She wished he’d yell at her and demand to know if she’d meant everything she’d said six months ago. But Jett didn’t let things like that affect him. He didn’t care what she’d said or what she did, she was just a Barbarani to him. The spoiled party girl turned ice-queen lawyer he worked for. There had never been any depth to what Jett felt for Nella. She was a puddle. And she’d dried up any remaining droplets of friendship after the funeral by ignoring his and everyone else’s calls these past six months. He’d be glad when she was gone. And that would be right after this hearing.
4
Nella
Jett stared at her in the elevator mirror. ‘Did you skin Sully fromMonsters, Inc.to make those shoes?’
Nella hoped it was just distorted glass and that she didn’t actually look like the reflection staring back at her. Back home, she’d been working out so much she could pretty much eat whatever she wanted and not worry about not fitting into her favourite jeans (which of course actually meant not worrying that random guys would look straight through her like she was a vacuum cleaner). But she’d never admit that. What she’d said to Jett about the spin class shaman was true, but her presence at said spin class was more Christmas and Easter church attendance than devout self-flagellation. Had she changed that much these past six months? Would she ever get to that stage that women seemed to reach where they didn’t care about flat stomachs and toned arses and perky tits? Was it forty? Fifty? Did you care about all of that until your thirty-ninth birthday and then suddenly wake up at forty and think ‘Fuck that, there’s nothing wrong with me! Men’s opinions of my body don’t matter at all!’?
Nella hoped so. That meant she only had about seven more years of this. Of wondering ridiculous things like what Jett had thought when she’d pranced around in front of him in nothing but knickers and a bra. He’d probably been equally disgusted and satisfied at the sight of her, fallen from grace.
Maybe the shaman would help her with this.
‘You’ve been planning that line since I walked out of the bedroom, haven’t you? I saw you look at my feet.’
‘It’s human instinct to be drawn towards horrific sights. Like how people always slow down to look at a car crash.’
‘These shoes were on the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week.’
‘See, I didn’t know that. Pity Chris— I mean Vincent didn’t get a chance to see them.’
‘The only reasonVictordidn’t get a chance to see much’—she pushed past him as the doors opened into the gold and white lobby—‘is because you broke into my apartment.’
She left her suitcase in the lift so he’d be forced to take it. Power Moves 101.
He grabbed it without missing a beat. ‘He passed all the challenges then?’
‘Barely knew him long enough to make it past number 10,’ Nella shot over her shoulder.
‘So he made it throughUgly clothes?’
‘I was wearing a fluorescent orange fedora.’
‘I’m sure there’s a Pornhub category for that particular fetish. Are you going to see him again?’
They exited the building. Bessy, Jett’s red Porsche (well, her family’s red Porsche that Jett pretty much had full custody of), was parked in a tow-away zone right outside the lobby entrance, the rainbow lights of Elizabeth Quay twinkling off her shiny coat.
Nella’s cheeks burned at the arrogance of his assumption that he’d be able to convince her to leave with him so quickly.
‘He’s married.’ She knew that would shut him up. Jett hated cheating.
As Bessy’s lights winkedhello, Nella flopped into the front passenger seat, the familiar smell of leather, Bindi Bindi honeysuckle and Jett’s smoky, peppery cologne unwittingly soothing her thumping heart (courtesy of the unexpected espresso and lawsuit).
‘Sounds like I did you a favour then.’ Jett’s words were clipped and woke something inside her, but she was too exhausted to pay it any attention.
‘He only wanted to fuck me because my surname’s Barbarani.’
‘That’s not why he wanted to fuck you.’
She opened her mouth to reply but her brother’s caller ID flashed up on the Bluetooth connection.
‘Tom?’ Jett answered as he turned onto the arch-shaped road that cut through the quay.
Nella still did a double take whenever she looked out onto the new Elizabeth Quay foreshore. It annoyed her that Perth couldn’t just stay as it had been when she was a child. It annoyed her even more that she struggled to remember exactly what the foreshore used to look like before the plastic surgery construction started to Kardashianify the city, making it look more like the eastern ‘cool’ girls Sydney and Melbourne.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember the shape of the banks, the road, the swans, before it all changed. She couldn’t. Maybe Perth was standing in front of a distorted elevator mirror too.
‘Did you get her?’ came her brother’s voice. ‘Did she finally pull her head out of her—’
