“I know you aren’t happy about it, but that dress really does look stunning on you. The shoes as well. You really were built for these kinds of clothes, you know?”

Elsie, who was sitting much more primly than she was used to in the bucket seat of Caleb’s Ferrari looked at him and scowled. What exactly did he expect her to say to a thing like that? Did he expect her to fall all over herself and thank him, to tell him that she’d never wanted to be a clothes horse before, but now that he’d come along her eyes had been opened to a whole new world? Because if that’s what he was looking for, he was going to be looking for a hell of a long time. What she wanted, was to be at home. What she wanted, was to put on her absolutely oldest pair of sweats and the oversized Knicks shirt that had belonged to her father and snuggle into her couch cushion where she could feel something like normal again.

“You can say thank you, Elsie. It wouldn’t kill you. Even if you don’t love the dress, it was still a gift, and not a particularly inexpensive one either.”

“I never asked for it,” she answered stubbornly, her cheeks burning nevertheless at the mention of her lack of polite behavior. “I never asked for any of this… because I never wanted any of this.”

“No, I guess you didn’t. But you got it anyway, didn’t you? Anyone ever tell you that you should try and make the best of a situation? It’s not a bad thing to try. Might make you a little bit happier.”

Without realizing what she was going to do before she did it, Elsie reached across her body with her right fist and punched Caleb in the arm. He gave a surprised little “oomph” sound but didn’t lose any of his control over the fantastic machine he was driving. She thought he would yell at her. She thought she would deserve it if he did yell at her even, and she was surprised when he started to laugh instead.

“What the hell was that, Elsie?”

“Honestly? I’m not too sure. I don’t really know where that came from.”

“Do you really find me that frustrating?”

“Um, I don’t know. I guess I kind of do. It’s just that this isn’t what I get paid to do, going out to ridiculous clubs and shit like that. I get paid to work with computers and see who’s been doing something they shouldn’t have. That’s the way I feel comfortable. But this stuff? I don’t do this. I don’t do this, and I don’t get why I have to.”

“I told you—”

“Right, I get it. You told me that we have to keep up appearances. I get that part. What I don’t understand is why.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I don’t get why this has to be such a production. Why not just let me do my thing with the computers, and then I’ll be out of your hair? Better for everyone, right?”

“It’s just not that simple. It won’t work that way. Whoever is doing this, they’re close to me. I think they might be very close to me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know! I don’t have a reason to give you; it’s just a feeling I have.”

“A feeling.”

“Yes, a feeling. I usually trust my feelings because they’re usually right.”

“Fine.”

“Look, I’ll make you a deal. Do this tonight, and tomorrow we’ll start to get into more of the details. I’ll go over everything with you, and I’ll do my best to answer every question you have. But you have to do this tonight, and you have to do it well. Do you think that’s a deal you can make me?”

“Fine. It’s a deal. Can we just go? I just want to get this out of the way.”

“Spoken like a true party girl,” Caleb answered sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he put his car into park. Elsie wanted to ask him where they were and why he would park his car right out front of the place, but there was no time for any of that. There was no time for her to ask any questions at all. The next thing she knew, her door was being opened and a very good-looking, very young valet boy was helping her out of the car. Just that in and of itself was no small feat, something she’d never even thought to worry about. When she wore her sweats and flip flops, getting around was easy, no matter where she was—and all of the time. In the tiniest black dress ever to exist and bejeweled four-and-a-half-inch heels, on the other hand, it was a different matter entirely. In this get up, she had to try to pull herself to a standing position while also keeping her legs locked so tightly together that they hardly even moved. The result was that she came very close to making it to her feet and then toppling face forward, probably breaking at least her nose and likely some other things as well in the process. The valet, although very sweet, had no idea how to help her right herself. He didn’t seem to even understand that she was struggling, and she was pretty sure that by the time he saw that something was up, it would be too late.

“Here,” a deep, low voice spoke softly in her left ear and seeming to come out of nowhere, “just put your weight on my arm. I won’t let you fall, I promise. You’ve just got to trust me on this. And for the love of God, try and smile. This is going to wind up on page six, I guarantee it.”

