Page 42 of Tiebreaker

"I never told you that you could talk to him about that. That was private and personal. I shouldn't even have told you in the first place."

His scowl turns deeper, lines etching between his eyes.

"Was it even the truth?" he asked.

At this point, I'm so angry. I don't even know what to say to him.

"Who's Chrissy?" I asked. "Is she one of your employees?"

I jerked my hands up and gestured in a set of air quotes with my fingers. Vince snarls.

"You speak way too casually about shit you don't even know," he says.

I roll my eyes.

"And you broke my trust the second I gave it to you," I reply. "Why wouldn't I think that you're some kind of monster?"

He closes his eyes and tips his head back looking frustrated. His mouth opens but I scoff.

"Save it, I'm done. Thanks for the good sex. Next time you take a woman to bed, maybe skip on making her feel like shit the next day."

I brushed past him.

"Olivia, wait," he says.

Chrissy is in the hallway, her mouth open and surprised. I walk around her and she turns.

"I'm not a whore," she says. "Not like you."

I grit my teeth. It's not even worth arguing about.

"Whatever."

I leave his apartment and make a straight line for the elevator, jamming the button on it 50 times in a row.

"Come on, come on, come on," I said.

Any minute he could come out of this apartment and resume the argument and that's not something that I want to deal with right now. I just need to be on my own where nobody can hurt me. These people are so exhausting. They're so messed up. And there's so many layers of lies and half-truths that I don't know what to believe anymore. I don't even know why Vince is here at the tower if he hates it so much. He doesn't look like he even gives a shit about the business at all. From all the meetings I've had to sit in so far, they're pretty dry and he shows up, but he spends his whole time looking down at his phone. He's like a kid in calculus class. It's so frustrating to me, because at least I'm trying. I'm putting in a good college effort, attempting to know what the hell it is they're talking about and I don't. I don't understand half the stuff they say, but at least I'm trying. And I'm also not exactly running around sleeping with the guys and then making them feel shitty about themselves. I make it up to my apartment just fine and stand there. What the hell am I supposed to do? Go to bed, make myself a snack. I don't have a job, just this pathetic half person who's got a bunch of money in the bank that doesn't really belong to her in this huge towering monumented masculine virility of a building. It's also insane. I don't even know how I got to this point, but here I am useless, a waste of space, empty on the inside. I have no family, nothing to live for. I don't even care about my master's degree anymore. The one thing I'd like to do is pay off the debt, my student loan and if I could put up with these assholes then that's going to be a dream come true. I collapse onto the couch. I don't even really have any friends. Not anyone I've talked to recently anyway. It's been so long since college. They say that you lose 10% of your influence with another person each month that goes by without you talking to them. If that's the case, I've lost all influence and connection with anybody that I used to know from college or from my childhood. Now it's just me.

"Meow, meow," says Toby, jumping up into my lap as I sit there on the couch.

Well I guess me and Toby. I stroke over his fur and then curl my arms around him pulling him up against my chest. I bury my face in his fur and sigh as he purrs loudly and comfortingly. At least I still have Toby. If nothing else, he's a gentle constant in my life and I appreciate him so much right now when I'm so confused, and so broken over everything that's happened and yet the world beyond the windows still keeps going. LA is beautiful and gritty and grimy as ever. Somewhere, someone's making an indie movie, just trying to do their thing and make their dreams happen. Somewhere else a woman's crying in bed because she can't get pregnant. Somewhere else a mother feels lost and exhausted because she has so many chores to do and so many kids to take care of and not enough help with either. It's just too much. There's so much pain in the world. I'm fighting my battles, which is just to stay alive long enough to get a bunch of money and get out of here. I'll disappear into nowhere. Take my cash and go buy a little cabin. I'm never going to wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again. I let my head fall back against the back of the couch and sigh.

"This is so painful."

And the problem is it shouldn't have to be. I reach for my phone. I call him, it rings and rings and rings and finally he picks up.

"What do you want?" He asks. "Want to yell at me some more?"

"Vince," I sigh.

Hi sighs in return.

"Thanks for giving me a minute," he says. "I didn't realize I needed it. I'm sorry I told Kai what you confessed to me."

"It's not that he raped me," I say, "Because technically he did, but he didn't know it was rape. I was set up. His assistant thought that I was an escort and that I was there to be his before he went on stage, you know, to get rid of the tension or whatever."

"Is that what they're calling it these days?" Vince asked, "because I swear on the street, we call it something else."

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