Miss High Maintenance

Amelia

Maybe I’d actually had a drink too many, because when steady hands pulled me down, I stumbled into the arms of Professor Ethan Reid.

When did he even get out of the game? And why the fuck was he ruining my mojo?

I pulled away from him, a scowl on my face.

“What do you want? How dare you pull me down like that?”

“Hey.” He raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “I didn’t mean anything by that. You just looked like you were off the deep end. See those boys over there?”

I part-snorted, part-sighed. “The spikers? They’re there in every club, Ethan.”

Cursing myself a wee second later, I wondered if it was far too soon for a first-name basis. But, he followed suit.

“Nice to see you remember my name, Ms. Amelia Knight. But, if you know there’s people here that thrive on date rape, shouldn’t you be safer with your, shall I say”—he smacked his lips delicately—“pursuits?”

This time, a genuine grunt of incredulity escaped my lips. “It’d be hard to forget a professor who called me childish in our very first class, Mr. Reid. And don’t worry about those bozos. Everybody here knows who they are.”

“Ah, I see you’re as stubborn as ever.”

What the fuck was wrong with this dude? Was he seriously judging me, after pulling me down and ruining the good time I was having?

“Are you done?” I pushed him away. “Because I have better things to do than waste my energy here.”

“Of course, I’m sure you do.”

The sarcastic hint wasn’t lost on me.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I raised my blue eyes to his brown, noting the presence of my own fire reflected in them.

“Why do you thrive on treating everyone around you like guinea pigs to be experimented on?”

Again, that irritating little dimpled-smile. It was as if he considered me the same spoiled child who’d entered his classroom with her radical perceptions on love all those years back.

“You’re still Miss High Maintenance, aren’t you, Amelia?”

“I—” I sputtered and whacked his hand with my bag. It was immature, but the impact made him jump back and gave me immense satisfaction.

“Fuck off, Ethan Reid. Go waste your intellectual breath on some big-titted cunt who has the time for it.”

Well, that wasn’t me at my 167 IQ-tempered vocabulary. That was the crass New Yorker, who sought cuss words when every other ammunition had run out.

I stumbled out of the bar, not willing to listen to Ethan any longer. My phone rang the second I hailed a cab to take me away from this urban nightmare.

“Hey, Ver.”

My voice had slurred. And it caught her notice immediately.

“Where are you? Are you drunk?”

“About the usual.”

She groaned. “Can you come to the penthouse? There’s some really important people here.”

Oh, hell no. “Can’t it wait?”

“No.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. From the frying pan, straight into the fire.

When I reached Veronica and Ace’s posh penthouse, it was chock-full of celebrities and business tycoons, even the odd oil investor. I recognized some faces simply because of their perennial media presence.

“Now, why would your husband want to go to Mars when all the money is here?” A rotund man laughed at Veronica, who looked like she needed aspirin and a sledgehammer.

“Hey.” I walked up to her. She introduced me to the beefy neighbor.

“This is Albert Hemingway.” I knew Veronica’s artificial tessitura like books know pages. “He’s one of our newest investors, and he comes from a long history of oil and textiles.”

I nodded at him. “Wassup?”

Veronica considered me for a second, absolutely scandalized. She pulled me to the side, where Ace waited for the both of us.

“Okay, I’m busy helping Ace finalize the details on the MARS mission, do you hear me? Please don’t mess things up while I get this done.”

“Sure—”

“Have you been drinking?” Ace scowled at me.

Oh, enough with this night already.

I turned my back to him. He should just go on with his mission and leave me to my pursuits. It was bad enough that the evening had turned out so bloody rancid. I didn’t want another thorn up my sleeve.

“No more than you, Ace. No more than you.”

“Ame—”

“Leave her be,” Veronica said. “There’s more of those Woodland investors coming in, and if they tell me one more joke about pelicans, I’ll kill myself. Amelia, can you handle them?”

“Well, I’m not in my senses, so I’ll probably show them a really good time,” I retorted, almost laughing.

“Fine.” Ace bunched his hands into two fists. “But I still think this is improper.”

“When did that ever stop me from being who I am, Ace?”

Ethan

The encounter with Amelia left me shaken and stirred, bemused and confused all at the same time. If I were a martini, James Bond would have thrown me back at the bartender’s face in sheer disgust.

But she was always one to throw me off-kilter. Even as a precocious, albeit a quite arrogant undergrad, she managed to weaponize the element of surprise in ways deeply damaging to my self-esteem.

Careful, I cautioned myself as I watched her sway away from me. She’d clearly been observing the poker game from a private vantage point. I guessed that it was usually reserved for the use of security personnel to catch cheaters.

And yet, Amelia Knight was allowed to use it for fun, which meant she must have influence with club security.

What a surprise.

I tracked her progress through the heaving crowds, my intent to leave forgotten. I was curious to see what my once-prodigy of an ex-student was doing with her life.

The bass beats boomed, sonorous and all-enveloping. I resented the distraction, but to be fair, the music was what most people in the club were paying for.

That and the visual entertainment. From where I was standing, I had a bird's eye view of the city's most notorious billionaire heiress. She climbed up on the bartop and started dancing.

The lyrics to the song were more suited to a stripclub than anything else. Something about bend it over, girl, shake it like a salt shaker. It being a truly delectable derriere, of course.

I hadn't really noticed back at Harvard. I'd been keenly aware of her intelligence and her defiant spirit, but that was in a competitive learning environment.

Watching that same bright young woman debase herself in skimpy clothing to cheers and hoots from the drunken perverts in the club was disappointing, to say the least.

The poet performing the rap announced that her ass was like an ounce of crack, then proceeded to claim that it was so fat it was both the future and the past.

Unexpected lyricism aside, the man had a point.

But if I kept watching, I was one of the perverts, and I wasn't okay with that.

"Fuck me and my life," I muttered under my breath, as I pushed my way to the bar. Somewhere up ahead, a group of louts were throwing money at Amelia's twerking act as if they thought they could buy her.

Unacceptable.

I told myself it was the chivalrous thing to do, to put a stop to it. But the truth is, I was both jealous and annoyed. Difficult, though clinical objectivity might be in a moment like this, I had to face the facts.

So I yanked her down from the bar. I might have lectured her a little bit.

But her fiery nature got the better of both of us. I probably shouldn't have called her Miss High Maintenance, but she absolutely should not have told me to fuck off.

So, here I was: a beautiful woman storming away from me, going home alone and on the receiving end of filthy looks from all the men who didn't want the fun to stop.

Moments later, I slumped defeatedly in the back of my cab. The nice Sikh man driving me home gave me a quizzical look in the rearview mirror.

"Rough night, my friend?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Ah," he said. "Never mind. It's this city. It wears you down.

Not a reassuring thing to hear on my first night here, but I let it pass.

"It's not the city," I told him slowly, liking the innate kindness of the man. "It's a woman."

"Oh, a woman." He laughed. "Let me tell you something, my man. I've been married for thirty-three years, and I speak to you from a place of vast experience. You will never understand a woman's mind. Don't even try."

"But I'm a psychiatrist," I replied. "It's literally my job."

"Psychiatry is different." He shook his head. "I am speaking about love. It's not a science. It is an art."

“You’re a very wise man, sir,” I said, just as we pulled up to my place. I clambered out. “Here, take some extra cash. I’ll keep your words in mind.”

He nodded happily. “No mention. And not to worry! She’ll come around.”

I hope so, I thought, as I waved him off. Before I went in, I took a last look at the shadowy street, already overladen with a dull and heavy smog.

“Fuck this,” I said out loud. “I hate New York.”