by Sonia Hartl
“All in good time.” Margo beckoned the waitress. “Let’s have some wine first.”
The waitress, Auriane, was lithe and lovely. Very French. She probably smoked thin cigarettes with long filters while she cried silent, beautiful tears on the L. When she brought out a Pinot Noir, she let Margo have the first sniff and swig before serving the rest of us. She made to leave the bottle on the table, but Margo wisely ordered two more after glancing at Emma. As I sipped my wine, I took a moment to check out the other partnerships.
Liam and Charlotte seemed comfortable around each other, but I couldn’t tell if it was a close friendship or something else going on there. If I had to guess, I’d have said platonic on Charlotte’s side and quiet desperation on Liam’s. The way he looked at her was anything but friendly. Allie and Charles were polite to each other, but I couldn’t pick up any vibes from them, good, bad, or otherwise. At best, they were indifferent. Emma and Nick both looked like they’d rather be getting root canals than sharing a meal.
I ordered magret de canard, which Mark informed me was duck breast. I’d never had duck before, but I liked chicken, so it was a safe enough bet. Until it came to the table bloody. Apparently the French really liked their raw meat. Auriane informed me—with undisguised judgment—that it could not be well-done and could not be served with ketchup. I picked at my potatoes and ate around the semicooked edges of the duck.
“This food might be too hip for you,” Mark whispered beside me.
“Shut it, you.” I bumped his arm with my elbow. “I only ever looked at their wine and dessert menu online.”
“To priorities.” He raised his glass.
“To hitting up McDonald’s after we leave here.” I clinked my glass against his.
My phone buzzed in my clutch, and I pulled it out under the table.
EM: You’re going home with him???
ME: We’re sharing an Uber, nosy
Margo tapped her glass with her fork, and I put my phone away. Here we go.
I worried about what Emma would do. She’d been hit the hardest by the partnership. While we all had walls up because we’d been burned in the past, Emma’s betrayal was directly related to work. Putting her in this position was the shittiest thing Margo had ever done, and truly, that was saying something.
“I brought the eight of you here tonight to talk about this first week.” Margo’s serene expression faltered when she glanced at Emma, but she quickly recovered. “I know this is still new for you girls, and you might not be a hundred percent sold on this idea yet, but you’ll need to get along with the men if this is going to work. If you refuse to train them, you give me no choice. I will have to let you go.”
I turned my head to Emma, whose lips had gone bone white as she pinched them together, a sure sign she was trying very hard to contain all her fucks. I reached over Nick for her hand, and she clutched mine like a child about to get her first tetanus shot.
“We’ll train them.” Charlotte looked around at the three of us, her eyes shining with fear. None of us wanted to lose our job. “I know it’s been a long time since we worked with men, but we can do this.”
“Don’t speak for me.” Emma’s voice was barely above a whisper, as if she didn’t trust herself to go any louder or she might start screaming and never stop.
“Emma, if you’ll join me at the bar. We should have more of a private chat.” Margo stood, giving me a pat on the shoulder as she left. My skin crawled under her touch, even as I leaned into it.
I stood, dropping my cloth napkin over the plate of food I’d hardly touched. “I’m going to the bathroom. Allie. Charlotte.”
They both followed me to the ladies’ room, which was nicer than my apartment. Travertine tiles covered the floor and walls. There were also walnut-framed mirrors, fluffy white hand towels, and baskets of leafy green plants spilling out of mosaic pots.
“I don’t care if you’re mad at me.” Charlotte pulled on the ends of her dark hair. “I said what I had to say to keep my job. And I have a confession.”
“You slept with Liam?” I asked.
“No!” Charlotte’s face pinkened. “It’s not like that, but we’re friendly. He’s a nice guy. But I also think he should be at H4H.”
“Wow,” I said, but I didn’t have any bite. Mostly, I was sick of it all. Not just the men, but of H4H in general. “I thought we agreed they didn’t belong.”
