Hell on Heels (2 page)

I can’t abuse drugs. I can’t abuse alcohol. A drink or two, sure, but drowning in my sorrows isn’t going to happen. But men? The cause of my anguish? I can use them, can’t I?

Because this high makes me feel fucking lethal, and I never want to come down from it.

Eight and a half years later.

“M
ark my words, I will never sleep with another man who wears an earring again.”

Making eye contact with our waiter, I signalled for the cheque, before drawing my eyes back to my best friend. “Aside from the fact that you just might fight over jewellery, if that were the case, why exactly are you making this profound declaration on a Monday?”

“Because I’m going to assume it means they’re shit in bed.” Leighton huffed dramatically in exasperation.

“Is this the Tinder guy?” I wanted to face palm on behalf of her stupidity.

She nodded, stabbing one of the ice cubes in her Coke Zero with vengeance. “He was so promising. So much potential.”

I wanted to kick her underneath the table in frustration, but at the risk of scuffing this season’s Steve Madden ankle boots, I poked her in the forearm with my salad fork instead. “I told you to stop sleeping with the idiots from that website. This isn’t
Sex and the City
, Leighton. You’re not going to end up with a Mr. Big.” I paused for effect. “What you’re going to end up with is another broken heart from some ass clown who isn’t worth the breath it takes you to talk about him, or worse, an STD.”

While I had my issues with men, and I’d admit they ran deep and ugly, my self-preservation instincts were fully intact, heightened rather. Honestly, I think people would do anything in the name of love. Sometimes I had to wonder if it was just stupidity that made us that naïve, or if we were all just clinging to a desperate notion that we remained hopeful romantics and not just selfishly seeking out partnership to even the playing field within ourselves. Ensuring we were gold-plated in the areas we lacked, rather than polishing the authentic twelve-karat facets of our personalities. It was easier to believe you just had to find the right person, put up with the right asshole, and settle for a little less than the dream, because you’d be happy, or at the very least, you wouldn’t be alone. Because the alternative was eating Chinese takeout, alone, in your one bedroom walk up and looking inward at the abundance of work it would take to heal by your own hands. And that seemed to be a job description most of us weren’t willing to sign on the dotted line for.

Happiness and love were among the most fickle and fleeting of emotions. I had no time for either, yet in no way was I a sadist or among those adverse to romance. The fact was I’d spent much of my adult life in the company of great men, and I wanted to love each of them. I wanted them to save me, but each time, as the high ran dry and true colours were bled, I did what the past in me had bred and I fled, downward and fast, until I was picking myself up off the ground again, piece by piece, little by little, bloody knees and broken heart in tow. Maybe that was the problem: my insecurities and ill fitting need consistently led me to believe my saviour would be a gentleman caller of sorts. My mind relentlessly insisting I was a queen, but my heart reverently convincing us we are a lady in waiting, a lady waiting for a man specifically.

While I toyed relentlessly with the ebb and flow of love, Leighton, however, was a true bleeding heart. Trusting and full of unrelenting hope. I wasn’t saying it was a bad thing, but every guy she encountered who had half a brain somehow managed to prey on her romanticism, and while she was off planning their
Page Six
wedding, he was juggling a handful of other women and she was none the wiser.

Her latest venture to find men? Tinder. The online, grown-up version of Hot or Not. Ever wondered what ordering a person to your door like pizza looks like? That was Tinder.

“Where else am I supposed to find a man with the hours I keep?” She pouted.

Tucking my napkin under my salad plate, I looked up, pretending to search for an answer before locking my eyes with hers and raising my brows in surprise. “How about, real life? You work in a building full of men.”

Fidgeting, she pursed her lips. “Pompous men.”

“Yes, because the Tinder Trophies you’re racking up are of substantially higher quality.” I cocked an eyebrow at her, sarcasm hanging off my words in the air.

“I guess so.” Furrowing her brow, she made a funny face. “I think his studs were bigger than mine,” she whined, twisting the princess cut diamond in her right ear.

“The bigger the diamond, the bigger the douche.” I laughed, tilting my glass in her direction in a mock toast.

“And the smaller the dick,” she grumbled, just as our waiter returned to the table, cheque in hand.

“I thought you were into your dentist anyway,” I offered as our joint chuckles subsided, signing my haphazard signature across the bottom of my bill.

“He was just,” she paused, struggling to tuck her wallet back inside her structured black tote, “too into me.”

Women.

“He was too into you?”

Waving her hands in the air, she shrugged. “Too clingy. Too easy. Too much of everything. I didn’t even want to sleep with him. He was acting like such a bitch I was afraid I’d get down there and realize my balls were bigger than his.”

Tilting my head back in poised laughter, I marvelled at the absurdities of love. Her reasoning was thinner than her two petite arms. It was kind of sad, wasn’t it? We needed fear. It motivated us, even when it came to loving other people; we must fear the loss of them to inevitably want them in the first place. I think in more common terms it’s referred to as “the chase.” While no one wanted to chase or be chased too long, no one wanted to catch or be caught too suddenly. It was a delicate equation that lovers in the dating game couldn’t seem to solve. Leaving us to continue playing Russian roulette, blindfolded in the dark, with our relationships.

“It’s nearly one. I need to get back to the office. I’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes,” I said with a reluctant edge to my voice, standing from my seat and shimmying up the black denim hugging my thicker thighs.

Dropping her napkin on the table, she nodded in agreement. “I should get back, too. The partners will have my hide if I don’t bag this up-and-comer by end of day.”

