She shakes her head. “No. It’s not like that. You wouldn’t understand.”
Her tone is resigned, and something in her expression is making me wonder if I do understand. I remember that unrelenting pressure. “Try me.”
She stays silent, so I shift tactics. “Aren’t you worried someone’s gonna report you missing?”
“They wouldn’t do that. It could tarnish the value of my brand.”
The value of her brand.She says it so sincerely it brings a sour taste to my mouth. “Of course.” She seems sweet enough—almost fragile—on the outside, but she’s just shown her true celebrity colors. She’s a total narcissist. They all are.
“So can you help me find a place to stay? A nice house with a cozy bedroom and a quality mattress?”
I scoff. “A quality mattress.”
“That’s right.”
In the end, we waste a solid thirty minutes while she vetoes two dozen perfectly reasonable options before settling on asprawling five-bedroom mansion along the river purely because the ad mentions the specific brand of mattress she likes.
It’s $800 a night.
I try in vain to convince her to find something less expensive so she won’t run out of money immediately, but she insists, pointing out it has a security system. I charge it to my card, she pays me back in cash, and we finally roll out of the parking lot.
We’re blocks from her rental when she claps her hands together.
“We have to go back into town. I forgot to pack some things.”
I roll my eyes. “All right.” I pull off to the side of the road. Cass is going to owe me big-time for this one. “What do you need?”
“Just the essentials. A sleep mask, earplugs, those noise-canceling headphones with the white noise—but not where you can hear it looping…”
She rattles off her list, and it strikes me that every one of these items is related to sleep. Like the mattress.
This girl is obsessed with sleep.
“But they need to have the soft, bendy strap,” she continues, demonstrating with her hand over her knit cap. “Not the kind with the bar that goes across this way. That presses on my head.”
“Right.” My voice is thick with sarcasm.
“And I like pink.”
I turn and stare at her, dumbfounded. “You realize I’m your bodyguard. Not your personal shopper.”
“Oh. I figured since you’re the only one here…”
“That what?” I squint at her. “That I would wait on you hand and foot?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “No, I just?—”
I sigh. “Look. Maybe that’s how it is in your fairy-tale fantasyland, but that’s not how things work in the real world.”
“Sorry,” she whispers. The scarlet in her cheeks is visible even through the pancake makeup, and again I find myself wondering if I went too far.
“It’s just…I can’t sleep without certain things.”
“Well, maybe tonight’s the night you learn how.”
“No. That’s just it. I tried. I really tried.” She’s getting upset, waving her hands in front of her. “But now, with the stalker situation and everything, I get revved up. Like I’m too wide awake.”
I point to her coffee cup. “That right there’s not helping anything.”
