“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.
“Are you subtle? You don’t look subtle. Who furnished it?”
Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. She knows something is off. Here I was, thinking I could just be someone and no one would notice.
I need a lie. A lie to conceal a past she can’t know about, a lie that holds some truth, so she doesn’t see more.
“My dad always taught me not to draw attention to money,” I say carefully. “He always ruled everything, decided everything.”There it is, the small truth in the lie.“After he died, I had all that shitton of money, and I’m still figuring out who I really am.”
She hums out a huh.
“What did he do, your dad?”
Next lie needed.
“Owned several companies in France,” I say. “Until he ran his car with him and my mother over a bridge. Drunk driving.”
“Men are idiots,” she says. “You need art. And style. You don’t look like a princess. And this here gives too much princess with all the rose shades. This needs to be refurnished. Cooler, more edgy.”
“Feel free,” I say as I let myself fall onto the fluffy champagne couch, because I agree that this here is not me.
“I mean it,” she says.
“I mean it, too. I don’t fucking care, just don’t make it pink. Here,” I say as I fumble my cardholder from my pants pocket and throw my own black Amex onto the table.
She laughs. I cringe. Because flexing money feels so wrong to me.
“You know, you turned out to be hell of a catch,” she says and sits next to me with the bottle of champagne in her hand.
She leans sideways to put it on the table and grabs her bag. She pulls a small package containing white powder from the bag. I have never done drugs before—for the same reasons, I have never done alcohol.
“Are you in for some fun?” she asks and wiggles the pouch in her hand.
“Fuck yes,” I say without thinking twice about it and grin. The world I grew up in was filled of drugs. The men who contracted us were mafia, which is why I was never allowed to step out of line. One wrong move and it would have all blown up in our faces.
“That’s what I thought,” she says and grins as she throws some of the powder on the table and takes my card to prepare several lines.
She grabs a Benjamin from her bag, rolls it up, and does a line; then she hands me the rolled-up bill.
I take it.
Lean down.
Place the rolled-up bill in my right nostril.
Close the other nostril with my left pointer finger.
Somehow it all comes so naturally.
So I don’t question what I’m doing here. It is my time. My time to catch up on the time that was taken from me.
I sniff.
My nostrils burn, spreading up into the area behind my eyes, before they get numb, and a horrible, bitter taste runs down my throat.
And yet, there is this thrill.
Elation.
