“I am familiar,” I shoot back. “Don’t assume I know nothing.”
“When you pass off our contract as semantics, I’m going to assume you need to be educated, especially when taking on your sibling’s business that they’ve built from the ground up. You don’t fuck around with that.”
“I’m not fucking around with it.”
“You need to take it seriously,” he says in that commanding voice.
“I am taking it seriously.”
“This isn’t just a game, Lottie. This is an opportunity to seize, to jump to the next chapter in your life, to level up, and if you’re just going to fuck around—”
“What the hell makes you think I’m fucking around?” I spread my arms wide. “I’m standing here in a dress you want me to wear, and some man is going to come here and move my boxes to your house, at your request. I’m going to attend a dinner tonight that, frankly, I’m terrified of attending, just for the mere fact that if I slip up, if I say something wrong, then I fuck everything up for you. And for some odd reason, I don’t want to do that.” I close the distance between us and poke him in the chest. “So don’t accuse me of fucking around. Do you understand me?”
A munching sound fills the silence, and at the same time, Huxley and I both turn toward Kelsey, who has a container of lo mein in hand, chopsticks in the other. She’s midbite when she smiles at us and says, “Oh, sorry . . . just enjoying the show. Lo mein?” She offers the canister.
Annoyed, I spin on my heel and return to the bathroom, where I disrobe once again, but this time, I sit, half naked, on the covered toilet.
The nerve of that man. It really is time to read that contract.
The air conditioner in the car is doing nothing for the burning inferno that’s ripping through my body.
I know this is business, I’m not looking for anything other than a business transaction, but would it have killed the man to at least acknowledge the lengths I went to, to curl my long hair? Granted, he asked me to curl it and demanded I go with a natural look with my makeup, but a nod of approval would be nice.
Do you think I got one?
When I stepped out of the bathroom—looking damn fine, mind you—he said nothing, other than “Let’s get moving.”
Kelsey gave me a hug of encouragement before I left and told me to call her if I needed to come back to her apartment. From the anxious look on her face as we were trying to figure out what to do with all the boxes, I’m going to assume the invitation is an empty one.
Huxley drives the car into a quiet street and pulls up next to a large white house that resembles the house from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, with the grandiose pillars and large, dangling light fixture.
I reach for the car door handle, but he asks, “Where do you think you’re going?”
I look over my shoulder at him. “I don’t know, arriving obnoxiously early to a dinner date?” I point to the clock. “Honestly, who shows up an hour early? Is that a rich thing us peasants are unaware of?”
“Cutting the snark out of your tone would be helpful.”
“Cutting the asshole out of yours would cut the snark out of mine, so . . . the ball is in your court, Huxley.”
The animosity between us seems to be strong, and I can’t quite pinpoint when it happened. Somewhere around the time he came to Kelsey’s apartment and demanded I try on a dress. Whenever it was, it’s now filtered into the vibe between us.
The tension is fierce, that’s for sure.
His jaw clenches and he carefully turns toward me, his large frame adjusting to the compact space of the car. “This isn’t their house. Dave lives down the road more. I figured, for your benefit, we could talk through some of the questions you texted me, but if you want to show up early, looking like a dysfunctional couple, then, sure, let’s do that.”
I point my finger at him. “That’s not cutting out the asshole tone.”
“I’ll cut it out with the asshole tone when you take this seriously.”
“I am taking this seriously,” I yell at him. I flip my hair in his direction. “Do you realize the kind of effort it takes to curl this hair? I rarely do it, but while you were enjoying lo mein with my sister, I was sweating like a beast in the bathroom, trying to make myself presentable enough to be on your arm. I’m sorry I’m not Page Six material, but you chose me to help, so deal with what you got.”
His eyes remain stern, his facial expression stoic, and for a second, I’ve an urge to poke his face, to see if he’s frozen without me knowing it. But he drops his eyes to his phone and grabs it from the console. He flips through it and says, “You want to know how we met.”