Page 15 of My Grape Crush
“Just because I toppled onto him naked doesn’t mean I’ve become sexually fearless,” I counter. “Or that he’s even interested. It was an accident. Plain and simple.”
Although, it feels like anything but. Something fundamental shifted between us during my Nurse Rialto session. A flash of emotion had moved over his face and the effect of his proximity shimmered on my skin. The question is, do I risk my newly minted career on a summer fling? With one of the most recognizable humans on the planet?
“And he lives in Greece,” I say, firming it up in my mind.
“Not for the next five weeks,” she flips back. “I mean, I’m not encouraging anything,” she continues. “But?—”
“But you are.”
She heaves a sigh. “You could position it as spiritual cleansing of a former douchebag.”
I squirm around a familiar feeling. Just when I think I’ve packed away all the debris of my crushed self-esteem.
As if she can read my mind, Amelia’s voice dips. “Can I tell you my story now? I ran into him at Starbucks the other day.”
Something cold blooms in my chest. “And?”
“He pretended not to recognize me until I snagged his mochaccino and confronted him.”
Brett Winn is the person in reference. My ex-boyfriend, boss, and entitled loser. A cheater with a warped perspective of decency baked into his corrupt soul.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Tell me it ended without bloodshed."
“No literal blood spilled, but no one fucks over my sister without getting an earful.” Amelia's excitement is palpable even through the phone. “I tore a strip up and down him. Mini applause from the baristas.”
There is a threat to being in public with Amelia. She’s the person berating a chef if the meal sucks or shrugging off dirty looks when the clerk at the supermarket has to refund the ten cents he overcharged her.
“Was his assistant there?” I’m careful not to voice Lauren’s name. She’s the sleek, younger model Brett traded me in for.
“Queen of the Concubines stayed camped outside in his Maserati,” she says. “I spat on the sidewalk and pranced off with my latte.”
I rub my forehead, imagining the scene. “Jeez, Ames.”
“I believe it's,Thank you, dear sister, for humiliating a deserving creep.Oh, and the best part? The entire Starbucks groaned when I mentioned how he dumped you.”
“You didn’t?” I whisper-ask, knowing it’s a futile question. I can see her holding court as if she were the main attraction at The Globe Theatre. Mind you, it is Shakespearean and fucking tragic to casually inform your girlfriend of six months thatI’m beyond your pay grade.
That sword to the gut still bleeds. If a hot but no-name executive can mash my soul under the heel of his three-hundred-dollar Italian loafer, conventional wisdom dictates that my attraction to the fabled Rhys can only end in disaster.
But his banter, poking fun at my coffee maker, threw me off. It felt real. Normal. For an influencer heavyweight, you’d think he’d have some kind of superstar affectation. Not fierce intelligence shining deeply in his eyes. Bald curiosity too.
And my entire villa had thickened with sexual tension.
Conventional? Not in the slightest.
Rhys Trenton saw me completely naked, and damn if he didn’t enjoy the view.
“By the way,” Amelia says, dragging me out of my thoughts. “You haven't said anything, right?”
I take a sip of water. “Of course not.”
Amelia swore me to secrecy. That I wouldn’t utter a word about her podcast to Rhys, or drop a single hint that my sister, current hausfrau and milk machine, was the infamous Easy A. Not that Rhys would cobble the pieces together. Amelia transformed into a wildly different persona for her podcast, from the spiky black wig to her posh British accent.
No one but her closest allies knew who she really was.
And when she ditched the podcast two years ago after her European honeymoon with Dean, I initially assumed pending motherhood was the cause. For someone whose life MO is balls-out, shoot first and ask questions later, it struck me as odd to bail when she was on the brink of success. But Amelia danced around my questions then, and she wants to bury her alter ego for reasons she continues to dance around.
So, I’m not surprised she wraps up the conversation with a brisk“good,” and we pivot to discussing our parents living their best retiree lives in the wilderness of Colombia.
