His eyes pinched together, penetrating me with the resentment he’d been hiding up until this point. “What do you want?”
“One hundred thousand.”
“You must be joking,” he seethed.
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
He turned away, curling his lip as his eyes fell to the picture in his hand. The lovers in the frame were lost in the throes of passion, disgracing the guest bedroom of his best friend’s summer house on the cape. I was there with him that night on the beach with his friends, regaling them with stories of my fake life. But when I snuck away and spotted them, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap the shot.
As I watched him now, his feelings were written all over his face. He wouldn’t betray her. He couldn’t.
“You love her,” I said, “don’t you?”
He dragged a hand through his hair and stuffed the photos back into the envelope. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll get your money if that’s what you want. It’s done.”
His answer was what I expected, but at the same time, it renewed my constant companion of hopelessness. This was a cruel world. A world where people would choose reputations over love. Dirty escapades over happiness. I never wanted to weave myself into that fabric of society again. Situations like this reminded me why it was better to be a loose thread, dangling in the wind.
I didn’t know how to love men. I only knew how to leave them, with everything I wanted.
“I’ll need it by five o clock today,” I told Graham.
And then I walked away.
“HOW ABOUT ANOTHER SHOT, CUTIE?”
The drunk college student drooling at her feet couldn’t take his eyes off her. Around the bar, a similar theme persisted. In the face of the jilted bride dancing on the bar to a country song, the entire male population of the little dive bar in Jersey had suddenly forgotten they had girlfriends or wives.
I had to give the girl some credit. She knew how to captivate a crowd. Her sob story about the groom leaving her at the altar had earned her plenty of suitors who were ready and willing to be her Prince Charming this evening and soothe her aching heart. The wedding dress and boots were a nice touch too. She had them convinced she was a small-town Dixieland princess who was homegrown and fresh off the farm with that fake Southern accent.
I’d been watching her play this game for two hours, and so far, she’d swindled several of her potential suitors out of a couple of grand by playing light with her fingers. Knowing that she’d just come from a large con, she wasn’t doing this because she needed to. She was indulging her reckless behavior because she wanted to get high on her favorite drug.
Fucking over the men who would fuck her over if given the chance.
In a bold move, she decided to try her luck at the pool table. But while her male counterpart might have had a dick, he also had a brain. And he didn’t take too kindly to her pretending she didn’t know how to play while they were placing bets only to come out and reveal herself as a shark halfway through.
His voice was getting louder, and her taunts were tiptoeing the line of savagery.
“You didn’t call the shot,” he said.
She planted her hands on her hips and glared. “Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t.” He pointed the pool stick in her direction. “Now I’m beginning to think you’re a lying bitch.”
I didn’t come here with the intentions of stepping in, but at this point, I had no choice.
“That’s because she is.” I moved in beside her and commandeered the stick in her hand. “But that’s still no way to talk to a lady.”
“She ain’t a fuckin’ lady,” the guy snarled. “She’s a lyin’, cheatin’—”
“Con artist,” I finished for him. “And she was trying to swindle you out of your money.”
She peered up at me, and I removed some cash from my wallet, tossing it down on the table. “That should cover the inconvenience.”
Shark gray eyes cut into me. “Who the hell are you?”
“That’s a good question,” her opponent chimed in. He walked around the table and stopped a foot away, studying me. “You aren’t from around here.”
“No, I’m not.”
He cocked his head to the side, and I knew the moment recognition sparked in his eyes. I cringed before he even spoke.
“I know who you are.” He jabbed his pool stick in my direction. “You’re that fella from the TV. That lawyer who defends all those rich wife beaters and such.”
Gypsy looked up at me, her eyes flaying me alive. I could almost hear her judgment already. With one simple comment from some drunk moron, she’d made up her mind about me.
“I saw you,” she murmured. “At the courthouse. You were the guy who opened the door for me. Are you following me?”