by Ali Parker
We came around the corner.
The room looked as it always did. The fireplace, an obnoxious stone monstrosity, burned brightly. It was the only light in the room, except for the table lamps beside each of the two sofas with emerald-green shades. The sofas, big and plush with high backs, were the same ones I’d never been allowed to sit on as a kid. The carpet was a massive gold and green and black piece littered with liquor bottles and empty glasses.
And my mother’s unconscious body.
“Shit.”
I pulled away from Gigi, who grabbed for my shirt. I met my mother on my knees on the carpet and put a hand on her back. Her graying hair was matted and sticky. She reeked of whiskey. I took hold of her shoulder and rolled her over.
She smiled up at me with her eyes closed. “Jasper, is that you?”
“It’s me. Did you drink all of this?” I looked around at all the bottles on the carpet. Five. There were five. “Jesus, Mom.” Suddenly overwhelmed with nerves and adrenaline, I pulled my phone out with shaking hands and dialed 911.
My mother tried to claw the phone out of my hands. I held her down with a hand on her shoulder.
“I need an ambulance to the Daniels Estate at 41100 Daniels Road. My mother has had a lot to drink. Alcohol poisoning.”
The dispatcher told me paramedics were on the way. As she told me how to take care of my mother, I tuned it out. I’d been here a dozen times over. I cast a glance over my shoulder at Gigi, who was gripping the frame of the archway to the sitting room. She was staring at my mother, shocked.
I didn’t know why anyone was surprised anymore. This routine had been clockwork since I was sixteen and my father cheated on her for the first time. She’d always been an alcoholic, but she’d never drank to the point of real danger until then.
And chances were, he’d done something tonight to set her off down this path again.
Chapter 17
Vanessa
I stole another Mountain Dew out of Doug’s fridge after my shift ended. Ryan, the intern, and Lizzy were in the office as well, and the four of us chatted about how the show had gone. After Mr. Anonymous, things ran smoothly. We had a lot of generic calls, which was common and always a little disappointing. We liked the ones that were edgy, that stood apart from all the rest. That was what made people tune in every night.
“I’ve been wondering if we should get back to screening some of the calls.” Doug ran a hand over his head and turned to me expectantly. “What do you think?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. You could always do it but not tell me what the call is about so we still have that organic sort of vibe. You know?”
He nodded. “I’ll consider it. Anyway. I have to get out of here. I promised the wife I’d be home with a bottle of wine in hand at the end of the night. She had a rough shift at the hospital today. See you losers tomorrow night.”
Doug left and the rest of us were pretty quick to follow. I said goodnight to Lizzy, ignored Ryan because I still thought he was a little shit, and went to my car. I slid into the seat and cranked the ignition. Cold air blasted through my vents and I let out a little squeal as I killed the heat. The stupid thing took way too long to heat up. My windows were fogged so I waited and flipped through the radio stations in search of a good song.
When I finally found one, my phone started ringing. I rummaged through my purse and got to it before it went to voicemail.
“Hello?”
“Vanny. Hey, it’s me.”
“Rhys?”
“Yeah. You free tonight?”
“Um.” Yes, I was free every night. What else did a single girl do after work other than go home to binge-watch trash TV and drink wine and light discounted, out-of-season candles? “Yes, I am.”
“Come over.”
“Slow down there, Romeo. I said we needed time to get to know each other. I know you probably have a set of moves to impress the ladies as soon as they step into your playboy mansion.”
“No moves. Promise. I’ll text you the address. You hungry?”
Now he was speaking my language. “I could eat.”
“Good. Buzzer number one hundred. I’ll ring you up. See you soon.”
He hung up before I had a chance to say anything else. I stared down at my phone, a little surprised by his call even though I’d been waiting on it for days. He’d sounded off. Unlike himself. Strained.
He was a very rich CEO. Maybe he’d had a tough day and needed to blow off some steam. Lucky for him, I wanted to do the very same thing. Did I expect to do it in a rich, sexy man’s house? No. But I couldn’t very well complain about this new turn of events. Rhys texted me his address as promised and my windows cleared at the same time. I plugged the address into my phone and followed the directions for the fifteen-minute drive to his condo.
If there was one word to explain the condo the map took me to, it was opulent. The hundred-floor tower was an all-white structure with lightly frosted glass for privacy. I parked my car in the visitor lot, which offered wide spaces, and walked over a bridge that crossed a beautiful little creek up to the front doors. I buzzed one hundred and was promptly let in.
The lobby was all mother-of-pearl tiles and reflective surfaces. I tried to keep my tongue in my mouth as other residents glanced up from the bar in the lobby and looked me over.
I did not belong in a place like this.
And yet, here I was, on my way to see the big cheese of the building.
The elevator brought me up to the hundredth floor. It stopped and the doors didn’t open until there was another buzzing sound. When they did roll open, I didn’t find myself in a hallway lined with apartment doors like all condos.
Instead, I stood in the middle of Rhys’s penthouse.
