Park Avenue Player by Vi Keeland
Chapter 7
Elodie
“I got the job!” I held up a bottle of Dom Perignon when Bree opened the door, handing it off to her as I helped myself inside her house.
She studied the label. “Wow. Must pay well if you’re splurging for the good stuff.”
“Nah. Someone from the college sent it to Tobias as a wedding gift when we got married. I put it aside to have as something special on our one-year anniversary. When I packed his stuff, I gave him the figurines someone else had sent us. You know, since he hated shit like that. I only kept the stuff I thought he would’ve really enjoyed. I forgot I even had it until now.”
Bree smiled. “Good call. He loves pretentious crap like this. That’ll make it taste extra delicious for us.”
I slipped off my shoes and plopped down on the couch, bringing my legs up under me. “I hope you can open it. Last time I tried, I wound up splitting the cork into pieces and digging them out with a fork. I had to spit out cork bits after every sip.”
Her response was a loud pop a few seconds later. She held the cork up for inspection, still very much intact, between her thumb and forefinger, and coughed. “I’m not supposed to have any. But I’ll make an exception for your celebration.”
Bree was actually my ex-husband’s stepsister. A few months before Tobias and I broke up, she’d moved back to the little town in Connecticut where we lived, to be closer to her family. Tobias hadn’t had much contact with her before that, and I’d only met her once at a wake for one of their cousins. But the two of us hit it off immediately. We’d become fast friends, and when I’d caught Tobias sleeping with one of his students and kicked him out, she was my biggest supporter.
One night, after a few glasses of wine, she’d admitted she never liked her stepbrother much. The best thing I’d gotten out of my short-lived marriage and subsequent divorce was Bree.
A few months ago, when the lease to her apartment was up, the cottage next door to me happened to become available for rent. Since she’d moved, I pretty much saw her every day. She’d become the sister I never had. And it allowed me to keep an eye on her health. Bree had moved back home to be near her father because she has lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a horrible lung disease with a sickening short-term survival rate. Only fifty-five percent of those afflicted lived five years. Twenty percent made it ten years. But you’d never know it from Bree’s attitude.
She untangled the tubing attached to the oxygen machine she spent her days tethered to and walked over to the couch to pass me a wine glass. “Champagne flutes are for amateurs. Wine glasses hold more.” She clinked her glass to mine, and we both drank.
“So…tell me…about the job?”
“Oh my goodness…well, where do I start? I’ll be taking care of an eleven-year-old girl, who I happened to meet accidentally when I was leaving his office that first day. She reminds me so much of myself when I was a kid. I really think I have a lot of insight to offer her.”
“That’s great. I’m excited it worked out.”
I gulped some more champagne and pointed to her. “I have you to thank for that. If you hadn’t read that classified ad, I’d be getting mauled by Mrs. Brady’s husband tomorrow.”
“Who?”
“One of Soren’s clients.”
“Oh. Well, I’m thrilled you’ll be working in the field you went to school for. But I’m even more thrilled you won’t be working that crazy job anymore.”
I sighed. “You know, I feel like everything works out for a reason. That job might not have been ideal, but it paid well and gave me a place to blow off the steam I needed to after everything happened with Tobias. Although it was also a constant reminder of all the reasons there are to hate men, and it probably wouldn’t be a healthy profession to stay in if I’m ever going to move on.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Bree smiled. “I’ve been telling you to quit that job for a year.”
“Yeah. I guess I just needed some time.”
I drank more champagne and decided to be honest with my friend about another thing that might have caused my sudden change of heart. I felt a little sheepish mentioning a man to Bree. I knew it was silly. She’d never given me reason to feel that way. Just the opposite, in fact. Bree had encouraged me to get back into the dating world, almost before the ink was dry on the divorce papers from her stepbrother.
I took a deep breath and pushed off the weird feeling I had. “So, also, the guy I’ll be working for is kind of gorgeous.”
Bree had been mid-sip and started to cough. Lately, she spent half the day coughing because of the progression of her disease. But this time, my admission had caught her off guard.
“Shit.” I grabbed the wine glass from her and patted her back as her face reddened. “Are you okay?”
She held her hand to her chest and tried to take a few deep breaths. “I’m fine,” she said, straining to get out the words.
After a few minutes of residual coughs and sputtering, the color in her face started to return to normal.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re not his biggest fan, but Tobias is your brother. I’m an ass.”
“First of all, stepbrother. And second of all, don’t be crazy. I’m…happy to hear you met someone. I just didn’t expect you to say that.”
“Are you sure? I understand if it might be weird for you.”
She nodded. “I’m positive.”
“Okay. Well, it’s not like he’s interested, anyway. I didn’t exactly make a good first impression. And I’m not ready to start dating again either. But it felt good to feel a little spark from my blackened heart. Like maybe it isn’t dead after all.”