“Maybe they don’t belong in Egos. But Grifters is a different animal. So is Cheaters.” Charlotte nodded to Allie. “My job is so much easier when I have someone who can help me run recon, and honestly, I’m surprised you don’t feel the same way as me, Allie.”
Allie held out her hands. “Don’t drag me into this.”
“Don’t you think your job will be easier if you have a built-in partner?” Charlotte persisted. “You wouldn’t need to schedule all your targets to show up at the same restaurant anymore.”
Allie frowned at the floor. “It’d be easier, yeah.”
My head swiveled between Charlotte and Allie. The tension in the room squeezed at the air in my lungs. If Charlotte and Allie were out of our pact, then I had no choice but to be out as well. I needed this job. But where would that leave Emma? She’d never agree to train a man to be a Heartbreaker. Not in a million years.
All of us had been brought on by Margo because we’d been broken in some way by the very archetypes we now targeted. It wasn’t just a job or a paycheck. It had also been therapy or maybe even a religious experience that allowed us to exorcise our demons. Charlotte had inherited a small fortune from her parents’ estate and lost it all when she married a grifter at the tender age of twenty. It had taken Allie six months before she told any of us her story. Her ex had cheated on her with her sister and given them both chlamydia.
I had no idea how Charlotte and Allie could fold so easily.
“I get why this is hard.” Charlotte turned her pleading gaze to me. “You know I do. But Liam has become a friend, and he’s a huge asset to me.”
“It’s fine if you feel that way.” She was entitled to move on, to get over whatever kept her locked in this void, but I wasn’t quite as ready to let go. Not yet. “But even after two years, I still see Aiden in every one of them.”
“I still see Derek too,” Allie said quietly. “I haven’t been with a man since him, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a point where I can believe one enough to try.”
“Do you think…?” Charlotte cleared her throat. “Do you think maybe working with the men, getting to know them in this controlled environment, will help?”
“Maybe?” Allie said. “It’s not like we have a choice.”
I didn’t want to give in quite yet. At least, I didn’t want to say it out loud. It felt like too much of a betrayal of everything I’d signed up for, everything Margo had sold us on, which now turned out to be nothing but a fluffy fantasy, full of vague mission statements, pink hats, and empty promises. At the end of the day, she didn’t give a shit about women, but she’d found a way to commodify feminism for a while.
Turned out, her principles stretched as far as her wallet.
Leaving the girls in the bathroom, I headed back toward our table, then stopped. Margo was chatting with the guys, but Emma was nowhere to be seen. Hazarding a guess, I went outside to find her.
Emma was leaning against the building, bent over with her head between her knees. I rubbed her back. “You don’t have to be okay. You don’t have to train Nick, you don’t have to do anything at all.”
Emma stood, and I wanted to wipe away every shadow in her eyes. “Margo fired me.”
“What?” My heart stopped. She couldn’t do this. Emma was the soul of our team. I didn’t want to do my job without her. “No. I’m fixing this right now.”
“B, don’t.” Emma grabbed my arm to keep me from marching inside and chewing Margo out for her colossal mistake. “She wanted to make an example of me, and it’s fine. I’m ready to go. Don’t put your job at risk.”
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“What do you mean, you’re ready to go?” I couldn’t imagine H4H without Emma. We’d been each other’s rock for two years. We’d bounced ideas off each other and commiserated over the hardest assignments.
“Do you ever think Margo is messing with us?” Emma stared out into the street. “Sometimes I picture her as a bored millionaire who doesn’t actually want to run a business. She just wants to provide some kind of fucked-up therapy for women, and introducing the men is an experiment. She’s changing the pattern to see how we’ll respond.”
I had nothing to say to that, since I’d often had the same thoughts myself. H4H did well, if my commission checks were any proof. But Margo had also handpicked her Heartbreakers and placed us in the divisions where we’d not only do well, but take pleasure in the work. We got to play out our most vengeful fantasies, over and over, in real time. It wasn’t Aiden on the receiving end, but they were all Aiden in a way. All the Egos I’d taken on had cut down and belittled the women in their lives so they could feel just a little bit bigger. But lately, the work we did at H4H had begun to feel so insignificant and petty. I still needed the paychecks, but I no longer needed the revenge.