“Holy mother of tits.” The place was incredible.
No, that was a grand understatement. It was everything a girl could ever imagine a luxury apartment to be. It was modern but not too modern. The wraparound windows offered a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Nashville’s city lights, and off in the distance, I could see their reflection in the Cumberland river, pink and blue and purple and yellow.
If the views weren’t enough, the apartment itself was. A grand white fireplace was set in a half wall in the middle of the living room. Atop it was a liquor display. Furniture wrapped all the way around—an entertainer’s dream for sure—and up above was an exposed black piped ceiling. It was industrial and luxurious all at once.
I turned in a full circle, soaking in the sight of this place, and when my gaze landed on the kitchen, I found Rhys staring at me. He was leaning against the kitchen island, a massive expanse of a thing upon which there were several trays of food, and he had a glass in one hand, which he was slowly swirling.
He arched an eyebrow at me and my pulse fluttered wildly at my throat. Then he smiled. I almost melted right then and there.
“Mother of tits, huh?” The amusement in his voice was thick.
“I didn’t expect this.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Something a little more traditional?”
Rhys lifted his glass to his lips. His dark eyes never left me as he tilted the glass and sipped. I resisted the urge to fidget with my purse strap or keys, which were still clutched in my hand.
“Care for a drink?” he asked.
“Yes. Please.”
“Wine? Whiskey? Moonshine?”
“I don’t think this is a moonshine kind of evening.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Wine, please. Red if you have it.”
Rhys went about pouring me a glass of wine while I set my purse down on one of the stools at his kitchen island and checked out the smorgasbord of food he’d laid out. “How did you throw this together so quickly?”
“Money.”
“Right.” I popped a piece of jalapeno Havarti in my mouth with a cracker. It immediately took some of the tension out of me. “I was surprised you called.”
�
�I said I would.”
“I know. But—never mind.”
He frowned and handed me my wine. “Were you waiting by the phone like a high school girl for me to call you, Vanny?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” I sipped my wine. “That’s kind of assumptive of you.”
He smiled. “Truth be told, I should have called you sooner. But there were some things going on with work I had to take care of. But after today, I knew I had to see you.”
“Why?”
“I had a shitty evening.”
“Me too. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Rhys studied me coolly, and for a minute, I thought he was going to deny my offer. But then he nodded, picked up one of the trays of cheese, meats, and crackers, and brought it into the living room. He told me to bring the other platter, a collection of fruits and jelly spreads and vegetables, and I joined him on his massive sofa.
He and I began eating and he nudged my shin with the toe of his shoe. “Go ahead. You start.”
“Well.” I licked my lips and considered where to begin. “My day started with opening the dress shop. I had my hands full with my bags and I spilled my very expensive latte all over my shirt when I got out of my car. And I poured my purse out on the concrete and lost my favorite lipstick, which I’m pretty sure I drove over when I pulled out of my parking spot at the end of my shift.”
“Not the lipstick,” he mused.
“Shut up. I’m just getting started.” I took another sip of wine and fixed him under a commanding stare. He chuckled and held up his hands in compliance. “So I had to start the day trying on clothes in a store that sells items that aren’t made for girls like me. I found this.” I tugged at the white palm leaf and pink flower printed shirt. “It’s not great, but it would do the trick. And then these bitchy customers came in and took a crack at my weight. When I was sassy with them, they asked for my name so they could complain to my manager about them.”
“I’m sorry. That sounds rough.”
“It wasn’t the best.” I sighed and self-medicated with more cheese. “What about you? What made your day shitty?”
He stared at me like he was considering not telling me.
“Hey.” I pointed a finger at him. “You said you would tell me.”
His jaw flexed. Then he set his drink down. “I had some investors pull out at work, which threatened to cost me a lot of money and time. I managed to patch it up. My receptionist quit and left me stranded. And then I had plans of calling you up around seven-thirty to see if you wanted to do dinner, but my mother called and asked me to come to the estate to see her.”
That was all he said. I frowned. “Do you and your mother not get along or something?”
“She’s an alcoholic.”
“Oh.”
“And she’d been drinking all day. I had to call an ambulance. By the time I got there, she’d managed to pour five bottles of whiskey down her throat.”
“Holy shit. Sorry. That was rude. I didn’t even know that was possible. Is she okay?”
“She will be. She had her stomach pumped. They’ll keep her there overnight. Then everyone will have the fun conversation about rehab and whatnot, which is just a giant waste of fucking time.” He flashed me a smile. “Do I win for the worst evening?”
“Yes. By a landslide.”
He stared down into his drink. For a moment, he seemed very unlike himself. There was a darkness in his gaze and a slump in his shoulders that definitely didn’t make him look like the million-dollar version of Rhys Daniels I was used to seeing.
“Rhys?”
He glanced up at me. “Hmm?”
“Are you okay?”
He blinked at me. Then he laughed. “Of course I am. I’m not the one who swallowed all that liquor.”
