Who: Audrey and Orin What: How many blondes can you fit in an Aubade hot tub? Where: 406 When: Last evening Warnings: Amazingly, none.
It had taken months for the work on Orrie’s apartment to be completed. Admittedly, if he hadn’t been such a picky son of a bitch about the whole thing, he wouldn’t have been living in a hotel in Long Beach for the better part of a year. But he owned the hotel, and so he didn’t mind so much. He hadn’t owned it when he’d moved in, but after a few complaints about the parties he was throwing on the penthouse level he’d been left with little choice. He wasn’t going to stop having the parties, after all.
He’d just gotten the keys to Aubade 406 that morning, and he was sitting out in the balcony’s jacuzzi with two blondes as the sun set over the Sound. And he was out of Cristal. It wasn’t his particular taste, but the blondes loved the pricetag (if not the taste), and Orrie wasn’t one to disappoint a woman. He’d reached over for the deck phone, and he’d called in an order for three bottles with the front desk, knowing they’d find a courier service to take care of it for him. After all, that’s what being rich was about.
He assured the women, twins, that their libations were coming, and he tuned them out as they fawned and splashed in the warm water. Coming back to Seattle, really coming back, it brought back more memories than he’d been expecting. It was different than Musings, of course, in the small details. But his bedroom had looked out over the Sound when he’d been small, and his first night looking out at that water was harder than he’d expected. He would either completely intoxicated, or he’d go burn off steam another way. But he hadn’t been expecting it, hadn’t thought anything could bother him after so many years.
He’d been wrong.
It was toward the end of Audrey's shift when she got the call for one last delivery, three bottles of Cristal for some rich bastard in the Aubade. She'd always found Cristal pretentious as hell - no one she'd spoken to who had tried it seemed to actually like the way it tasted, just the fact that it cost a lot of money and rappers drank it - but the courier service she worked for wasn't paying her to criticize its customers on the sort of things they wanted delivered.
She took the money from her boss and picked up the bottles from a specialty liquor place they used for last-minute requests like this one. The man at the desk seemed impressed when she asked for three bottles of Cristal, and asked who she was delivering to. She shrugged. "Somebody trying to impress someone," she said, and the man behind the counter chuckled. She tucked all three bottles into her bag, and exited through the back way, turning the back door into a portal to subspace after checking to be sure the man in front wasn't watching.
She exited through a janitor's closet in the stairwell of Aubade that she'd used before. Nobody in this damn building ever seemed to use the stairs. Why take stairs when you were rich? That was what the gilded elevator was for. As she knocked on the door she was delivering to her thoughts wandered to Thomas upstairs, who she could not imagine would ever order three bottles of Cristal to prove to the world he was rich. She pulled the bag with the bottles in it from inside her purse, and knocked on the door again when no one answered immediately.
Orrie didn’t have anyone to answer his door, because he liked not having anyone to answer his door, and he slipped away from the twins with a lazy promise to return and grabbed the white robe that was laid out on the deck chair and slipped it on. The apartment was open, no walls or doors or anything practical like that. It was a bachelor pad, it liked being a bachelor pad. It was damn proud of its status as a bachelor pad.
He dripped all the way to the door, not giving a damn what the water might do the marble underfoot, and he pulled the door open and stretched one arm high on the frame as he looked at the courier. “They let you in here with stoning you?” he asked, an entertained expression on his lips as he looked over the strange girl (who definitely didn’t look like she belonged in Aubade), and then he let his arm slide back down and he moved aside. “The deck,” he said, indicating where he wanted the bottles.
Audrey quirked a brow. "Don't worry, they checked to see if I floated first," she shot back. She'd already changed out of her skates before Orrie's order came in, anticipating heading home, so she walked past him rather than rolled. She glanced around the room, and didn't hide her curiosity, but also didn't look overly impressed.
One part of the courier job that Audrey liked was that she could, and did, wear whatever the hell she wanted (today her outfit consisted of the usual layered shirts under a leather jacket to shut out the cold), and they didn't care what color her hair was. That didn't prevent people she delivered to from raising eyebrows, but she'd been immune to that sort of silent critique for a long time.