She did as Caleb was asking without thinking. It was reflex, pure and simple, and it was the only thing she had going for her at that point. She plastered on the biggest, phoniest grin she had and put all of her weight onto Caleb’s arm, fully expecting to send the two of them sprawling out on the concrete. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Somehow Caleb managed to take her weight in just such a way that she was able to stand in one fluid motion without flashing her nether regions for all of the world to see. Then, before she even had time to fully marvel over how suave that move had been, he moved his arm and slipped it around her waist. He pulled her in tight to him, and at first she thought he was trying to come on to her, but when they took their first step forward, she saw the real intent behind the move. He was guiding her. He knew that she wasn’t confident walking on the shoes he’d pretty much forced her to wear, and now he was guiding her movements to make sure she didn’t get hurt, be it her body or her pride.

“See?” he asked through his most charming smile, as he turned them both to face the plethora of flashbulbs that had begun to go off with their arrival. “What did I tell you? It’s all about a little bit of trust.”

Maybe it was the loftiness of this last statement or the cocky little kick in his walk. Maybe it was just her total lack of comfort with the ultra-posh, crazy-expensive club Caleb had taken her to, where all of the people she was rubbing elbows with were either rich, beautiful, or both. Looking back on it later, Elsie would never be able to pinpoint the exact reason or set of reasons that had led her to behave the way she did on that first night out with Caleb. All she would be able to tell for sure was that it had been bad, and she would know this with such certainty because of the things Caleb would tell her and because of the photographic evidence.

Walking into the club with some one-word name she couldn’t remember and didn’t care about at all, Elsie had felt like she had been transported to another planet. It wasn’t a good feeling either, not one of those Disney-World-type moments when a person got to live out a fantasy she’d never even realized she had. This was the walking-onto-another-planet feeling that made you think you had landed in a hostile environment that could become deadly if not vacated as quickly as humanly possible. Maybe it was feeling so out of place that made her agree so quickly to the drink Caleb offered her, a drink she had downed in about two sips and then marched to the bar to order herself another while Caleb talked to three very beautiful women who had accosted him and completely monopolized his attention. Getting the drink had been beyond easy. At first, she had been nervous. Everything she heard led her to believe that the drinks were like twenty dollars a pop in the place, but when she’d gotten to the bar, she’d been told that she could have whatever she wanted all night and money wasn’t a part of the equation. She started to ask why, but before she could get the question out, she figured the answer out on her own. It was because she was with Caleb Grant, of course. She was with Caleb Grant, and because of that, she could have whatever the hell she wanted.

“What a bunch of bullshit,” she scoffed to herself, turning away from the bar and sucking on a vodka soda that was way more vodka than it was soda. “You only get free shit if you’re rich. What kind of ridiculousness is that?”

“Excuse me?” a tall brunette with obviously fake breasts asked her in a bored tone that had the sound of having been practiced. “Did you, like, say something to me?”

“Nope,” Elsie shot back quickly, looking the girl directly in her eyes and daring her to say something nasty. “Nothing.”

The girl looked down and shrugged, and then she hurried off in the opposite direction. At first Elsie was surprised by her reaction, but when she caught a glimpse of herself in one of the club’s obscene number of mirrors, she understood. When she’d answered that lady, it had been with an “us against them” mentality. She’d been thinking of things along the line of the fake-boobed brunette being one of the beautiful people and her being the shleppy chick with the computer. Except that she wasn’t that girl anymore, at least not in that moment, and the force of that realization hit her like a ton of bricks. These were the kinds of people, the girls especially, she’d been considering herself to be better than for all of her life. She’d prided herself on being better than them, on being smarter and more interesting and just...more. She’d always been so sure of that being true that it had become a part of her identity without her even realizing it, which made what she was looking at now extremely hard to handle. Because she looked like one of them. If any of the people in this club were to look at her, they would have thought she fit right in. Even more than that, they would have identified her as the chick who had come in with Caleb Grant, which would automatically skyrocket her to rock star status. If people could think that about her and be so completely wrong, what did that mean about the people she’d spent so much time looking down on? For all she knew, there was another computer nerd in here. Maybe that girl she’d just been rude to was a doctor or something equally impressive. All at once, Elsie was forced to understand that maybe people and places weren’t quite so black and white as she’d always let herself believe them to be, which was just the sort of mind-blowing revelation she was not in the market for. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to wonder about it, and so she sucked her drink down and ordered another, this time asking pointedly for a double. By the time Caleb broke away from his fan club, (she had no idea how long it had been; as far as she was concerned it could have been fifteen minutes and it could have been an hour) and found her again, she was good and drunk… and on her way to being sloppy drunk. Not good, she thought hazily to herself, not good at all.

