Chapter 25
Dane
I woke up on someone else’s bed. I knew it because the bed sheets were in a rich velvety satin, and a bright pink color that I knew I didn’t own. Other than that, when I blinked my eyes open, I couldn’t remember a single thing that had happened the previous night. My head throbbed as I tried to straighten up. This wasn’t new to me. The last year had passed in a haze like this, night after night of heavy drinking and partying and sleeping with women whose faces I couldn’t remember.
I had cracked the first billion on the Logan bonds the previous night, and we had a party in office. While I stayed away from the drugs being passed around, I didn’t stay away from the women. And now one of them, a skinny blond with a spiky pixie cut slept beside me. Her bedroom was big, almost as big as mine, and she had expensive looking furniture, fittings and clothes strewn all over the place.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she said when I slipped out of her bed.
“Home. Work,” I said and she laughed. She had a wide mouth with a set of perfectly white teeth. I noticed the tattoo of a dog on her shoulder, and her long black nails. Who was she?
“It’s a Sunday afternoon, Dane. I’m sure my dad won’t mind,” she said and my eyes widened when I heard those words. Her dad wouldn’t mind? What was she talking about?
She must have seen the confusion in my eyes, because she started laughing again.
“You don’t remember, do you?” she asked, and I wished Tina was there with me. To remind me just what I was up to the previous night. We were both naked, and now I started to look for my clothes that were thrown all over the floor.
“Do you know who I even am?” she asked as I pulled up my tailored pants to my waist. The girl had small perky breasts with smaller pink nipples, a thin waist and a flat stomach. She was too bony for my tastes, and clearly had a rebel look going for herself that I wasn’t ordinarily into. But I was clearly drunk out of my wits the previous night.
“How old are you?” was my first question to her. I was already beginning to panic.
“Don’t worry, Dane. I’m twenty-one,” she said with a laugh and pointed at the digits tattooed on the inside of her skinny arm. It looked like it was the year of her birth. When I started putting my shirt on, she got on all fours and crawled towards me, to the edge of the bed.
“You don’t remember last night at all?” she asked and straightened up, while licking my body from navel up. I was too hungover to be turned on, besides I wasn’t attracted to her any more, and also I wasn’t sure who she was. She was talking like I aught to know her, or at least her dad.
“Piper Bradbury, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Dane,” she said and looked up at me from under her heavy false eyelashes. I nearly stumbled back from the shock. Piper Bradbury, like Matthew Bradbury’s daughter? The last time I remembered meeting her was several years ago. The only time Matthew had invited me to his house for a dinner party. She was a rebellious looking teenager then, with dark long hair streaked with purple and heavy smoky makeup on her face. She still had traces of that look, but was completely unrecognizable now.
Piper smiled when she saw the shock on my face.
“You don’t have to worry, Dane. I had a lot of fun last night. I won’t be telling dad, unless I want something from you,” she said, making her voice sultry. She was still trying to seduce me. I stepped away from her and tucked my shirt into my pants with force.
“I have to go now, Piper,” I said. I had just slept with someone who was nearly a decade younger than me. Who also happened to be my mentor and my boss’ daughter. Things had gone just a little too far.
“Where are you going?” she said, jumping off the bed with her long skinny legs and following me. In a flash she had wrapped her arms around my clothed torso, and pressed her small breasts into my back. I suddenly felt disgusted with my self. I couldn’t believe what I had let myself become.
“Let me go, please. I have to go to work,” I said and I felt Piper dig her sharp nails into my back.
“Oh, c’mon Mr Forsyth. Make me feel good again, the way you did last night. I’ve never been with a man who could eat me out the way you did,” she said in the same sultry voice, and I yanked myself out of her grip.
“Last night was a mistake and it’s never going to happen again. I’m sorry that I don’t remember it, but I don’t want this to go anywhere,” I growled, whipping around at her. Piper’s face shrunk a little and I knew I’d made a mistake. I had pissed her off. Her eyelids fluttered and her lips quivered as she stared at me, not ashamed of her nudity in the least.
“You better have a good excuse to give my dad when I tell him how you seduced me last night,” she said.
