So mortifying.
Not that he knew. He couldn’t know. But in the morning light, I still felt totally self-conscious and ridiculous.
I had dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and my Converse, and I took the leash off the counter, determined to take the dog for a walk and stop acting and feeling like an idiot. It was better this way. I did not need Devin Gold hanging around inadvertently fostering my socially awkward crush.
“Come on, Amelia,” I said, bending over and clipping the leash to her collar. I couldn’t believe that Devin had entrusted me with his dog. I had never owned a pet and I had given myself a ten minute online crash course on the Labrador breed and their needs first thing when I’d woken up. It was second nature to me to reach for my iPad and do research about anything and everything. It had been my lifeline to the outside world for years, and I figured I knew a little bit about a lot of things. Jack of all trades, master of nothing.
I had wandered online for hours every day, but had never done much of anything. My life experience was nonexistent. Unless you considered using a box of Clairol to dye an old lady’s hair a life experience.
As I took the dog and we walked across the yard, down towards the ocean, I wondered what New York City was really like. I’d seen it in a million movies and TV shows, had read about it online, but what would it be like to be standing in Times Square? What did it smell like? Would I feel less singled out, less obvious, less the biracial abandoned foster girl in a city where there was every color and kind of human being in existence?
It wasn’t likely I’d find out anytime soon.
But my research had shown that Devin owned not just the house I was staying in, but an apartment in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. He’d paid 3.3 million for the three bedroom pre-war apartment four years earlier. He had also married Kadence Creed a year after that, the daughter of his mentor, Owen Creed, a legendary music producer. According to TMZ they had split up six months earlier after a trip to Mexico for Devin’s thirtieth birthday. I figured three years was the average life span of an entertainment industry marriage.
Like milk, they soured quickly.
As we walked, or more accurately, Amelia dragged me over the brown grass, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and quickly found the picture I’d discovered the night before of Kadence and Devin at their wedding. It was a Vegas ceremony and she was wearing a short dress, her boobs bursting out of the top. She looked like she had strolled out of the Playboy mansion and right on down the aisle. Big hair. Big acrylic nails. Big eyelashes. Everything was large and fake and exaggerated.
It grossed me out that this was the type of chick he would go for. But for all I knew, maybe she was super sweet. Maybe she cooked dinner for him and thoughtfully walked the dog and laughed at all his jokes. Somehow I doubted it.
I was being judgmental because I thought not only was he good looking, he was interesting. And I was jealous. Just flat out, plain old, pointlessly jealous. Kadence had money and success. An exciting life.
I had five bucks, no family, exactly two friends, and a future that stretched ahead of me as an endless struggle to survive. Yesterday I had arrived at Richfield full of hope, appreciative of the beautiful place to stay, the decent income I could stash away to hopefully start online college classes, grateful for the quiet.
Ready to be left alone.
Now I was alone.
And somehow Devin had tainted that, made it not good enough.
I also hated to see that it was true- that women who primped themselves into living Barbies got the guy. You never saw a rich dude with a librarian.
Or a short girl from Vinalhaven.
It made me angry.
Fuck him. Screw him and his designer sunglasses and his ridiculous need to have a box of doughnuts available to him at all times. Because clearly being denied anything when you wanted it was a foreign concept to Gold Daddy. Big pimpin’, take his coin, and buy the world, yo. Fucking tool.
Leaning down, I picked up a rock and hurled it off the cliff with all my strength. It fell so far to the water below that I never even saw the splash.
My phone rang in my hand. It was Cat.
“Hey,” I said, breathless, but wanting someone to talk to.
“Hey! How goes the housesitting? Is it like insanely beautiful there?”
“Yes. The house is amazeballs.” I always cranked up the teen speak with Cat because it drove her crazy. She thought it made me sound cliché.
If you say you’re going to take a selfie I’ll stab myself.
Yeah. He popped right back into my head.
“I’m so jealous. Heath is outside chopping wood right now because this house is so damn drafty. I can never get warm. I bet you can crank the heat up and he’ll never even notice. You’ll be living in a sauna all winter. Your skin will glow like a Neutrogena commercial.”
Sitting down on the hard ground, I let Amelia lick my hand. It tickled, but there was something about having a connection with another living creature that was awesome. I could see the appeal of having a pet. The dog was great company, a silent and constant companion through the night and that morning. “The heat is on a timer. It’s all controlled electronically through software. So he can basically control the heat in the house from his offices in New York City.”
The tech geek in me loved that. But it also suddenly occurred to me that if the house was wired that way, most likely there were cameras monitoring the property. Was I living in the Big Brother house? Didn’t they have to disclose that to me? Though I wasn’t sure who the mysterious “they” was. But again I remembered the night before with pure horror. Even if they couldn’t tell what I was doing under the covers, I was still staring endlessly at Devin’s image on my computer screen.
Holy shit.
Somewhere in some glass tower in New York was a team of his employees smirking over me? Watching me lie in bed researching Devin. Watching me eat a doughnut this morning that I totally didn’t need in two offensive and gooey bites.
“That sucks.”
“Do you think the house could be monitored by cameras?” I asked Cat. “Is it illegal for them to do that without telling me?”
“I have no idea. I mean, it’s his private property. But if he had cameras sweeping the house, why would he need you there?”
Good point. “Squatters? He and his assistant seem weirdly convinced drug addicts will break into any empty house and start cooking meth.”
“That must be a New York thing. But if the cameras showed someone breaking in, the security system would alert the cops and they would come. You totally wouldn’t need to be living there if he had that much technology rolling.”