Bree got up to grab the champagne in the kitchen. Her steps were slow, but I knew she didn’t like me jumping in and taking care of things for her. I stayed seated, even though it wasn’t easy to watch her struggle. She walked back to the living room, winded.
Refilling my glass she said, “It takes a while after we get hurt to feel ready. And trust me, you’re not a proper judge of the first impression you make on men. I’m sure his impression was today must be my lucky day.”
“You know what’s funny? I think one of the reasons I found myself attracted to him was because he didn’t seem bowled over by my looks.”
Bree smiled. “You like a challenge.”
I sipped. “I like honesty. And beauty is the biggest lie of them all. People look at you, see the outside, and assume the inside is a match. But a mirror doesn’t show who you are.”
Bree sighed. “God. My asshole-very-handsome stepbrother really burned you badly.”
***
“My uncle thinks you’re hot.”
I stopped mid-braid, with a handful of Hailey’s hair in each hand. “He told you that?”
She shook her head. “I overheard him on the computer.”
“What do you mean you overheard him on the computer?”
“He installed this program on my cell phone so he can listen to my phone calls. He thinks I don’t know. But I do. So one night I swiped his phone and installed the same thing on his. When I’m bored, I listen to his calls.”
I had soooo many questions. Why would you do that? Why didn’t you just speak to him? Do you know that two wrongs don’t make a right? But yet, I led with…
“Who was he talking to when he said I was hot?”
“His friend Lucas. He’s like…seven feet tall. He has to duck going through doorways.”
Let’s not get off track here.“What else did he say about me?”
“He said you were a…brasif.” She shrugged. “Whatever that is.”
“Abrasive?”
“Oh, maybe that’s what he said. What does abrasive mean?”
“It’s sort of someone who gets on your nerves.”
She smiled. “Uncle Hollis is abrasive for me then.”
I chuckled. Yeah, he’s abrasive to me, too.
But I had to back up. Returning to braiding, I tried to set the right example. “You know, Hailey, when you found out your uncle had put something on your phone to monitor your calls, you should have sat him down and spoken to him about it.”
“Sat Hollis down? You have met him, right?”
I guessed she had a point. “You know, your uncle comes off as sort of…difficult…at times. But he can be reasonable, too. Look at him and me—we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances, and I never thought he’d give me a shot after that. Yet here I am. I came back to talk to him, and then he thought about it and changed his mind about hiring me.”
I tied a rubber band around the bottom of the second French braid I’d made in Hailey’s hair, and she turned to face me.
“Uncle Hollis hired you because of tampons.”
“Ummm…come again?”
“After we met in the cafeteria, I asked Uncle Hollis if you were one of the people interviewing for the nanny job. He said yes, but that you weren’t qualified. The next day, he had some man come to the house from a nanny agency—a guy nanny. I heard Uncle Hollis saying how much great experience he had, and it sounded like he was going to hire him. So he called me out from my room to meet the dweeb and asked if I had any questions for him. I asked if he could show me how to put a tampon in.”
My hand flew to my mouth to cover my smile. “What did the guy from the agency say?”
“He said he would find some appropriate YouTubeinstructional videos that I could watch. I looked at Uncle Hollis and said, ‘Elodie has an actual vagina’.”
Oh my God. This girl was like looking in the mirror fifteen years ago. “What happened after that?”
She shrugged. “The guy left five minutes later, and my uncle sucked back that golden stuff he usually drinks from a fancy glass after a long day.”
I bet he did.
“Anyway,” Hailey continued, “you were hired because of tampons, not because Uncle Hollis is reasonable.”
It dawned on me that she’d mentioned maxi pads the other day and now wielded a tampon like a weapon against her uncle, which meant she might actually have some feminine-product questions that were the source of her anger.
“Does your uncle buy your supplies for you when you get your period?”
She made a face and nodded.
“You’re not…using tampons, are you?” She wasn’t old enough for that.
“No, but can I use them? The other stuff is like wearing a diaper.”
“Can you show me what he buys you?”
Hailey led me into the bathroom attached to her room and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. She pulled out a package of something more appropriate for someone who was incontinent, rather than having her period.
“You’re too young for tampons. But I think we can do a lot better than these things. They must be uncomfortable. And you need wings. I’ll tell you what. After school today, we’ll take a trip to CVS and do a little shopping.”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you go get dressed so you’re not late for school?”
“I don’t mind being late.”
I laughed. “I’m sure you don’t. But your uncle doesn’t like lateness, and it’s your last week of school before summer break, so I think we can hack making it on time for five more days.”
“Fine.” She didn’t sound happy, but went to get dressed, nonetheless. At her bedroom door, she turned back. “Elodie?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad he hired you.”
Warmth spread through my chest. “Me, too, Hailey. Me, too.”
