Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,39
the breath from my thoughts.
Then when he’d given me the smallest bit of space, I grasped the half-completed idea that the relationship was like quicksand, and every time one of us tried to pull away—
“Come with me this weekend. Forget about everything else.”
What had that thought been? I blinked, staring up at his face, at all its beautiful and familiar parts.
“Hamptons?” I repeated and he nodded.
It was enticing, indulgent. A farewell weekend. Why not, as he said, forget everything else? When else in my life would I be visiting these places in the company of a man who could afford to be there?
In whose arms I couldn’t nearly afford to be.
Chapter 12
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” I flopped back on the futon in the living room, reaching my hand out to trail my fingers along the wooden coffee table.
As the electric whirl of the blender filled the room, I shifted, sprawling onto my stomach and resting my cheek against the rough canvas.
Finally Leanna came out of the kitchen, holding two full glasses of blended fruit and rum.
“I’m going to posit something a bit controversial here,” she said, placing one glass down on the coffee table before me.
“I’m not sure I want to hear controversial.”
Leanna continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Maybe he’s not as bad as you’ve thought your whole life.”
I groaned into the cushion of the sofa, and then with a deep sigh, sat up and rearranged myself cross-legged. I watched Leanna fold herself up into the papasan chair kitty-corner from me.
“If I didn’t know what I know about him, I would be head-over-heels swept away. Of course, if I didn’t know what I know I also wouldn’t have gone to work for him. Or if I had gone to work for him, my job would have mattered more. And seriously, would he have even looked twice at me, so different from all his models, if I hadn’t been exactly who I am?”
“Slow down, meta girl.”
I sighed again, reached for my glass. Took a drink.
“Emily, listen, in the last four weeks, I’ve heard you gush about him and then feel guilty, and then gush, and then feel guilty. Now he’s asked you to choose him over work. There is something intensely romantic about that.”
“Except I’m the one supposed to make the sacrifice,” I pointed out. “That is far from feminist, I think.”
“Everyone makes sacrifices in relationships.”
“That’s the problem, Leanna! It’s not a relationship. It’s a game!”
“I think you need to get rid of the guilt, Em, and maybe stop playing the game.”
My gaze flew to her.
“Stop?” I blinked. “But he’s playing too.”
“Are you sure?”
I pulled a pillow into my lap, took a sip of my drink. There was only the slightest tang of rum rounding out the sweeter flavors of banana and strawberry. I took another sip.
Thought of the way he trusted me with information, thought of my clothes tucked neatly in their drawer in his apartment. Thought of how he’d told me that what was between us wasn’t safe.
“No, I’m not sure of anything.”
“Well, at the very least, go with him this weekend. Enjoy yourself. Don’t fight it. Let yourself be in love. When it’s over, you’ll have a better idea of how you really feel.”
There was something incredibly beguiling about Leanna’s advice. For one moment, I let myself imagine being in love with Daniel. And then I thought about the consequences.
I pulled my knees to my chest, around the pillow, holding on, the glass sweating in my hand. I didn’t look at Leanna. I pulled words out from the deepest, darkest place inside of me.
“I’m scared, Lee. I’m really freakin’ scared.”
• • •
The fear was gone the next morning, replaced by a surreal sense of otherness. I was living a life of high drama and nothing in the outside world mattered or compared. This was a movie, some other girl’s life. Sitting in a private jet, or going for a weekend away in the Hamptons with a handsome billionaire. A billionaire who was paying more attention to a stack of papers than he was to me. This was what it would have been like to be a mistress. Only, rather than being the mistress/muse to another artist, I was lover to a businessman or to, like, Napoleon or something.
But I wasn’t living in the Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec, Zola or Colette, where courtesans and courtesan culture was celebrated. Well, I wasn’t living in France, period. Instead, I was a girl who’d been raised on feminism, riot grrls,