Page 6 of Privilege
“I thought we’d have time to go to town tomorrow!” he snipes. He sounds almost petulant. I’m reeling from this entire situation and Rich looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. Or been scolded, caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Am I the cookie?
The brother sits up, puts his hands on his knees, and rises slowly off the bed. He’s staring at Rich, hisface hard. I swallow and take an involuntary step back.
“The Prodigal Son has returned,” he says slowly. “This calls for celebration.” It sounds like a threat.
He strolls towards the door and pauses in the doorway, the back of his dark hair catching on the collar of his shirt.
“Welcome home,” he says without turning around. And then he’s gone.
I exhale, long and hard as I take in Rich’s ashen face and balled up fists.
“Rich, are you okay?”
He’s staring at the dry cleaning bag. “I’m fine,” he says, voice curt, and then he turns on his heel and disappears into the bathroom. The softshhhhhhof the shower coming on makes it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it.
I've just been attacked by wolves.Or possibly tossed into a snake pit. I was expecting some tension with the parentals, maybe undue pressure to take over the family business or some kind of intense, unrealistic rich people expectations. But I wasn’t expecting abrother.
I wasn’t expecting THAT.
I squirm a little, uncomfortably aware of the delicious clench in my lower belly. My boyfriend is afucking smokeshowas Sasha regularly likes to remind me, with his floppy hair and chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and athletic body. He’s the kind of guy you notice across the bar, who stands out when you pass him on the street, who you quasi-follow at the grocery store because how can someone that hot have to do normal people things like buy food?
But this guy? This walking, talking, portable human pheromone bomb? You’d never find him at the grocery store. Gods don't eat.
I wince at myself, but I eye the clothing bag anyway.Because I knew my brother wouldn’t,he’d said. How can six words say so much about a person? About their relationship?
A tiny voice inside my head has raised its hand and is whispering something along the lines ofbut wouldn’t it have been nice if Rich had thought to mention a dress code?I ignore it, because it obviously slipped his mind in his stress about coming home. But still… How didthis guyknow I wouldn’t have appropriate clothes unless he knows who I am? Do him and Rich talk? If they do, why hasn’t Rich ever mentioned it?
To shut up my death spiral of anxiety and nerves I unzip the stupid dry cleaning bag and pull out the dress.
It's beautiful. A delicate, cream-coloured summer sundress with a crocheted neck and flared skirt. I touch the material, finger the embroidered overlay, and can't help but think that this isexactlythe kind of dress I’d always ogled in my mom’s shameless celebrity gossip magazines. But that isn’t what has my mouth hanging open. It’s the $5,000 dollar price tag, zeroes barely visible between a note scrawled in sharpie:
Make it up to me later
- D
Well… shit.
Chapter Four
Dane
I wish Rich hadn’tcome home.
I’ve been keeping tabs on him, worried he and Jamie would end up back together somehow. Unlikely, given how things ended, but she’s almost as conniving as Rich’s mom.
When she hadn’t turned up on his Instagram by second semester I started to relax. And then I noticed the blonde chick starting to appear in some of his photos. Her messy hair and makeup-free freckles were a serious swing from Rich’s standard assembly line of brunettes with filler-enhanced pouts andtwo-inch-long claws. But meeting her? Social media hadn’t done her justice.
Spread out on his bed like that, with her tan waist exposed, she had me momentarily questioning whether I’deverliked any hair colour but blonde.
As soon as I found out Rich was bringing her home for the summer, I knew my stupid brother wouldn’t think about dress code. It was pretty clear from their pictures that she lived in jean shorts and campus hoodies. The closest I’d seen toBlackstone Appropriate Attirewas a story he’d posted at 3 a.m. of her standing in front of the fridge in his apartment, head thrown back in a laugh, wearing nothing but his dress shirt.
It had been taken down not even twenty minutes later, when I went back for a second—okay fourth—look at it. Pretty sure I single-handedly altered YouPorn’s algorithm tofarmer’s daughterfor at least a month after that.
Now she’s standing in the middle of a garden party surrounded by Manhattan’s elite. She looks a little nervous, mildly uncomfortable,and absolutely fucking stunning.It’s annoyingly distracting. This really isn’t how I wanted to kick off my return to New York—brotherly tension and an off-limits girl who’s got my dick so hard my zipper is imprinted inmy fucking foreskin.I have work to do.I can’t afford distractions.
All the old familiar faces are strewn about the garden, clumped like weeds across our sprawling estate lawn. It’s like a cocktail party for the members ofSpectre.
