Page 32 of I Almost Do

I lift my head to look into her big brown eyes. Then I look toward Bronwyn, who has her arms crossed over her chest and her lips held tight.

“What I’d like to know,” Bronwyn says, “is how James could check out your ass in a thong and not tap that. You’re fucking fine. Are we sure he’s into women?”

I sigh. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Because if he’s not… if he’s gay or asexual, then that’s a whole different situation.”

“Bronwyn, I know he’s attracted to me.”

“I think he’s trying to be noble,” Franki says.

I roll my eyes. “He thinks because of how strict this trust fund is and how he controls all of my money, my home, and my education that it would be taking advantage of me to sleep with me.”

“Hmmm,” Bronwyn says.

“What does that mean?”

She puts both her hands up, all “calm down,” and says, “He’s not really wrong, is he?”

I reach down and adjust the Christmas packages on the floor. We’ve been spending the afternoon shopping, and suddenly, I’m tempted to toss James’s gifts out the window.

I’d never do that. But even the fact that I’ve thought it feels strangely empowering.

“I don’t care that he’s in control of my money. I’ve never been in control of it. What difference does it make?”

Even Franki’s jaw drops. She and Bronwyn share a look I can’t decipher.

“What?”

“You just want to go from being under your dad’s thumb to another man’s? And he doesn’t just control your money. He could tell you tomorrow that you’re not going back to school, that he won’t pay for it. Or he could tell you that the two of you are moving, that he’s closing up the house you’re living in. And you couldn’t do a thing about it. He could sell this car without even discussing it with you first. How does that not bother you?”

“James wouldn’t do that.”

“But he could. And he knows that. If he’s uneasy about it, then I have to say, as much as his rejection of you makes me want to cause him extreme bodily harm… I respect it a little.”

I frown and lean back against my seat. I hadn’t really thought about it, but she has a point.

I don’t want to be angry at my father. I won’t be angry at him. Dad had reasons for the things he did.

But why did he create this particular type of trust fund? I understand about protecting assets with a trust fund, but why one so strict? Did he have no faith in me at all? I may as well have been a seven-year-old with a guardian instead of a twenty-year-old woman.

My eyes widen at the realization. “James thinks he’s my guardian.”

Franki shrugs a little helplessly. “He kind of is.”

“No,” I breathe, my voice shaking a little with the word.

And something in me shifts, like ice breaking up on the Hudson.

She’s right.

I sigh. “This will never work if I just sit around and wait for James.”

Franki lifts her palms. “What’s keeping you in that house?”

Only my own fear of taking charge of my life and a pathetic dream that James will change his mind. But he isn’t someone who waffles. If he says he’s waiting until I’m twenty-five for us to have a full marriage, he means it.

I will not waste my time sitting alone in that brownstone while he finds excuses to not be there. How soon until he moves back into his Manhattan penthouse because it’s “closer to the office”?

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