Page 75 of Most Eligible Billionaire

I go to my locker and grab work clothes to put on behind the changing curtain.

When I get back, she widens her eyes. Yeah, that’s right; it’s Henry Locke, hot Henry Locke, here in our space recognizing the awesomeness of her furniture. It makes me feel ten feet tall.

He wants to hire her to do the furnishings and they talk about that. And I know he’s not hiring her to appease me. She really is one of the best, and Henry would see that.

Henry gets this world. It makes my heart swell.

We head out to the truck, the three of us, and pick through the wood chunks and start matching parts together. We haul a few things out onto the broken sidewalk. Latrisha’s thinking tables and a lobby desk. Henry has measurements on his iPad.

I get the idea of having Bron, one of our smithy pals, heat and reshape small bits of the rebar to make design elements. Latrisha is talking about an entire lobby desk of chopped and polished construction timbers, fit back together like a puzzle with mostly triangular pieces. It’s an awesome idea, and soon enough, Bron, another smithy friend, and Henry are unloading the truck.

People don’t recognize Henry right off, though I have no doubt word will spread once somebody figures it out.

But right now, to everyone but Latrisha, he’s one of us, full of energy and ideas.

Maybe his work clothes cost more than a month’s rent, but he makes up for it with his passion, not to mention his construction expertise. He and Latrisha and Bron and I take to the collaboration of making a grand lobby desk from the reclaimed materials like we’ve been working together forever.

A few people drift over and throw out suggestions. He draws the appreciative gaze of most every woman who comes by, but he just keeps rolling with the group, gazing over at me, all sparkly, when things are popping.

Henry is so full of contradictions. He’s a powerbroker into controlling everything, but he can do brainstorming and teamwork like a pro.

More smithy guys come over a few hours later and, not coincidentally, beers come out. The smithy guys clink bottles so hard, I think the glass might break. I wince and catch Henry’s eye and he’s just laughing, like he knows what I’m thinking.

And then he goes off with them, the three of them with armfuls of rebar.

“Oh, how far we’ve come from the dog throne,” Latrisha says to me, watching them disappear.

“What?”

“You’ve done a one-eighty. From wanting to mess with him toquitethe opposite.”

I can’t keep the smile off my face.

“What happened to the asshole?”

“His company is his family and, yeah, he’s a complete asshole to anyone who threatens it. Which he saw as me, I suppose—”

“If he really knew you, he would know you’re the most trustworthy person on the planet.”

I smile without meeting her eyes. Latrisha doesn’t know I'm Vonda O’Neil, either. I’m lying about my entire identity. But that’s not what she’d hate me for. She’s my age, around twenty-four. She would remember Vonda’s supposedly destructive lies. She could’ve forwarded the news stories and liked the Facebook memes.

Somebody made a video of strung-together clips of me on the Deerville courthouse steps that made it look like I was dancing up and down the courthouse steps. They spliced in a lot of imagery of pigs rolling in mud and set it to music with violent, misogynist lyrics.

It got millions of likes. Latrisha could have been one of them. I could still go typeVonda pigsin the Facebook search bar and find the seven-year-old video online, and I could search the likes for her name.

I’ve done it before with people, like teachers of Carly’s, but I had to make myself stop that.

Would Latrisha be in there if I hovered over those likes? Would Henry? God, he’d hate me. They both would.

“We’ve come to a good place. It’s complicated.”

“Record scratch!” she says. “Did you sleep with him?”

“Weeeeeell…”

“Oh-em-eff-gee,” she says.

“No, we didn’t do it...” I pause, awash in memory of us on the rooftop. And the way his lips felt against my skin, his hands.

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