by Alexa Riley
Paige and I have been together since freshman year at Yale. We were practically attached at the hip when we weren’t in classes. We oddly fit together, even though we’re so different. I think it’s why we work well together. We balance each other out. She’s loud, in your face and always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone else. She’s petite, but I once saw her take a two-hundred-pound man to his ass when he got a little handsy with me in a bar.
Most of the time she’s like an older sister. She’s the closest person to me in the world and the only person I can count as family.
“You can do whatever you want, Mal. Just don’t paint the walls pink.” She pulls the emergency stop chain and jumps off the treadmill. “Please.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I protest as she grabs a water bottle from the refrigerator in the kitchen. The condo has an open floor plan for the most part. The living room, dining room and kitchen all flow together, and there are two bedrooms down the only hallway, each with their own bathroom.
It’s more than I could’ve ever dreamed of having, and Paige is the only reason I’m standing here to begin with. It’s her condo. She bought it when I said I’d gotten an offer to intern at Osbourne Corporation, and she’d insisted we go.
I wasn’t going to pass on the opportunity, knowing there was no way I could make it in New York. I didn’t have the funds, and to be honest, I was scared shitless. I’d yet to fail at anything in my life, and I wasn’t ready to start. I’m not cocky, just determined. Osbourne Corp is no joke. They offer three internships a year, and I’d landed one. I may have had a leg up because I’d also earned one of their top scholarships and they were already aware of my performance. The scholarship paid my way through college and covered everything: board, food, books—you name it. I graduated at the top of my class and first in my major. Osbourne Corp had given me my education, and the internship would give me a chance to show them what I’d become because of them.
I wanted to prove myself, but trying to make it in New York intimidated the shit out of me. Thankfully, Paige was there to offer this place and help me start a new chapter in my life.
At first I was disappointed I didn’t get any other offers after graduation, but the job market is tough. I guess I was surprised that I got an Osbourne scholarship and then an internship offer but never any other offers.
“You look like you’re thinking awfully hard over there,” Paige says, taking another big chug from her water bottle before putting it down on the counter.
“I guess I’m a little nervous about Monday.”
“Are you serious right now?” Paige comes over to stand in front of me, taking the moving box from my hands and putting it back down on the ground. I know what’s coming, and I crack a smile. It’s something she does for me sometimes. “Who busted their ass through high school and got herself a full fucking ride to Yale?”
“I did.”
“Who graduated top of her class?”
“I did.”
“Who corrected that cocky-ass-dipshit Professor Sitten when he tried to say your answer was wrong, and then broke it down to him like he was in the second grade and made him cry?”
“He didn’t cry.”
“Oh, he cried on the inside. Trust me. I know the face a man makes when he’s crying on the inside.”
I can’t help but laugh because it’s true.
“Who?” Paige pushes.
“I did.”
“And who landed one of the best internships in the country?”
“I did.”
“Fuck yeah, you. You’re going to rock that accounting department. You’re going to own those numbers or whatever it is you do with them,” she says, like reading numbers is like reading alien code.
“I love you.” I pull her in for a hug. I know I’m smart and can do anything I put my mind to. It’s easy to be driven when you only have yourself to rely on your whole life. Only you can catch yourself, and that’s how it’s always been, until Paige pushed herself into my life. Sometimes I still need a little shove, and she has enough confidence to easily hand one out.
“I’m hard not to love.” Her freckled nose turns up, and she makes a smug face.
“Except when you’re making men cry on the inside,” I add.
She shrugs before picking up the box, taking it over to the coffee table and ripping off the tape.
“We should have burned all of this stuff instead of taking it with us. I think I can still smell ramen noodles. I swear the whole floor of our dorm smelled like it.”
She waves her hands over the box like she’s trying to air it out.
I come around beside her, dropping down on the couch as I watch her pull random things out of the box. This one is mainly filled with framed pictures. I love taking pictures; capturing our memories. Paige hated having her picture taken, but after four years I’ve worn her down and now she smiles when I tell her to. I never really had much to be happy about, didn’t have anything I wanted to capture before college, so I kind of went nuts at first.
“Which of these are mine?” she asks, going through them.
“Oh, now you want one?” I smile, rolling my eyes.
She pulls one out from our freshman year. I’d dragged her to a football game, saying we had to get all the college experiences we could. I was very eager to soak up everything my first year. As much as I rubbed off on Paige, she’d rubbed off on me, too, because by junior year I was much more blasé about college life.
“God, I must love you. I can’t believe I went to this with you.”
She hands me the picture, and I burst out laughing. I’d taken a picture of us at the same time she was dumping her soda over a guy’s head. He’d been talking about loving new freshman pussy for half the game and Paige finally cracked.
“That one’s mine.” She takes it back from me.
“Oh, I’ve got copies,” I remind her. That was the day I realized Paige wasn’t a normal student at Yale. The boy she’d dumped the soda on tried to get her expelled, but he was the one who ended up waist-deep in trouble.
