Tragic

"I'm offended, Elise. Really. I'm a professional."

She eyes me cautiously for several long seconds. "If you do, I'll know. And I will be pissed, do you understand?"

"It's a movie, Elise. I'm gonna feed her some more fruit and get her a little drunk, what could possibly go wrong?"

"I'm not kidding. I saw your little stealth hand move, by the way. Next time I'll pull the plug, but Antoine is exhausted tonight so I ignored it." She stops to glare at me. "I won't ignore it again. And she's not even legal, Ronin. You will not get her drunk."

"Would you relax, Ellie! It was a joke, since when do I get minors drunk? Fuck, I don't know why you're going all batshit about this. I'm gonna take care of her just like I take care of all the rest, except I'm gonna enjoy our photoshoots just a little bit more than usual." I grin, thinking that remark is fantastically fun in my mind, but Elise is not amused.

"That's what I'm concerned with, Ronin. We don't need another Mardee on our hands."

Oh… buuuuuurn. What a bitch. "You know what? Fuck you, Elise. I was nineteen f**king years old when she came through here. I had no idea what she was doing."

"And that's my point, dumbass. This girl is nineteen too, she's had some kind of very recent upheaval in her life, and you're f**king with her head right now. Stay out of her pants, do you understand? Or I will pull you from this project so fast your dick will spin."

"Whatever." I wave her off and go back inside. I am not responsible for Mardee, that's one thing I've come to terms with since all that shit went down. I could no more have stopped her than anyone else. And Elise insinuating that I dropped the ball when she was modeling for us just pisses me off.

Rook is already dressed when I get back inside. She's waiting by the door, biting her lip.

"What?" I ask, a little impatiently as I direct her up the stairs.

"What was that about?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it."

"I put the dress back in the bag and hung it up on the rack."

I shake Elise's words off and take my attention back to Gidget as we round the corner and head to my apartment door. "Perfect, I'll take care of it in the morning. Are you still up for a movie?"

She nods. "Yeah, sure."

Rook is not Mardee, in fact, Rook is the anti-Mardee. There is not one thing I can think of that might link the two. They don't look alike, they certainly don't act alike, and I never thought of Mardee as anything more than a fun interlude between girlfriends.

And she thought the same of me. We were mutually apathetic towards each other.

"But Elise didn't look too happy."

I push Rook inside the apartment and close the door, then take her face in my hands. "Who cares?" I kiss her again but she's not as interested as she was down on the terrace. "She's just overprotective, that's all. She worries about the girls, especially the ones I date." I stop here to make a point. "But I'd just like you to know, I don't bring them home, Rook. Ever."

She shoots me an incredulous look.

"I swear, I'm not saying I'm celibate or anything, but I don't bring them here to this apartment."

"So where do you take them?"

"It's a four-story building and we're the only people who live here. There are lots of places downstairs."

"Oh," is all she says to that and I take a deep breath, feeling stupid for admitting that I f**k girls in random rooms in our building.

"You have to be hungry, are you?" I ask, trying to change the subject.

She pushes me away from her, then ducks under my arm, walks into the living room and takes a seat on the couch. "I am. What do you have?"

Yeah, that moment during the photoshoot is pretty much gone. I go into the kitchen and open the fridge. "Fruit," I call. "Apples, Cuties, grapes, and pomegranate seeds."

"That's quite a selection," she says from behind me.

I spin around, surprised. "I love fruit. I blame it on Antoine. He gets fruit baskets delivered every week. I'm not even sure where they come from, like maybe he's got a subscription to one of those Fruit of the Week Clubs or something? I'm not sure. But for the last dozen years or so I've been eating fresh fruit out of a basket that sits on Antoine's desk in his office."

She's smiling again and my heart lifts. Maybe I didn't f**k it up?

"You've never asked where they come from?"

"Nope."

"Why? If you've always wondered."

"Because it's gonna be something stupid like Mamie Chaput or the f**king Fruit of the Week Club. And I'd rather imagine something more exotic, like maybe it comes from some long lost love who lives in Fiji—and she misses Antoine so much, she sends him fruit every week to remind him of what they might've had?"

"You have a Mamie Chaput?"

I laugh. "Yeah, well, Antoine is French, in case you haven't noticed. I kinda got sucked into the family by extension."

"Wouldn't that be weird for Elise if there was some woman sending Antoine fruit baskets every week?"

"Yeah, probably. But I like picturing this girl in a string bikini, lying in the sun on a tropical island, pining over the one that got away. I never said it was practical, just exotic."

I hand her a Cutie and take out a container of pom seeds for me.