I’m the one who’s marrying the perfect girl, the one they wanted me to. And still, she thinks I need you to make sure I do it properly.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, fuck you, Jared.”
“I’m making you a coffee. You need to sober up.”
“Perfect Jared with his perfect business and his perfect schooling. When are you going to let me have a win, for once?”
I whirled. “Are you serious right now? You’re the golden child who can do no wrong, Will. You’re the one they love. I’m the reject who gets the scraps.”
“Boo-hoo, poor little Jared who just wants to be loved by Mommy and Daddy.” Will snorted, stumbling back and sitting down abruptly on a long, low seat at the foot of the big king bed. His head lolled. “When are you going to take that stick out of your ass and realize that they judged everything I do based on you?”
Standing across from my sneering brother, it was hard for me to make sense of his words. My hands shook as rage shot through me, so I turned my back on him and busied myself with the coffee machine. It was one of those pod ones, which reminded me of the machine in my apartment, which reminded me of Iris splayed out on top of my desk when I woke up with an insatiable need to have her again that first morning we woke up together in my apartment.
I slammed the machine closed and mashed the button. “You need to sober up, and then you’ll go downstairs and get married.”
“I just want to be treated like something other than an idiot,” Will said quietly. “I would have liked to have been sent away to school.”
“You would have liked it?” I roared. “Liked the isolation? Liked being left there for holidays because our parents were off doing their own thing? You would have liked feeling like no one cared about you because the truth was, no one did?”
Will slumped, his back arching at a weird angle as he lay on the foot of the bed. “I would’ve liked the choice. I had to stay there and be treated like an invalid. ‘Wear this. Stand here. Be quiet. Study here. Major in that.’ You have no idea how good you had it, Jared. No fucking idea.”
The machine behind me stopped humming, but I didn’t move. The scent of coffee filled the room. I stared at my brother’s sprawled limbs, his untucked shirt, his stubbled jaw. “Do you want to marry Natasha, Will?” I asked quietly. “It’s not too late to back out.”
Will let out a dry husk of a laugh. “It’s about two years too late to back out, Jared. I’m stuck with her now. A mini-Mom.”
I shuddered, turning to grab his coffee. My brother groaned as he pushed himself up to a mostly seated position, nodding his thanks as he took the hot drink.
I fixed my own coffee and took a seat on a chair across from him. My whole world had turned on its ear in a single conversation with my brother. He was jealous of me? Of the way I’d grown up?
How could he possibly think that I had it better out of the two of us? I was shunted off to boarding school, ignored, and told to keep quiet. The only thing I got from my family was a trust fund and a last name, which, admittedly, had set me up for a successful life.
A successful, empty life.
But Will…he had the affection and the attention of two people who might not be capable of caring for their children the way we’d needed them. Maybe receiving our parents’ attention had been more toxic than lacking it. For the first time in my life, I considered the pressure Will must have been under for the entirety of his life. I knew the expectations our parents put on us; I’d always fallen short.
Based on Will’s half-drunk ramblings, it sounded like he felt the same. Neither of us had gotten what we needed, and we’d been pitted against each other in the process. The whole thing made me feel tired and sad.
I stared at my brother as he stared into his cup. As gently as I could manage, I said, “You don’t have to go through with this, Will. I’ll back you up if you want to call it off.”
Will snorted, then downed the coffee in one shot. “No,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “It’s too late for that.”
The wedding seemed more tragic after that. Will made it downstairs, looking presentable enough that I avoided getting an earful from my mother. He put on his most engaging smile and laughed with all the uncles and aunts and family friends, all the business associates and important personages in our parents’ various circles. He kissed his bride and grinned as the guests threw rice, and even managed a passable impression of a man in love as he spun his bride around the dance floor for their first dance.
But for the first time, I saw the tightness around his eyes, the slight grimace at the start of his widest smiles.
He was miserable. We both were.
“Jared,” my mother said behind me. “I want you to meet someone.”
I turned to see my mother standing beside a couple and a younger woman. She was shortish, blonde…and familiar. “Ophelia? What are you doing here?”
My mother smiled. “Jared, you remember the Gerbers, don’t you?”
Shock splashed through me. I looked at the older couple, recognizing acquaintances of my parents.
The family resemblance between them and my employee was striking.
“Our daughter was determined to make her way in the world without our influence,” Ophelia’s father said indulgently, smiling at his progeny. “We’re so very proud of her.”
My own mother cut in with a sharp smile, “I understand Ophelia has been performing very well at Branson. Hasn’t she, Jared?”
I frowned at my mother, then at the other three. “What’s going on here?”
“We just wanted to introduce you two properly,” my mother said, giving me a significant look. “I’ll let you and Ophelia catch up. I’m sure you have lots to talk about.”
She ushered the parents away, and I was left with my employee. She blinked up at me, a coy smile on her lips. “We met before I started working at Branson, actually. A gout charity four years ago. I was there with my mother.”
“I see.” My mind raced as I tried to understand what was going on. Ophelia knew my parents, but she’d never mentioned it. My mother knew Ophelia worked for me and didn’t tell me.
Was this a setup? My heart thumped. Was this the mole? This was the woman who’d fed information back to my mother?
“You mother mentioned you’d be here on your own,” Ophelia said, touching my sleeve. She took a step closer to me so I could smell her overly sweet perfume. I jerked back, and her expression hardened. She dropped her hand from my arm but didn’t back up.
I glanced across the room and saw my mom staring at us intently, watching if her snare had closed around me as she’d planned.
I was supposed to choose Ophelia the way Will had chosen Natasha. I was supposed to go along with what was expected of me, chasing the carrot of my parents’ affection while they wielded the stick of their disapproval.
And suddenly, in this beautiful resort, surrounded by people wearing designer gowns, dripping in jewels, eating the best food and drinking the best wine, I realized just how empty my life really was.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.