“You know that’s not what I’m asking.” I didn’t know what it was that compelled me to push him. But I felt like he needed it, like nobody had asked him those three little words in a long time. He searched my eyes and I waited patiently, a trick of the trade from my gig as Nessa Night, and I hoped he would see this as an opportunity to unburden himself from a weight he’d obviously been carrying for a long time.
Chapter 18
Rhys
“I’m fine.” I hoped the words didn’t sound as hollow to Vanny as they felt in my throat. “I’m used to this. My family might have a lot of money but nobody actually has their shit together.”
She cocked her head to the side. She didn’t believe me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just have a talent for detecting bullshit. And you, sir, are full of it.”
“I am, am I?”
“Yes.” Vanny gave me a very matter of fact nod before reaching for a baby pickle. It crunched between her teeth and she followed it up with a piece of smoked gouda. She let out a soft sound of appreciation that continued to play over and over again in my head as she spoke. “I’ve always been very intuitive. And even if I wasn’t, you’d have a hard time convincing me you were okay after the night you had. Even if you’ve seen this several times over, that doesn’t make it any less serious. Or emotional. Or disappointing.”
She was hitting the nail on the head with every word. I wished she wasn’t as I cleared my throat. “Yes. Well. Perhaps it’s easier to pretend to be fine instead of focusing on something that is out of my control.”
“Perhaps.”
“You disagree.”
Vanny shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Of course it does.” I waggled my eyebrows. “You’re my betrothed.”
Vanny snorted into her wine glass. Bubbles popped and stained her nose red, and when she came up for air, she was blushing as deep a red as the wine in her glass.
I tried not to laugh as she used a napkin to clean herself up.
“Who says betrothed these days?” she asked.
“Apparently, I do. Sorry. I didn’t expect you to drown in your wine glass.”
“I can think of worse ways to go.”
Intrigued, I draped myself over the back of the sofa, my whiskey glass in one hand. Then I crossed one leg over the other. “Name three.”
“Asphyxiation.”
“Could be kind of kinky.”
“Gross.” Vanny scrunched up her nose.
I laughed. “Keep going.”
“Fire. Being eaten alive. Being drawn and quartered.”
“Good thing it’s the twenty-first century.”
Vanny laughed softly. “Yeah. Good thing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have let someone lesser than you—a woman in my case—have a glass of your expensive wine. You would’ve poured me the cheap stuff.”
I scoffed. “Please. Don’t insult me. I’m Rhys Daniels. I don’t own the cheap stuff.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet you’re here drinking my wine.”
The corner of her mouth twitched in a smile she fought valiantly to conceal by dropping her head and letting her hair fall over her shoulder. “It is good wine.”
This girl was a vault of secrets. I could see it in the way she carried herself. She wasn’t confident. She hadn’t been since I first met her. It confounded me. She was beautiful and clever and sly. I could see traces of her own internal monologue in the depths of her eyes and she was always thinking about something, dissecting something someone said, considering what it meant, listening patiently for more information she could use to build a better understanding of who they were. She was careful and considerate. She didn’t have a rash or impulsive bone in her body, where I was the definition of often unwise compulsive behavior.
Would her senior class believe our fake engagement? What could a girl like her ever see in a trust-fund baby like me?
“Where do you see yourself in five years, Vanny?” I watched her closely after I asked the question.
Vanny licked her lips and pondered for a while, her gaze fixed on her nearly empty wine gl
ass. “I like to think I’ll be out of the dress shop and moving into a field I’m actually passionate about.”
“You’re not passionate about working at the shop?”
She lifted her gaze and narrowed her eyes in an almost condescending way. “Am I happy selling dresses to skinny women that I could never dream of fitting into? Am I happy about being constantly reminded I am not one of them? No. Not really.” She finished the last three mouthfuls of her wine and set it down on the coffee table.
I pushed up out of the sofa and picked up her glass. I refilled it from the open bottle on the kitchen island and brought it back to her. She accepted it silently as I claimed my seat again. She hadn’t liked my last question very much but I appreciated her vulnerability. “So what are you passionate about then?”
“Helping people.”
“In what way?”
She sighed. “I’ve always known my calling was to help people with their relationships. I want to be a marriage counselor. When I was young, I used to corner my parents in the kitchen when they were having a disagreement. It was always surface-level stuff. Like my dad had forgotten to unload the dishwasher or my mom had undermined his parenting at the dinner table. They didn’t fight often. Hardly at all. But I saw those little squabbles as opportunities to exercise my exceptional advice-giving skills.” She smiled fondly as she recalled some of those memories with her parents. “They indulged me wholeheartedly. Sometimes, I’d arrive with a notebook and pen and ask them how the offense from the other person made them feel. God, I must have been such an annoying child to have in the house.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “I think that sounds pretty damn cute. And I bet you were good at it even as a kid.”
“I guess I was. I used to help my brother with his girlfriends, too. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time I was helping him get in their pants, but that’s the thing about being twelve years old with a horndog for an older brother. I was clueless.”