Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules

by Annika Martin

  I scrounge up my dance workout clothes. Kelsey’s helping me with my dance moves for the audition, and I’m helping her nail her song. Usually we practice with recorded piano, but it’ll be good for her to do it live.

  “Now I want to eat it alllllll!” she calls to me.

  “Don’t.” I go out and whip the bag out of her hand. “You’ll get a side stitch.”

  “Eating doesn’t cause those.” She takes it back. “I’m eating it all. So how’d it go today. Did you reverse-chase him?”

  I grab my coat and my phone and then the marker. I put an X in the reverse-chase box.

  “You so rock.”

  “Uh, I don’t know.” We get out of there and head down the stairwell.

  “Did he respond?”

  “It’s gonna take a little more oomph to crack that nut.”

  “What happened.”

  We burst out onto the street and hoof it down the block. “I acted like I thought he brought me in as a delivery girl as a way of hitting on me, and I was all about letting him down easy. I go, I’m sorry you went to all this trouble to woo me.”

  “To woo you,” she snorts. “Love it.”

  “I was really going for it. Just putting up this wall of belief, as though my reality is so much stronger than his. Like he says in the book.”

  “Which is something you’re actually very good at,” she says. “You know you have a talent for that.”

  “Well, he wasn’t all that moved. He opened with disbelief—he was all, ‘that’s what you’re going with? Really?’ and eventually he moved on to informing me that he’d be weeping into the bosoms of supermodels.”

  “What a pig,” Kelsey says. “But maybe you were getting to him. Maybe a little?”

  We hold up at a corner. “He didn’t show it.”

  “Well don’t forget—the target will act like they wouldn’t ever even give you the time of day. But they’ll keep on engaging you, and that’s how you’ll know.”

  “I won’t give up, don’t worry.” We grab hands and run across the street before the wall of cars hits. We hop a puddle and get safely to the other side. “He’s messed with the wrong Jerseygirl.”

  “Yeah, motherfucker!” Kelsey says. “Don’t you flip my girl’s bitch switch.”

  I snort. “Though he has been giving me great tips.”

  “He’s a billionaire,” she says. “Billionaires and celebs have to tip extravagantly or people think they’re cheap.”

  “True.” We sidestep bits of soggy garbage and head in under the bright red dance studio awning.

  “I still can’t picture him as a goofy cowboy,” she says as we climb some more stairs.

  “He was great as a goofy cowboy.”

  “How did you guys even co-exist in a summer production. And what was he doing there anyway? If he was mister classical?”

  “It was part of a crossing genres requirement. Where a teacher puts you in a production out of your comfort zone and the other kids have to help you. He was my lead.”

  “Wait, you were leads together?” She stops at the landing. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

  “Yup. I had to play a poor rube in love with Max. And him in love with me. It was…whatever.”

  We head on into an unfinished hall. “It doesn’t sound whatever,” she says, slightly accusatorily.

  “It was,” I say.

  She unlocks the door and we go in. It’s a massive room with mirrors all around the perimeter, and an upright Yamaha piano in the corner. We put down our stuff. Kelsey goes over and hooks her iPhone to a speaker and starts up the music. She claps twice. “This music is mellow—what do we need?”

  “Back grooves!” I say.

  She starts in, rocking her hips, and I mirror her. “You were romantic leads.”

  “Yup,” I say. “And it was a summer show, and summer shows are always weird, like this one was full of younger kids, mostly from other schools. It felt like we were stranded on a deserted island, away from our friends. It was the one time we got along. Or I thought we were getting along.”

  “Define getting along.” She turns to the side and I copy her. We dance side by side in the mirror.

  “Okay, I’m going to confess something to you here—we had kind of a fling. Or, I thought we did.”

  Kelsey turns to me, eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

  “Not a full-blown fling. More like, the stage kisses were getting hot.”

  “Switch!” We hop around to face the east wall. “And?”