“Darling,” he said in a honey-smooth voice, wrapping one arm easily around her slim shoulders and pulling her in closer. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Do you have to do that?” she countered, dimly aware that she was slurring her words and yet incapable of speaking correctly. “I don’t need you to do that.”

“Of course, you don’t need me to,” he answered in a voice that sounded so full of genuine concern that she could almost have believed it was real. “It’s not about that. I want to do it, sweetheart. That’s just the kind of man I am.”

“Maybe you could be the kind of man who goes to the bar to get me another drink. How would you feel about that?”

As she spoke, she wriggled out from under his arm, grinning triumphantly at having gained her freedom and then promptly stumbling several steps to her left. In doing so she managed to smash into a cluster of girls, who all looked like they had never had to work a day in their lives, causing the blondest and bitchiest looking of them to spill a bright red drink all over the front of her white dress.

“On my god!” the girl shrieked, looking at Elsie like she would have happily murdered her. “What the hell is wrong with you? This dress is Versace!”

“Sorry,” Elsie answered, her newfound slur almost under control now. “I didn’t mean to. Just out of curiosity though, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to wear white after Labor Day?”

The girl shrieked and actually lunged forward, as if she was planning on tackling Elsie and teaching her a lesson for her insubordination. In the moment, Elsie would gladly have accepted the challenge, never mind that her would be foe was about a foot taller than her and not nearly so drunk. The stubbornness of a sober Elsie didn’t hold a candle to the stubbornness of a drunk Elsie, and no amount of reasoning would have convinced her that she was not going to put on her very own rendition of David versus Goliath. Even though the angry, drink-covered girl’s friends made half-hearted attempts to hold her back, there was no way they were really going to keep a fight from going down. It was Caleb who did that. It was Caleb who stepped in and took control of things the way Elsie thought he probably did with every single thing in his life.

“I’m so sorry, really. She didn't mean to do it.”

“Didn’t mean to?” The angry brunette said in an incredulous voice, clearly caught in between wanting to rip Elsie apart and wanting to look ultra-sexy for the one and only Caleb Grant. “What are you talking about, didn’t mean to? Are you saying she accidentally made that crack about Labor Day? Because nothing about that says accident to me.”

“No,” he answered smoothly, reaching out to put a sympathetic hand on her arm while simultaneously using his other arm to keep Elsie at bay. She fought to break free of his grip, no longer even sure why she wanted to, but feeling like it was important nevertheless, but it was a lost cause. Caleb was worlds stronger than her, and it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. In fact, she was pretty sure he was stronger than any man she’d ever come into close contact with. Actually, he was in better shape than any person she’d ever seen in real life. It sort of made sense when she took the drunken time to think about it. He was better looking than any man she’d ever seen in real life, so why not stronger as well? It was annoying, that was what it was, and that was what she wanted to tell him. He wouldn’t like it, but it had the added benefit of rerouting her one-track mind about the white after Labor Day, so that was something. She was so annoyed and so distracted, in fact, that she actually turned around and stumbled off in the opposite direction of Caleb and her new almost enemy. She could hear him calling out to her, but she didn’t care in the least. What she cared about was getting back to the bar and having another drink. She never drank like this, absolutely never, but something about being in this setting—one that she didn’t understand and that made her feel so terribly exposed—had brought that voracious appetite for liquor out of her, and she couldn’t seem to slate it.

