Finance Guy didn't wait to see if I would actually answer his question, which was honestly a sort of relief. "The finance world moves fast, and when you're completely immersed in it, 24/7 like I am, you start to see these ins and outs that people who don't work in it wouldn't be able to discern...."
I smiled at him and nodded, while wondering if faking a seizure would be enough to get me out of this disastrous blind date. Would Finance Guy even notice? Or would he sit next to me in the ambulance and tell me about how his job in finance made him qualified to administer my meds?
I decided against it in favor of murdering Dayna at the next opportunity.
"See, they don't see things the way I do, you know what I mean, Monique?"
I snapped back to attention when Finance Guy said my name, but of course he didn't actually mean for me to contribute to the conversation. "I have the kind of mind that can break these things down, you understand...."
Picking at my appetizer, I mentally counted down the minutes I had to endure this until I could gracefully make an exit. Should I stay for the entree I had ordered in a fit of "he can't be this bad" optimism?
"...I told them, I said, you leave this kind of thinking to me, but they didn't. Idiots think they understand finance, like it's something you can just pick up, like riding a bike. It's not; it requires a different set of tools, ones that require years of honing in the trenches. Like my time at Finklestein and Toth, now that was a real crash course in the world of finance, you might have heard of them, they're real titans in the industry...."
Forty minutes into the date and Finance Guy hadn't stopped to take a breath once. He also hadn't asked me a single question about myself.
Usually that would be appreciated. But ever since I arrived back from Brock Ranch, I had this vague, unsatisfied desire to...talk.
"You sound different," Chanel had told me when I called her to say I was on the ground at the airport.
"How so?" I asked as I fetched my bag from the overhead compartment. I certainly felt different...and it wasn't a good kind of different.
"Sad?" Chanel ventured. "No wait, that isn't right," she added as I heaved a sigh. "No, wistful. Wistful is the word I'd use. Why are you wistful, Mo?"
I was being jostled left and right. There is a right time to talk about feelings and disembarking an airplane is not that time. But I couldn't help myself.
"He was...," I started...
But I was immediately drowned out by Chanel's hooting. "Oh girl, oh shit, I recognize that tone. Girl, you've got it bad for him, don't you? Shit, are you wearing overalls right now?"
"Shut up," I seethed, cheeks flaming. "He's not like that."
"Defending him too, huh? Oh man! This is too good."
I sighed again, and Chanel's evil glee died away instantly. "Well shit girl, I'm sorry. You sound actually upset about this."
"I'm not," I snapped.
And I wasn't, I still insisted to myself. But the longer I sat here, chafing to get the hell away from Finance Guy, the more I had to admit that I had never, in all my years of dating, felt the kind of connection I felt to Tanner Brock. One day with him seemed to be enough to completely rearrange me right down at the cellular level. I couldn't even pretend to care about Finance Guy long enough to get my entree.
"Dennis, I'm going to have to stop you there," I said, standing up and throwing my napkin down on the table.
For the first time, he paused his avalanche of words. It was almost gratifying to see him staring, a wad of chewed up food visible in his open mouth. But I was too far gone to laugh.
"You're a busy and important guy, I get that. Your time is valuable, which is why I'm not going to waste one more minute of it. It was nice to meet you, but this isn't going to work out."
Dennis closed his mouth with a snap and swallowed. His eyes glittered. Oh my god, were those tears? "Really?" He sputtered. "I thought we had a real connection going on here."
"The only connection I saw was the one between your mouth and your ego," I snapped, throwing down a twenty. "That should cover my part of the bill, have a good night."
Leaving Dennis utterly flabbergasted, I strode from the table, phone in hand, ready to light into Dayna the minute I cleared the door.
Instead my phone buzzed in my hand and startled me so badly I almost dropped it.
"Gil? Is everything okay?" My editor never called me this late. The man was out the door at 5pm on the dot, all of the work he hadn't delegated yet left to fester in piles on his desk until the next day.
"Monique, where are you?" If his normal voice was high, right now it was nearly ranges only dogs could hear.
"Um, I just finished having dinner," I said warily.
"Good, I need you to come in the office, right now. We got something big here, really, really big."
"You need me in the office to tell me?"
"Yes, no wait, no," his voice was cracking like an eight grade boy. My heart rate soared, what could he want? Was there something wrong with my pictures of Tanner?
He didn't leave me in suspense long. "Fine I guess I'll just tell you, but you're not allowed to say no."
"That doesn't inspire confidence, Gil," I laughed nervously. People were streaming past me on the sidewalk. There was no place private to hear whatever bad news he was about to give me.
"This is a massive scoop for Auteur, Exclusive access he's never granted before. You'll need to pack for three weeks, minimum..."
"Wait, Gil, you're going too fast. You want me to what?"
But he was off and running. "Backstage access, intimate shots, band life, Mo, it's unprecedented. He's so careful with his image, that wholesome aw-shucks-ma'am thing he has going on. You can blow the lid open on that. The wild scene backstage...I can't believe he asked for this, this is massive..."
"Gil, slow down. Who asked for what?"
Gil took a deep, frustrated breath. "Tanner Brock!" he squeaked indignantly.
I stood frozen in the middle of the sidewalk. "Tanner asked for...."
"For you, Monique. He is granting unlimited backstage access to you and you alone. You will tour with the band for three weeks, getting shots of life on the road. He's never given this before, to anyone. Are you on board? And remember, you're not allowed to say no."
Tanner asked for me. Me, personally. My heart was hammering in my throat for a different reason entirely. "He wants me?"
"You, Mo. I sent him previews of the shots you took back on the ranch and that apparently impressed him, because he wanted more. He said he would only grant this story if you were the photographer."
Bang bang bang went my heart. Impressed him. Impressed him because I told him no, that was the real reason. Men like Tanner weren't used to being denied. He was using his influence to get at me again, pulling the celebrity angle to get his way. I should have been offended. I should have gotten angry. I should have told Gil that I wasn't a prize, and Tanner Brock shouldn't be allowed to rig the game.
But all I could think of was Tanner's lips on mine. My lips
were betraying me, with their greedy need to feel his kisses again. And that was why they answered, "Yes, I'll do it."
Chapter Sixteen
Monique
Leo Williams looked every inch a security guard, and there were a lot of inches, both vertically and horizontally. A massive light-skinned Black man with more muscles that I knew were possible, he looked over his mirrored shades at me with an appraising look on his face. Then he glanced down at his clipboard and back up at me.
I started to wonder if this had all been a huge mistake on Gil's part. Maybe he had misinterpreted what Tanner had offered. It wouldn't have been the first time that my editor sent me on a wild goose chase. I resolved to brazen it through. "Mr. Brock's team should have received my clearances. My editor faxed over my insurance papers and all that stuff already."