I’ll be only too glad when I’m out of here.
Snorty and I pass the large, oversized window of the strip club where I saw Joseph earlier this morning.
The dancing girls are as energetic as ever. Pulsing pink light spills out onto the marble in front of me.
I peek inside, curious if Joseph is there.
For the first time, I wonder if he had any fallout from his name and face in the tabloid.
After our yoga session, I remember Janie telling me that his company was super strict.
Though the tabloid was sleazy, I suppose there wasn’t anything morally wrong about hugging an ex-fiancé in a shopping arcade.
Except for his hand on my ass. His bosses had to see that.But could a man be fired for doing that? In Las Vegas?
Hard to say.
I take a second look inside, but Joseph isn’t there.
“Thank God,” I say to myself, shifting Snorty's carrier as we head toward the elevators.
We turn the corner.
And I freeze.
Joseph’s in an alcove by the restrooms, gripping the rim of a chrome trash can. His body jerks twice before he wretches into it violently.
The sound echoes against marble. Raw and desperate.
Then he collapses sideways, landing in a tangled heap, face pale and damp.
“Joseph,” I say to myself from a safe distance, stunned. “What happened to you?”
Snorty stiffens in my arms, ears pricked.
This isn’t the arrogant, self-assured golden boy who strode back into my life last year with a smug grin.
This is someone broken.
Two security officers round the corner at the same time I do.
“There he is,” the woman says. “Another one who can’t hold his liquor.”
The security guards discuss the next course of action. The woman opens a leather book from her back pocket and writes something in it.
The man takes photographs of Joseph lying near the trash.
My gut instinct tells me not to get involved. To go directly to my suite. That Joseph deserves everything he has coming to him.
But then I realize that he didn’t have anything to do with the tabloid photo capturing us together. That image was tabloid fodder because of Rio’s fame and had nothing to do with Joseph.
Joseph, like me, was just an innocent victim.
The male officer catches me edging forward, looking at Joseph. “Ma’am, you know this man?”
A sharp, vindictive part of me wants to say no.
Wants to take smug satisfaction in seeing them drag him out.