And why should she? This was what he had wanted, after all, wasn’t it? He’d made a big fuss over making sure she looked the perfect part, that she did her homework and learned how to play the part to the best of her ability. Wasn’t this what everyone around her was doing? Because it sure as hell looked like it. They were all gulping down their drinks and then ordering another round as quickly as they could, then searching the crowd around them with hungry eyes in search of the perfect mate (or if not the perfect mate, then someone to take home for the evening and feel just a little bit guilty about the next day). This time, when Elsie approached the bar she ordered her now customary vodka soda. (She asked him to “make it a large one, darling.” And the bartender grinned at her and gave her a little wink.) She also asked him to give her a shot. When he asked what kind, she told him to surprise her, then changed her mind and told him to make her two. She was, to use a term familiar from the driver’s ed days, past the point of no return. Whatever ability she had to reason, which was rather substantial on an ordinary day, had left the building. In its place was that all powerful driving force Freud had identified as ruling all people at their most basic level. That was the part that started to come out and take control of things when a person got good and drunk, and it was the part that was currently making Elsie Morrow’s decisions for her. If she’d been thinking straight, she would have realized that having yet another vodka soda—which amounted to having a tall glass of nothing but straight liquor—and then chasing said drink with two large and syrupy sweet shots, which were also pretty much straight booze, was a recipe for disaster and a whole lot of vomiting, but she wasn’t thinking straight. She wasn’t thinking straight at all, and as she pulled the first shot towards her, clumsily so that some of it spilled over the side and left a sticky bright pink ring of liquid on the otherwise immaculate white quartz bar top, the thought that kept going through her head was that it served him right. It served him right that she would get this drunk, and never mind the fact that it was only hurting her in the long run. Never mind the fact that she was the one who would have to do the getting sick and then suffer the brutal consequences the morning after. She wasn’t thinking about any of that while she prepared to take the first of her two shots. The only thing she was thinking was that this was how things were done on this strange new planet, and that it freaking served him right. Then a hand swooped in out of nowhere, swiping the shot out from her slowly clasping hand and whisking it away as if it had never been there at all. When she reached out for the second one, the same thing happened. The only one of her three adult beverages she managed to save was the vodka soda, and that was probably because the culprit, the dirty-down-low thief, didn’t have enough hands to take that one from her too.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing?” she cried, looking through the dim, pulsing light to see who said culprit was. It was Caleb, of course. She should have known that was whom it would be, and on some level, she supposed that she did. Still, knowing a thing and being okay with it were not always the same thing, and in this particular case, the two didn’t even exist in the same universe. To put it plainly, Elsie was pissed, which seemed to be the general theme for the evening because it didn’t take a whole lot of intelligence to see that Caleb was in the very same boat. Even as terribly intoxicated as she was, Elsie could see that Caleb was hopping mad. That had been one of her father’s phrases, hopping mad, and thinking about it now in this place, so unlike anything he would have considered stepping foot into, made her giggle. Giggling, however, wasn’t something Caleb was in the mood to appreciate, and she could see the stormy expression in his face grow even darker still.

“What the hell am I doing? What the hell are you doing? I think that’s a much better question, Elsie.”

“Of course, you do,” she answered in a voice that sounded unpleasantly pouty and not at all like her own. “It’s your question. Something makes me think you always think your stuff is the most important. It’s probably how you got to be where you are today, right? Just stepping on all of us little people. The best lesson good ole mommy and daddy ever taught you, aside from how to count your hundred-dollar bills.”

It was truly the nastiest thing she had ever said, and even in her numbed-out drunkenness, she regretted it. Saying it made her think about her own parents and how completely infuriated she would be if anyone ever spoke like she’d just done about Caleb’s parents, especially her father. It was over the line and she knew it, but she couldn’t take it back. Her stubbornness wouldn’t allow her to do so, and so instead, she stood defiantly, daring Caleb to do something about it. When she looked more closely at his face, having to squint now to keep from seeing double and even triple of him, she could see that doing something was exactly what he meant to do. This was one thing he was not going to let go.

“Watch your mouth, Elsie. I’m going to tell you this one time and only once, so make sure you pay attention. I know you’re drunk, and that’s really too bad, but if there’s one thing you take away from this disaster of an evening and store in your permanent memory bank, let it be this. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Are you quite sure, Elsie? Because I’m not joking around now. There’s no part of me that’s joking around.”

