“No.” She sniffs under her shirt. “You got me through break-ups, and midterms, and endless disappointments at work and in life in general. You were my happy place and my escape from every negative thing I’ve gone through for the past eight years. At the end of your videos, you always say,‘Lucky loves you.’But that isn’t true.Iloved you. But you’re a vile, repugnant human being. And now, all I want to do is forget that I ever stumbled upon you in the first place. I can’t wait to go home and make you disappear from my world forever.”
Your gimmicky act has a shelf life,Gia’s voice echoes in my mind,and one day there’s gonna be no fans. You’ll just be a sad, lonely old man in an apartment somewhere.
Deep under the scar tissue where doctors carved four bullets out of my side, an ache begins to hum. Ava’s staring at me so hard that I feel like I’m naked under a friggin’ microscope, and I have to look away.
“Just go inside, Ava.”
Without another word, she does.
I close the door and lock it, and then watch her as she crosses the room and heads up the stairs.
I linger in the living room for a few minutes before curiosity and jealousytake over, and I go upstairs.
I head for her room at the far end of the hall, fully expecting to find the door closed and Patrick’s voice coming from inside. But when I get there, the door is still open a crack, and I peek inside. Ava’s curled up on the bed with the balcony doors open as she stares out at the empty street. She sniffs intermittently, wiping her eyes.
I don’t really like apologizing, but I like guilteven less, so I lightly knock on the door. “Ava.”
“I know this is yourhouse…” There’s a crack in her feather light voice. “But will you please just leave me alone?”
I look at her for a minute, but she doesn’t even turn her head my way.
I offer a slow nod and start pulling the door shut. “Yeah.”
Ten
Ava
Quarantine Day 7
“I’m going to be sick,”I mumble, sprawled out on the bed with my phone lying next to my head.
"Tell me about it,” Zoey mumbles back over the speaker. “I didn’t even know whatfurloughmeant. I had to Google it. That sounded terrible, but at least there was some kind of hope for after it was over.Lay-offis pretty freaking cut-and-dried. There’s no hope.”
“It seems a little hasty to lay everyone off after only a week,” I say. “Something about this feels shady.”
“Well, remember last year when there was all that talk of them selling the company? I think that’s what they’re getting ready to do. Salvage what they can for themselves and fuck everybody else.” She sighs loudly. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
We settle into heavy silence for a couple of beats, and on reflex, I sit up to double-check that I locked the door. The last thing I need after being informed that my job was eliminated is Meyer coming in to try to pester me about helping him figure out how to organize a virtual concert tour for Lucky. Or Lucky himself barging in to demean me more than he already has.
I’ve done an excellentjob avoiding that bully for the past several days, even though I’m pretty sure everyone in this house thinks I’m a total hermit. My hermit level is so expertthat I’ve barely eaten anything in days, given that I have to sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night just to make sure I don’t bump into Lucky.
As though reading my mind, Zoey speaks up again. “What about that guy Meyer and what he’s asking you to do? You know, with the online concerts.”
My stomach growls, and I rub my hand over it. “What about it?”
“I don’t know, don’t you think that could become some kind of viable contract work? I mean, online concerts are basically just virtual events.”
“Yeah, but pointing him in the right direction is just a favor I’m doing for him. I have no desire to create some kind of business relationship with these people. Lucky De Luca is an entitled, misogynistic asshole and a bully. As soon as some kind of transportation becomes available, I’m getting the hell out of here, unfollowing all of his social media, and burning every album and piece of merch of his that I own.” I swallow as a pang rattles my chest. “I wish I’d never come here.”
“I know, Ava girl,” she says sympathetically. “I feel awful for pushing you into it.” She sighs. “But seriously, we have bigger shit to worry about right now. And I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to exploit them a little right now since they have a need and you have a skill set.Wehave a skill set, that is. You should talk them into hiring me to build the website for the virtual shows or at least creating the form that intakes and processes digital ticket sales. And they should pay you a consulting fee.”
“I could probably get him to hire you to build the site, but I already agreed to help him without mentioning any kind of consulting fee.” I sigh. “Besides, I really don’t want money from them or any reason to keep in touch after I leave. I’ll just do the bare minimum as a favor, and then I’ll start reaching out to some of my contacts to see what I can come up with.”
“I think you should do it for them anyway as a ‘fuck bitches, get money’ kind of thing, but that’s just me.” She groans. “But fuck it. I don’t think either of us should try to do anything today. Tomorrow we can hit the ground running. Tonight I’m going to get drunk on purpose and binge Netflix. You should get drunk and go find that Patrick guy.” She snickers mischievously, and I roll my eyes. “Or maybe even go spar with Lucky some more and try to get him to hate fuck you.”
The mere suggestion causes a physical reaction in me. Something like disgust combined with undeniable lust. If I’m honest with myself, there actually issomething about the idea of having sex with Lucky after he’s been rubbing in my face how much he would basically rather die than have Patrick’s “sloppy seconds.”