  “Let’s just say we rehearsed the kiss a lot. It was a joke with us—even knocking around backstage, one of us would say, we need to practice that kiss. And we’d make out. And we’d get bubble tea afterwards and do homework together and stuff.”

  “Mia,” she says. “You had a fling with him.”

  “I don’t think it was a fling to him. To him it was more like, he was trapped in an uncool musical with an uncool girl. I was the only person his age there. It was a game for him, as it turned out.”

  “This guy is unbelievable. Switch!”

  I hop in unison with her. The beat is picking up, and I’m thinking back to those long afternoon rehearsals. I played the prairie girl with a rope for a belt, so smitten. And Max would shove his thumbs into his pockets and play the goofy cowpoke. He couldn’t sing, but he really seemed to enjoy being in the show. It was fun, like we had this entire secret life together of being all in with stupid Oklahoma!

  I fell for him hard. Daydreaming, name-doodling, social-media-orbiting hard. “My heart would just hammer to think about him,” I say. “The force of my crush on him could’ve powered a small nuclear sub.”

  She starts us on oppositions, getting more core involved.

  “I had this stupid idea that the production of Oklahoma! was the real him,” I continue, heart pumping. “I thought that I was the only person who knew the real him, and all the rest of his life was the false him. Wrong.”

  “He was just playing you.”

  “And then school was back in session, and it was the worst. Our texting had been sparse. That should’ve been an alarm bell. And finally I spotted him at lunch, sitting with his crew. And this happiness just filled me. I had this tray full of spaghetti, and I rushed over there. And he had this weird look on his face. And I started feeling all nervous, and then I wasn’t looking where I was going and I tripped and fell on my ass with spaghetti all over my shirt. And my face and hair. And the whole lunchroom erupted in laughter. I was mortified.”

  “And Max?”

  “He did nothing. He just watched. My friends rushed to my side, but it’s like he didn’t care at all.”

  “Did you confront him?”

  He came later and apologized, but I really think he was just jerking me around. He didn’t want to know me once cooler people were around. I was all, fuck off! Don’t pretend like you care.”

  After our warm-up, we move onto my dance for my audition, a combination of contemporary and classical ballet moves we worked out, and Kelsey picked the music. There are a few combinations I haven’t been nailing, so we concentrate on those.

  I’m dead on my feet an hour later. Luckily, it’s switch-off time. I seat myself at the piano and take Kelsey through her vocal warm-up. We’ve chosen Midnight Blue as her audition song, but we think if it goes well, the casting director might ask her to sing Blow, Gabriel, Blow, so we’re preparing that one, too.

  Getting this show would be so major. As in breakout major.

  People are saying it’s going to be the next Waitress. Maybe even the next Hamilton. The group behind it has had massive hits before, so who knows? Needless to say, the best actors are vying to get a part in this production.

  Sometimes I’m afraid to hope for landing the part of confident, sassy Reno, like am I dreaming too big? But when people who know the show hear I’m going out for it, their eyes light up. It’s a very me part.

  At home I eat rice and cheese and watch YouTube videos. I go to bed early to read, but eventua
lly the evil phone is calling and I’m on Max’s Instagram feed.

  Why I bother, I don’t know. I guess I have this desire to find out something vulnerable and sensitive about him. A post where he isn’t perfect, either. Where he shows his belly.

  Some of the posts are familiar to me from late-night Instagram scrolls, or let’s just call them drunk scroll.

  There’s Max with the captain of his yacht. They’re standing in front of a giant steering wheel and Max’s hair is all windblown, his cheeks are kissed by the sun and he’s in a perfectly worn-out T-shirt with some sort of rugged tan shorts, making the captain look like a sad vision of manhood indeed. Caption: Rough weather ahead. Prepare the martini shakers.

  There’s a series of pictures of him kissing a short woman with dark, curly hair—definitely not a supermodel. Caption: Happy Saturday. So not the Max Hilton type. I always felt sure it was one of his fans.

