Page 36 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

Is he messing with me? “Are you forgetting you’re makingmedo this idiotic charade?”

His expression is stony and distant. “We clear?”

“On the fact that you are an unbelievable jackass? Crystal,” I say.

“Alverson will give you his direct number. You’ll text him tomorrow morning when you’re all packed up, and he’ll come and get you.”

“I’m an athlete in training!” I say.

“And?”

“So in the middle of the most grueling series of rehearsals of my life, as I prepare for the most important tour of my life, while desperately trying to not put extra stress on my hurt knee, you have decided that I’m to be ripped from my comfortable home where I have all of my friends and support system and move in with you as some kind of an employee?”

“That’s about right,” he says.

I sit back heart pounding. I’ve never felt so powerless. I hate it. “Well,” I begin, “I’m assuming it’s alright with you if I bring my wind chime collection?”

He glowers anew.

Benny hates wind chimes. There was one in the palm tree in the courtyard of our building that drove him crazy. He’d drag chairs over and climb up there to tie things around it, but the groundskeeper would always get rid of his wind chime-muting fixes.

“Because I’ve become an avid wind chime collector,” I add.

“You may not bring wind chimes,” he says.

“Even if it’s one of your wife’s passions?”

“No wind chimes.”

“Fine,” I say. “But surely you won’t object if I use your money to commission a massively expensive portrait of myself to hang in a prominent place in the living room? Because that’s another thing that I must have. In addition to other things that I’ll soon think of. A gown, possibly.”

He pulls out a credit card. “Go crazy,” he says.

Nine

Francine

Newsof my impending forced cohabitation with Benny travels quickly around 341 West 45th and beyond, through our far-flung friend group.

My girlfriends stop by one after another to theorize about this strange turn of events. Even Vicky has dropped by; she’s staked out the comfortable corner chair while Smuckers makes the rounds of people’s laps.

Lizzie speculates that wealth has made Benny power-mad, and that I’m his new shiny toy. Jada thinks maybe he’s turned embittered from years of females rejecting him when he was in his nerd phase.

“So messed up!” I say. “Shouldn’t he be happy with all of his success?”

“Maybe he really has been in love with you all these years,” Kelsey says, because clearly she still hasn’t let go of that idea. “And it crushed him that you didn’t even care you were married.”

Scenes from last night flash through my mind like a montage of film clips, and it’s safe to say that him sliding the cold edge of his beer bottle over the hot mounds of my breasts as he gazed into my eyes is the headline feature. It’s up on the marquee of my mind in giant letters surrounded by blazing lights.

It’s a side of Benny that I wouldn’t have imagined—a sort of dommy side that’s all about being in control. Technically hot, yes. Okay, it was very hot. But so unlike the Benny I knew and adored.

I wish he would let me apologize for how idiotic I acted. I want to tell him how truly ashamed I am about having made those unwelcome advances and then blowing town the next morning after he was so kind to let me sleep in his bed while he took the couch. “Nobody cares,” he’d said. But that’s not true—I care.

But then he goes and acts so jerky. Maybe he doesn’t care.

“Whatever he was before, the man he is today just wants to push me around,” I say. “It’s all about a powerplay with him. And I promise you, he’s acting like the opposite of somebody who is in love with me.”

“Like the schoolyard bully who pulls a girl’s pigtails?” Kelsey says. “Is he being mean in that way, possibly?”

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