Page 3 of Filthy Rich Ex's Brothers

“Maybe I didn’t get together with him for his money. Maybe that’s the point you’re missing, B.”

“I’m not saying you did! But it’s like, a perk, right?” There’s more rustling on her end of the line, and now I know she’s pacing back and forth in her room, socks shuffling against the vintage rug laid over scuffed hardwood. “Like, you don’t get with a guy who’swell-endowedjust to be content with oral!”

“Yu-ck,” I laugh, and it breaks through the tension. Bianca laughs, too, snorting a little at the end, and I’m reminded of the reason she and I are friends. Because even in conversations like this, we know how to pull it back. How to be insistent and gentle at the same time.

She learned it from navigating her strict family life. I learned it from navigating all aspects of mine.

There’s a moment of quiet, nothing but shuffling on Bianca’s end and the hollow sound of my footfalls against the sidewalk in my head, muffled by my earbuds. Then, as seriously as I can, I say, “It’s important to me that whatever place we pick is mine, too. Obviously, I can’t put in as much as Alex. But I’m working so my name can go on the deed, and I can feel like it belongs to me.”

I don’t need to elaborate on why that’s important to me. Why I would never do all this just for Alex to “take care of things” and have only his name on our place.

That’s how we’re operating right now, just because Alex didn’t want to tell his landlord about me moving in. “He’s kind of a tight-ass,” he’d said, brushing off my concerns. “But he won’t ever come by. Don’t worry about it.”

But chipping in with rent is a little different than sinking my money into a house. I’ve been working on trust. Our relationship counselor helped me identify it as one of my key issues. That’s why we opened a joint savings account to save up for the house.

“I know,” Bianca says, and there’s something small about her voice that I can’t quite put my finger on. “I’m just…worried. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to slow down with Alex? Especially with everything the two of you have been through. He might…”

But I don’t hear the rest of what she says because I turn the corner onto our street, and my mind stalls out.

The rain is coming down pretty hard now, so at first I think that must be what’s causing the illusion. That I must be hallucinating.

Then I pick up the pace, feet clomping against the sidewalk, camera bag thumping against my hip. I get close enough to our house and realize I’m not imagining anything.

There’s stuff on the lawn.

Not just stuff.Mystuff.

The lawn is littered with mounds of shiny black plastic and some items that are not in bags, everything slicked with rain. They’re scattered like someone stood on the top step and launched them, not caring about where they landed.

The rain comes down harder as I walk up the sidewalk, the rain coming down even harder now. It plays a pretty staccato against the dark, shining trashbags that contain my entire life.

“Serena. Are you there? What’s happening?” Bianca’s voice is a little shrill, and I think she might have said my name quite a few times before I finally heard her.

“He threw my things on the lawn,” I say, my voice catching onlawnwhen I realize that, while my clothes are bagged up and safe from the rain, my record player is sitting on the bottom step, decidedly wet, and likely ruined.

Growling, I grab the record player—hefty and uneven, the brass horn rubbing against my cheek—and haul it up under the overhang of the front porch. I set it down as gently as I can, then straighten up and face the front door.

And somehow, I have enough hope left inside me to think that the door might open. That there’s some explanation for this. Maybe there was an ant infestation or something. Maybe someone was robbing us, and he fought to save my things.

An argument wages internally. One part of me insists that Alex wouldn’tdothis. He wouldn’t throw my things on the front lawn. Wouldn’t stuff my hoodies and fleeces, jeans and underwear, shirts and jackets, into black garbage bags.

Not after sitting in counseling with me, listening to me grind out the stories, pry them up from the deepest parts of myself. Not after I explained, in detail, the particular embarrassment of moving your things from foster home to foster home, all tied up in ugly black bags.

My life, nothing more than rubbish. Like they could have rolled me right up in the bag, too. Forget the stork, kids like me were dropped off by the trash man.

Letting out a low growl, I surge forward and grab the door handle, depressing the thumb lever and pushing.

It doesn’t budge.

“No,” I mutter, shaking my head, pushing my wet hair out of my face. “No.”

Like me denying it can stop it from happening. Like this is my delusion, instead of Alex’s cruelty.

Fingers trembling, I punch in the code for the deadbolt, wait for a moment as my throat squeezes painfully. It responds with three disappointed beeps and a little red, blinking light.

Denied.

He changed the code. Even though I know it’s useless, I drop my camera bag on the porch, dig into the very bottom of it to find the keys I never use—Alex had the keypad installed when we first moved in—and drag them out.