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Chapter Fourteen
LARA
The doorbell rings and I hurry out of the kitchen, spatula and apron in hand. I open my front door to Leila. She has a bottle of wine in one hand and a covered dish in the other.
"You said you wanted to talk, so I assumed we'd be staying up late. I brought my famous sweet potato pie and a bottle of Italy’s finest. At least that’s what the guy minding the shelves at the store told me. One bottle is probably not enough, but we both have to go to work tomorrow, so I had to, very sadly, force myself to only stick to one."
Smiling, I move out of the way as she sweeps in.
"Oh my God! What is that wonderful smell?” she asks heading towards the kitchen.
“It’s just me. I’ve been baking scones,” I reply as I shut the door behind her and hurry back towards the pot simmering on the stove.
She looks at the spread of food on the kitchen table. “Have you been cooking all evening?"
"Yeah."
"Why? There’s enough here to feed a whole country. Wait! Good God, are you pregnant?"
I scrunch my face. "What? Why would your mind even go there? You know I always cook when I’m tense."
"Holy shit, this must be serious stress then," she says, trying to find a space on the crammed table to put her pie on. She goes to the drawer and retrieves a corkscrew. "I guess we better start drinking."
"Alcoholic," I tease.
"At this point, I can't even argue. I'm so harassed at work, last week I considered replacing my coffee with neat vodka."
“What?”
"I'm kidding, calm down."
"You better be," I reply.
She starts to pour the wine into two glasses while I put the lid back on the pot and head over to sit next to her. She pushes over one of the glasses, and then she instantly downs more than half of hers.
"Wow! Is your work that stressful?" I ask.
"How stressful could managing a store be?" she asks. "It's not, it's just... I don't know, I think I'm bored. I want a change. I'm looking for other options, but nothing really appeals to me, but not to worry, I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll become a wine connoisseur or something."
"I think those jobs are mostly for people who have an interest in wine but aren't addicted to it."
"Very funny. Still, we're here to talk about you, not me. Tell me what's wrong."
I take a small sip. The man stacking shelves was not wrong, the wine is good. "You’ll find this hard to believe. I don’t think I quite believe it myself, but I had to show a billionaire client a house today."
Her eyebrows fly upwards. "A billionaire client instructed your agency? Wow!"
"Yeah, I know, but that’s not the unbelievable part."
"What do you mean?" she asks, leaning closer.
I tell her everything, every detail. From start to finish. Afterwards, she stares at me, her mouth wide open. I point towards the swan. “And that’s the swan.”
She walks towards the crystal piece and stands looking at it. “Fuck me. That is some expensive shit,” she says in an awed voice.
"I did warn you it was hard to believe," I joke weakly.
She holds up her hand to silence me and for a few moments, neither of us speaks while she processes my situation. When she finds her voice again, she is shooting from all cylinders. “On a scale of one to ten, how ugly is he?”