What if dreams come true?

They sat us in the corner booth.

Chez Phillipe’s very best table.

Red leather seating for ten, but only two places set.

Such a Lloyd thing to do. 

He was sweet in the important ways, thoughtful. He respected me as an equal, although I was a receptionist and he was so successful, but I could not deny the wonderful buzz when he went all alpha male and swept me off my feet with extravagant gestures.

At school, Lloyd always had the coolest clothes, the swagger, the dangerous edge. The whispers that he sold recreational drugs in nightclubs only added to his bad-boy allure. We all had crushes on him, even the homely girls like me. Especially us, I guess. 

I recognised him the moment he walked into the gym where I work although his hair was shorter and I’d never seen him in a designer hoodie and running shorts. The cheekbones, were enough, the chin, and the way Lloyd set his shoulders as he entered a room, daring anyone to give him their best shot. Before I could squeak his name like a teenage groupie, he hesitated, dropped his mirror Oakley’s to stare into my eyes and said, “Angie? Angie Beresford from Beachside High? No way!”

He remembered me! Wow, he knew my name!

“You’re looking incredible.”

Incredible? I wasn’t so sure. Definitely better than I did in Year 10. I grew into my weight late in my teens. Free gym access did wonders, too, and confidence to shop at the best stores, but it felt good for those efforts to be noticed by a guy I swooned over for three solid years, until he dropped out to start his own business. We smirked at that, all us west-of-the-freeway kids. People like our dads owned legal partnerships, real estate agencies and car dealerships, not penniless state housing kids with nothing but striking good looks and unbreakable self-confidence. Lloyd proved us all wrong with… whatever it is he did. He hated to talk about work. To his credit, I think. My mother said it’s undignified to brag about your wealth.

When Lloyd asked me for a date—after I just about died—high school Angie kicked in with a vengence. I’d be devastated if he dumped me. Okay, when he dumped me because Lloyd Haynes was the all-time heartbreaker in high school. If he’d asked me out, then—as if!—I’d have said no for self-preservation. I could not have coped with the rejection when he moved on to his next fling. Those old anxieties bit hard, but I’d grown resilience. I still hyperventilated over what might go wrong, but I’d learned to ask myself, ‘But what if it goes right? What if I miss out and regret it for the rest of my life?’ I squashed my fears and took the plunge so I wouldn’t die wondering what being Lloyd’s girl might be like, and I was right. It had been everything high school Angie dreamed of. Whisked from the casino to nightclubs, stage shows and five-star restaurants in his Porsche. Deep and meaningful conversations, holding hands under a blanket in front of the telly. Walks along the beach, everything a girl desired. So, there I was, in my purse-emptying, bodice-hugging, A-line Stella McCartney and the diamond earrings Daddy bought me for my twenty-first with waiters swirling around us speaking French, thinking life could not get any better, until it did.

“Guys. Thanks,” Lloyd said, and the head waiter waved his minions away to give us a bubble of solitude in the heaving mass of diners.

Lloyd’s hand shook a little as he flattened it on the table, taking a nervous gulp. These moments of vulnerability made my heart melt for the bad boy made good.

“I… I’m sorry. I know I insist we stay in the moment, party or bust, living our best lives, but I have to be serious tonight.” He reached across the table for my hand.

“About us?” I asked. 

Was he going to dump me? Damn it. Not now! I was still high school Angie after all. I could not handle Lloyd Haynes rejecting me.

No, I was an idiot. No-one booked Chez Philippe to break up.

“Yes, about us.” His Adam’s apple rose and fell. “Our future. Together.”

His free hand went to his pocket.

OMG! He was proposing!

“Is that him? Yes, it is! Lloyd bloody Haynes. What are you doing in Chez Phillipe?”

The interruption came from an abomination looming at our table. A buck-toothed stick insect with a tick twitching his stupid moustache, flanked by two tattooed lumps who looked like they bench-pressed SUVs.

Lloyd let out a slow, calm breath and glared at the stick insect. 

“I’m here for dinner, Ivan. How about you?”

He knew this horrible man?

