“Beg to differ, pumpkin,” she shot back. “I have exclusive rights to your work.”
I cough-laughed at her audacity. “You have exclusive U.S. rights,” I reminded her in a vicious hiss.
I planted my hands on my hips, mimicking her posture, but inside I wanted to take it all back and start the conversation again, but better.
“OK, that came out totally wrong,” I started, holding my hands palm up. But I could see her stiffen and quake where she stood. It was too late to turn it around.
“Do not do this,” she warned.
“Bridget, it’s just for a little while,” I said in a softer voice. “I just want to see what’s out there, OK? You’ll get your cut.”
“Fuck you,” she spat. “I don’t need you buying me off. You have commitments, Margot. You have promised me this work, and I’ve been patient as fuck with you while you suck off the whales who were supposed to buy your work, Margot!”
“You have totally been patient,” I agreed carefully.
“And have they bought your work, Margot?” she yelled, stepping toward me as I stepped back. “Has it escaped your cum-addled brain that they haven’t actually done shit for you but fuck you sideways?”
“No, but Declan--”
“FUCK Declan! FUCK Jackson! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She stalked off, stilting incautiously on her lucite heels in a tight circle, then coming right back to face me. My heartbeat hammered in my ears. I had never seen her so genuinely furious.
“Fun is fun, Margot, but you have got to stop!”
“I’ll be back in a week,” I lied, not really knowing when I would be back at all.
“You won’t! That’s not their game, sweetcheeks!”
I squinted at her, hard. If I let her keep going, I knew she would say something she couldn’t take back.
“It’s not a game. Declan really does want to--”
“See if he can get you to totally do whatever he says?” she finished sarcastically. “See if you’re a complete doormat with no opinions of her own? See if you’ll trash your career and follow him to fucking Dutchland--”
“The Netherlands,” I corrected her automatically.
“THE FUCKING NETHERLANDS!” she yelled maniacally. I watched her pulse shooting across the vein in her forehead like a bolt of lightning over and over.
“You don’t even really exist for them, you fucking idiot!”
“All right, Bridget, that’s enough. Come on…”
“No! You need to hear this,” she shouted, pointing a finger at my chest. “Because you do not seem to be catching on, like at all. This has been great fun, and oh aren’t you just such a daring, extravagant arteest, but you need to know - they’re not like us. You are a diversion, Margot. A fucking toy. And your scrawny, worn-out ass is going to run out of cute little tricks to do like any minute now. And that will be it.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “That’s not true.”
“It’s. Fucking. Gospel,” she spat.
“No, Bridge… you don’t know.”
“I’ll bet you Declan is laughing about what a boring little cooze you are right this very second!”
I bit back a whiplash of insults that I wanted to hurl at her.
She’s just mad, I reasoned. Don’t let her get to you.
But she saw my hesitation and narrowed her eyes, coming close enough I could smell the bitter waft of her lunchtime coffee.
“He’s already said something, hasn’t he,” she snarled.
“No, actually Jackson asked me about making, like… Us… About being a couple or something.”
“Ha!” she barked. “You’re avoiding the question. Fuck Jackson. He’s too good for you. Too good to you. You want the one who’s going to treat you like shit. I saw the way you were hating on Anneka at dinner. You already know, don’t you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know Declan is bored,” she accused, her voice edging up triumphantly. “You know he’s looking for something new to do, and you’ve gone into full Margot-desperation-mode to get his attention.”
“No,” I shot back.
“Oh yeah,” she nodded, raising the outside of her botox-paralyzed brows. “You’ll follow him to fucking Siberia now if he dangles a little hope in front of you!”
“Bridge--”
“You’ll fucking burn your life to the ground…”
“Bridge!”
“And I’ll bet Jackson really did say something real to you, right? But you can’t even hear it because you are so asshole-addicted that you’ll do just anything for Declan’s douchey attentions, right? Am I right?”