Maybe what I need isn’t to prove something to Hannah, or my hometown, or my dad. Maybe what I need—who I need—is sitting three floors down, editing TikToks, not knowing she wrecked me.
I don’t just like her.
I’m gone for her.
And she friendzoned me.
Guess I’m starting the game already three goals down.
2
NO OFFENSE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (JOY)
“Engaged by New Year’s,” my mother says, as casually as ordering another mimosa. “Or you lose the trust.”
I freeze, fork halfway to my mouth, the roasted beet suddenly a tiny murder victim on my plate. The words hang in the air, a grenade with the pin pulled.
Two weeks. Fiancé. Twelve million dollars.
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“I’m sorry—what?”
“Your grandmother’s trust, dear.” She delivers the news with her trademark frost, crucial for survival on the Upper East Side. “It vests the year you turn twenty-five, contingent on a formal engagement announcement. You turned twenty-five in October. Which means you have until December thirty-first to produce a fiancé and make it public.”
Across the table, my sister Lila chokes on her coffee.
My pulse flickers. The trust: circled in red since childhood. My birthday came and went. No call. I didn’t ask. In this house, curiosity invoices as greed.
I set my fork down with the careful precision of someone defusing a bomb. “And you’re telling me this now? Two weeks before the deadline?”
“We didn’t want to distract you during your… sports media project.” She smooths a napkin corner that was already straight. “Kinder to let you enjoy life before the adult choices.”
Uncle Julian’s jaw tightens. “It’s a league job, Serena, not a lemonade stand. Joy’s exceptional. Our numbers say so.” His tone stays sunny, which is, if you know him, when he’s most lethal. “The franchise clears more in a weekend than most galas raise in a season.”
“I merely suggested she could be doing more with her Harvard degree than working for the Defenders,” Mother says tightly. “No offense.”
“Some taken.” I meet her gaze. “I happen to love my job. And I’m not signing up for this nonsense.”
Mother continues, honey over steel. “Your grandmother was a practical woman. She believed in partnership and stability—” Mother’s smile could frost glass “—and she didn’t trust you’d make the right choices without incentive.”
The words are a cold slap. My grandmother loved me, but only if I performed the right version of femininity. Only if I proved I was worthy of the Preston name by securing the right husband.
Twelve million dollars. That’s the price tag on my grandmother’s approval. And the difference between keeping my apartment, funding the Harlem dance program, and having to crawl back to Mother with my hat in my hand.
“The trust document is specific,” Mother continues, undeterred. “A good-faith engagement, publicly announced, on or before December thirty-first of the year you turn twenty-five. If not—” she dusts her hands, a magician finishing a trick“—the principal transfers to the Preston Family Foundation, irrevocably.”
Heat climbs my throat, my pulse hammering. “You’re telling me I have to stand up in public with a ring on my finger in two weeks or lose my inheritance?”
“Don’t be dramatic, darling,” she says, fluting the word. “It’s just an engagement.”
“Which famously requires another person,” I snap. “And I don’t understand why we are still peddling this institution to women like it’s a designer handbag. Half of your friends have signed divorce papers between yoga and Botox.”
Mother gasps, her hand flying up to her throat. Father clears his throat, uncomfortable but not unsympathetic. Uncle Julian’s mouth twitches, fighting a smile.
Lila leans in, eyes bright. “She’s not wrong. Women don’t need marriage to get what they need from men anymore.”
Mother’s brows jump. “Good God. That sounds straight out of?—”
