“I am not!”
“Are too!” She’s giggling like a demented schoolgirl. “How was it? Was it everything I’ve heard about him? Spill, dammit!”
“Depends on what you’ve heard,” I hedge, going toward the bathroom to get my makeup off. She follows me, waiting for more. I get my cleanser out and start dabbing at my face.
“Okay, yes or no questions it is then. Was it good? How big is he? Did he make you come?”
He came inside me. Three times. God, the raw sounds he made while he spurted…
“Brooke?”
“Huh?” I realize I’d frozen with my hand halfway to my face. I resume cleansing and steal a look at Stella through the mirror.
“What?” I say when she continues to give me a knowing smile.
“Your glazed-over eyes say it all.” She takes the pad from my hands and finishes it off. “You had a spanking good time, girlfriend.”
After a pause, she says, “Does that mean we’re going back to Empire soon?”
I snort. “You’re more than welcome to go back. On your own.”
“Did you at least get the guy’s number?”
“I left before he woke up this morning. I didn’t get his number or give him mine. Yesterday was an anomaly. Stella, you know that. And he’s a playboy,” I say with distaste. “You said so yourself. I’m never seeing him again.”
“Alright.” Stella huffed. “At least I can add this to my resume:My best friend hooked up with a billionaire because I styled her.”
I roll my eyes and laugh.
By Thursday, I’d managed to push the events of last weekend firmly from my conscious mind, although my nights were a different matter entirely. Absolute torture, waking up so turned on, remnants of wildly erotic dreams clinging to the edges of my subconscious.
Steve and I negotiated a payment plan of some sort for Fulvio. We agreed to come up with five thousand dollars a month for the next three months, by which time we would have found a way to pay half of the money off. And the rest would be due after another three months. Any default would attract consequences.
Sixmonths to pay off three hundred grand. Great.
Even the five grand a month is more than my entire salary. Although I should only be paying half of that each month while Steve comes up with the rest. If he can.Good luck with that.
So I’ve started taking on extra jobs from private tutoring, babysitting—anything.
I just got back from work, and I’m putting up one of the drawings I got as a gift from my pupils on the corkboard above my desk when Stella comes in.
“Hey. Do you still babysit?” Stella asks.
“I’m taking any job I can get at the moment, so yes.”
“Cool, so Ivy’s sister Coral was babysitting and the kid shaved off her eyebrow.”
“Oh my God! That’s horrible,” I say. Ivy owns an upscale beauty and spa salon in Manhattan. She brings more traffic in by temporarily renting out furnished space in her salon for freelance makeup artists and beauty technicians, which was how Stella got to meet her.
Stella holds up her phone and shows me a girl of about twenty years old with bloodshot eyes and one eyebrow shaved off.
“How did that happen?”
“Coral took a nap on the job,” Stella says, “and the little monster took Daddy’s shaver to her face. Coral unceremoniously quit after only two weeks on the job. Not that I blame her.”
“Anyway”—Stella continues reading Ivy’s message—“the mom is desperate because they need to go out of town this weekend. They need a sitter from eight a.m. to eight p.m. on both days.
“The girl can’t be that bad.” I try to reassure myself, thinking of some of the terrible darlings in the class I teach.