“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” I whisper.
He lowers my hand from his face to his heart, where it beats as heavily as mine. “The only thing I’m asking for is you. The rest will fall into place, or it won’t. I don’t care. Nothing else matters to me.”
Talent walks behind me with his hands in his pockets, dressed in a casual pair of shorts and a plain black T-shirt—a far cry from the tailored suits he wears normally. If his face wasn’t so recognizable, he may have blended in with those of us who don’t live in the most luxurious apartments in town. We’re far from slumming it, but we’re double level only, and we can’t see the ocean from here.
A mom following behind her son on his bike, a man flipping through a stack of mail as he walks back to his building from the mailroom, and, of course, our very own neighborhood watch coordinator, Dog Mom, have no shame and gawk at the infamous Talent Ridge as we follow the sidewalk to my front door.
Talent’s oblivious, shrouding his face between my neck and the curve of my shoulder as I strain to get my key in the door. I drop my set of keys twice.
“I can’t wait to see your room,” he teases. “I never made it that far.”
The front door opens with a crack, and I notice right away that my apartment isn’t the same place I left yesterday. Camilla’s candles have spilled out to the living room, flickering on the coffee table and the kitchen counters. She’s thrown a sheer scarf over the floor lamp beside the couch and has covered every flat surface with a potted plant.
“Oh, you’re home,” Camilla mumbles over the nails she’s holding between her teeth. She spits them into her hand once she realizes Talent’s following me in and sets the hammer down on the coffee table. “What do you think so far?”
I recognize the art Gary has given me over the years on the walls right away. They’re one-of-a-kind reminders of every time I stepped into his office and knelt on the marble floor to be at his service. I don’t accept gifts from clients, and these paintings shouldn’t have been the exception. Their beauty hypnotized me, but now it feels like I’m surrounded by my indiscretions.
“I found these beautiful paintings in the hallway closet.” Camilla holds up the contemporary piece she was in the process of hanging when we barged in. “I can’t believe you had all of this hidden away.”
It’s all I can do not to rip the paintings off the walls and tear them to shreds with my bare hands. No one but me knows the personal cost of owning such coveted pieces of art. I’ve put forth an exorbitant amount of effort to taper who I am deep down—brutal, calculated, and hardhearted—to guide Camilla without scaring her and to show Talent I can be more than a slut. But at what point do I start to keep it real?
Noticing my discomfort, Camilla rubs the back of her neck and asks, “Should I take them down? I was going to ask before I put them up, but you smashed your phone and I didn’t have a new number—”
“I like the plants,” I admit before she spills more about the phone I destroyed with the same seven-dollar hammer she’s hanging hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of art with.
Enthusiasm returns to her expression, and she smiles. “I took a taxi to the nursery after you left yesterday. They’re drought tolerable, so we don’t have to worry about watering them too often. Just make sure you keep them off the ground because Dog ate one already. Like, he literally ate it. The dirt and everything.”
As if on cue, Dog growls from his spot on the couch.
This is my fault because I gave her permission to decorate, but I expected a few throw pillows and an area rug. I didn’t imagine she’d find my skeletons in the closet and hang my transgressions on the walls for everyone to see. My life two months ago is unrecognizable now, and I can’t process any of it. Today, especially.
“Looks good, bleeding girl,” Talent says, glancing around the apartment. “This collection is impressive.”
If you only knew, I think to myself.
Camilla has a hard time making eye contact with Talent, and I hope she doesn’t have the same problem with her client this evening. I’m not