt Felicity’s hand beneath my neck, pulling me up to sitting.
“Don’t drown on me,” she said.
I took a deep breath. The knife was still in my brain, but it no longer burned. “What happened to me?” I asked again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “One minute you were fine; then Kara found you slumped on the floor outside the bathroom.”
“Where?”
“Coco’s. You don’t remember?”
Coco’s. Right. It was murky, but I at least remembered being there. Everyone had been there. Damn. “Who saw me?”
She twisted her mouth into a frown. “I don’t know. I was outside when it happened.”
“Why did you leave me?”
“You were fine! It happened so fast. I’d gone for a short walk around the harbor with Jackson when Taylor called to say you were incoherent.”
Oh God. “Taylor was there?”
She nodded. I sank into the silence beneath the bubbles again, wishing I could stay there forever.
When I surfaced, Felicity was holding a fresh glass of water. I drank it obediently. “Was Madison there?” She shook her head, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank heavens. Who else was there?” I asked.
“Rick and Jackson. We took you away from the bar so no one would see, and I made you throw up.”
I groaned, imagining the scene. What they must think of me. “How?”
“I stuck my finger down your throat.”
So it was over. Surely I’d be fired now. I’d squandered my chance at redemption and would be punished, tossed back into the void. Worse: shamed.
I sank into the womb of the bath. I couldn’t face another round in the stockade. I wouldn’t survive another public stoning. It had taken every ounce of my strength to pull myself through these thirteen years. I’d lost my career, my love, my friends. All I had left was my little dog and the fleeting reprieve provided by pills and booze—nothing more than small Band-Aids holding back a river of blood. I wasn’t stupid. I knew the Band-Aids only made the wound worse in the long run, that I would eventually bleed out if things didn’t turn around for me someday. All that had kept me going was hope for that day. Without it, I was finished.
Felicity’s hand beneath my back. Air. And then she was lifting me out of the bath, wrapping me in a soft white robe, and guiding me to the bed.
June 28, 2019
XRay Online
BREAKING:
Stella Rivers Can’t Keep Her Act Together
Stella Rivers has been shooting The Siren with ex-husband, Cole Power, on the Caribbean island of Saint Genesius for only two weeks, and she appears to have already fallen off the wagon. Sources tell us a stipulation of her contract was that she remain sober for the duration of the shoot, but this morning a photo surfaced of her clearly inebriated and slumped against the wall of a local bar. Rumors of Power and Rivers rekindling their romance were swirling until a few days ago, when a video of Power laughing at her as she fell into a puddle came to light. Then last night influencer/actress Madison Kasabian posted a selfie kissing Cole Power. The kiss was on the cheek(!) but has everyone speculating that Power has turned his attention to his younger costar, leaving Rivers out in the cold. Looks like the beleaguered Rivers is once again drowning her sorrows.
Taylor
Far too early the morning after Coco’s, I awoke feeling as though a bomb had gone off in my head. Burning rage toward Cole mixed with the lingering effects of alcohol and lust for Rick made a firestorm that set my heart racing. I tossed and turned, fully aware I needed to sleep as late as humanly possible in preparation for our night shoot that evening, but it was no use.
At some point I gave in to the idea that going back to sleep wasn’t going to happen and lounged half-conscious in bed with the blackout shades drawn, alternately reliving my kiss with Rick and imagining confronting Cole. I would be devastating, ripping apart his ideas about who he was and how the world saw him. I would write a scathing article exposing his true nature, which would turn the public against him, and he would be out in the cold where he belonged—if only I could prove what he’d done…and I were brave enough. Around midmorning, the Tilt-A-Whirl of emotions gave way to a caffeine headache that forced me out of my cocoon to make a cup of coffee.
I took my mug outside and settled on a shaded lounger overlooking the miles and miles of turquoise sea. The day was still and bright, and a delicious breeze blew off the water. Next door, Brian and two other guys were having a contest to see who could jump farthest off the bungalow balcony into the sea, while overhead the gulls called to one another. I had to admit the place was growing on me, and not only because of a certain tall, dark stranger. That bioluminescent bay last night had been mind-blowing of its own accord. And the kiss…
I distracted myself from the cocktail of desire and rage coursing through my veins b
y opening the real estate app Rick had told me about and scrolling through homes on Saint Ann while allowing the morning sun to caress my lily-white legs. Obviously I wasn’t looking to move to the islands, but it was crazy to see what I’d be able to afford if I were so inclined. For the price of my condo, I could buy a beachfront home twice its size and have money left to furnish it beautifully. It was fun to daydream, anyway. Gave me a reprieve from the shit storm that was being in the employ of Cole Power.
Fuck Cole Power. The very thought of him made me want to scream in fury. I yearned to feel my fist smash into his perfect jaw.
Once my legs were sufficiently pink, I indulged in a lingering shower, allowing the hot water to loosen the muscles in my sore lower back. I was dragging. Last night, Rick, Jackson, Felicity, and I had sat out on the porch of Stella and Felicity’s bungalow talking for far too long after Rick carried Stella home and installed her in bed. Jackson strummed a guitar, playing songs we could all sing along to while fish jumped out in the water. Rick and I had played it cool in front of them, of course, and Jackson had walked out with us when we finally left, so I couldn’t exactly invite him in. It was better that way, anyway. I needed to keep it in the road—and after the realization that Cole had likely drugged me, I was preoccupied to say the least.
When I’d asked Jackson why he’d agreed to let his father finance his film, he grimaced. “He wanted me to believe he’d changed, that he wanted a relationship with his son, and this was his way of making up for all the years of prioritizing his career and women and—hell, anything—above me. I accepted on that premise.” He swirled the rum in the bottom of his glass, then downed it. “I’m not an idiot though. I knew the chances he’d somehow done a one-eighty when I wasn’t looking were slim, but I figured the one thing my father can give me is a career. I’ll take it.” He cut his eyes toward the bedroom where Stella slept. “But not if it comes at someone else’s expense.”
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