  I scroll past Max sitting in the front row of some basketball game next to the coolest movie stars ever. Caption: Down five points! Judging by the outpouring of sympathy in the comments, you’d’ve thought he was a child trapped in a mine shaft hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface.

  There’s Max the fierce entrepreneur, hands planted on a drafting table, necktie loosened just enough that you can get a hit of his corded neck, and from that infer an entire body of muscular perfection. He’s surrounded by fiercely photogenic twenty and thirty-somethings in an array of genders, set against the grunge-chic background of his “studio complex.” Caption: Never feels like working when you’re doing what you love.

  There’s an arty shot of a woman in an elevator, head tipped back against the panel, as if in pleasure—you can’t see her face because of the light from the elevator chandelier reflected just above her, but a man’s hand is planted on the panel next to her. Caption: This elevator has everything it needs except a well-stocked liquor cart.

  Max at work, surrounded by models, and they’re all laughing their heads off—one guy is doubled over. Caption: Shoot crew made my day.

  I definitely feel like that caption lies; if you study the picture long enough, you can see that their energy is directed at him, like he said something funny. He made the shoot crew’s day, not the other way around, but Max is clever like that.

  It made him a dangerous enemy.

  There’s Max holding a lady’s hand over a candlelit table. The hand is all of her that we see—the rest of her is cut off, because it’s Max we care about. But presumably it’s a Max Hilton girl, possibly it’s Lana, his most famous Max Hilton girl, the model with a really successful line of capes and boots that even Antonio had heard of.

  Whoever it is, she has pretty blue fingernails and wears several vintage cocktail rings. And Max gazes intensely across the table at her with an expression that is so full of desire, it makes my heart hurt. Caption: No words.

  I tell myself it’s not the girl he’s looking at, but that’s a lie, because if you trace the line of his gaze and triangulate from her hand, it’s obvious that he’s staring right at her face.

  But who can say what she’s doing with the other hand?

  I decide she’s holding a pork chop in front of her face with her other hand, and she’s about to bite into it. And it’s the pork chop—and not her—that Max is staring at, lusting over.

  New Caption: Why the hell didn’t I order the pork chops? I wonder if she’ll trade with me. I am Max Hilton, after all.

  I shut off Instagram. Max Hilton’s Instagram feed is not helping my mood. But then there’s that slice of his tower, right out my window.

  “Yeah, I'm not done with you,” I say. I give his tower the finger and go get my uniform. I empty the sequins out of my pocket from when I ripped them off my ears in fury—oh my god how Max would’ve loved to see that.

  Carefully, I sew them back onto my ears. Because I’m doing this thing. I’m fighting him on behalf of all the women who ended up going home with losers because of his stupid book.

  I sit in bed, hand-sewing them on. I don’t care what it takes, I’ll keep alpha-signaling and reverse-chasing and all of the rest until Max sees what he’s done.

  7

  Women are like dogs. They enjoy knowing you’re in charge.

  ~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM

  * * *

  MIA

  Sienna slips from her pose of leisure into a pose of attentiveness when I arrive at today’s meet place. “So?” She looks my blingy self up and down. “You’re wearing it again. Does that mean the tips stayed good?”

  “Oh, they stayed good, my friend,” I say.

  “Really? Forty percent good?”

  I smile. Raise my brows. Yes.

  “And you didn’t do more deliveries? It’s per delivery?”

  “Per delivery, an average of forty percent better.”

  “That settles it,” Sienna says. “I’m doing it.”

  “You should.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not,” I say, feeling happy that I could help pretty Sienna. We may be in bitter competition for musical theater roles, but we’re a family at Meow Squad; one of us getting better tips doesn’t take away from the others.

  “So is this the sort of shit you’ll be wearing for the Anything Goes tryouts?”

  “Not sure yet,” I say. “Did you pick yours?”

  “Not sure,” she says, resuming her picture-perfect pose of leisure.

  Neither of us want to reveal what we’re wearing. The audition outfit is a delicate balance—you want to feel like that character to the casting director, but it’s a rookie move to go full-on dressing the part.

