“Lucky,” AJ’s voice cuts through my internal thoughts.
I glance up from my drink and cock an eyebrow at her. “Hm.”
She combs her hair with her fingers and props herself up on one elbow. “Were you serious?”
“About firing you?” I prompt, then salute her with my glass. “Yeah. I’m going out for a smoke, so you have that long to clean up and go back to your room.”
AJ looks at me blankly while I slip on my suit jacket and then pick up my glass. “But if you need a reference or something for your next gig, feel free to get a hold of Meyer.”
Downing the bourbon, I set down the glass and leave the room.
It’s a chilly night here in St. Louis, but nowhere near as cold as some of the nights I spent as a kid on the streets of New York City. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to getting back to New Orleans where a cold snap means something like fifty-ish degrees, which is a friggin’ joke.
The street in front of the hotel is dark, lit only by the ember glow of streetlights. There’s a fine mist in the air, and I lean against one of the lampposts, lighting up and watching the rings of smoke curl into the atmosphere and disappear. City streets in the dead of night create a symphony of their own, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. The hum of tires on asphalt. The rumble of diesel engines from delivery trucks making their after-hours runs. The intermittent, distant wail of a siren. Someone’s having a bad night somewhere, but it ain’t me. And it never will be me again.
By the skin of my fucking teeth, I clawed my way to the top, despite everyone and their friggin’ grandmother doing everything they could to knock me down at the knees.
“Vin.”
Speak of the damn devil herself.
The quiet voice that cuts through the fog doesn’t surprise me—I knew she wound up in St. Louis some years back—but it does piss me off.
Bringing the cig to my lips, I take a long drag and slide my gaze to my left to see Gia standing there. She’s wrapped in a big winter coat that just makes me want to laugh. Of course she’s fuckingcoldin this weather. She’s never really experiencedcoldbecause she always had someone or something to fall back on, includingmefor a time, and including when she fucked me over to make sure she had something to fall back on.
I turn my gaze back to the clouds of smoke.
“Are you even going to say hi?” she asks.
I drag the cigarette again and reply through a puff of smoke, “No.”
“I knew you were going to be here, and I wanted to talk to you so I could finally apolo—”
“Yeah, I know you knew I was gonna be here because you’re a fuckin’ stalker.”
I perceive her take a step closer to me, and I flick the ash off the smoldering tip of the cigarette.
“I’m not stalking you, Vin,” she says. “I just want to make amends for—”
“First of all.” I turn toward her and gesture at her with the cigarette. “I don’t wanna hearthatname coming outtathatmouth. You lost that privilege when you fucked me over.Second.” I cock my head and narrow my eyes at her. “I don’t think I could imagine anything more worthless to me than anamendsfromyou. If you wanna do me a fuckin’ favor, you can get lost.”
“Vincent, I didn’t mean for all that to go down that way.” Gia pushes a lock of her inky black hair behind her ear and then wraps her arms tighter around herself. “It’s been a long time, and I just want to apol—”
“And right now, you stupidly ignored me when I just said don’t fuckin’ call me that.” I stomp toward her, closing the physical distance between us. The three long strides bring my face only inches from hers, but therealdistance—the one she created by fucking me over—is a chasm in the fucking universe that’ll never be stitched back together. I point at her face with the lit end of the cigarette. “So if you don’t want me to burn a fuckin’ hole in that two-faced mug of yours, I suggest you get the fuck outta here.”
Gia sets her jaw. “I know you. And I know you wouldn’t do that. You would never hurt a fly.”
“Oh yeah?” I angle my face over hers and stare her down. “Fuck around and find out.”
She returns my hard stare for a beat or two before she backs off. “I’m sorry. That’s all I have been wanting to say. And I know in your mind, I crossed you so badly that you’re never going to let it go, but that’s only going to end up hurting you even more. You and me went through some shit, and I’ve been trying to fix this for years because you’re going to need someone one day. I know you think that just because you have a pile of money now, all your problems are solved, but that’s just putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. All this isn’t going to last forever. Your gimmicky act has a shelf life, and one day there’s gonna be no fans. There’s gonna be no groupies. There’s gonna be no entourage. There’s gonna benobody. Because you’re too scared to let anything actually mean anything to you beyond a quick thrill and a good time.” She takes a couple more steps backward. “One day, there’ll be no moreLucky, and it’s just gonna be Vincent De Luca, a lonely old man, sitting in an empty apartment because all he ever cared about was getting money, and fuck anyone who got in the way of that.”
I flick the cigarette again and slip my opposite hand in my pocket. “Yeah, and you’ll still be coming around looking for a good, hard fuck like I know you like.” I point the cigarette at her face. “And I’ll still tell you no then also.”
She juts her chin out toward me. “If you think I’ve been trying to track you down this long just so you can fuck me, you really are delusional.”
I turn on the balls of my feet and stalk back toward the lamppost. “Get lost, Gia.”
“I will get lost. Andyouwill realize I’m right one day. But by the time that happens, it’s gonna be too late for you to do anything about it.” The sound of footsteps walking away echoes against the hard facade of the buildings. “I hope all the cash is enough to keep you warm at night. Because I know you know how cold it can get.”
