I could still feel the scrape of his calluses against the unworked flesh of my palm when we shook hands. Mine had disappeared into his, making me feel dainty, delicate, which was a feat of skill. I was no pixie, and my hands were proof—my fingers were slender and longer than my palm. Witch hands, Ivy called them, elegant and with the potential to wreak ruin or riches, depending on my mood. Which, of late, had been less than pleasant.
A pang of guilt niggled at me for giving Kash Bennet such a hard time. It was just the pressure of my job. Now, I loved my job—warts and all, as it was its own form of witch—but until I got a promotion, I worried I’d be impossible to endure.
We’d just landed the wedding of the decade. One of the Felix Femmes had met former-actor-turned-emo-rockstar in Aruba a month ago, and they were getting married. In eight weeks. Which meant I had a lot to do and not enough time to do it.
The Felix sisters were a quartet of socialites starring on a show titled Felix Femmes, a reality show documenting the daily lives of the infamous sisters. Their parents were one of the it couples from the nineties—Romanian supermodel Sorina Felix and her husband Adrien, a French socialite and retired playboy—and as such, the girls had been born with impeccable bone structure and an obscene wealth that afforded them a charmed life. And by charmed, I meant they were spoiled, entitled, and an absolute shitshow.
Alexandra and Sofia, the eldest, had been married and divorced half a dozen times between the two of them. Angelika was the third—and our client. And Natasha, the youngest, was every bit the party girl, gracing every tabloid in America with her beautiful face and-or beautiful vagina, depending on her outfit of choice. They were inhumanly gorgeous, with hard cheekbones and full lips and sweeping blonde hair, none of which were real. They had created fashion and makeup lines, perfumes and designer handbags. In essence, they were a household name of astronomic and notorious status and the clients that would likely test the limits of what I was willing to endure for my job.
For instance, at their engagement party last week, Alexandra had given a tipsy, passive-aggressive speech, halted by a glass of champagne in the face—courtesy of Angelika. Natasha, drunk, pelted them with pistachios while Sofia tried to wrestle them apart, resulting in a broken heel.
When she’d fallen, she’d taken Angelika’s strapless dress with her.
Like I said, I had my work cut out for me, and until this wedding was over, I was likely going to be a nightmare, one fueled by my boss’s breath on my neck as she waited to push me in the fire to keep herself warm.
Speak of the devil …
One of my texts was from Addison Lane, the senior coordinator in charge of ruining my life.
Johanna Berkshire was just in here with her lawyer. I told them I was handling it, so I hope for your sake that you fixed the flower issue.
A sharp inhale and flex of my jaw accompanied the tap of my fingers. It’s handled.
Of course Addison had and would continue to take credit. This was the crux of our relationship: I did all the dirty work—particularly dirty today—and she got all the kudos. I also got blamed for everything that went wrong whether I’d done it or not.
God forbid Addison actually owned up to a mistake. She was so far up our boss Caroline Archer’s asshole, she’d taken a bag of Doritos up there with her and made a nest, and the last thing she would ever do would be to tarnish her perfect reputation, especially with our high-powered boss. Addison lied easily, manipulated without thought, and held the keys to my career in her evil, ambitious talons.
So, I took all the garbage she dumped on me with a smile and an internal promise to someday ruin her. Someday, we’d be equals. Or—if I played my cards right—I’d be her boss. I smiled at the thought of her retrieving my dry cleaning and picking up coffees that I could send back for lack of proper foam. She could take the fall for my screwups. It’d be so nice to be infallible.
But as satisfying as that might be, I was all talk. I defaulted to honesty and fairness to the point of personal injury—mine or others, depending. But the impulse sometimes made it hard to get things done.
Never was a fan of the easy way.
With a glance down at my screen, I cleared out the rest of my notifications and sighed, looking out the window as the city slid past.
Honestly, I had everything I wanted. I had the perfect job planning weddings for the biggest firm in Manhattan. I had the perfect apartment in the Flatiron District on the perfect block with the perfect coffee shop downstairs. I had the most perfect boyfriend—who would propose any day now, I was sure. We’d been saving to buy our own perfect home together. And once we moved in, I’d have the perfect wedding to kick off the perfect life.
As I stepped out of the cab and into my building, that thought had me forgetting all about my spill into the flower bed or my filthy pants or my stupid boss or the myriad brides hell-bent on making my job as difficult as possible. Because I was on the threshold of all the beautiful and wonderful things. All I had to do was walk through the metaphorical door.
I slipped my key in my very real door and opened it, touched by the familiar scent of home and the sound of my perfect boyfriend fucking Natasha Felix against the wall of our entryway.
I didn’t feel my fingers let go of the keys, nor did I hear them hit the ground. I was too busy listening to the huffing and puffing and grunting as Brock drilled her into the wall, pants puddled at his ankles, shirttail covering most of his ass as he thrust. It was a small ass, I noted distantly, smaller than I’d realized. That ass was foreign to me, as were the noises he made and the sight of his hands on the twenty-year-old reality star’s waist.
Natasha opened her doe eyes and smiled at me like a porn star, twisting her fingers in his hair.
And yet, I felt no pain. I felt a number of things, like a sad sort of pity for the pathetic visage of the man I’d thought I loved pumping her like a Chihuahua on a throw pillow. I felt a raw fury, mostly at the audacity that he’d deceived me, accompanied by a rush of shame at my stupidity for placing my trust so carelessly.
But there was no pain, a realization that dawned on me like sunrise over a mountain peak. In fact, under all that fury, I noted the dim sense of relief that I’d moved out of the way in time to miss getting hit by that particular train.
I hung on to that half-truth with the same tenacity with which I grasped a candlestick and hurled it at the wall, and when I walked through the door once more, it was with a slam that shook the stars.
3
Bawdy by Nature
KASH
The shower cut off with a squeak. Steam had gathered in tufts and whorls at the ceiling, diffusing the light and fogging the mirror as the dirt from the day, muddying the banks of streaming water, slipped toward the drain in cloudy eddies.
My mother would insist that her filthy Bennet boys were the reason she required a maid service three times a week, but we all knew a cover-up when we saw one. Truth was, Mrs. Bennet was a terrible housekeeper, as evidenced by the piles of orphaned things lining the walls as I exited the bathroom in a towel, propelled by a pulse of steam. Piles of books leaned into each other between the occasional cardboard box filled with more things with no home. Glancing into one might reveal a whisk, several lost socks, a stapler, loose photographs, a pair of shears, floral wire, fabric scraps. Mom needed places to stow things like a magpie, lost things, extra things. Things without status but not unimportant enough to throw away. She always held hope she’d find that extra sock or that she’d remember to return the whisk to the kitchen, not knowing why she’d brought it up two flights of stairs in the first place.