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Billie forces a smile. Looks more of a grimace but she tries. “He threw a rock at me.”
More to the story, obviously. Billie just started the story that way it in some poor attempt at a joke. Break the ice, all that.
It lands like a wet fish on the marble floor. A dead one.
Bunny arches a shaped, preened eyebrow.
Redhead looks down into her champagne glass then takes a pretend sip.
The so-far silent brunette isn’t even paying attention. Her face is turned to the side, her eyes on a passing waiter, and Billie isn’t convinced that she’s eyeing up the caviar on his tray, if you know what she means.
Preston is the only one who receives it well, her lame ass joke.
His smile is small, a twitch of his perfect pink lips, a fleeting moment that’s gone just as fast as it came. “If memory serves, you started it.”
His jest lands better than hers.
There’s a chime of fake, small laughter from Bunny and her minions. Redhead, Billie notices, has teeth whiter than her painted nails, and they look odd. Wrong. Like she’d filed them or something to be perfectly straight.
Brunette turns her angular face back to them, a smile so false on her lips that she might as well as have drawn it on. “Isn’t that darling,” she says, and Billie doesn’t quite know if it’s a question or not.
“A love story for the likes of Shakespeare,” Redhead adds.
Billie just stares blankly at her. Not like she’s read anything by that guy. Once, she vaguely remembers, they had a reading at school for one of his plays. Kate did the work, Billie copied it. Dumbed it down, too. Had to be convincing. She got a C. But can’t tell you the name of the play. It had a line she still doesn’t get to this day but does remember.
‘To be or not to be. That is the question.’
Only reason she remembers that line is because Carmine—gearing up for the school play—practiced it time and time again, and it drilled itself into Billie’s brain, behind a small door at the back titled ‘useless shit I’ll never need to remember’.
Bunny murmurs into her champagne, “Less Shakespeare, more a Greek Tragedy I hope.”
Intention is everything with that woman. She wants Billie to hear her every jab and stab.
Joke’s on her though, because Billie has now idea what that means, what the difference is between an American and a Greek tragedy.
Redhead turns to Preston. “Your mother tells me you are at the end of your studies.”
Billie cuts her gaze down to the water in her glass. The talk switches to him, him in the city, him at the fancy school for the smartest of rich people.
Billie’s forgotten, and she’s fine with that. Gives her a chance to swap out her water for a real drink as a waiter passes too close by.
Preston doesn’t say anything about it, but his gaze cuts to her for a second or two, and as sure as he noticed, the downward turn of his mouth is surely disapproval.
She downs it anyway. In one go. Obvious and obnoxious.
“I expect Billie—” Another squeeze of his hand on her waist, one she ignores. “—will be joining me in the city after I take the bar.”
“When is that?”
“The final Wednesday of July,” Bunny answers with a proud smile. “Less than two months from now.”
“Once that’s out of the way,” Preston says and glances at Billie, as if to reassure her somehow, “I’ll be available to Billie, to help her settle in.”
A numbness drapes over Billie. Her shoulders are slumping and her very soul starting to feel weighed down. She trades off the empty glass for a full one, feeling the burn of eyes on her—watching, judging.
Billie isn’t welcome here.
Not if she’s sober and well dressed and smart spoken.
