TROUBLE IN LOVE?
Jordan
“I just got invited to Marcia’s house tomorrow night.” I gave my brother a look as I entered the kitchen and grabbed a homemade cookie from the cooling rack. “Marcia La Croix.”
“Marcia La Croix called you?” Stephen asked over his huge bowl of cereal. It was half the box in one of Lucia’s serving bowls for pasta. “Why didn’t Monty call you? Befriending a guy’s girl is weird and creepy. That’s a dangerous mistake, trust me.”
“Yeah, it’s not like that. But I might have made a huge mistake regardless.” I bit my lip and contemplated not telling him what I’d done. “This afternoon I called to ask about that friend of hers.”
“The smoking-hot one from last night?”
“Yeah. Lacey.”
“You said her name was Cinderella.”
“No.” I needed him to focus on how this was a bad idea, not her name.
But he didn’t agree. “Awesome.” He held his knuckles out for me to pound.
“You don’t think it’s a terrible idea to hunt her down while I’m still dealing with the Amy thing?” I tapped our knuckles, not feeling the spirit of it all. Not yet. If I were rid of Amy, I’d be doing cartwheels. Poorly.
“No, I think you need to bang that chick and then give me all the details. If you weren’t my brother, I’d ask you to film the whole thing. I might still.” He laughed at his own disgusting comment.
“Porn not doing it for you anymore?”
“Porn-free for a year, man. Cynthia doesn’t approve.”
“She has revoked your porn access.” I snickered and stole his spoon, taking a huge bite of his cereal. “Not that I blame her,” I said with a mouthful. “Poor Jane wouldn’t even do your laundry when we were teenagers.” Our maid hated Stephen. She still did, in fact.
“Jane hated me, but that had nothing to do with me whacking off in socks. She had a personal vendetta against men. Especially handsome, charming ones.”
“The socks didn’t help your shitty personality.” I ate some more of his cereal. “And learning to do laundry was good for you.” I chewed fast before I choked laughing.
“Laugh it up, chuckles. I got smart about the whole thing and started leaving the socks in your room. So you washed them, not me.” He took back his cereal and his spoon, grinning wide.
“Asshole!” I backed off, shaking my head in disgust. “You’re not even human, admit it. Soulless asshole.”
He laughed harder, chewing and nearly choking. “I’ve been waiting on that one for a while.”
“You’re disgusting.” I shuddered.
“Anyway.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “We gotta go. Our massages are in, like, half an hour. On the ride over, you can tell me what you plan to do about the Amy problem.”
“I don’t want to talk about the Amy problem.” I grabbed my wallet and phone and stalked to the door. “I’m sick of it, and it hasn’t even been a week yet.”
Apparently he wasn’t, though.
The moment we got into the car he asked, “But what’s your plan?”
“Well, last night changed a few things for me.” I gave him a look. “I believed Dad when he said Amy had a crush on me, but now I’m starting to suspect her parents have given her the same bullshit spiel that she has to date me. And last night I followed Grandpa Jack’s advice.” I chuckled with embarrassment but continued. “I told her that the dress she was wearing looked bad on her and she needed to choose a different color.”
“No!” He slapped me on the arm. “I didn’t think you had it in you. Feels good, right? Sticking it to her?”
“No. It didn’t. It felt terrible. It was hurtful and rude and a lie; she looked fine.”
“Did she slap you?”
“That’s the point I’m making. She sucked it up. Rage in the eyes, totally wanted to kick me in the balls, but didn’t. She fucking took it on the chin.”
“Oh, damn. Her dad has given her the speech, and our dad has given you the same. And now you’re both just playing along to appease the bank accounts.”
“Right.”
“So you can treat this girl as badly as you want, and her family threats will make her stay with you?” His eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Yeah, but that’s not my type of sport.” I didn’t say anything about the plans I’d been contemplating. Publicly humiliating myself so her family would refuse our relationship or something along those lines. I was going to throw myself to the wolves and risk being cut off. But I didn’t want Grandpa to disown me. I loved my grandpa. But I couldn’t go along with this. At this point I was even thinking about faking my own death.
“I love this, Jordie. I’m not gonna lie. Your life is amazingly entertaining. When you decided to major in finances and toe the company line instead of doing something that actually suited you, like writing or cartoon work or newspapers, I thought for sure we would never have another interesting moment from you. But here we are. Dad’s pimping you out, and Grandpa’s teaching you how to get dumped by a girl who will never dump you.” He hadn’t laughed this much around me in a long time. “This is amazing. It’s going to be so boring when summer’s over and you go back to Boston. I don’t know how I’ll get along.” He cackled like a fucking witch or evil queen.
I wasn’t laughing.
At all.
As the car pulled up to the spa, I climbed out, ready for a massage and the Roman steam baths. I hadn’t been here in six months, and now that classes were over for the summer, I was ready to relax.
“Oh, buddy. It’s going to be a rough summer.” Stephen wrapped an arm around my shoulders and beamed. He was enjoying my hell a little too much.
Inside he started charming the girl at the front desk while I roamed and checked out the foyer. Bright colors caught my eye as I came to the side hallway, seeing Post-it notes covering a wall. It was just like the ones they had at school and in the subway. People were invited to tack up random posts, mostly cheesy inspirational crap they stole from googling cheesy inspirational crap.
But one caught my eye as I scanned.
Trouble in love? Trouble with trust? Or just desperate to catch that man of yours in a sticky situation and have him publicly humiliated? We can help. Email [email protected] for more info or check out our Instagram, thetestdummies.
I pulled my phone out and snapped a quick photo, wondering what kind of world we lived in and yet also spotting an amazing opportunity.
Maybe, if this worked, I wouldn’t have to fake my own death after all. And if I handled it right, even Grandpa might give me a pat on the back for unlocking the fourth dimension in how to get dumped. I made a silent promise to myself to someday use my creative genius for the benefit of mankind.