Page 3 of Privilege
He says, “Have some more champagne.”
I smile and shake my head. “I probably shouldn’t be drunk when I meet your family? And I didn’t bring any cash.”
“It'sfree,Cara,” he says, waving his hand dramatically.
It’s not free. He’d discreetly handed over his black AMEX to one of the girls before we took our seats. Told herkeep it coming, and don't tell my girlfriend.
It’s sweet, really. He means well. And I know he gets frustrated with my penny pinching. But I'm knee-deep in student loans because it turns outacademic scholarshipmeanswe cover tuition and the rest is on you.Unless you’re a football player. Despite bartending as many shifts as I can grab, I’m still short every month unless I'm willing to give up a roof, or food, or both.
Lifelong debt, here I come.
Rich tells me not to sweat it. Says I'm bound to graduate with a job. But it’s easy to be sweatless when you have roman numerals after your name. The rest of us are stuck with clammy palms and a crippling fear of checking the mail.
He lives in a ridiculously lavish apartment off-campus, one of many owned by his family. He has roommates, Christian and Lyle, but I’m not entirely sure if they pay rent or not. To be honest, I'm not sure if they even attend SoCal—I've never seen them with a book and they’re always at home, drunk, and dry humping a never-ending parade of women. But Rich takes his education seriously enough, even if the rest of the lacrosse team does party way harder than they should.
We met in the library. He was drunk.
In fairness, it was two a.m. I’d finished my shift atSlack’sand gone straight to the library to try to cram for a midterm, knowing full well my roommate Sasha would be busy camming for her OnlyFans account. I tried it with her once or twice, and considered sticking with it—less work than bartending and twice the money, especially together. But the constant notifications and social mediamanagement gave me anxiety. I left Sasha to turn our dorm into a den of inequity on her own, and I overserved weak beer to frat boys and then camped out with my overpriced textbooks until dawn. Living my best scholarship student life.
Despite his inability to walk a straight line at the time, he’d been rather charming. Sweet. Sure he was dripping with the kind of arrogant swagger borne of multi-generational wealth and being raised by a nanny, but he made me laugh.
I’d been nervous about the summer, unsure where we stood. He hadn’t been seeing anyone else and neither had I, but I traditionally spent summers in Alaska with my dad and I assumed we’d both be going home to our parents.
I was shocked when he asked me to come home with him. Told me he wanted me to meet his family. Asked me to spend the summer with him at Blackstone, his family’s house in the Hamptons. He rarely talks about his family and I know next to nothing about how he grew up. Most of what little I do know I learned through drunken snippets and ribbing from Christian and Lyle, who had apparently all attended the same boarding school before college. So it was an understatement to say the curiositywas killing me. Despite how much I'd been looking forward to my summer in Alaska with my dad, I said yes.
“God you’re beautiful, you know that?” he slurs, reaching out and touching my cheek.
I roll my eyes and he chuffs my jaw playfully.
“Youare,”he insists. “You're definitely the hottest of all my girlfriends.”
I smack his arm but he leans forward and nuzzles my neck, his hot breath on my jugular sending a quiver up my spine. He’s not normally like this in public. Never been much of a PDA guy.
I kind of like this, Rich.
The man across the aisle from us in the expensive looking suit glances at us over his thick rimmed glasses. He appears decidedly unimpressed.
“You should probably stop,” I whisper.
“Make me,” he murmurs against my neck. His hand slides up my bare thigh and fingers the hem of my jean shorts.
I glance at the man whose eyebrows have hit his hairline. “Come on Rich,” I mutter. I intertwine our fingers and put our interlocked hands firmly on the armrest.
He sighs, kisses my neck once more, and then flops back into his seat. He lets his head loll onto his other shoulder to stare at the man across the aisle.
“Women, huh?” he chides, waggling his eyebrows at him. The man’s mouth twitches but he doesn't say anything. “Guess we should have sprung for a sleeper pod.”
I smack his arm again and he laughs, the sound as warm as his smile. Such an easy, charming face, winning hearts and dropping panties everywhere he goes.
“We don’t need a sleeper pod,” I grumble. “It’s not that long of a flight. We’ll be at your place in like, less than two hours.”
His face falls, and his lips draw downward in an uncharacteristic frown. It’s a face he’s been making more and more lately: the closer we get to Blackstone, the more permanent this impenetrable mask gets.
“Hey,” I say, squeezing his hand. “It’s going to be fine. You’ve got me, right?”
He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes, and as he ducks his head to rummage through his bag for something, I could swear I hear him saythat’s what I’m worried about.
Chapter Two
