Did I ever. The meanest, most vindictive, passive aggressive woman I’d ever met in my life. I swear, instead of toys she must have played with knives when she was a baby. She always had a plan, always had an angle, was always watching every single move you made so she could use it against you later.
I couldn’t prove that she’d put cameras all over the house, but she knew things that she couldn’t possibly have known if she hadn’t.
The day she moved in with Vail was so clear in my mind. Dad’s previous wife, Anita, had lasted six years somehow. She hadn’t been terrible, but having a new person come in after being abandoned at the age of eight by my mother had been traumatic enough without bringing in a stepmother who had taken over the house and redecorated it in garish colors, animal print, and too many black-and-gold and pornographic statues.
The house looked like it belonged to someone from a bad Mafia movie. Anita was originally from Connecticut, so I had no idea where her terrible taste had come from.
One day she’d been in and the next she was out, and he was on to Allegra Browne-Chadwick. When he first told me he was seeing her I’d asked if she was named after the medication. He hadn’t thought that was funny at all.
From the minute Allegra had gotten her perfectly manicured claws into my father, she’d been a nightmare. I could still remember that she’d fly to North Carolina to get her hair colored for some reason.
“Does she still take a private jet to get her hair done?” I asked.
Vail gave me a look. “What do you think?”
Allegra might not have been named for a medication, but she’d named her daughter after a ski resort town in Colorado. Vail had also had an older half brother named Dallas, so Allegra was big on the place names apparently. Dallas had mostly lived with his father, and I wondered if Vail was still in touch with him.
As if mentioning her had opened the floodgates of a million memories, I was thrown back into my fifteen-year-old self when Allegra and Vail had moved in.
I’d been so happy to maybe have a sister. Anita hadn’t had any kids, and she’d mostly ignored me and begged my father to send me to boarding school.
“You want me to voluntarily piss off your mom at her wedding by showing up with you?”
She wiggled her eyebrows and I could see how excited she was at the prospect.
“Why would I want to do that?” I asked. It was a good question. I had done my best to remove myself from that world and that culture, so why would I dive headfirst back into it? I hadn’t seen Allegra in years, and I was just fine with that.
She leaned over the table and grinned at me. “Because it would be a really good time. Open bar. Dancing. The food will be spectacular. And cake. I know how much you love cake.”
I hated how well she knew me. I’d been determined to take my free matcha, the croissant and the muffin, and split, but something in the way she was looking at me had my ass glued to my seat and mentally going through my closet for what I could potentially wear. I kept a few parent-appropriate outfits around, including a few cocktail dresses. No doubt the wedding would be black tie. Did I have anything black tie?
Why the hell did it matter? I shouldn’t even be entertaining this at all. There was nothing in it for me. Nothing but seeing a bunch of people I would rather not see.
“You’re doing an awful lot of thinking over there, PT. Have a sip of your matcha.” I hated that I picked up the cup and sucked through the straw. Vail smirked at me.
It was a struggle not to moan. It was my favorite for a reason. They flavored it perfectly.
“Guess it’s good.”
I couldn’t answer her because my mouth was full of matcha. I wanted to drink five hundred more, but that would send me to the hospital with a caffeine overdose, so that was probably a bad idea.
I swallowed and set my drink down.
Before I could open my mouth and tell her “hell no,” she put her hand up to stop me from speaking and somehow that worked.
I wish she didn’t have any kind of power over me. My teeth snapped together in irritation.
“Before you say no, just think about it. I’m also willing to foot the bill for the entire day. That includes your clothes, transportation, everything.” That was something, I guess. It wouldn’t cost me any money. It might cost me something else, though.
“I’ll protect you,” she said. “If anything goes down, we can leave. Promise.” That sounded good too.
Her soft voice was hypnotic, luring me over to her side. I hadn’t been under her spell for years and now here I was, and she was pulling me in again. It was one thing to be in awe of her as a teenager, but it was another to feel this way as a grown woman. I hated it.
Mostly.
“Eat while you think,” she said, nudging the plate closer. “It’s just one day.”
Before I reached for the buttery croissant, I asked one question: “why would you ask me? You don’t have someone else you could take?”
