Chapter 115

Hailey put her head on Phil’s shoulder as they rode the elevator back to their suite at the Plaza. The others were headed back to their homes but the couple was staying behind for the night.

“Did you enjoy the evening?” Phil asked.

“It was a bit overwhelming,” Hailey confessed. “I mean, seeing so many people who came from thousands of miles away for an engagement party.”

Phil smiled and held Hailey a little tighter.

“It was partly about the engagement,” he said. “For some of them, it was about getting an invitation to something they consider ‘exclusive.’ For others, it was a chance to mingle with people they don’t see every day. For a few, it was a chance to curry favor with Mom. The only people who came here for the sole purpose of standing up for you and me were those you already know love you: my Mom and Dad; your Dad; Tiffany, Molly, Katelyn and Bob; the group of friends we have in SouthPointe and at Heilman. That’s another thing you’re going to have to get used to. People are going to gravitate to us for reasons that have nothing to do with who we are. Hell, Hailey, most of the people in that room wouldn’t have given a shit if you used to turn tricks and I grew up torturing kittens. We have money and we’re going to have a hell of a lot more money in the future so that makes us interesting – even though we’re boring as hell.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hailey joked. She had already parsed through the reality of the situation. In some ways, it was no different than in prep school. Her social position meant people were attracted to her. Now it was Phil’s money.

“I won’t make that mistake again,” she said almost to herself.

“What mistake?” Phil asked, having overheard Hailey’s soft utterance.

She looked up at him for a long moment but waited until the elevator stopped before she spoke.

“I won’t make the mistake of thinking those people actually care about me,” she said as they walked down the hallway. “They didn’t and I know that now. They cared about what I could do for them – improve their popularity, fuck them, whatever. I can’t really be pissed off about it because I was using them for the same reasons. I have my friends and I won’t lose them. That will be enough for me.”

Phil pulled the keycard out of his jacket pocket and ran it through the reader to open the door.

“You can’t be that way,” Phil advised as he put his jacket on the back of the chair.

Hailey opened the mini bar and pulled out a bottle of orange juice. She considered adding one of the small bottles of vodka to it but changed her mind. She had had a glass of very good wine earlier in the evening and she didn’t want to erase that taste from her mind just yet.

“That’s how I was for too long,” Phil continued. “Outside of Scott, I didn’t have a real friend once I moved to SouthPointe.”

“What about Rachel, Mitchell, Ron, Ann and Rachel?” Hailey asked. “What about Lisa?”

“I would consider them more acquaintances until the last year or so,” Phil admitted. He loosened his tie and joined Hailey on the couch. “I know a lot of details about them but I kept them away from learning much about me. Lisa was always Scott’s girlfriend to me. I didn’t have private conversations with her. She was around me because I was around Scott. If Scott was out of the mix, we didn’t talk or text or e-mail each other. If I hadn’t decided to open myself up a little, I would have missed making some solid relationships.”

“I suppose,” Hailey said.

“I’m not saying that you have to befriend every single person you meet,” Phil said. He waited until Hailey finished her juice before putting his arm around her and pulling her closer to him. “I’m just suggesting that you don’t close off everyone all the time. There are some people who grew up like you who are going to see you as a role model.”

“Because I landed the richest kid they ever met,” Hailey noted.

“Not because you landed me but because of how you landed me,” Phil corrected as he kissed her on the top of her head. “I’m sure you remember how I treated you when you first asked me for a ride home. If I hadn’t caught a glimpse of the real you beneath the façade, when we got back to college would have been the last time I ever spoke to you. I would have ignored you or maybe I would have destroyed you. I hadn’t really decided. I didn’t have proof but I already suspected how you’d acted in high school. I had second-hand information that the behavior continued in college. Now it doesn’t.”

He shifted slight so he could look down at Hailey.

“You’re not that person any more,” he said. “The people who dug into your past haven’t taken the time to get to know you. The people who came here for some other reason than to celebrate you would love you if they got to know you. I can speak that way with certainty because I love you now that I know you.”

Hailey was all smiles Monday morning when she got off the elevator on Barton’s top floor. She veered over to stand in front of Bonnie’s desk. The assistant was on the phone but offered a wink.

“And why didn’t I get to meet your husband Saturday?” she asked when Bonnie hung up.