Paige’s dad had money and power, but it wasn’t something we talked about much. She didn’t offer a lot on the subject, and I didn’t push. I had things of my own I didn’t care to talk about, too.
“I’m over this.” She gets up and plops down on the other sofa, throwing her feet up on the coffee table. I cringe a little. This table is probably worth more than I could make in two months, just like the rest of the furniture in here. Most everything was already here before we moved in. Paige acted like it was no big deal.
“You’ve literally unpacked one frame.”
“You need to feed me, or I’m going on strike.”
“I’m actually pretty hungry, too. You’re from here—what should we order?” I pull my phone from my pocket and look for local delivery places.
“Forget that. We’re going out. It’s Friday night, and it’s our first night in the city.”
“We have a lot to unpack and I need to study more.” I pick up one of the books off the coffee table to remind her. The internship had sent over a stack of books and folders I’ve been combing over. I’ve read them all at least three times but I still want to go over them again. Maybe make some flash cards. I don’t want to be asked a question and not know the answer immediately.
“Nope. We have all weekend. I’ve decided. Dinner and then out for a few drinks. We can unpack Saturday and Sunday, and you can do all your overthinking and analyzing about your new job then. Tonight let’s have some drinks and shake our asses.”
She grabs the book from my hand, tossing it back onto the coffee table and knocking the stack of books over as she hops up from the sofa, then holds on to me and pulls me with her.
“We haven’t unpacked our clothes or makeup or anything!” I try to reason with her as I thin
k about what I’m going to wear. This is New York. Aren’t I supposed to meet, like, a sheikh or something? All I really have are jeans and tops. And a few business clothes I’d picked up for my new internship.
“We can do a little of both. Get some stuff unpacked while we get ready.”
“I’m not sure I have anything that will work for whatever it is you have in mind,” I tell her, following her to our rooms, dodging random boxes in the hallway.
“Simple and sexy. Wear your tight black pants, and you can wear my black boots. Then all you have to do is find a cute top.”
“That’ll work for where we’re going?” Before this I’d been to New York twice and was completely lost both times. It’s a little overwhelming for me, a step out of my comfort zone. Even after being at Yale for four years, I still sometimes feel out of place, like I don’t quite fit in.
“Mal, I’m not taking you anywhere crazy. Just getting a steak down the street and stopping in somewhere we can have a few drinks. Girls’ night.”
I know she added the last two words to sucker me in.
“Can I do your hair?” I ask, wanting to play with her long auburn locks.
“Will you eat whatever I order?” she fires back. Paige has this thing where she likes to pick up the bill, but she also likes to eat at the most expensive places. No one can rip through a steak like her. I had to stop fighting her on picking up the bill, but I try not to order anything crazy-expensive. She’s not having it tonight, it seems.
“Deal.”
“No hair spray,” she adds quickly.
“No appetizers.”
“Fine, hair spray,” she grumbles before heading into her room, making me burst into laughter. Maybe I can talk her into a little mascara.
“No makeup!” I hear her yell from her bedroom, making me laugh even harder.
Chapter Two
Mallory
* * *
“Jameson. Neat,” I shout over the music in the club.
After Paige and I finished dinner, we took a cab to the Upper East Side, closer to where our condo is. She said we’d have a couple of drinks before we headed home, and I thought she had something a little tamer in mind. I didn’t want this to be a long night. I need to be up early and at it again. I only had days before I started my new job. I should have known better when we pulled up outside a bar and there was a line out the door. Paige wiggled her eyebrows at me as she hopped out of the cab and went straight to the bouncer up front.
I jumped out of the cab behind her and barely heard what she said to the doorman as he unfastened the velvet ropes and waved the two of us in. I didn’t get to ask her how she did that before we walked through the double doors and were hit by loud music.
Seven Eight Nine is more of a club than a bar. The place is swanky, but there’s a dance floor in the middle of the place and a DJ throwing down like it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s dark around the edges of the dance floor, with big velvet couches huddled up in corners. I rest against the bar, waiting on my drink as I watch Paige talk to a guy on the other side of it.
As if she senses my stare, she looks across at me and winks.
The music is good, and I’ve already had one drink, so I’m beginning to really like this place. I ended up wearing my black skinny jeans, teamed with Paige’s stiletto boots and a black silky tank top. It’s June in New York, and the humidity is killer. Cool air blows around the bar, and I close my eyes, enjoying the breeze.
My short brown hair exposes my shoulders, and the slight breeze is nice. But suddenly the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and it’s as if someone is watching me.
I open my eyes, and at that moment, the bartender passes me my drink. I lay some cash down, but a hand comes out holding a black American Express card, and the bartender takes it without a second glance.
Turning slightly, I see a man with dark hair and a short dark beard. He’s dressed in a suit and tie and is somewhat hidden in the shadows, but he smiles at me, and I can see his full lips spread, showing straight white teeth. His smile is easy and welcoming, and I smile back.
