But that’s what Baylor, Bunsen & Newton do. They sell an image, and they make a shit ton of money doing it. My brother followed in my father’s footsteps, working at BBN since he graduated college. I don’t blame Shawn for it. At least he never lies about having a rough start in life. Shawn has always had money, and he’s honest about that fact. In my experience, he’s also generous with his bank account and doesn’t treat people who make less than him like they’re subhuman.
George is the only son of the Bunsen line, another legacy. I don’t know what part of the company he works in, but Shawn mentions seeing him all the time, so I’m betting they’re in the same department. There’s the Baylor legacy, too. A woman named Tasha who’s around Shawn’s age who I don’t know well.
In another universe, I might have known her. Maybe been friends with her. In a world where my father wanted a relationship with his daughter.
But no, Karl Newton was content to have his former assistant fade into the background with his illegitimate offspring.
One of the many reasons Shawn works for a billion-dollar company and I work for a diner that requires I wear a turquoise waitress uniform.
I don’t want to switch lives with him, but sometimes I wish the brother I love so much could exist in the same tax bracket as me. There always seems to be this crevice between us. One that he has no trouble hopping over, but that I fear falling into and never climbing out of.
The same gaping social pit sits between George and me, but we’ve never needed to attempt to cross it. He stays on the rich side, and I stay on the will-I-be-able-to-pay-my-mortgage-this-month side.
But now he’s here.
And he’s staring at me.
Wait…no…now he’s staring at his coffee mug. But hewasstaring at me. I swear.
Maybe he thinks I’m going to sue him for the plane incident.
I’m not. Even if I have a case against him, that seems like a shitty thing to do. George’s life was in as much danger as mine. And he was…not a complete asshole afterward. In his brisk, no-nonsense way, he checked on me.
Unfortunately, that fed into my fear libido. If only he’d been his normal aloof, dickish self.
Ever since I first met George at my brother’s housewarming party, I’ve known the man didn’t like me. I’d walked in the front door of the luxury condo in my best sundress—still many steps below the designer outfits Shawn’s other guests were wearing, but I thought I looked nice—holding a plate of spicy dark chocolate brownies because I figured my brother liked them after eating nine in one sitting at Thanksgiving. The first person I encountered was a handsome manwith a shaved head and a frown, who looked at me with an air of discomfort. He’d muttered, “I didn’t know you were coming.”
Then he left. Just brushed by me on his way out the door. Not even an hour into the party.
I thought maybe the guy had somewhere to be, but then Shawn showed up with two beers in hand and, after greeting me, asked if I’d seen George Bunsen. I’d heard of the BBN legacy but didn’t know what he looked like. Shawn described him to me, and I told him George had just left.
Apparently, he departed moments after asking my brother for a beer.
The only connection I could see? Shawn Newton’s low-class half-sister arriving in her department-store clearance-rack dress, holding a plate of brownies made from a box mix.
George’s exit wasn’t the only judgment passed on me that night, just the most dramatic. Inevitably conversations turned to work, and when the mainly BBN attendees learned about my lack of a college degree and full-time gig as a server, their friendly interest turned into dismissiveness. As long as Shawn wasn’t nearby, they abandoned the conversation altogether.
For most of the party, I stayed in a corner by the window, pasted on my waitress smile, and tried to give no indication of how inside all I wanted was to retreat to my car and cry. When I decided to attend the party, I knew Shawn’s friends and I might not have much to talk about. They were all career-focused professionals in the big city while I was taking a night off from my diner job and caring for my ailing mother.
But I hadn’t considered any of them would treat me like my father does.
Like I’m someone whose very existence is offensive.
I was naive. Obviously, anyone connected to BBN would sidewholeheartedly with Karl Newton and his dictate that my mother and I should disappear. Shawn was always the outlier.
Shawn was the only one who ate a brownie.
That was the first time, but not the last, that George made an abrupt departure when we ended up in a room together. I’ve watched him immediately vacate an elevator he’d just stepped onto in order to keep from being stuck in my vicinity for the length of time it takes to travel a handful of floors. Seriously, he jumped out of the thing just as the doors were closing like he knew the cord was about to snap. Most terrifying elevator trip of my life.
The guy could compete at an Olympic level in the sport of pretending I don’t exist. I’ve done my best not to let his next-level cold shoulder affect me, but the constant dismissal sliced deep enough to reach a sensitive center I previously thought I had well guarded. So I’d made up my mind not to like him, either.
George Bunsen landed himself a permanent spot on my shit list, right above the girl who kept hiding my bras in gym class junior year and right below the customer who thought it was funny to whip out his flaccid penis in the middle of me taking his order.
Billy was not gentle when escorting that man out of Cornfield’s.
So twenty-four hours ago, I would have confidently said I thoroughly despised George Bunsen.
But then the guy had to go and land our plane like he used a highway as a runway all the time. Pairing that with how he touched me…spoke to me with concern…whispered naughty words to the plane…
