“My incognito browser pleads the fifth.”
“No one keeps secrets from Sunny Palmer,” I told him.
“No offense, but your brother sounds like a fuckwad.”
“He is.”
“So are you going to do it?” he asked. “Step down?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it would make things simpler.”
“Don’t let him push you into anything you don’t want to do,” he said.
“I won’t.” Even though I’d already admitted defeat to myself. I wasn’t ashamed of the life I’d lived up until now, but I also didn’t want to turn into some salacious headline.
“It’s all coming together now,” he said as he stood to pour himself a cup of coffee. “The nanny. The eggs. The parallel parking. You’re a nepo baby.”
“Takes one to know one,” I said.
He sat back down with a cup of black coffee. “Hey, I’m not the one cosplaying as a normie and holing up in a decrepit motel.”
“The normie thing isn’t cosplay. I have exactly eight hundred dollars and forty-two cents in my savings account and about four hundred in my checking,” I said proudly. “I went to cosmetology school, dropped out, then joined forces with Teddy. I don’t get access to my inheritance until I’m forty, unless I put in four years at the family biz.”
He tilted his head to one side, trying to make sense of me. “So you’re not rich yet, but you will be in ten years?”
I nodded. I guess it didn’t sound very normal when you put it that way.
“You’re definitely playing normie dress-up,” he said with a smile, like he was very pleased with himself.
“What?” I asked suspiciously.
“I’m just really glad to have someone to swap embarrassingly gaudy childhood stories with.”
I liked the thought of hearing all about Isaac Kelly’s star-studded childhood way, way too much. “What was the most extravagant birthday you had?” I asked, because it actually was a little nice to bond with him over this.
“My thirteenth birthday party was in Hawaii. All expenses paid vacation for my friends from school and their families.”
“Whoa, Carina Kelly really knows how to throw away perfectly good money.”
“Yeah, except she was on location filming a summer vacation murder mystery with George Clooney, so that’s why we were in Hawaii to begin with.”
I gasped. “Are you talking aboutKnife Knowing You?”
He sighed and nodded.
“My nanny loved that movie!”
“What about you? What was your most ridiculous birthday party?”
“Well, it’s no trip to Hawaii, but my dad did hire Kelly Clarkson to perform at my fifteenth birthday party.”
“‘Since U Been Gone’ is a bop.”
“Yeah, teenage Sunny really felt that song deep in her bones after Tanner Montgomery broke up with her the night before her birthday for Candice Greene, whose dad was a Marvel producer. Way more posh than diapers.”
“Fuck Tanner Montgomery,” he said with conviction.
“I have a movie to write.” I downed my last sip of coffee and stood up. “A movie you’re supposed to be helping me research,” I reminded him.