“I’m listening, okay? Jesus, just say what you need to say so this stupid conversation can be over.”

Caleb moved in closer to her, closer, so close that she thought he was either going to kiss her or haul back and hit her in the face. The second one would be a virtual impossibility with a normal man in a crowded place like this club they were in, but Caleb wasn’t a normal man. That had already been well established. Elsie had a feeling that if he decided to deck her as hard as he could, if he decided to use a closed fist on her even, nobody in the club would have a thing to say about it. That was how it was with men like this, wasn’t it? They could do whatever they wanted to, things normal people would never even dream of, and all because of a name and a fat bank account. He didn’t hit her, though, although she remained convinced later on that he had very much wanted to hit her. He only stared at her with those angry eyes.

“Here it is, Elsie, the thing you aren’t allowed to forget. You don’t talk about my family. You don’t talk about my family, ever. You want to insult me, fine. You want to act like I’m Satan reborn because I’ve got a lot of money, go for it. But my parents are off limits, do you hear me? Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth? Insult my parents again and things are going to go south real fast.”

This last part came out sounding almost like a growl, and despite her desire to appear as tough as nails, Elsie shrank back from him. Doing so only made him move in closer, however, and just when she was about to ask him if he was still trying to scare her or what, he leaned in and did the last thing she thought he’d do after a tirade like the one he’d just spewed all over her. He kissed her. He kissed her deeply, the kind of kiss that made a girl lean back and lift one foot into the air without knowing she was doing it, just like they did in the movies. He kissed her so that a little spattering of applause came from the people around them, and the bartender let out a low, appreciative whistle. Then it was over just as abruptly as it had begun, and Elsie was left reeling, almost toppling over after all, as she watched Caleb slam both of the shots she’d ordered for herself. She had no idea what to do. She wanted to slap him for being so presumptuous, to make damn sure he knew this act they were putting on for the benefit of his paranoia didn’t extend to him being able to actually have her physically whenever the mood struck. She wanted to slap him, but she also wanted to kiss him, and that was the part that made her feel vaguely ill. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been kissed as well as what Caleb had just done because she never had been kissed that well. The kiss he’d just planted on her, anger and all, was the kind that made her weak in the knees, made her stomach do happy little flip flops and clamor for more. Part of her wanted to kiss him again and to keep on kissing him until it led to something else, something more, and because she didn’t know what to do with that desire she did the only thing she could think of; she fled. She grabbed the little hot pink clutch Caleb had insisted on her bringing in place of her far more practical leather satchel bag, and she fled, running away from him the way a child might run from a movie monster come to life. By the time she made it outside, sincerely grateful for the blast of cool air that met her, and dimly aware of an uncomfortable sloshing feeling in her belly, she was sure he would have followed her. She actually turned around to look for him, ready to pick up the fight right where they had left off before the kiss had left her so confused.

Only there was nobody there. Caleb hadn’t followed her. He hadn’t come to make sure she didn’t get into any more trouble. He’d let her leave, which was how she knew he was really and truly pissed off. Absurdly, she felt a little sad that he’d let her go so easily and then cursed herself for being so unbelievably stupid. She didn’t need to worry about Caleb and why he hadn’t bothered chasing her down. What she needed to worry about was how the hell she was going to get home. She’d brought zero cash with her because she hadn’t expected to need it, and because she’d been so flustered by the direction the day had taken her, most of her normal daily items were still in her other bag. All she had was an ID, a stupid lip gloss, and her phone. Her phone was the only thing out of the three items that could be of any use to her, and because she could think of nothing else to do, she extracted it and dialed the only number she could think of that would be any use. Despite the fact that it was now squarely in the middle of the night, the person on the other end picked up after only the second ring.

“Joe?” she said in a broken voice, hating herself when she started to cry and feeling utterly powerless to stop herself. “Can you come and pick me up please? I need to go home and I have nobody else to turn to.”

He told her that he would, and Elsie sat down on the curb, on a street, in the middle of New York City, at one o’clock in the morning…to wait.