“Why don’t you answer my calls, Lloyd?”

“Because we have nothing to discuss.”

​“How about what you owe me?”

“I don’t owe you a cent—”

“Two hundred grand he took me for.” Ivan turned his ferrety gaze to me. It made my skin crawl. “Is this your latest mug? Watch out, love. He’ll stiff you for the bill. He scams everyone.”

“What’s happening?” I asked. These men frightened me.

Lloyd raised a hand. “Nothing, it’s nothing, Babe.”

The stick insect sneered. 

“Don’t believe a word he says. This one couldn’t lie straight in bed.” 

He dismissed Lloyd with a contemptuous snort and spun away. His bodyguards closed in behind as the head waiter hurtled from the kitchen, presumably to throw them out.

“Lloyd?” I asked. "What was that?"

He shrugged, all boyish embarrassment. 

“Business. I--”

“You work with that man?”

“I did. Once. Years ago. A mistake. Look—”

“What is your business?”

“What?”

How do you make a living? Whenever I ask, you change the subject.”

"Because it’s boring. It’s what I do for money. This is my life.” He opened his arms to take in the restaurant. “Us. Having fun with you.”

“You deal with people like them?”

“No.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Not anymore. Never again. I make investments. I trade.”

“You owe that animal two hundred thousand dollars?”

“No! Look, Angie. Ivan tried to wedge me for two hundred K. He’s a criminal.”

Lloyd rattled off a wild excuse that I didn’t hear over the clang of scales falling from my eyes, the whiplash of blinkers torn away and the tinkle of rose-tinted glasses shattered. Lloyd Haynes hadn’t changed one bit. He made investments? Traded? In drugs like he did in school or stolen goods, and he owed a large sum of money to a criminal he’d ripped off called Ivan, as well as others, no doubt. Which meant he needed cash fast.

“How much, Lloyd?”

“What? Pardon?”

“How much did you plan to weasel out of me? A few thousand to see you over a little hump? Or more and more ‘to secure our life together’? You bastard!”

When Lloyd Haynes arrived at Realisation Fitness, he saw Angie from high school, all right. Angie, the frumpy, timid nerd who had a rich daddy and would be easily parted from her trust fund by a little attention and his nice-guy act. I would have given him whatever he asked, too. Because I thought he loved me, that he wanted to make me his wife. What an abject fool I’d been.

How ironic that it took a revolting criminal to save me from an equally loathsome fraud.

I escaped by the skin of my teeth.

+++

“Monsieur Haynes?”

The headwaiter, like me, and everyone else in Chez Phillippe, stared after Angie. Her flame-red party dress swung around her hips as she stormed out of the restaurant. I should have chased her, but my legs had gone to rubber.

The best laid plans, eh?What were the odds that  Ivan Rebrov would turn up in Chez Philippe at the vital moment? The waiter read my mind.

“Mr Rebrov recently, err, obtained our restaurant from Chef Phillippe.”

I doubt Ivan paid. The Russian mafia got what it wanted. As Ivan just had from me. Maybe not the two hundred K I made when I flipped the warehouse I bought from him. He decided the profit was his and I wish now that I’d handed over the cash, because the deal had just cost me so much more. 

“Err. Mr Rebrov has asked that you leave.”

I put the little box from my pocket on the table. My hopes. Smashed.

“Should I bring your champagne?”

Funny guy! He meant the Dom Pérignon I brought from my cellar for the celebration if she said yes. I should have known it wasn’t meant to be, that fate would step in to crush my dreams. Angie Beresford. In my new gym. The sweetest, prettiest girl at Beachside High. Way out of my league then, too pure, too innocent. I thought I’d clawed far enough from the sewer to have a chance, but I guess guys like me will always be state housing kids to people like Angie.

“Keep the bubbly, Alphonse, mate. Share it with your crew. You need something nice if Ivan’s your boss now.”

“Indeed.”

“Any chance I can get a Scotch? A double, before Ivan’s heavies carry me out?”
​
“I’ll see what I can do, Monsieur.” 


Image by Ortega Ulloa from Pixabay