“We slipped away early,” Bonnie said with a blush. “He looked so handsome in his tuxedo. We didn’t really fit in with all the movers and shakers. He was uncomfortable so I took him home and let him get out of his monkey suit.”

Despite the numerous social events sponsored by Barton Holdings, Hailey had never met Bonnie’s husband. She would have thought the man was a figment of Bonnie’s imagination if Phil and Beth hadn’t assured her that the man was real.

Javier Najera didn’t work for Barton Holdings. He worked for a natural gas company, doing manual labor. He was a nice man but he wasn’t comfortable around the people Bonnie worked with.

Bonnie had dragged him out to company events during the first few years she worked at Barton but had relented when it became obvious that he would prefer to be anywhere else.

“It isn’t his sort of thing,” Bonnie noted.

“It isn’t anybody’s sort of thing,” Hailey answered with a laugh. “Did you meet Bob Prohl’s parents?”

Bonnie shook her head. She had heard of Bob from Katelyn and from Phil but she hadn’t been introduced yet.

“Mason works on the shop floor at a factory in Cutter’s Crossing,” Hailey revealed. “His wife works at an insurance agency. They are about the most normal people in the world. Yet they came down and had a good time. Mason spent most of the evening talking football with Terrence Williams. That’s the thing you need to impress upon Javy. These things are for the muckety-mucks. Everyone there is a normal person. Yeah, some of them have more money than sense but there wasn’t a single person there who wouldn’t have stopped to help you push your car out of a ditch on the way home.

“The people we invited – particularly the people from Barton – didn’t get to where they are on the strength of their name or because of who they know. They did things the same way you did – the same way Javier has done: They worked their way to the top. Even people like Terrence or Courtney Hollings have to work just as hard as Javier does to get to the top of their professions. You see every day how hard Beth works and I hope Phil and I work just as hard as she does. I guess making it a black-tie affair was a bit much but Phil decided that not because of who was invited. He decided it to tweak the noses of those who weren’t.”

“I probably didn’t explain that very well,” Bonnie admitted.

“We’re all going to a baseball game in a couple of weeks,” Hailey said. “Phil, me, Bob, Katelyn, Tiffany, Molly, Bob’s parents, Beth and David, my Dad. Why don’t you see if Javier wants to come with us? We aren’t sitting in a private box or even anywhere near the field. We got tickets in the nosebleed section because it’s all-you-can-eat at the nearby concession stands. We bought a bunch of tickets when they first went on sale. I’d love for Javier to get to know us – and our families – in our natural habitat.”

“I’ll run it past him,” Bonnie said with a smile. “I know he’d really like David if he got to know him. But Javy has only a high school education. He worries that people with upper-level degrees will look down on him. He worried that I might leave when I got an associate’s degree in administration.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Hailey said, shaking her head. “Mason Prohl is one of the finest men I’ve ever met. He’s only got a high school diploma. His wife is wonderful – and I would put their kids up against the little monsters I went to prep school with any day of the week. Your husband gets up and goes to work every single day. He works his butt off so you can have a good life. I know that and I respect that. Phil’s family is the same way. They are more likely to befriend a hard-working man with a sixth-grade education than some asshole with six degrees after his name.”

“I know that,” Bonnie agreed. “Still, Javy is a proud man.”

“And he should be proud,” Hailey cut in. “If you ask me, people like you and your husband demonstrate everything that is good in the world. I admire him – and not just for putting up with you. If he doesn’t want to spend time with us because he thinks we’re jerks, that’s one thing. But he doesn’t even know us. He’s doing to us what he’s worried we’ll do to him. He’s judging us based on things that have absolutely no bearing on friendship.”

“I’ll tell him that you would really like to meet him,” Bonnie promised. “If the game doesn’t work, maybe I’ll invite you and Phil out to the house for supper sometime.”

“Perfect,” Hailey agreed happily. She genuinely liked Bonita Nejara and she wanted to get to know the woman’s husband. “I better get in there and start to work. Wanna have lunch later?”

“We can go to the deli on Ninth Street,” Bonnie said, smiling again. “Where’s Phil?”

“Between you and me?” Hailey said, leaning forward and whispering. “I wore that boy out last night. I’ve been sort of a bitch to him the past couple of weeks so I made sure I demonstrated how sorry I am. I doubt he’ll be in before two o’clock.”

“You are so bad!” Bonnie laughed.

“But I am so good when I’m being bad,” Hailey shot back with a wink.

