Reckless

I flashed a thin grin at Wes-Con, toying with him, pushing to see if he would stay standing all the way to the bell.

Wes-Con wasn’t throwing in the towel. His smile stretched a little wider. “One-fifty.”

I could respect that, but I shook my head. It wasn’t the twelfth.

Wes-Con’s smile went all the way. “Two.”

This time I didn’t shake my head.

Just when I thought Wes-Con’s smile couldn’t go any wider, it stretched another half-millimeter. His cheeks quivered. I think he was cramping up. “Two-fifty.”

I stood my ground. I wasn’t for sale to anybody, no matter how much I needed the money.

His eyes twitched. Wes-Con was about to go DefCon. I saw a single drop of sweat on the corner of his forehead. That was his towel going into the ring. But it wasn’t even the twelfth round. I’d thought Wes-Con had way more cash than that, especially when it came to his daughter. Guess not.

They say that every man had his price.

I didn’t. Not when my love for Samantha was on the line.

The battle won, I said casually, “Would you guys like to see the new work?” Meaning, a sneak-peek at my unveiled, upcoming paintings. You always wanted to offer them a token gift after you ransacked their shit. A gift that said, “Hey, your ass has been kicked, but it doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

“I think we better be going,” Wes-Con said, sliding his checkbook back into his blazer, where it joined the useless check for $25,000. Had there been any samurai warriors on hand, they would’ve broken that gold pen of his on principle.

I was merciful. His pen would remain intact.

“Daddy!!” Tiffany shrieked with anger. “You promised me that painting!!!!”

You know how they say behind every powerful king is a powerful queen? Sometimes all you needed was a princess. They were the worst.

“No, Tiffany,” I said.

Unfortunately for Tiffany, Wes-Con had just become my vassal on this issue. At least she still had her yacht to go cry on. Or she could make Wes-Con buy her something for a couple-hundred grand.

“Daddy!!” she screeched. “I want my painting!!!!”

I shook my head. She was still referring to it as hers. Her entitlement was legendary.

Westin-Conrad Kingston-Whitehouse flicked his eyes at his daughter briefly, then gave me a plaintive, horrified look. I think it was meant to be a private moment between us men.

I actually felt bad for the guy.

I showed them the door and offered them waters for the road. Both declined. Maybe I should’ve offered Wes-Con some earplugs. Poor guy.

When they were long gone, I returned to the liquor cabinet and poured myself a fat glass of the cheap stuff and pounded half of it in one go.

I walked out to the studio and looked at my nearly-completed painting of Isabella. I was not liking what I saw. It was verging on hack work. The problem with showing hack work was that if you did too much of it, no one wanted to pay a premium price for your art anymore. Not long after that, nobody wanted your art at all. We’re talking garage sales and thrift store pricing.

I sighed heavily.

Maybe I was rushing the painting because Brandon was calling every day asking about my status. I had a backlog of paintings to get through for the show. Maybe I could spend more time on the Isabella canvas, turn it into something special.

Or not.

As of yet, no pre-sale money had come in. Brandon had said something about building anticipation to push the prices up before closing any sales. That meant no more money for your’s truly until after the show, which was likely to be months away.

Russell Merriweather’s invoice for services rendered would have to wait, but I could only string him along based on our friendship for so long before I looked like a bum. Russell had bills of his own to pay.

With my trial date breathing down my neck, I wondered how much painting I would get done if I landed in jail. I’m sure the corrections officers would be more than happy to set up a private studio in my cell.

Yeah, right.

With storm clouds hovering over my financial horizon and shit closing in around me from multiple directions, Wes-Con’s $250,000 was money I could’ve used.

But there was no way I was selling out Samantha for any amount.

I tipped back my glass of whisky and downed the rest of it before walking back to the liquor cabinet for more.

Maybe there was an escape hatch from this mess I wasn’t seeing yet.

There was always a way out of any dilemma, even if it was the most drastic one.

SAMANTHA

When I got my mid-term grade for History that day, it turned out I was bombing the class worse than I’d thought. My overall grade was now hovering around a C-minus. The last thing I wanted was a D on my transcript.

Fortunately, I had paid Major Marjorie another visit in her office hours and she had confirmed that my grade would now most certainly be a B, if not higher. That worked for me.

But a D in History? Even I wouldn’t be happy with that. My parents, of course, would put out a contract on my life if they found out I got a D. Knowing my mom, should probably put one out on Christos, too.

Hell to pay…

I needed to start hitting the books twice as hard. I don’t know where I was going to find the time. The only answer was less sleep. Even though I’d agreed to move in with him, Christos and I really hadn’t been spending much time together lately, even when it came to working together in his studio. We were both simply too busy. It was a total drag.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have a shift at either the museum or Grab-n-Dash today. I was free to focus my entire afternoon and evening on the political exploits and daring deeds of the American Presidents. Yipee! Not.

But I was morbidly surprised to discover that many past American Presidents were far from nice people. Many had been involved in all kinds of back-door nastiness. I mean, I’d heard that Abraham Lincoln had secretly hunted vampires, but I didn’t know that some of the previous presidents had been vampires. Seriously. I read it on the internet somewhere.

Groan.

The truth was, I doing anything I could think of to make my reading more interesting for myself, but I kept imagining political cartoons of everything I read, which wasn’t actually helping my comprehension and retention.

Maybe I needed some ice cream? I was convinced it helped me remember things better. I stood up to go raid my freezer.

My cell phone rang.

My first thought was that it was Christos calling to tell me not to get any ice cream and that he was coming over to cook me dinner. The idea made me smile.

Then I saw it was parents.

There went my smile.

“Hello?”

“Good evening, Sam,” my dad said.

“Hello, Sam,” Mom said.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked sarcastically.

“Your mother and I were calling to find out if you had registered for Spring Quarter classes yet?”