I contemplate the legal ramifications of threatening someone’s job in exchange for a relationship, and I think better of it.
“Of course not,” I say.
Besides, it’ll give us more opportunities to see one another. From here forward, I’ll be making extra trips to her section of the Westcott campus.
My future wife shows herself out without any fanfare, her heels padding silent on the lush carpeting.
I’m sure, once she peruses the paperwork later over a glass of twist-cap five-dollar wine in her humble apartment, she’ll reconsider.
And tonight as she lies in bed, she’ll imagine a life with me. The gravity of my offer will hit her like a wall of regret. Come morning, my phone will ring. And if it doesn’t? I’ll find a way to change her mind.
I always get what I want.
And I want Sophie Bristol.
Five
Sophie
Past
Every time his fingertips graze the small of my back, I feel nauseous—the good kind. Butterflies. Goosebumps. An electric trill running up and down my spine. Total sensory overload.
Everyone at the party is dressed in all black, their faces hidden behind glimmering facades made of silk, satin, leather, or sequins.
They could be anyone. Movie stars. Politicians. No one would know.
The mask he brought for me is covered in dark rhinestones and accentuated with exotic feathers that turn deep purple in certain lighting.
It’s all I can do to think straight with everything going on around me. Even from behind masks, I can tell some of the most beautiful people in the world are in this very room. Celebrities, maybe. I want to take it all in, all at the same time, but whenever I find myself enamored with a beautiful dress or an antique oil painting on the wall, I’ll find myself distracted by something else elegant and otherworldly.
The delicate tinkle of guests toasting with their crystal goblets. The hush of intimate conversation parsed with educated vocabularies and the occasional exotic accent. Wafts of expensive perfume. Glistening diamonds dripping from lithe bodies.
A server in a tuxedo delivers flutes of rose-hued champagne to a cluster of people beside us. When he gets to us, my date hands me one.
My fingers tremble when I accept it.
I’ve never had alcohol before.
Gold flakes float in the bottom of the glass. Is it safe to drink gold? A quick glance around the room tells me it must be fine because everyone else is doing it.
I hesitate, imagining the disappointment in my mother’s eyes if I were to come home smelling like this, imagining the words she wouldn’t have the energy to say.
“It’s okay, Sophie,” he says, his full lips curling into a mischievous smile that makes my insides somersault. “I won’t tell, if you don’t.”
His hand finds my lower back again, and I bring the glass to my lips. One couldn’t hurt. The liquid is bubbly on my tongue, tickling my throat as it glides down effortlessly. Sweet but not too sweet. It tastes like privilege and glamour.
He leans in.
“You like?” His voice is low and vibrates off my ear drum.
I nod and take another sip.
“You’re going to like it here,” he says, scanning the large room. We’re in the living room of someone’s palatial penthouse, that’s about all I know. “I can tell already. You fit right in.” Leaning in again, he points to a group of suited men chatting near a lit fireplace. “See those sorry bastards over there? They’ve been staring at you since we walked in the door tonight.”
One of them looks my way, letting his gaze linger. He doesn’t care that I see him gawking. It’s almost as if he’s challenging me to a staring contest? My confidence buckles, and I look away first.
How could he possibly know if I’m attractive when half of my face is covered?
A warm flush floods my cheeks when I remember the too-tight dress hugging my body, accentuating my curves.
That’s what they’re staring at.
“Does that bother you?” I ask. Because I think it would. I’m here with him. As his date. All the guys my age get jealous so easily.
He tosses back a mouthful of champagne, swallows it clean. “No. I love it actually.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They wish they were here with you, Sophie,” he says with his velvet tenor. “But they’re not. And it kills them. That feels good to me—to have something everyone else wants but can’t have.”
“So I’m a possession to you?”
His hand slips into mine, giving it a squeeze and lifting it to his lips to deposit a kiss. “Oh, God. Sophie, no. I didn’t mean it that way. I just … I enjoy showing you off. You’re gorgeous, and tonight, you’re mine. I’m a lucky man, that’s all. You should know that.”
My stomach tightens. The sensation of being desired by someone like him is foreign, exhilarating in a way I’ve yet to know in my seventeen years.
I had a crush on Devon Peterson for three years before he finally noticed me, and when I heard through the grapevine he thought I was “kind of cute,” it didn’t feel half as wonderful as it feels when my date’s eyes drink me in from behind his shiny onyx mask.
“We should make our rounds before dinner,” he says. “There are a few people I’d like to introduce you to.”
I hook my hand into my date’s elbow, and for the hour that follows, I get lightheaded off flute after flute of champagne as he takes me from one masked party goer to the next. The floor is wobbly beneath my heels and the sparkling chandeliers spin above like crystal stars. A string quartet of masked players serenades us from another room.
“Why do we use our real names if we’re all wearing masks?” I ask him when the host calls us all to the dining room. I’m drunk. I think.
Everything around me swirls.
I can’t stop grinning.
I want to laugh at everything he says, which is suddenly ten times funnier for no reason at all.
And I love the way the fabric of his suit feels under my palm. It reminds me of junior prom, when the guys rent the nice tuxes from the store on the square and everything is stiff and formal and fancy and special.
Pulling me aside, he leads me to a private hallway. He lifts his hand to my cheek, and my face feels small. He presses his body against mine, delicately pinning me to the wall.
I want to curl up inside him, be here forever in this magical moment where everything is new and exciting and I’m not Sophie-with-the-hand-me-downs, Sophie with the sick mom and disabled sister, Sophie who waits tables to pay her family’s rent.
I’m simply … his.
Nothing more, nothing less.
“You’re having fun, yes?” he asks, his dark eyes dancing in mine.
I bite my lip, nodding, breathing in the sharp citrus of his aftershave.
“The people here, they have silly little rules,” he says. “It’s like a club where people use code names.”
“… but you gave them my real name.” My tongue is heavy and my words slur into each other. I can’t talk right but I can still think. My logic is intact.
“It’s different when you’re not an actual member.”
“So only the men here are members?” I ask.