Page 80 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“That’s your problem, not mine. Gift cards in my inbox by ten in the morning Eastern time every day from now on. Or else. I’ll text you the email.” He hangs up.

I stare mutely at thecall endedmessage on my phone, pulse going crazy. What am I going to do? It’s morning in Estonia. I give the real Stella a call. She picks up all groggy from sleep, but when I tell her what AJ is demanding, she wakes up really fast.

“Uh,” she says. “I’m so sorry. He’s such a devious piece of shit.”

“What should I do? Will he follow through? Will he tell on me if I don’t pay him?”

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “There’s not a lot AJ wouldn’t do. He’s not a good guy. I’m fine, I’ll play dumb, but you need to either disappear or pay him. It’ll probably be okay.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“He’s always broke—he’d be stupid to kill the golden goose,” she says.

I hang up the phone, not entirely reassured. My web of lies is starting to feel like a noose around my neck.

Briefly, I consider fessing up to Malcolm, but how could I do such a thing? I’d be abandoning this project, my friends. And I’m not ready to put an end to my time with Malcolm. I don’t know what it means, but I don’t want to walk away from all of this now.

But if I stay, I have to pay AJ. And sure, I can go without the per diem. It’s what I’ve been doing already. But paying it all to AJ feels like stealing.

I head back to the bar and find Lawrence. He buys me a shot of tequila, and I slam it, and then I buy him one.

The shots make me feel more confident. I’ll brazen it out, I decide. Maybe it can still work out.

I head out onto the floor and dance like mad.

20

Malcolm

I wakeup at dawn feeling energetic, and set out for a nice run through Golden Gate Park in the crisp San Francisco morning.

Usually I stop thinking about a woman the minute she leaves my sight. What is there to think about? Either I’m actually spending time with a woman and we’re talking or eating or fucking or I’m doing other things that don’t involve said woman.

Talking and eating and fucking does not require a lot of extracurricular thought. There are no decisions to wrestle with, no strategies to develop. And I would definitely not reminisce. What point would there be to that?

But all bets are off when it comes to Elle. I pound the trail, passing under trees collected from all around the world, every imaginable shade of green, reminiscing about soft gusts of pleasure, and intelligent eyes gazing sideways. The rush of excitement I felt when she made it clear she enjoyed my hands on her. The warm, coconut-scented silk of her skin under my lips.

I want you to unzip it, please.

The nervous-brave combo is definitely working for her, or at least it’s definitely working for me—that naïve vulnerability of hers mixed with steely determination, the peanut butter and chocolate of the world of women.

God, I loved how she asked it, her voice wavering a little, like she was striding out of her comfort zone, but there was this determination inside her words. I felt like she was showing me something intimate. Like a gift of trust.

Foolish of her—a gift of trust is not really something anybody should be giving to the likes of me. But still she gave it.

I don’t know what to think of it. It turns me around in my head to think of it.

I can’t stop going back to things she said. And of course, there’s the million she turned down. The absolute gobsmackery of that.

I get back, shower quickly, and hop on a call with the New York team, but I’m thinking about her blue-striped tie the whole time.

I could’ve unclipped it and cast it aside. Or better yet, I could’ve made her remove it. And then I undo a button.

Briefly, I imagine it as the non-clip-on kind, and conduct thought experiments designed to answer the question of whether it would have been more satisfying to pull it free with speed and efficiency, or to draw it from her collar slowly and provocatively.

All in all, not the most productive use of a conference call.

Those ties. She has no idea.

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