“I’m thinking about therapy.” Emma lit a cigarette. She took one puff, looked at it in disgust, and stomped it out. “Actual therapy, not whatever the fuck I did for Margo.”
“I still go to therapy,” I said. “Not as often as I used to, but I still go.”
It had been an enormous eye-opener, though my therapist didn’t approve of the walls I’d erected to protect myself. I’d studied gaslighting and still couldn’t recognize it when it was happening to me. The way Aiden would use silence and short replies to punish me for his transgressions. I couldn’t see it—even when I was crying and begging him to talk to me because I couldn’t take the icy glares while I fumbled around and tried to figure out what I’d done wrong. Abuse wasn’t always raised voices or raised fists. Sometimes it was quiet and insidious. It slid inside your head and twisted your thoughts so you didn’t even know your own mind anymore. I’d needed months of therapy before I could admit that.
“I didn’t know you were still going to therapy.” Relief shone in Emma’s eyes, as if she suddenly felt a little less alone. A little less ashamed. That had been tough for me too. I’d majored in psychology for three years, yet when I’d finally called a therapist, I was embarrassed.
“Once a month. Probably should go once a week, but it got expensive and our shitty insurance won’t cover it. There’s no shame in going to therapy. I wish it wasn’t so stigmatized, so more people could get the help they need.”
“It must help some. You look…” She rotated her wrist as if searching for the right word. “Softer. Less unhappy than you did two years ago.”
“Isn’t less unhappy just happy?”
“I don’t know. Is it?” Emma tilted her head as she studied me. “Is it horrible that I don’t even know the difference?”
I reached for her hand. “It’s not horrible at all. I think we can all be happy; we don’t have to settle for less unhappy. We just have some stuff to work through first.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a hug. “I’m going to call a therapist tomorrow and see about getting an appointment. Lord knows I should be doing something useful with all my blood money.”
“Do you want me to come home with you?”
“I’m good. I have some things I need to put together on my own tonight, but we’ll talk tomorrow. And don’t worry about me. This is for the best.”
Her Uber driver pulled up to the curb, and just like that, Emma was gone from H4H.
CHAPTER 15
“Oh God. It’s so good,” I moaned. I couldn’t get enough.
“Fuck, yeah.” Mark licked his finger, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. “I have never tasted anything so amazing in my life.”
“We should’ve skipped Margo’s dinner and done this instead.”
His heated gaze dropped to my lips. “You’ve got a little something right here.” He brushed his thumb over the corner of my mouth. “Mustard.”
We sat in the corner booth of McDonald’s with a pile of cheeseburgers and two large fries between us. Margo had announced that Emma couldn’t come to terms with the new arrangements at H4H and had decided not to stay on. Which was how she let us know she’d fired her, without actually taking responsibility. As expected, Charlotte and Allie had promised to train the men and had given them inside information on their assignments, as well as passwords to their research folders. Margo didn’t waste any time taking over Nick’s training.
I’d wanted to leave right away. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Margo after what she’d done, but Mark had muttered to me that I needed to stay and put on my game face. After the way I’d treated him the past week, I hadn’t expected him to be helpful, but he was right. I had no doubt Margo would make a second example out of me if need be. She had too much riding on the men succeeding.
By the time we got out of there, we were starving. Turned out, just because Mark could pronounce the French dishes didn’t mean he found them appealing. He’d deposited half his food into his napkin to avoid offending Margo.
“Looks like neither one of us is hip enough for the Gilded Swan.” Mark bit into his cheeseburger, making more deeply orgasmic sounds as he chewed.
