Page 44 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

“I’m just working with what you give me,” Kelsey says. “You really do need to have that party. We need to evaluate this guy as a group.”

“Not happening. It’s enough that I’m playing wife to Billionaire Bluebeard; I’m not going to be adding socialite hostess.”

“Fine,” she says. “But you wanna know what’s so ironic? You do sometimes date people that are like how Benny sounds. Nerdy techie creative types. Or at least, pre-billionaire-status Benny.”

“I wouldn’t say the guys I date are like Benny at all.”

“The orchestra sound guy?” Kelsey suggests. “Socially challenged techie in the arts? And that one Canadian who did all those little inventions? He was also a little bit gruff, as I recall. Without grace but fun—remember how you said that?”

I dismiss her assertions with a wave of my hand and catch her up on company news.

“Honestly, I was kind of glad they had Daneen rehearsing in parallel to me. That way I knew that, even if my knee blew out, somebody would be able to hit the ground running. I kind of wanted to tell them to keep her on my part, but I don’t want to alarm them and get booted from the tour. I also don’t want to let people down. I mean everybody understates their injuries but…” I look over at her to see what she’s thinking.

She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you what to do.”

The kids are flagging and I run out onto the floor as hyena teacher, which means I scream and claw the air as I run toward them, and they all scream and step it up.

“I don’t have to decide now,” I say when I rejoin Kelsey. “About the knee.”

“You don’t,” she says. “You’ll know when you know.”

I focus on the class, and that lifts my spirits. Nothing gets me down when I’m teaching with Kelsey. She and I sometimes talk about opening our own little school because there’s not a lot of money in teaching for somebody else.

Class goes on. We start in on some barre work.

We have a big recital planned and we’re not ready at all. Kelsey and I sometimes discuss working with the group in a park, just to try to catch up, but park rehearsals suck—you always get people watching and commenting, and random kids race into the middle of things and sometimes they even try to dance along. I’d do anything to be able to bring the girls to Benny’s home gym to practice—even not moving the boxes, it would be workable.

If only.

Eleven

Benny

Spencer ridesin the back of the limo with me to the dog daycare, a vast dog playground that occupies the upper floor of warehouse space on Tenth Ave. I’m saying excited dog things to him.

My eyes are itchy and my head feels wrapped in gauze, but somehow it doesn’t bother me; I feel this strange sense of optimism about life that I haven’t felt in a long time. My thoughts drift back to the exercise room yesterday, to the way Francine’s breath quickened when I teased her; to the sensation of her challenging gaze. The clever taunts directed at me.

It was strangely…enlivening.

Not that I’m looking at this situation with rose-colored glasses. She’s here to get what she needs—nothing more, nothing less. Once she gets it, she’ll be gone in a flash, just the way she was before.

Still, it’s interesting. The way she jars me out of the malaise I’ve felt. The way she looks at life.

“Hey, buddy,” I say, scratching Spencer’s ears. He licks my wrist.

If James were here, he’d confront me to no end about this thing with Francine.What the fuck are you doing?

James was brutally direct, which suited me after a lifetime of people delicately dancing around me, misreading my expressions and my silences.

James and I got each other. It meant a lot. I’d never had such a good friend, and I know I never will again.

We were opposites in many ways—I was a small-picture thinker and James was big picture. I’d tease him about being a hippie, but he had incredible business savvy and he was loyal as the day is long. With his Patagonia clothes and Mediterranean good looks, James attracted women left and right. He was a massive serial monogamist—he’d fall hard and get bored two years in.

I wasn’t particularly interested in dating, especially not in that first year after Vegas when I was so ridiculously emotional about it all. Plus, I was technically married, even if it was a fake bureaucratic paperwork marriage where we’d never had sex and it was only a drunken farce for Francine.

My paperwork non-marriage became a handy “keep-out” sign. I liked getting naked well enough, and even went through a phase where I worked on my moves rather diligently, hell-bent on replacing my old romantic technique, which I might describe as “hungry, out-of-control nerd,” with a more cool and dominating style. But I liked that nothing could come of any romantic relationship—no strings, no emotions.

The Swiss chalet thing actually started as a joke that I made to a reporter. It took on a life of its own, that’s for sure, and definitely reinforced my “keep-out” sign.

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