cream floors and rich mahogany walls continues throughout the yacht, and between them, obscene wealth thrives like bacteria on a Petri dish. Italian sofas draped with cashmere throws dominate the lounge. The scent of tobacco and secrets hangs thick in the cigar room, which is cleverly hidden behind a false bookshelf in the library. The bar itself, with its marble surfaces and tawny leather stools, could be mistaken for the lobby of any five-star hotel, if it weren’t for the steam rising off the hot tub on the other side of the sliding French doors.
Below deck, a network of narrow corridors and oddly-shaped rooms make up the staff quarters, and a gleaming kitchen with enough pantry space and stove burners to feed a small country beats at the heart of it.
Laurie tells me there are two types of staff: service crew and ghost crew. We’re service, in charge of making sure anyone who comes onboard has a good time, while the ghost crew make sure the yacht runs smoothly. They’re the captain, engineers, and deckhands, and they all live onboard and, captain aside, way below deck.
“Pretty impressive, huh?” Laurie asks, flinging open a door and spilling light onto what appears to be yet another terrace. We step outside. Now, the night is dark and frosty and the coastline is nothing but an inky shadow peppered with twinkling lights.
Truthfully, I don’t think it’s so impressive. In fact, I think it’s pretty gross that, for more than seven-eighths of the year, this boat probably bobs unoccupied in some glitzy European port, while there are millions of people who can’t even secure a regular roof over their head. What’s worse is that this asshole apparently has two of these things.
But I bite my tongue and manage a nod. “Yeah, impressive.”
I follow Laurie as she dodges tables and heat lamps and heads toward a staircase in the shadows. I let out a small groan, because how the fuck is there yet another deck above us? We climb the stairs up to another patio, and Laurie tugs a key from her pocket to open the set of sliding doors leading back inside.
“Final stop, I promise,” she says, rubbing the back of her hand over her mouth. “Thank god, because my stomach can’t handle all this walking about.”
Warmth and low jazz brush my face when we step inside. As I scan the room, an unwelcome sense of nostalgia and familiarity creeps over me.
Deep-seated chairs flanking green velvet tables. Black and red squares and the sensual purr of a spinning roulette wheel.
“There’s a casino onboard,” I say flatly, my eyes skimming up to the half-moon bar and the man cleaning glasses behind it.
“Of course there is; it’s Raphael Visconti,” Laurie replies in a blunt tone designed to squash any other questions. “We’ll be working in here tonight.”
My gaze slides to her, wide and flecked with mild panic. “In the casino?”
“No, in the toilets around the corner,” she deadpans. “Of course in the casino! I’m going to put you behind the bar because I’ve just looked at your resume, and you definitely have the most experience.” Mistaking my expression for nerves, she adds, “Don’t sweat it. Tonight will be just friends and family, so think of it as a trial run. The real opening night isn’t until the New Year, so there’s loads of time for you to learn the ropes. Come on, let me introduce you to Freddie.”
I converse with the bartender, asking and answering mundane questions that both float out of my mouth and over my head. I can’t concentrate on pleasantries, because I can’t shake the ominous feeling of dread looming over me.
My fresh start is taking the same shape of the life I left behind and I don’t like the look of it. Soon, this room will be filled with oversized watches and overstuffed wallets, and temptation, in all of its hot, itchy glory, will drip from the walls like condensation. As part of going straight, I vowed to never step foot inside a casino again. Not because I don’t want to—Christ, do I want to—but because the impulse to be bad is too great.
I swallow the lump clotting my throat. Force a smile when Freddie makes some shit joke about the Viscontis drinking the bar dry.
When the small talk finally fizzles out, Laurie checks her watch then leads me back down to the locker room—the first door on the left—to get ready for the shift.
As we enter, expensive perfume and laughter float over the tops of the wooden lockers. I turn the corner and find a gaggle of girls leaning against a row of marble sinks. I recognize some of them, including Anna, from the wedding, and others from childhood summers spent on Cove beach.
