“I, personally, knew that he was lying about some of that shit because I, personally, carried seventy pairs of his shoes down three flights of stairs and then shoved them in his dirty trunk. Lucky they were so small, or they wouldn’t all have fit,” the bouncer guy noted. “You threw one ring back, but did you keep the rest of what he gave you?”
“He only gave me a bracelet and a pair of earrings, and I left it all in his car with his other belongings. The bracelet wasn’t real gold and the rubies were some kind of glass. The earrings were diamond simulants, the same as my ring.”
“Simulants,” he repeated. “Sounds like an alien movie.”
“I thought the same thing,” I agreed. “But it just means ‘imitation.’”
“I know what it means. That shit-brained pinstripe gave you a fake engagement ring,” he told me, and now he sounded amused when it wasn’t funny. Not at all. “How’d you find out?”
“Another woman in my office is getting married soon. She started talking about all the things they’d done to make sure that her diamond was real,” I said. “I had never even thought about that. But I started to wonder how Dax had paid for it.”
“That fake ring was massive. When it hit me—”
“It hit you when I threw it?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He rubbed a spot on his chest. “Right there and you threw it hard.”
“I played softball. Shortstop,” I added. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“Your coach probably would have been mad about your shitty aim but there was a lot of power behind it. It bounced off me and flew somewhere. I heard that your boyfriend, daddy shortlegs, had them turn on the house lights to find it because he said it was worth more than the building.”
“No, it wasn’t! Those stones weren’t even the expensive kind of fake ones,” I told him. “I did all the diamond verification tests that they recommend online and I started to see that something was wrong, but I told myself that I was being silly. I decided that I would go to an expert and that would settle the issue and prove that it was real. But when the jeweler looked through her magnifying glass and before she did anything else, before she even said anything, I could tell by the expression on her face. It was fake. And what did that mean about everything else in our relationship? What did that say about Dax?”
“Probably that he’s a cheap liar with the judgement and reasoning of a fruit fly,” the bouncer suggested. “But I alwaysthought that. The reason I’m here now is because I wanted to warn you. I’ve never seen him get physical, because as I think I told you, he’s worried about marking up his pretty face. But you embarrassed him in front of his crew, and even with how moronic they are, he cares about their opinions.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have eyes, sweetheart. I have ears.” He pointed to where they were visible, because his thick, blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a long one. “I watch all those chuckleheads trying to act big, and you could be an easy way for him to prove that he really is.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a weak piece of shit but he could overpower you. Even with your softball muscles.”
“I go to the gym regularly,” I told him, but he seemed less than impressed. “Dax is actually really strong.”
“Your boyfriend may lift weights but he doesn’t know how to handle himself.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yeah, believe me. If he got into trouble, he’d depend on his crew and his gun to get him out of it. He couldn’t count on his speed or his fists.”
“What gun?”
The bouncer stared at me like I was an idiot, but then he shrugged. “Your dental floss boyfriend may or may not be armed.”
“You keep calling him that, but he isn’t. He’s not my boyfriend anymore—but I have known him for nine years. However mad he may be, I don’t think that he’d do anything to me.” Also, I’d asked him before if he carried a weapon, and he’d always sworn that he didn’t. I looked down at the white line around my finger and remembered that he had lied about other things, too.
The bouncer guy was nodding, though. “Yeah, he may be too big of a chicken shit to come after you, no matter how much he shoots off his mouth. But as I said, I thought I should tell you and since I didn’t know your real name, I came here.”
“My real name is Camille Carpenter,” I told him. “Camille Ursula Carpenter. I said it before, too.”
He nodded and started humming—I remembered him doing that the first time I’d promised him that it was my real name, when we’d met at Château Moderne.
“All right,” he stated. It must have been how he said goodbye, because he walked away from the window and straight to the door, where he started to unfasten all the locks.
“Um, wait,” I said, and he paused halfway into the hall. “How do I contact you? In case I need to get in touch.”
“Why would you need to get in touch with me?”
