Page 10 of A Smooth Operator

"Fine. I'll be there."

"Thanks so much."

Lani had become a little needy in the past eight months since she lost Marina to Remi. Making me hang around Remi with his girlfriend was not helping my bruised heart—because this was worse than when he had a flavor of the week on his arm.

Remi Drake was known all around Memphis to be able to get any legal-aged woman to drop her panties for him. I'd seen him with models, wannabe musicians, one or two famous musicians, two actors—one who had a show on Netflix and the other whose show had been canceled on Hulu, and many other women.

Since Remi started having sex when he was fifteen (Lani told me), not one single woman I'd seen him with looked anything like me—as in, a plain-looking nerd.

I mean, just take Marina. Blonde. A body that went va-va-voom—perfect for Playboy magazine and our local lothario. She came from a family as wealthy as the Drakes. She went on vacation to Paris and Rome. She spoke French. She knew how to tell a salad fork from whatever other silverware there was on a table lined up next to a plate. She'd gone to etiquette school as Lani had for a summer in Switzerland. I thought those places only existed in books and movies—I was wrong.

Marina worked at her family's charitable foundation doing…I had no idea. But you probably didn't need a job when your family had things like estates, trust funds, and charitable foundations.

I beat them all in one area—IQ. I was smart, like really smart. Somehow, that wasn't getting me laid, not in real life, just in Remi's imagination and that too—yuck—by his father.

Besides Lani and Marina, the girls who called me Poopy Pants were Katherine, who went by Kate (like the Princess), and Petal. Kate was engaged and was getting married this Christmas in Aspen. It was a destination wedding—and a small one with just close family and friends. Translation: the guest list was easily around five hundred but didn't include me. I would have RSVP'd "hell no," anyway. Kate's fiancé did something in his father's company, which was a financial institution. Petal was a kindergarten teacher because she loved children—not because she needed to work 'cause she didn't. She and David were high school sweethearts. David was a smarty-pants like me, but unlike me, he was handsome and rich—hence better than me, which Petal let me know every time she saw me. David, on the other hand, was actually decent, and I could carry a conversation with him. He was a big shot at an AI company.

So, yeah, there was a theme here. All my high school friends came from wealthy families and lived a life people only dreamed about. They went skiing in Austria, went to the Maldives for a break, and owned homes in several places around the world. They traveled in private jets and expensive cars. Most had family money, inherited over generations. Even though Dallas Drake had built his biotech company on his own, he didn't have to. The Drake investment portfolio was substantial enough that neither he nor his grandkids needed to work. How nice for them!

I handed the keys to my BMW to the valet and walked to the entrance of Paint the Town Red.

The bouncer looked at me when I took the VIP entrance.

"Get in line," he rudely said.

I don't think so!

I called Lani. She didn't pick up. Great. I texted her, told her I was outside and if she didn't show up in ninety seconds to get me in, I was out of here. Okay, so that was my inner monologue; my message actually said: I'm here; bouncer won't let me in through VIP.

The bouncer looked at me suspiciously when someone put an arm around me. "Poopy Pants, what're you doin' here?"

Tommy, as always, was tipsy. I shrugged his arm off. "Your fiancée wanted me here."

Remi was with him and the bouncer immediately all but genuflected.

"Major, she's with us." Remi pointed at me, to my surprise.

"Of course. Ma'am."

"Major, I'm Echo." I held my hand out, and he shook it, amused.

"Nice to meet you, Echo. You have a nice evenin' darlin'."

"What are you doing here?" Remi demanded as we walked into his dimly lit club, where the live music was bluesy in keeping with the spirit of Memphis.

"Lani is…." I stopped myself from saying having a crisis because Lani always had those, "Lani asked me to come."

"And you showed up," he sneered. "What a good friend."

"Yeah." I didn't even bother to acknowledge his insulting tone.

Why was he so rude to me? What had I ever done to him? Seriously, why did he tell the bouncer I was one of the cool kids if he was going to do me this way?

Lani all but bounced over to me, wrapping me in a big hug. "Oh, Echo, thank you, thank you, thank you."

I nodded grimly. "What's up?"

"Come, have a drink."