He wasn’t doing any of this out of the goodness of his own heart and his offer of help was simply an empty gesture because…because he pitied me for working.
Which was just shitty of him now that I thought about it. Nobody who worked should be pitied. It didn’t matter how inferior the type of work. I was making money that was helping my family.
Iwas doing that.
Which meant by the time I’d hiked up what felt like a mile-long driveway and pressed my thumb on the overly large doorbell, I’d worked up a pretty good steam.
Fitz opened the door and I let all that steam blast him right in the face.
“You know I don’t need your charity,” I said.
He immediately pulled back.
“So I work at The Club! I make money. I use that money to buy things I want. There is nothing pitiful about any of that. I’m top in my class. I’ve got a list a mile long of accomplishments to put on my college application. And now I can actually add part-time work to that. If anything, it’s only going to make me appear more well-rounded.”
During my rant, he’d leaned against the door jab, arms folded across his chest. He really had some rather impressive biceps. Had I noticed that before?
“Are you done?”
I sniffed. Played back my monologue in my head. Realized it made me sound only a little bat-shit crazy and nodded.
“I don’t pity you, Bennet. I could never pity anyone as proud as you. And you’re not at the top of your class, you’re tied. With me. Now get in here.”
He moved away from the door and I followed him inside. It was strange. Of course I knew where the Darcys lived. The twins had been here any number of times for Gigi’s birthday parties growing up. But this was the first time I had been invited inside.
There was a massive foyer with a place for coats. I’d worn a jean jacket on account of the late September chill in the air and allowed Fitz to hang it up for me.
“We’ll go down to the playroom.”
“Sure,” I said, thrusting my hands into my jean pockets. I’d purposely not changed my outfit for this, so I was wearing the same tan cashmere sweater I’d worn to school, along with dark jeans—professionally torn at the knees—and a pair of Chucks. If only to shake up my look from the Doc Martens.
My hair, like normal, was pulled into a ponytail, and I thought about how vastly different my light brown hair was from Anne’s golden blond waves.
I followed Fitz down a hallway to a door that opened to a staircase leading us down. The “play” room was huge with a bar, multiple games tables, a huge black leather couch and two black leather recliners.
My mother would be horrified at the decor. She considered leather gauche.
I thought it looked comfortable.
“Maisy is going to bring some snacks in a few minutes,” he said.
“Who’s Maisy?”
“Our housekeeper.”
“Right.”
I wandered around the room. Rolling a ball along the felt of the pool table. Sliding a disk on the shuffleboard surface that looked as smooth as glass. All this stuff. My dad had a pool table he kept in what my mother called his man cave. She’d sold it. Everything in my dad’s man cave was the first to go.
“I thought we could get started on actually figuring out our shtick,” Fitz said.
“Shtick?”
“You know our back and forth. How we want to play it. Our banter.”
Banter. With Fitz.
I glanced down at my red high-tops and told him the truth. “This is probably a waste of time.”
