When she’s standing on the rug wrapped in a thick gray towel, her curls falling around her face, she whispers, “This has been amazing, but you have to let me go, C. People will notice I’m not around. Word will get back to Frank. Please don’t make my life more dangerous than it already is.”
I towel off, not speaking at first. I’m not ready to let her go, and it’s not because I’m worried she’ll be hard to find if her story doesn’t check out. I straight up want to hold onto her longer.
“I know you’re never with one girl for long. So for me, this doesn’t make sense.” She steps forward and puts a hand on the side of my face. “I don’t think you want to see me get hurt.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
“So please let me go. You know where to find me. If you find out I’ve lied—which you won’t because I didn’t—you can just come and get me.”
She might run. But so what if she does? I know she’s not the one who orchestrated the robbery.
I nod.
She slides her arms around my neck and hugs me. My arm’s around her waist before I think better of it. I don’t remember the last time I let a woman get this close outside of sex.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
It takes a serious act of willpower to release her, but I let her go. It feels off. I’m always the one who leaves, not the one who gets left. This is different, I tell myself. She’s not some random hook-up. Frank Palermo obviously considers this girl family. There’s no way I should put her in the middle of our fight. If she’s innocent, then she should be off limits from now on.
She moves into the bedroom. I stay with my feet planted on the marble tile, knowing that it’s better if I don’t watch her dress. One look at that girl’s ass, and I might put her over my knee and then fuck her the rest of the day.
“C?” she asks from the bedroom.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Can I borrow a shirt? My sweater’s dirty.”
“Yeah, go ahead.”Sure, borrow my clothes, I think. That implies that she’ll get it back to me sometime, that we’ll have an excuse to see each other at least once more.
“Thanks,” she says.
I move to the doorway. She opens a dresser drawer, then another. She holds up a black V-neck T shirt.
“This one okay?” she asks.
I have six-hundred-dollar Tom Ford dress shirts hanging in the closet, and I wouldn’t care if she took one of those, let alone some T shirt that costs forty bucks.
“Sure.” For some reason, I want to see her wear it, so I wait. She pulls it over her head and slides the towel down to her waist. A couple of minutes later she finds her panties under the bed. She slides them on and goes back into the bathroom to hang the towel on a hook.
“Your bathroom reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of luxury hotels. The shower was amazing with all those jets from different directions, and the tub looks awesome... do you ever use it?”
“No, but I would if you were in it.”
She smiles. “If only,” she says. Turning, she retrieves her tights. “I wish I’d washed my undies and leggings in the sink and hung them to dry. That’s a trick Rachel and I use when we travel. You can pack a lot less if you can hand wash things and let them air dry overnight. No jeans or sweaters obviously because they’d never air-dry in time, but other things will.”
“Rachel’s the Palermo princess, and she’s washing her underwear in a sink when traveling? I never see that on Instagram.”
Zoe laughs. “No, it was before. Back when she first moved in with Frank after he’d refused to acknowledge her for so long. She wouldn’t take money from him. It was a thing with her at first, so no Louis Vuitton luggage, no four-star hotels. We were so broke, but we had the best time! These days, she has plenty of money, but she’s not allowed to go anywhere without an entourage. It’s not fun for us to go on road trips anymore.”
“She’s got an entourage, but you don’t. Why don’t you take road trips without her?”
Zoe shrugs. “That wouldn’t be fun either.”
“She’s your best friend,” I say.
“Yes. We’re like sisters.”
“There probably isn’t much you wouldn’t do for her. If she asked?”