  Sienna could be real competition. She has a bell-like voice and perfect diction. She has a big ballet pedigree, too, but I’m the better overall singer, and a way better soprano.

  A few hours later, I’m heading into the lobby of Maximillion Plaza with my trusty cart. I’ll be doing the Show You’re in Charge rule, which is exactly what you’d think it is.

  It’s not easy to take charge when you feel like a tiny little plastic figurine living in a snow globe on Max’s desk. And Max gets to shake up your world and make it snow whenever he pleases.

  But that doesn’t stop me. I have a little something in store for him. I may not be in charge of much, but there is one thing when it comes to Max—his lunch.

  I practice showing I’m in charge to the customers on the lower floors. I give people unasked-for mustards when they’ve ordered sandwiches that should have mustard, and instruct them to use it. Or I override their chips selection, or tell them to eat their cookie before the sandwich.

  Going bossy like that was scary at first, but people love it. Max’s book is kind of brilliant, aside from being the pickup guide that helped to ruin Kelsey’s life.

  There’s a sweet guy on the twentieth floor who has lots of Blade Runner stuff in his office. The first day he was all, the cat thing is working for you! and we had a charming exchange. Today I tell him he has to eat his barbecue chips after he eats his sandwich, because otherwise it spoils the taste, and I’m very firm about it. He seems surprised, but then we bond over Blade Runner, and I tell him I’ll be calling him Blade from now on.

  Blade is the kind of guy I’d normally fall for if Max wasn’t looming up there, poised for another round of his favorite new game, jerky billionaire vs. delivery cat.

  * * *

  PLAYBOY BILLIONAIRE EXECUTIVE and supposed woman expert Max Hilton is on the phone when I arrive.

  I busy myself with my cart.

  It’s a problem that he’s on the phone—I need him to be paying attention. I’ve taken the liberty of changing his order. He’ll be eating a lunch of my choosing.

  He motions to the corner of his desk, not even looking at me. Like I’m a dog who needs a hand signal to understand that the master needs his food laid out.

  So arrogant.

  I look away, because maybe I can’t be bothered to
glance at him.

  Looking away turns out to be worse, because there’s that giant photo of models hanging all over him. I avert my eyes after a quick, hate-drenched glance. Those models need to buy a clue about the cynical, soulless robot they have their sights set on.

  I go around and extract the sandwich and work really hard on flattening the bag out to form his little placemat. He’s talking scheduling, something about Tuesday night being out.

  “No, it’s out, always out. The entire evening. A foundation commitment.”

  Slowly I unwrap his sandwich. I’m detecting a definite emotional charge around this Tuesday-after-work thing. Somehow, I know he’s lying.

  It’s not like I interacted with Max all that much in high school in terms of volume—aside from Oklahoma!, anyway, but I interacted with him a lot in terms of intensity.

  The relationship of prey and predator is a fierce form of intimacy, especially in high school.

  I watched him closely. Listened to conversations across the halls and classrooms with rapt attention, tuning out all else. And it wasn’t just real-time stuff; I kept his every utterance alive in my mind for later dissection and analysis. Understanding your enemy is an important survival skill.

  So I really think he’s lying to whoever is on the other line. Foundation commitment is the sort of vague term a man like Max would use as a lie. Maybe he’s really going to be out having a foursome with his three best friends’ wives. Or visiting a children’s hospital dressed as an evil clown.

  I set the sandwich he didn’t order on the perfectly flattened bag-bed, showing meticulous care, adjusting it just so. I’m close enough to feel the heat of him, the electricity of him, and something else—annoyance, maybe. Anger. Some high emotion.

  It feels amazing. I don’t know why, it just does.

  I decide to push things even further by making presentation hands, like a game-show hostess presenting a special prize.

  A muscle in Max’s jaw fires.

  I bite back a smile, imagining how Sienna’s jaw would drop if she saw me doing the presentation hands like this. Especially if she knew that this wasn’t even the sandwich Max ordered.