Page 3 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
Bitches don’t carry their own luggage.
I don’t have to ask Tabby to answer the phone. She fishes it from her jacket pocket, blows her fire-engine red bangs off her forehead, eyes the readout, and holds the cell out to me.
“It’s Darcy.”
I take the phone and say cheerfully into it, “Yo girlfriend!”
In response, I hear a sigh. “I take it by your lame attempt to sound gangsta you’re running behind schedule?”
“I could be gangsta!” I say defensively.
Beside me, Tabby raises her brows.
Darcy, who is 5’10”, African-American, and weighs somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred fifty pounds, says sweetly, “Sure you could. And I could be Taylor Swift. Now if we’re done living in a fictional universe, can we please talk about how late you’re running? Because I’m not walking into Xengu late; they won’t hold the reservation, even for me.”
The elevator doors slide open. Tabby and I step inside, and the doors silently close behind us. “They wouldn’t dare give away your reservation! Don’t they know who you are?”
“Right?” agrees Darcy, reveling in her bulldozer reputation. Her voice turns sour. “But apparently the owner isn’t particularly fond of food critics, because I was told in no uncertain terms that if I were more than ten minutes late, my reservation would be given away, no matter who I was. This place is totallo en fuego, girl! They can afford a few bruised egos.”
When speaking to me, Darcy enjoys peppering her speech with trendy little Spanish phrases, most of them botched. My mother is El Salvadorian, and my father was from Mexico City, and they both spoke Spanish to me when I was growing up, so I speak the language as well…and Darcy thinks she does, too. Her Spanglish is atrocious. It’s also highly amusing.
“FYI, Gloria, if you mean ‘completely,’ you just say, ‘total.’”
I call her Gloria when she butchers the language, after Sofia Vergara’s character in Modern Family. Though Gloria’s butchering English, so it’s not really the same, only it is because I said so.
“Tch! You ‘totallo’ know what I mean, V! Don’t hate! And don’t change the subject: when are you getting there?”
The elevator doors open again to reveal the elegant marble and glass foyer of my penthouse. Tabby and I walk inside. She leaves my handbag on the mirrored console against the wall. The rolling luggage bag she takes with her into my home office, where she’ll spend the next several hours going through mail, answering emails, scheduling meetings, and generally making my life easier. I pay her an ungodly sum of money, but she’s worth every cent. I couldn’t do what I do without her efficient support. Even more importantly, she’s proven her loyalty time and again, guarding all my secrets, exercising total discretion in the running of my affairs. She’s one of only two people on earth I trust.
The ironclad nondisclosure contract she signed when she came to work for me helps.
Still with my phone to my ear, I unbutton my jacket, toss it to the back of a white leather chair in the living room, and quickly head toward the master bedroom and my favorite thing in this six-thousand-square-foot ultramodern space I call home: the Jacuzzi bathtub. “Give me half an hour. If you get there before me, order me a—”
“Filthy Grey Goose martini with three blue cheese olives. I know, I know. And let me guess: you’ll be wearing Armani. White, no doubt.”
I pretend I’m offended. “Are you saying I’m predictable?”
“I’m saying you’re anal, V. Why not break out some color once in a while? Maybe a floral print? Or, if you’re in the mood to really go for broke, maybe try a drink other than a Grey Goose martini?”
Because, dear friend, there’s safety in routine.
It’s when you leave things up to chance that you get hurt.
I stop in front of the bathroom mirrors and resist the urge I’ve had since adolescence to stick my tongue out at my reflection. That person in the mirror simply isn’t me.
In my mind, I’m six feet tall. In my mind, I’m a Viking warrior. In my mind, I’m a goddess, irresistible and powerful and, most of all, beautiful.
The mirror, however, informs me with matter-of-fact disregard that I am a light-skinned Latina of average height and weight with no discernably interesting features. I admit I do have a good head of thick, dark hair, and straight white teeth. (Which, like my formerly crooked nose, I had fixed years ago.) My legs are all right too, but because they’re long for my height, I’m short-waisted, and therefore, unlike Sofia Vergara, an hourglass figure will forever elude me.
The funny thing is, men don’t see the woman that I see in the mirror. Men see me as exactly the image I have cultivated in my head. Even a plain woman can be beautiful, if only she believes it.
Perception is reality.
The problem is getting your pathetic self-image on board. (It helps if you shred the Victoria’s Secret swimsuit issue.) Besides, if Josephine, a woman described as “monstrously tall,” with bad teeth and a sallow complexion, could woo and marry Napoleon Bonaparte, the most powerful man in France, any one of us can definitely convince Joe Schmo we’re a catch.
Fake it ’til you make it, bitch.
I take a quick bath, change into a cocktail dress, shout good-bye to Tabby, who has her head buried in a stack of my mail, and head back downstairs to the lobby, where my car and driver await. In eight minutes, I’m walking into the noisy, delicious-smelling entrance of Xengu.