“I’m okay with not being hip.” I took a sip of Coke. “That restaurant was so pretentious, if it was a person it would be Gwyneth Paltrow. Did you see the way the waitress looked at me when I asked for ketchup?”
“I did.” His eyes lit with humor. “It was the highlight of my evening.”
I threw a fry at him. “Yet here you are, slumming it with me in McDonald’s.”
He caught my hand and gave it an exaggerated kiss. A joke, but still, his lips felt nice pressed against my skin. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
“Aww, such a charmer.” I took my hand back before it could linger in his for too long and balled up the wrapper from my third cheeseburger. I debated going in for a fourth, but that was just asking for midnight heartburn and regrets. “We should go.”
The Uber driver stopped at Mark’s place first, and once he got out, he leaned down on the passenger door. “Want to come up for a cup of coffee?”
This guy. So much trouble. “Did you just give me a line?”
He shrugged. “Did it work?”
“No.” I grabbed the door and slammed it shut in his face. I could’ve sworn I still heard his laughter as the driver turned the corner on my street.
At my building, I hesitated before getting out of the car. It would be so easy to go back to Mark’s place and take him up on his offer of coffee. Maybe he’d been joking… or maybe not. If I spent the night with him, I’d probably regret it worse than if I’d eaten that fourth cheeseburger, but still. It was a hell of a lot more tempting than spending the night alone in my apartment with my murder cat. I shook my head and went inside.
When I got on the elevator, Mr. Turner, the grandfatherly old man who lived down the hall, gave me a friendly nod. “Tea with honey.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re looking a little a feverish,” he said. “Tea with honey will clear that right up.”
The elevator stopped at the tenth floor where his lady friend lived. It made me oddly happy to know that somewhere in my building, two eighty-year-olds were getting it on like a couple of teenagers. He got off the elevator, humming a jaunty tune as he headed down the hall to get some senior action.
Feverish, indeed.
I unlocked the door to my apartment. Winnie jumped on the couch and hissed, eyes glowing in the dark as if she’d come straight out of Pet Sematary. I loved my cat dearly, but I occasionally considered trading her in for a poltergeist.
As soon as I went to my bedroom and pulled out a new sweater for her, she rubbed against my leg. It was one of her prettiest, pink with a rosebud print, and it would look fantastic against her black fur. We had snug
gle time while I changed her; then I got her some food and went back to my studio.
The painting I’d been working on had too much light where there should’ve been shadows. I’d meant to capture a woman sitting at a café with a man walking away from her, leaving his wedding band on the table. But somehow over the last week, the man wanted to sit down with the woman. He wanted to hold her hand while she cried and offer support when she needed it. It was warm and hopeful, and so far outside my usual repertoire that it wouldn’t fit in with my current collection.
“What do you think, Winnie?” I tried to pet her, and she swiped at my hand. That was one way to answer, I supposed.
The painting was good. It didn’t match the tone of my other work, but maybe it was time to move on from sad and empty and allow other feelings to breathe. Let a little more light in.
* * *
I woke up to my phone hammering against my nightstand. Seven in the morning was too early to be bothered on a Saturday. I hadn’t slept well. I’d woken up in the middle of the night cranky and sexually frustrated. Even masturbation hadn’t taken the edge off. I ignored the buzzing and attempted to get back to my dream where Jason Momoa had Mark’s face and three arms and he was bending me over a bale of hay, but my phone went off again. Only one person could be this relentlessly annoying at this time of day.
I picked it up without looking at the screen. “Hello, Mom.”
“Were you sleeping? If you were, I can call back later.” If she were really willing to call back later, she would’ve left a voice mail like a normal person, instead of dialing me over and over until I picked up. My mom excelled at pretending to be considerate while still managing to get what she wanted.
“I’m awake now.” I rubbed a hand over my forehead and came away with a piece of shredded toilet paper. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if Winnie’s little “gifts” were signs of affection, or a warning. “Just tell me why you called.”
“I had lunch with Eve Fillion the other day. You remember her, don’t you?”