“We’ll have the apartment to ourselves this weekend,” Hailey told Phil later in the week as they sat down for a late supper at the apartment.

Phil cut into his pork chop and looked up at his girlfriend with raised eyes.

“Katelyn and Bob are going up to visit his parents after his game tomorrow night,” she explained.

“And Molly and Tiffany are going with them?” he asked.

“Well, no,” Hailey admitted. “They’ll be here. But they don’t mind when we do crazy things.”

“What crazy things do you have in mind?” Phil wondered.

“So many things,” Hailey announced with a smile. “We were thinking of making the weekend clothing optional.”

“And you would opt to be unclothed?” he asked.

“It was my plan,” Hailey told him. “I thought we might make it a party weekend.”

The phrase “party weekend” was Hailey’s euphemism for a mix-and-match sex session with Tiffany and Molly.

“If you want,” Phil agreed.

“What do you want?” Hailey asked. “I do feel badly about the way I acted.”

“It was no problem,” Phil said. “I understood. I went through the same thing when it hit me.”

“You didn’t go mental,” Hailey told him.

“I didn’t know how to go mental back then,” Phil said with a laugh. “I just avoided everyone for months. You reacted; we’re through it.”

“I still want to make it up to you,” Hailey said. “It’s been since Christmas that we’ve played around with Tiff and Molly. I know they are getting antsy. Are you OK with the idea?”

“If you are,” Phil said with a shrug.

“I guess I’m asking if you want to call an end to the games now that, I don’t know, official?” Hailey pressed. “We haven’t really talked about where Tiffany and Molly fit in our new life.”

“Official or unofficial, it never mattered to me,” Phil answered after a moment. “I care about both of them and I know you do, too. They’re both happy with their relationship but neither of them gets everything they need from it. I don’t think that they have any different role now than they did at Christmas.”

“Good,” Hailey said with relief. She had been eager to reintroduce the pair back into their nighttime activities. She had often found herself watching Molly’s butt as she worked at the counter and had been forced to keep her eyes from straying down the neck of Tiffany’s tops when she would bend over in front of her to dry her hair of the mornings.

Still, she hadn’t pressed the issue. Katelyn and Bob’s presence created one problem. The couple wasn’t interested in joining in the games. Bob never even came to breakfast without a shirt. Katelyn was always fully dressed when in the penthouse’s public areas.

The biggest problem, though, was Phil. She knew Phil would agree to participate and she knew he had enjoyed their mini-orgies but she wasn’t certain he intended to continue with them.

“I wasn’t sure, you know...” Hailey said.

“It’s fun,” Phil said. “We all know where we stand, I think. Molly and Tiffany are great. I know you love them and so do I. I’ve just worried that Bob would freak out. He saw Tiffany in a bra when we first got here and I think he blushed for a week. I can only imagine how he’d react if he saw all of us coming out of the bedroom one morning.”

“Yeah,” Hailey said with a sigh. “Maybe we should, I don’t know, go to the lake or something.”

“And not invite Katelyn and Bob?” Phil asked. “We don’t want to exclude them just because they don’t want to ... participate.”

“True,” Hailey said.

“Do you want to go to the lake this weekend?” Phil asked. “The cabin out there is pretty isolated. We could even skinny dip after dark.”

“That would be fun!” Hailey said.

“My team is off this week,” Phil pointed out. “We could leave tomorrow after work. Bob doesn’t care if we go to his game. That way we can be back early Sunday so you can play Ultimate.”

“The other team forfeited!” Hailey told him. “We made the playoffs. Can you believe that?”

“That’s cool,” Phil remarked. His baseball team had managed to win only once – against Bob’s team.

“So we’re off the next two weekends,” Hailey continued. “But we have to play twice the week after – if we win the first game.”

“What do you think of going to Ireland next summer?” Phil asked out of the blue.

“Ireland?” Hailey inquired. “Why?”

“Molly has to go back for six weeks to renew her student visa,” Phil explained. “I thought it would be nice to go with her. I know that her relationship with Tiffany will make some waves so it might be a good idea to show our support.”

“You are so sweet!” Hailey said. “That will be fun. Can we get off work that long?”

Phil shrugged.

“I think we use the time to visit some of our European holdings,” he said. “It will be a good experience for Tiffany and Molly, too. I’m sure Bob and Katelyn will want to come but I doubt they will without a lot of work on our part.”