“What are we gossiping about, ladies?” Laurie drawls, sliding my bag off my shoulder and stuffing it into a locker with my name emblazoned on the front of it. Fancy. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because Katie’s face is as red as a tomato.”
I lock eyes with a pretty blond and smile. Laurie’s right; she’s flushed something rotten.
Another blond pushes off the sink, jumping as she tugs a pair of tights over her tiny waist. “We’re having a debate.”
Amusement tugs on Laurie’s lips. “Pray, tell.”
“We can’t agree on the type of girl Raphael goes for. Katie and I reckon he has the hots for blonds, but Anna thinks he only goes for brunettes.”
She pronounces Anna like Uh-Nah, and based on that alone, I stop feeling even the tiniest bit guilty about interrupting her chat with Raphael.
Anna leans over the sink, reapplying her blood-red lipstick in the mirror. “I don’t think; I know. My friend has worked as a shot girl in one of his Vegas casinos for over a year and she says he always has a brunette on his arm.”
“Well, one thing is for sure. He goes for girls with at least half a brain, so that rules all of you out, anyway,” Laurie mutters. A beat passes, then she doubles over, gritting her teeth. “Great, back to the bathroom I go. Meet me in the lounge for the start-of-service briefing in fifteen.” Hurried footsteps thud on the tiles, then a door slams shut in the distance.
“Poor Laurie,” Katie says, before turning her attention back to Anna. “Anyway, it sounds like you just have a bad case of wishful thinking.”
“It is wishful thinking,” Anna snaps back, far too quickly. “I have my eye on him, so whether he goes for brunettes, blonds, or”—her gaze slides to mine in the mirror with a spark of disgust—“even gingers, you better back off, because I’m staking my claim right now.”
Soft laughter ripples between the girls. My cheeks burn and my tongue twitches with a nasty clap-back. Reminding myself of the Ace of Spades stuck to the refrigerator door, I busy myself with tugging my makeup bag out of the locker and rummaging around in it for my compact. Nice girls take back-handed compliments with a grain of salt, or bitch to their friends about it later. They don’t start pulling hair.
“I think he has his eye on you, too,” the other blond admits, spritzing herself with enough perfume to set off the fire alarm. “Not that it matters, because those rumors are definitely true.”
“What, that he never goes on a date with the same girl twice?” another girl says, breezing around the corner in just her bra and panties. “I agree. He’ll be a bachelor until he’s eighty.”
“And even then, we’ll all still want to fuck him.”
Girlish laughter rises up like shower steam and for some dumb-ass reason, irritation slithers down my spine. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about Raphael Visconti’s love life, but the fact that he fucks-and-chucks women is just the cherry on top of his obnoxious cake. It makes all the smooth talking and shark-like smiles seem even worse.
“You know what I think?” bra-and-panties girl says. “I think he’s got the hots for the new girl.”
The laughter stops, and the weight of five pairs of eyes falls heavy on my back.
Silence. Bitchiness crackles in the air like static, and then a retort from bra-and-panties girl flutters through it.
“Not a fucking chance.”
It’s low and syrup-like, but it wades through the locker room and steels my spine.
Sighing, I close my eyes and rest my forehead on the frame of my locker.
I’m not used to being around catty women. Being around women at all, actually. Good times spent with my mother only existed in pockets of sobriety. Outside of them, the only time she’d talk to me would be to drunkenly whine that my existence had ruined both her figure and her relationship with my father.
In high school, the girls I ate lunch with acted like I had leprosy after my parents were killed. The only group of girlfriends I’ve ever had were the strippers I worked with for a few months. They were kind and uplifting and would be the first to come to my defense with an eight-inch glass stiletto in hand when a patron stepped over the line. But strippers, like swindlers, follow the money. They’d bounce from bar to bar, even city to city, and it was all too easy to lose contact.
