“I plead the fifth, your honor.”
“Whatever your rate is, I have no doubt you’re worth every nickel,” I say, “but do you think you could float me a freebie?”
“It’s not British law, is it?” she says, her tone suddenly serious. “I was only number two in my international class.”
“No, it’s a local matter,” I say. I can’t help but shake my head. Only number two at Harvard. That’s Most Likely to Succeed for you. “Do you know a guy named Ryder Cole?”
“The nightclub guy?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure,” I say.
“Tall and tatted and imminently fuckable?” she says.
“I guess you could say that,” I say, heat rushing to my face as my brain associates the word fuckable with an image of Ryder. “Which club’s door does he work?”
“He owns the doors at several places in town,” she says. “Just opened another one downtown.”
I pause, absorbing the shock of this information. “So, he’s a legitimate businessman?”
Savannah chuckles. “If you’re using a word like legitimate, Cass, you clearly already know as much about him as I do.”
“We met recently,” I say. “He’s an acquaintance of Jamie’s.”
“Well, from what I’ve heard, you should tell Jamie to acquaint himself carefully. You, too,” she says. “Ryder’s not putting him in the ring, is he?”
“What ring?”
“It’s sort of an open secret that when he’s not a nightlife impresario,” she says, “Ryder Cole also runs the underground fight scene.”
“Like boxing?”
“Exactly like boxing,” Savannah says. “Just without the gloves, head gear, or rules. Bare knuckles.”
Ryder Cole likes it rough. I might have guessed.
“What’s the name of his new place?” I say, setting the swing in motion again. Night has set in and the fireflies are out, their greenish-yellow bulbs flashing in the blackness of the back yard.
“I think it’s called Altitude,” Savannah says. “And you better not fucking go there without me.”
“Who can wait for you?” I say, laughing. “You work til eight o’clock at night.”
“Fucking entertainment law. I should have been a tax attorney, I swear, but I’m too damn good-looking,” she says, and I laugh again. It feels so nice to have this conversation with Savannah, like nothing’s changed in the last two years—even though so much has. “You’re not rushing back to your British babe too soon, are you?”
“No rush at all,” I say. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but it’s not untrue either.
“Good,” she says. “Let’s get together this week in person. I’ve really missed you, Cass.”
“Me, too,” I say, leaning into the back of the swing, bringing my knees under my chin as I sway lazily. Having a friend to talk to, feeling the warm, humid air on my bare arms and legs, listening to the crickets make their hopeful mating call—it’s good to be home.
My home. Our home—Jamie’s and mine. Not Ryder Cole’s, no matter what.
He’s not the only one who knows how to manage a fight.
CASSIE
CH. 5
My first impression of Altitude is that it’s warm and relaxed and feels like the kind of place that’s been in the neighborhood for a hundred years, where you can have a fun girls’ night on a Friday and then come back on Sunday to recap the weekend. It’s inviting and spacious but cozy—basically the opposite of Ryder Cole, so when I come looking for him the day after Savannah fills me in on his extracurricular activities, I’m still not convinced he owns this place. Standing in the entryway in my short, flowy sundress—when you haven’t really had a job for two years, “business casual” becomes a fluid term—I let my eyes adjust to the dimness of the space as the white, mid-afternoon sunlight squeezes through the slatted blinds. There’s a jukebox in the corner playing Johnny Cash, and a few people at a nearby table sharing a flatbread pizza that makes my stomach grumble with jealousy.
Heading toward the bartender working behind the long, wooden bar, I take in all the black and white press photos from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution hung on the walls, dated from the first and middle parts of the last century: beautiful women in 40s party dresses; Peachtree Street covered in snow; white college students dancing while a black five-piece band plays in a nightclub. It lends the bar atmosphere this kind of intimacy, as though Altitude is connected to Atlanta’s history, that everything that ever happened in this city has led me here to this moment today. Like trying to get Ryder Cole to call off Jamie’s debt is just an inevitable conclusion to something that got started a long time ago. Fate. Destiny. Things I don’t believe in anymore.