A Narration from the Brain of Jewel Quinn

Chapter 14: Gentlemen in Distress

Chapter 14 : Gentlemen in Distress

"Vodka?" Odette said, holding up a glass.

I shook my head. After such a dreadful day induced by copious amounts of alcohol, I had learned that it was best to stick with water.

"It will give me a stomach ache." I answered.

"This?" Odette eyed the glass curiously. "It makes me feel positively serene."

I nodded. There really was no other way to respond. I had spent more time listening to Odette's nonsense in the last few hours than I did the whole week. When Odette had told me to take the scandal like a lady, she'd been referring to herself as well, and apparently that meant sticking to my side like a leech.

It was, I realized, the most tangible show of affection Odette had displayed towards the girl who she said was a trollop.

"Well I will say one thing," Odette proclaimed. "I haven't seen so many of my friends gathered together since the last time you commited social suicide."

Friends?

"I think it's dying down a bit." she continued. "There were thirty visitors the other day, twenty-six yesterday and only twenty today."

"You've been counting?"

"Of course, I've been counting. What have you been doing?"

"Er... sitting here and taking it like a beauty queen?"

"Pfft." she said dismissing my distress with a wave of a freshly manicured hand.

Seventy-six visitors. Seventy-six people had come in and out of the Oaks home, eager to watch the next scandal or spread it or tell her how much it spread.

It was awful.

"Sit up straight!" Odette snapped clicking her tongue.

Maybe not seventy-six, some people had come more than once. Stephanie Laurens had certainly come more than once to rub it in my face.

I wouldn't blame Tom if he never came near me again. I really should have voiced out Luke Caprice's knarly vibes radiating towards the closest female in the vicinity. Me.

The doorbell rang to signal the first visitors of the day.

Odette picked herself of the peach couch and threw open the door. "It's about time. What took you so long?"

I simmered with inner mortification as Tom and his sister, Leah, entered.

"I was ill." he said, wryly pointing up toward his blackened eye.

His eye. It looked awful. Red rimmed, slightly swollen and a blue black bruise that spread to the outer corner.

I guess I wasn't able to hide my mortification as well as I thought I did because he said, "I probably look like a mob boss."

"I am so sorry about your eye."

He smiled. "I think the look is growing on me. It gives the air of a perpetual wink."

I started to smile but quickly hid it after sensing a glare emanating from Odette. "A godfather-like wink."

"And here I thought it was dashing," he whispered.

"Sit down." Odette said pointing towards the peach couch. I started toward it but she said, "No. Him. You over there."

Once she settled everyone to their correct seats, she lost no time in divulging to the matter at hand. "So what are we going to about this?"