Leighton was a little shorter than me, standing at around five foot five or so, with dark hair, a slender figure, and dark green eyes. She was also smart as a whip. That was how we met, actually, my second year of college at The University of British Columbia. She was a literary agent now for Hill & Decker Publishing House, specializing in the closing of romance novelists, which suited her personality somewhat perfectly. Her job title was expanded on the rise of what people were now calling
The Fifty Movement,
and she couldn’t have been riding the wave any harder.

I, on the other hand, stood at a very curvy five foot seven, sans heels, with ash blonde hair that was becoming less mine and more salon as the years crept toward my thirtieth birthday, but hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you blonder, right?

“I’ll see you on Saturday,” Leighton said as we exchanged a quick kiss on the cheek moments before our heels descended in opposite directions of the Burrard Street sidewalk.

Joining the flow of pedestrians, my longer than average legs moved me quickly up to Robson Street in the direction of the offices for Smith & Co. Productions, my office.

I guess you could say circumstances led me to become your typical overachiever, the poster child, if you will, for a disheartened workaholic who did so to avoid having to spend too much time alone in the other, less than stellar, areas of her life. That being said, part of me simply chalked it up to my addictive personality and the fault of singledom that brought with it an occasional abundance of free time.

Truth is, when you got burned, you learned to be strong. You make it out alive, or you don’t. I chose to claw my way up from the gallows and use what I got. My heart was weary, but my mind was strong and my face was pretty; the two combined were somewhat of a lethal combination.

In my professional life, I was a sniper. In my personal life, I was a mess.

I graduated top of my class from The University of British Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in Business Management before finally finding my stride at Simon Fraser University, where I garnered a degree in Event Planning. As busy as I remained during the course of my academia, my addiction would still rear it’s ugly head from time to time, and my need to soothe the loneliness inside me would have to be remedied. It was in those such instances I often chose to attempt to develop something with a suitor in my life, thus finding a handsome man to deliver me to heaven and return me to hell.

I had no delusions of grandeur. I didn’t believe being the recipient of a man’s attention garnered me a better person, but it was where the steel in my spine was forged. Without it, my vulnerability grew through the cracks like weeds on a broken sidewalk.

In the summer following the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, on the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday, I founded The Halo Foundation. This charity blossomed from the very core of my heart, where it eventually bled into a well-funded and well-sponsored organization that supported the education of post secondary children on the effects of addiction, as well as the “clean teens” program that aided young users in getting clean and rehabilitating them back into society. It was my heart and soul, my passion project, and yet it paved the way for the development of my company, Smith & Co. Productions, which was formally founded less than a year later.

We were a small event-planning firm that ran a staff of five people year-round, and we were currently days away from hosting the annual Halo Foundation Gala this Saturday evening.

Though we weren’t considered a large firm by any means on the scale of local companies, I was sought out frequently for a number of elite events for my expertise in the field, but more than that, my personality. It drew clients in like a mirrored fishing lure. Ironic, isn’t it? On the outside, nearly everyone I met would deem me a people person at first glance. However, my career had grown into yet another life choice that deceptively cloaked my fear of connection. Not that I was by any means insincere, but my job allowed me to masquerade in plain sight and no one was ever the wiser. It was a comforting yet alarming arrangement that had served my staff and me handsomely over the four and a half years since our doors opened. It was also the reason that each year, The Halo Foundation Gala was a masquerade. I considered it an ode to the dark parts of me, but only I knew that.

Meeting the intersection of Burrard Street and Robson Street, I waited impatiently for the lights to change, when the bass of my ringtone sounded through the leather of the tasseled boho slung over my shoulder. Rummaging through its expansive interior, my fingers finally curled around the vibrating iPhone and brought it to my ear.

“Charleston,” my tone was an edge above chipper.
Always answer the phone with a smile on your face
, Mom used to say.
They’ll be able to tell if you aren’t.

“Did they make you harvest the lettuce for that salad yourself?” my assistant, Kevin, snipped into my receiver.

The man was all sass. From the top of his quaffed salon blowout, to the bottom of his overpriced Testoni dress shoes. He was young, brilliant, gorgeous, and ruthless with numbers. Why was I not dating him? He was also as gay as they came.
Sorry, ladies
.

“I’m not entirely sure you
harvest
lettuce in the first place.” I shook my head at no one in particular as the heel of my boots took on the faded crosswalk.

There was a scoff on the other end of the line, followed by an unladylike snort. Before you judge, I compared him to a lady, because in every way was the man a queen. More of a goddess than any of the women I knew, and he wore it well—in Brooks Brothers suits, I mean. “Your 1:30 is here.”

Glancing down at the shine off my watch, my brows furrowed together. “Well, it’s just one. He’s early. Offer him a coffee while he waits.”

“Do you have any idea how much this man is worth?” His voice was barely a whisper and kind of a whine.

I knew exactly how much Beau Callaway, politician for the conservative party and our city’s front-runner for mayor, was worth. He came from a long line of old money and politics. I only took the meeting arranged by his assistant, because it seemed he was interested in providing a last minute donation to the foundation in exchange for being mentioned as one of the sponsors at this weekend’s festivities. There was no doubt the meeting was a campaign strategy, and if I was agreeable, a shiny mention of support and involvement in aiding a local charity would look admirable on the lapel of his young politician’s jacket. Regardless, that was neither here nor there in the scheme of things for me.

I made no qualms on the reasons why someone wished to be a sponsor.

Sponsors made donations. Donations funded my charity. My charity saved people like Henry.