She heard female voices in the direction of the deck she was supposed to be dropping off the bottles at, and wasn't the least bit surprised. "The ladies love Cristal," she said, mostly to herself, dead dry and a little exasperated with the world.
“They love the pricetag, and you love to shock,” Orrie said with a chuckle. He knew her type - bitter, defiant, anti-establishment. He’d fucked plenty of girls like her when he was younger. These days, he leaned toward blondes with big tits and no demands, but that didn’t mean he didn’t find the blue-haired courier entertaining. He quirked a brow. “Are you planning on carrying the bottles over there? Or do you need one of the ladies to come help you?” he asked, intentionally mirroring her tone and choice of words.
She glanced back at him, skeptical. "Sure. Because I want to have people ask who let me in the rich people palace when they open the door. It's my goal in life." When he offered to have a 'lady' help her carry, she rolled her eyes. "I'm more than capable of carrying them all by my lonesome without the help of the wonder twins out there," twins who she could now see through the glass wall of the penthouse, "But you're a gentleman for offering."
She carried the bottles out onto the deck, setting them within reach of the twins before coming back in. She couldn't say she lauded his choice in women, but she'd be out of here in another minute and she wouldn't have to think about what sort of girls the sleazeballs in the Aubade scored again until she had to deliver something else.
Orrie was watching her reaction through the glass with an expression that was a combination of lazy entertainment and lack of concentration. The moon glinted off the water over her shoulder, and he had to force himself to look away, that lazy billionaire’s smile finding its way back to his lips with absolutely no trouble. “If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t go out of your way to look different from everyone else,” he said, opening a drawer and pulling out a fifty dollar bill. “You’re either trying for attention, or aiming for rebellion,” he said, holding out the bill. “Want my guess?”
"I'm guessing that I'm not getting that tip until I listen to your psychoanalysis, so hit me Dr. Freud." Audrey watched him, brown gaze sharp, cutting, and observant. He was distracted by something, but as far as she knew it was the girls beyond the glass. Audrey knew herself, and she knew why she did what she did. She seriously doubted he had anything to say that she hadn't either thought of herself or heard from well-meaning people who thought that they could straighten her out.
“I’ll go for the combo,” he said, not bothered by her quip. “Trying to get someone’s attention through rebellion,” he said, shaking the bill so she’d take it from between his fingers. “Might be interesting to see what you’re really like, once you stop letting other people make you into things.” He grinned. “Maybe.”
Audrey stared hard back at him. She didn't like being laughed at - she could chalk it right up there with being ignored, running a close second to that sensation of invisibility, the next worst thing. She didn't like this guy, this stranger who thought he knew her inside and out. Was he wrong? Not entirely. But now she was here, and if she did something it was because she wanted to do it, not because she was trying to draw a blinded eye. "And that's never going to be a blonde with double Ds and a taste for wasting your money, so save it to spend on them. Have a nice night." She didn't take the fifty from him, going to the door instead. Could she have used the money? Yes. But she was too prideful to take it from him and let him pay her for listening to him judge her.
“Never let your pride lead you to fuck yourself over,” he called out to her. “Other people do that enough, don’t they?” It was a rhetorical question, and he tossed the bill onto the end table and shucked off the wet robe, dropping it across a pristine white chair before returning to the deck. He didn’t bother waiting for her to walk out, and he didn’t worry about locking the door behind her. And if he cared whether or not she took the bill (and the advice) you’d never know it.
Audrey looked behind her, watched him throw the money on the table and walk back out, jaw set tight. Everyone had an opinion about what she did with her life and her body, back home and here. At least back home, as bad as things had been toward the end, she'd been away from her family. Now she was stuck with Max whether she liked it or not, and on top of it perfect strangers had decided it was good policy to tell her what she was thinking and what she should do, acting like they knew what made her tick. He had no idea what he was talking about.
She walked back over and picked up the money from the table, stuffing it into her pocket and walking out. It did hurt her pride, and made her feel sort of dirty, really, but he was right about one thing - if people were going to keep making decisions about her, she might as well get paid to hear them. She had rent to pay. If luck was on her side, she'd never have to come face to face with him again anyway.