you were probably able to do because of your money, and you realized I was staying at a shelter. And that really probably made you feel bad for me.” I was getting going now. I wanted to put him in his place, to make him see that I wasn’t just some girl he could come along and save with his good looks and his money. I didn’t need saving. I was fine.
His cell phone rang before he could reply.
He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, answering it with a brisk, “Colt Cannon.”
Which just proved my point. If he didn’t think he was better than me, then why the hell did he answer a phone call in the middle of our conversation?
I needed to get out of here. Even the shelter was better than this. The shelter made you feel bad about yourself, but at least everyone there was in the same boat. You didn’t have to worry about some rich asshole making you feel inferior.
“Have Jessa take care of it,” Colt was saying into the phone. “She’s good with that kind of shit.”
I looked around the room for my clothes, the ones I wore here, the skirt and button-up shirt. I needed to change and get the hell out of here.
“Where are my clothes?” I demanded.
Colt held his finger up, the universal sign for “one minute.” But I wasn’t going to wait one minute. I wasn’t going to wait one second.
I crossed the room to the closet in the corner and flung open the doors. But there was nothing in there except for a bunch of fluffy robes hanging on hangers. I flung the drawers underneath it open, but they were empty.
Where the hell could my clothes have gone? I remembered folding them neatly and putting them on the chair in the corner, but now the chair was empty.
“Where are my clothes?” I yelled again. I was acting like a child, but I didn’t care.
“One second,” Colt said to whoever he was talking to. He covered the phone with his hand. “Relax. Your clothes are being washed.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You came into my room and took my clothes while I was sleeping?” How completely perverted.
“No. My housekeeper, Kendra, did.”
“Your housekeeper’s name is Kendra?” Housekeepers weren’t supposed to be called Kendra. Housekeepers were supposed to be called Martha or Stella or, in the interest of not being sexist, Marcel. Kendras were blonde with big boobs. She was probably one of those naked housekeepers, the kind that came over and stripped for you so you could get your rocks off while you watched them clean your house.
Colt ignored me, instead turning away so he could finish his phone call.
I just stood there, fuming. If he wasn’t off the phone in ten seconds, I was going to do something drastic. Like start tearing this room apart. I looked around for something I could start with.
The wasn’t much, but it was doable. When I was seven, I had a foster brother with an attachment disorder who would throw insane tantrums. My foster parents started removing everything from his room – his books, his toys, his clothes. Anything he could pick up and grab. Eventually he just started taking his bed frame apart using a butter knife he’d smuggled in from the kitchen. Then he took the pieces and hauled them out the window. That’s when then sent him back to social services. I was kind of sad to see him go.
I’d start with the robes in the closet, I decided. I’d pull them off the hangers and throw them onto the floor. Then I’d strip the bed. Everything in the room was done in light colors– white robes, cream sheets, cream bedding. Who had a room where everything was white or cream? People who were rich enough so that they don’t have to worry about laundry, I guessed.
I started a countdown in my head.
Ten… nine… eight…
“Whatever,” Colt said into the phone, sighing. “I’ll be right there.”
He hung up the phone before I could even get to seven, which was disappointing.
“I want to leave,” I said.
“Your clothes aren’t done being washed.”
“You can send them to me,” I said, challenging. “You can wrap them up in a box and have Kendra bring them down to the post office.”
“No one uses the post office anymore,” he said. “You have someone come and pick things up. From UPS.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “God, I hate you.”
He smiled. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No.”