I glug more wine into my glass. It’s slightly sweet on my tongue. The dopamine hit is instant when I scroll through social media on the Svensson Investment phone.
There’s a ton of Slack messages from my various bosses.
Having IT issues, laptop not working,I type back.
VP:Okay, I need them to fix whatever the hell is wrong with it immediately.
Piper:Where are you?
Piper:I hate to put this on work chat but since you are always working…
Piper:Graham. Freaking. Richmond???
Piper:Why didn’t you tell me???
Dani:This is a very recent thing.
Dani:I’m at his house right now.
Dani:Correction—PENTHOUSE.
I pad into the bathroom and shrug off the robe and step into the hot bath, trying not to spill the wine. I don’t have the Kindle app on this phone. Boo.
I mean, I really should probably do a detox. I start to type a help message to Piper.
Dani:I’ve been kidnapped, you need to send—
I backspace on the message and sink into the pool-sized tub.
“What’s the rush, really? What was I even panicking for?” I muse as I scroll social media and laugh at a video of a dog who just ate a bee. “Poor baby!”
Everyone knows where I am. They know I’m with Graham Richmond. I could just chill out here until the cops show up.
Alone. By myself. In my own bathroom with my own bed.
It’s like a staycation in a five-star hotel.
Maybe it’s the mimosas at lunch. Or the fact that I’ve been plugged back into my dissociative digital world. But I’m suddenly not in as much of a rush.
Could also be all the rich food. I’m kidnapped, so I ate as much as I wanted—though that wasn’t a lot. Very small portions at that place. I wish it had been a buffet.
“I’m starving,” I tell the blessedly empty bathroom.
The bedroom door is locked, which means my dad or my granny or whatever man she brought home isn’t about to barge in. I can’t remember the last time I had a proper bath. I kick my feet in the warm water.
“Are you really kidnapped if you have access to a tub like this?” I pour more wine.
If I’m kidnapped, at least I’m not in a cellar. I don’t like the dark. I don’t like to be dirty. I don’t like the creepy-crawlies that live in a cellar. But this? This is nice. My own suite.
Now that I’ve had brunch and a really good coffee and way too many mimosas, I can appreciate the fact that I am finally, blessedly alone.
You don’t understand—I amneveralone. Not when I wake up, because I share a dining room with my cousin and sometimes Gran’s boyfriends. I can’t even use the bathroom in peace, because in the olden times they didn’t build enough bathrooms—they just had random sinks in the hallway or the bedroom—so my parents’ Upper East Side apartment is lacking in that department.
I never eat alone. I have to sneak food on the subway under the watchful eyes of a thousand angry New Yorkers in rush hour. Or stuff my face at my desk or at a company lunch.
Here? I am all by myself. In my own suite, with my own bed and a separate couch that I don’t have to sleep on.
Also… Colette’s mom thinks I am no longer single.