“You didn’t ask,” I say to him as the bartender brings his card over and hands it to him.
“What would you have said?” he asks as he signs the receipt and pushes it back to her.
I lean back a little, making an exaggerated motion of looking him up and down. It’s too dark to see all of him, but what I can see is very nice.
Being a kid in the foster system, I never had nice things. But I was really smart and did well in school, so because of that I was almost always surrounded by privileged kids. I was raised around Manchester, Connecticut, in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. My foster home didn’t have a lot, but the people who took care of us were nice and tried to make sure we all had a good education. Being around rich people, I saw what nice things were. I may have never owned them, but I’m not ignorant to what money can buy.
Looking him over, I see the shoes he’s wearing cost more than a month’s rent in our Lenox Hill condo. My eyes travel over his fitted suit, which can only be custom tailored, and he reaches down, unbuttoning his jacket and opening it slightly as if to let me get a better look. His dress shirt is crisp white, and his tie a deep purple with little white flowers. His hand comes up to smooth it down, and I notice he’s wearing cuff links that are the same color as his tie. I also catch a glimpse of his watch, and I’m sure it’s something expensive to go with the ensemble.
When I look up, he’s come into the light a bit more, and I see that he’s got dark blue eyes, like sapphire stones. He watches me watching him, and the area around his eyes crinkles as his smile widens.
“So?” he asks, leaning in a little more and waiting for my answer.
“Definitely not,” I say, taking a sip of my whiskey and letting the warm flavor hit my tongue.
I look at him over the rim of my tumbler, and he lets out a small laugh. He looks like the type of man that smiles a lot. Which is very sexy. His dark wavy hair is cut short, but looks long enough to run your fingers through it. There’s so much wave on top, I bet if he grew it long, he’d have gorgeous curls. It’s not fair for a man to be so pretty.
“Good thing I didn’t ask,” he says, and his scent travels toward me as he shifts in a little closer.
He smells like warm amber and honey, and I move toward him unconsciously.
Reaching between us, he takes the glass from my hand but doesn’t make contact with my fingers. I’m mesmerized by him, and I easily let him take it from me.
I watch as he turns the glass, placing his lips where mine were, and takes a drink of the whiskey. My eyes move to his throat, where his prominent Adam’s apple moves and he drinks the liquid down. Once he’s finished, he pulls his lips away slightly, then licks the remaining drop left on the rim of the glass.
It’s erotic and sexy, and I’ve never been so weak at the knees from something so simple.
“I thought since I paid for it, I should at least get a taste.”
He turns the glass so that the same spot is facing me, and places the glass gently back in my hand. This time, though, his fingers make contact with mine. I don’t speak as they linger there, the two of us locked in an invisible embrace as his fingertips travel to my wrist. He holds them there lightly as he smiles at me again.
This man’s smile could knock down a building.
Bringing the glass back to my lips, I taste where his mouth was. I don’t know what possesses me in this moment, but seeing him do it makes the need to do the same that much greater. I’ve never behaved like this before, never been this flirtatious with a complete stranger.
I down the whiskey, drinking what’s left in the glass, and it burns the back of my throat. His hand moves from my wrist and takes the glass from me. He sets it on the bar, and then looks back at me, smiling.
“Tell me your name.”
He’s demanding something I’m not sure I want to give. If I tell him, then we’re no longer strangers and the spell may be broken. He’s ungodly gorgeous and obviously has money, but this isn’t the type of guy I want to get tangled up with.
He’s the type of man I saw all over Yale. He’d take me out and go on and on about his bank account commas while I tried to talk about Fermat’s Last Theorem. He’s entirely too charming for my taste, and a man in a place like this isn’t the kind of man I’m looking to settle down with.
“Let’s not, shall we?” I say, turning away to the bar to order another drink. I look for the bartender again and talk over my shoulder to him. “Let’s pretend this is the Emerald City and you’re the wizard behind the curtain.”
His hand slides to my hip, and I stop my movement, looking back up to his eyes. There’s a desperation there now, as if he’s pleading for me to give him something. Anything. His smile is gone, and there’s a vulnerable fear in its place. I want to comfort it.
“Please.”
I see his lips move, unable to hear anything over the sound of the music. I take a step toward him and lean up to his ear, giving him what he wants.
“Mallory.”
When I pull back, I’m suddenly shy, like telling him my name is exposing something rare in me. It’s just my name. Why does it seem so intimate?
Looking over across the bar, I see Paige is still there, chatting with the guy from earlier. She hasn’t moved from her spot, and as if she senses me watching her, she looks over at me. She looks at the man in front of me, and then looks back at me, raising her eyebrows. I shrug one shoulder a little and the heat of a blush creeps across my cheeks. I’m not doing anything bad. I don’t know why I’m embarrassed.