I clenched my jaw and turned to open her bedroom door and walk out. Thankfully, it seemed like Piper didn’t live with her parents. The worst thing would be to walk out of her bedroom and have to face Matthew. I found the front door of the apartment in a hurry and ran out of the building, craving some fresh air. My throbbing headache wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was the reality of what I had just done.
xxx
Work was going well, I was on top of my game as usual; I thought, as I weaved through the packed streets of New York. My head was ready to burst, and the shock of what happened last night had taken over my senses. I had bought a double shot Americano from a cafe, while I walked towards Central Park. I needed to clear my mind and walk off this hangover if I could.
Besides my work, nothing else was going according to plan. If anything, my life had managed to spiral out of control in the last few months. If I was being honest with myself, ever since I got back from Tramore, nothing had been the same. In order to forget about Sydney, I had immersed myself in my work for months. I avoided being at home alone. If I wasn’t working, I was either drinking or fucking. Those were the only three things I had done in the past eighteen months. I’d barely even eaten three square meals in a day. I ate when I was hungry, otherwise I survived on the peanuts served with Scotch at bars I met women in.
The parties I was lately attending were rowdy, over the top and too fast for me to keep up. I tried to tell myself that I was enjoying life, living it to the fullest. The reality was that every time I woke up in the morning, I detested myself and wondered what the beach at Tramore looked like right then. If the sun was shining, if the waves were more green than blue that day, and what Sydney was wearing.
We had barely said goodbye. I’d left her house in a hurry. She had refused to come out of the kitchen when my cab arrived, and when I looked back at the house in the car…she wasn’t at the window. She was the woman who had ruined me. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. I would never be the same again. And to numb the heartache, I drank and slept my way around New York, hoping that one day I’d wake up and wouldn’t be able to recall her face.
That day hadn’t arrived yet. I still remembered the scent of her shampoo, her large brown eyes and long brunette hair, how she smiled or tried to hold back her tears. I wished I’d never met her, because then I wouldn’t know what I was missing.
I was walking quickly around the park now, barely ever stopping to catch my breath. I wanted to walk till my feet hurt, so that I could go back to my apartment and just fall asleep. Sundays were the worst. I had very little work to do, which meant I couldn’t immerse myself in other things. If I wasn’t hungover, I was at the gym or meeting a friend or a date for a boozy brunch.
The thought of a date snapped me back into reality again. I’d just slept with Matthew’s daughter. He would never forgive me. He had seen me in action. He knew what my track record with women was. Sleeping with his daughter would not be something Matthew might appreciate. Was I going to lose my job again? I didn’t care any more. It might be a good excuse to move out of Wall Street.
I was dreaming of buying a cottage on a deserted hillside, trading on the stock market remotely and chopping wood in the evenings for a fire. That was what I needed. Complete isolation.
I needed to get away from this place, from this lifestyle I had found myself wound up in. I didn’t enjoy anything any more. Food didn’t taste the same. Whiskey only made me sick and I was filled with rage every time I slept with someone. Nothing was the same any more. I had got a taste of the quiet good life with Sydney. Even though she had no feelings for me, I had feelings for her. Whatever they were.
It had been eighteen months since I last saw her, and I wondered where she was now. It wouldn’t have taken Leo long to make a move on her. Or did she call James and were they together now? It was possible that she wasn’t even in Tramore any more. She could have moved back to San Fransisco.
In a fit of madness I pulled out my phone. Within seconds I had found the B&B’s website. There was very little information about the place, the website was sparse and cheaply done. The only thing I could tell was that the rooms were all booked up. So business was going well! I looked under the ‘About’ section and found a small picture of Sydney on the page with some little information about the place. So she still ran it. She was still in Tramore. Superficially at least, nothing had changed in her life. When mine had come crashing down around me.
I had been good all this while. I had managed to stop myself from looking her up on the internet, but now that I had seen a photo of her again, I could feel my heart racing. Thoughts of Matthew, New York, Piper Bradbury, whiskey, hangovers, the Logan account….everything was whirling around in my head. I was dizzy enough to just close my eyes and go to sleep. Nothing made sense any more, other than that small pixelated picture of Sydney on the website on my phone.
I needed to see her again, even if it was from afar, even if it was for just a second and just a glimpse. I also needed to get away from New York before everything blew up. Before Matthew found out about his daughter and fired me from my job again.