Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 36643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 183(@200wpm)___ 147(@250wpm)___ 122(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 183(@200wpm)___ 147(@250wpm)___ 122(@300wpm)
Eric fucking up is inconceivable to me.
“Are you going to elaborate?” I ask with a frown. “That’s pretty vague.”
He sets his cocoa down on the table and then pinches the bridge of his nose. Eric is classically handsome in the way that his dark brown hair is always gelled to stylish protection, his smile is wide and bright, and his jawline is sharp. If finance wasn’t his calling, modeling or acting could definitely have been another route for him.
“You know what I do for a living, right?”
I nod slowly. “Finance.”
“Well, yeah,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. I’m a day trader. Essentially, I buy and sell stocks all day for my clients, hoping to get them the best returns. You have to be focused and always anticipating market movement.”
He lost me at stocks.
I rub oil on people all day. Stocks are about as foreign to me as golf or geology or computer programming. It’s all complicated and something someone else does so I don’t have to think about it.
“In essence,” he says with a smirk, “I play with other people’s money.”
I can’t imagine being so rich you let other people play with your money, but rich people are crazy. I’ve seen my fair share of them come into the salon. Sometimes they blab about all the strange ways they spend their money.
“But they know the risk, right?”
“Yes.” He looks down at his hand and frowns. “It’s just business. You win some and you lose some.”
“So what did you do that’s so bad?”
He rubs at the back of his neck as if working himself up to confess his sins. It makes me wonder if the tension has gotten to him and he needs me to knead the muscles there, or if it’s just a nervous habit.
“I got close to one of the clients,” he admits. “Started hanging out a lot. Going to bars for drinks. Vacations. Ball games.”
“You slept with your client?”
His lip curls up. “What? No. My client, Tommy, was a friend.”
So far, I don’t know what has him so upset. It’s normal to make friends with people. Sometimes they’re clients. I go have lunch every so often with one of my elderly clients, Wynona. That’s just humans being humans.
“Anyway,” he rushes out, “he told me about some things he heard about happening overseas. Technically, it could be seen as insider information, but more than likely, it was just here-say. Regardless, I took the information and made some big buys for him. I thought that’s what he wanted, but…fuck.”
“What happened?”
“It was all bogus,” Eric grumbles. “And he ended up losing a lot of fucking money. He then tells me he has no recollection of even telling me this shit. Tommy went to my bosses and told them I was unprofessional for befriending him and mismanaged his money without his consent.”
“What a dick,” I hiss out. “But he told you to.”
“Essentially, yes. And, because I was within my parameters of our contractual agreement, I wasn’t in any legal trouble. He couldn’t sue me.”
“That’s good.”
“Not really.” He shakes his head and his features pinch bitterly. “He threw a big enough fit to my managers, that it got me fired. I stupidly signed a non-compete when they hired me on which means I can’t get another job like this one for a fucking year, Clara. Not that it would matter. Tommy made it his mission to smear my name in every circle he runs in. I’ll never be able to work in this industry again.”
As much as I hated that he left us to go pursue his big dreams, I hate it worse that someone stole them from him.
“I guess I’m just surprised you came here rather than to our parents.”
The despair bleeds away as a smile tugs at his lips. “This shit is humiliating. You’ve always kept my secrets. I figured you could keep this one too.”
I saved him numerous times by covering for him when we were younger. When he drove his dad’s car for the first time alone and side swiped a mailbox, I took the blame telling Mike I accidentally fell on it with my bike. And when he had sex for the first time with one of my friends during a sleepover, I never told a soul. Just like he’d cover for me if I sneaked out and picked me up countless times after getting drunk at parties, though underage. Like the hot cocoa, keeping secrets was kind of our thing.
“Fine,” I say with a resigned huff. “Under one condition.”
“Another one?” He grins at me, green eyes twinkling
“You have to go to the Christmas Extravaganza with me since my best friend is sick.”
“Deal.”
Eric
Coming here was a good idea. My best one in a long time. There’s a familiar comfort being with Clara that I didn’t realize I’d missed so much. She’s family, but she’s also more. Always has been. A built-in best friend.