Page 10 of Electric Blue Love
I’d turned on to College Street and was passing the university buildings before I’d realized I’d run directly where my brain was wandering. Toward Bianca.
She hadn’t called me from a sorority or dorm room, so I waved off the notion that she lived in campus housing, but knowing she’d walked these same streets made me really stop and think about Bianca and what her life was like here.
I slowed as I passed the courtyard. It was too early and too cold to be filled with students, but I could picture it. Bianca and I might have some things in common, but the simple fact that she fit in here, at a friggin’ ivy league school, divided us in a way that had me resenting my life all over again.
Turning around, I picked up the pace, running back to the hotel until my legs and chest ached.
Stifling a yawn, the nagging reminder of Bianca stayed with me while I listened to Allen Sterling lavish his fifth wife over lunch. Still tanned from a recent trip to Barcelona, they were very much in the honeymoon stage. The only stage Allen seemed capable of.
In his mid-fifties, Allen had been born into money and a company that he tirelessly needed backing out of trouble. I guess I shouldn’t complain since he kept me in a job, but from someone who had pushed their own luck pretty damn far, Allen was borderline insane with how he risked his company and money by marrying women half his age without a prenup. Even without a law degree, I knew that was a risky move. Even more volatile, he paraded each one into his company directly by making them his assistant. What made a man so insecure that he needed to stay tied down and keep his wives with him twenty-four-seven?
“What about you Court, do you have a girlfriend back in the city?”
I shook my head in answer to his question and to the idea that I’d tell him shit about my life even if I did. “No, no girlfriend.”
“Smart man,” Allen said and received a playful swat from his newest wife. Margaret was a curvy, bottle blonde. I didn’t know what kind of life she’d been living before she’d sold her soul to become Mrs. Sterling, but I wondered if she’d still think it was worth it in six months or a year when he kicked her out for a younger model.
“But seriously, a successful young man living in New York should have women lined up. You’re not batting for the other team, are you?”
Brushing off his less than tactful insult to an entire population of gay men, I answered as vaguely as possible. “I guess I just haven’t slowed down enough to meet the right woman.”
I wasn’t about to get into my preference of casual relationships with a serial monogamist and a client, least of all Allen Sterling.
Margaret perked up. “Ooooh, you know Isla is single and –”
Lifting a hand, I cut her off before she could go any further. “I appreciate it, but I’m not interested in dating right now.”
Sometime over the past decade, I’d become a man that couldn’t just be single without a barrage of questions or setup attempts. Being a single thirty-four-year-old man was no longer socially acceptable. With only a slight pout of her lips, Margaret nodded and sat back into her seat as Allen dove back into business.
Margaret looked as dissatisfied with the change in conversation as I felt relieved.
“You’re coming back next month,” he stated rather than asked but I nodded in confirmation anyway.
“Yeah, I’ll be back to do a comparison and make sure everything is moving in the right direction.”
“The end of the month?” Margaret sat forward. “You simply must attend our reception at the Omni.” She placed her elbows on the table and without pausing or giving me a second to respond added, “We won’t hear of you not attending.”
With a chuckle Allen pulled his bride closer. “Might as well agree. She usually gets what she wants one way or another.”
“I thought you two already had a reception,” I said by way of bypassing the invitation entirely.
“We did, but Margaret’s family in West Virginia wasn’t able to make it so we’re having another one now that her sister is out of rehab.”
Margaret’s face paled in shock as if she was horrified that Allen had given away so much. I wanted to tell her not to bother being appalled, the way she covered herself in designer labels and expensive jewelry like armor made it clear she’d come from a less than prim and proper upbringing.
“So, you’ll come?” she pleaded in a tone I’d wager she used to get her way with Allen.
I got her. We were more alike than she knew.
“I’d love to.”
As soon as the bill was paid, Allen and Margaret made their excuses and I caught a cab back to the airport.
Bianca’s first text came just as I’d started to doze off in the back of the taxi.
Bianca: Emergency! 911!
Without thinking I called her, more eager to hear her voice than I was worried. Bianca didn’t strike me as the dramatic type, but something told me I wasn’t the person she’d be calling for help if she was in real danger.