It’s sad to say aloud, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted. Maybe it’s because when my parents would pass out on the sofa, exhausted from a day of strong liquor and loud arguments, I’d sit on the rug in front of the television and watch The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on mute. I longed to have friends like that. Friends I could complain about my parents to and who’d invite me to sleepovers on Saturday night so I didn’t have to hear them fighting on the other side of my bedroom walls. Instead, all I had was a hotline, and, of course, Nico. While I love him, it’s just not the same. Sure, I’m forever grateful to him for teaching me how to unbuckle a Rolex crown clasp with my eyes closed, but it would’ve also been nice to have someone teach me how to do winged eyeliner, or how to choose a bra that fits.
I learned how to insert a tampon from a YouTube tutorial, and I still don’t know how to braid my hair.
There’s a rustling beside me, and I pop an eyelid to see Katie sliding down the bench and coming to a stop next to my locker. She looks up at me with an embarrassed smile. “Ignore her; she’s on her period.”
I roll my eyes and cross over to the mirror above the row of sinks to touch up the concealer on my faint head wound.
I stand beside Anna, pretending like I can’t see her gaze travel down the length of my body in the mirror.
She’s thinking what all the other girls are thinking. I can see it in their sideways glances, but she’s the only one to be so blatant about it. I don’t look like them. I’m not six feet tall and I don’t have the type of body that only eating leafy greens and doing a hundred crunches before bed will achieve. But I don’t give a flying fuck, because I like how I look. Well, I’m impartial about it, at least. Worrying about the little pouch of fat that hangs over the waistband of my panties has never paid my bills. Obsessing over the fact that my thighs rub together has never given me a winning Blackjack hand.
And being judgmental about other women’s bodies has never made mine miraculously perfect, either.
“Penelope, isn’t it?”
Gritting my teeth, I slide my eyes over to Anna’s reflection and nod. For whatever reason, she smirks and goes back to applying her makeup.
Skin stinging from thinly veiled insults, I focus on dusting powder over my nose and removing a mascara clump. It’s easy to feign indifference, until the conversation turns even lewder and my cheeks turn crimson.
“Why do you think he only fucks from behind?” bra-and-panties chick muses.
“I’m guessing because he likes using hair as a leash,” Anna retorts, swishing her own long locks over her shoulders for dramatic effect. “I’ve heard he fucks rough. Which is so hot, considering he’s such a fucking gentleman.”
Bra-and-panties eye’s meet mine in the mirror. “What about you, new girl? What do you think?”
I think I’m thankful for low lighting and full coverage foundation. I snap my compact shut and hold her gaze. “I think I’ll just ask the man himself.”
“What?”
“Uh-huh. Where’s his office?”
“But—”
“Where’s his office?” I repeat, calmly.
Silence stretches from the lockers to the sinks. Katie’s laugh slices through it. “Behind the bridge.”
“Thank you, Katie,” I say, walking over to my locker, tossing my makeup bag inside, and slamming it shut with more force than necessary. Before I stomp out, I pin Anna with a blistering glare. “Don’t worry, I’ll find out whether he prefers blonds, brunettes, or even gingers.” Not waiting for her reply, I switch my wrath to bra-and-panties chick. “And what did you want to know again? Whether he gets off on pulling hair? I’ll ask on your behalf, don’t worry.” I pretend to scratch my head in thought, ignoring the way her jaw drops open. “Oh, what was the other question you had? If he’s into choking, right?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Yes, that was it. Choking and spitting into girls’ mouths. Got it. I’ll report back. Toodles!”
I give an enthusiastic wave over my shoulder as I stride toward the door, ignoring the breathy “Wait!” coming from behind me.
Out in the hallway, I lean against the wall and take a deep breath. Christ, maybe there’s a For Dummies book on how to deal with mean girls in the workplace without getting fired.
One thing’s for sure; I won’t be sharing a pair of Levi’s with these girls over a long summer.
