NEVER EVER
Lacey
For everyone else at the party, the drinks flowed, even turning into shots a few times, but I managed to avoid the bar. I loaded up on food and was constantly sporting a bottle of water that was switched out by Moser. He knew me too well. He’d tried with Marcia, but she was too far gone. She wasn’t having the water.
I had too much on my mind to contemplate getting drunk.
I needed to be sharp tomorrow when I took down Kami’s boyfriend.
Plus, I didn’t want to accidentally get drunk and end up saying something rude to Jordan again or having another bathroom rendezvous. Not when he was my next target. I needed distance from that one. Even if he looked incredibly hot.
Marcia’s plan to invite Jordan infuriated me, and he must have sensed that, because he spent the night hanging with Monty and Theo, drinking on the deck with cigars around a fire. His eyes were the only thing that dared to venture across the room to me. I caught him staring a few times.
In the light of the fire and the twinkling buildings all around him—New York’s own version of a starry sky—he was obviously easy on the eyes but hard on everything else.
Hard on my morals, mostly.
He was everything I despised.
Rich, spoiled, trust-fund brat, cheater, and entitled.
“This dress is supercute.” Maya, one of our school friends, plucked at the skirt, pulling me from my internal conversation.
“It’s Marcia’s. I had to steal it. I came here after work wearing business clothes. Because I have a job.” I laughed and nudged Marcia, jumping back into the party.
“You swore you wouldn’t throw it in my face anymore.” She feigned a hurt look.
“I lied!” I cackled and let her attack me with hugs.
“Just love me, dammit. Accept me for who I am.”
“Stop fighting it, Marcia. Even I’m working now.” Maya smiled wide, interrupting us. “My mom got me in with her friend who does high-end designer work for interiors. She’s, like, the best of the best and looking for her newest intern. I start on Monday.” She beamed.
“Congratulations!” I dragged Marcia over to hug Maya with me.
“Yeah, I figured since my parents are splitting, I should find a career so that I can live on my own. My dad said I wasn’t allowed to move out until I chose a focus. So, there it is.” She laughed like she wasn’t in pain, but her eyes outed her truths.
“Oh, shit.” Marcia cringed.
“I’m so sorry, Maya. I didn’t know.”
“No one did. They told me last week. Mom’s moving to the Hamptons for the summer, and Dad’s going to stay in the house here. And they’ll avoid each other at all costs while Mr. Sandu ends his marriage and he and Mom start their new life together.” Her bitterness showed.
“Oh.” I didn’t bother delving any further. There was no way to pretend I didn’t know they were still seeing each other. Everything was clearly out in the open. And Marcia had seen them just a week ago.
“Shit.” Marcia repeated her thoughts on the whole thing.
“Complete. But I’m not going to dwell. I knew my parents were unhappy. And it’s whatever. At least I’m the youngest and this doesn’t really affect me. I’ll get my own place and finish my last year of school and start life.” She lifted her glass. “To choosing a career.” She sounded perkier, but again, her eyes betrayed her.
I clinked my glass and drank a sip.
“And you’ll be next,” she said to Marcia like this was even an option. “I guarantee it. You’ll find something you love.”
“I don’t know.” Marcia’s eyes decided to do the same thing Maya’s did: convey troubled waters and high emotions. “I honest to God can’t think of a single thing I’d want to do for the rest of my life. I watch my dad buy these bullshit businesses and turn them into some massive company and then sell them, and all I can think is, how did he know? How did he see the potential? All I saw was some lame shit show no one else could manage.” Her eyes darted to me. “You got that from him; you got all the potential in the family.”
Her words stabbed me right in the heart.
The conversation was taking a dark turn. I handed Maya my water and placed both my hands on Marcia’s cheeks. “That is the dumbest thing you have ever said to me. And maybe the dumbest thing you have ever said in general.” I felt tears starting to form in my eyes, which was crazy; I wasn’t the crier at the party. That was Carmen. She was the one who always ended up in tears and telling everyone she loved them. And I wasn’t even drunk. “You have so much inside of you that you don’t see or use. Why do you think your dad and I always hound you? We see it. You’re more than your mom. You’re half your dad and at least a third me. So stop setting your bar so low.”
“Lace—”
“No.” I cut her off, refusing to let her make this a joke. Not when she’d finally opened up about her feelings. “Trying to be your dad is a waste. You’re so much more than that. He’s a great example of what happens when you find the thing you’re good at. Nothing more. So yeah, he found it early. Lucky him. You’ll find yours.”
“Yeah.” Maya joined the awkwardness I’d created. “You’re fucking amazing, Marcia. You make everyone feel special and important and like their problems aren’t the end of the world. You always cheer me up, even when shit is going downhill fast.”
“You guys!” Marcia’s eyes flooded. “My mascara!” She sniffed and hugged us both, pressing her glossy lips into the side of my face, oozing on me. “I love you.”
“I love you more.” It wasn’t true. I wanted to love her more, but her ability to love was far superior to mine. It was one of the things I, well, loved about her.
“I’m gonna go fix my makeup, and when I come back, this conversation needs to change. You both better be whining that you’re, like, so drunk and ready to dance,” she said mockingly, and left the hug, leaving Maya and me.
“Seriously, congrats on the job.” I took my water back and clinked her glass. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Yeah, me too. It just fit, ya know?”
“I do.” I smiled and remembered my first time helping with a PR project to create slogans and media for a small company we turned into a massive sale for Mr. La Croix.
“So, what’s with you? No boyfriend?” She waggled her dark eyebrows.
“No.” I laughed and glanced down. “Still repelling the right kinds of guys. On schedule to die alone. What about you?” She’d been single for a year, which was uncommon in our group, except of course for me.
“Sort of seeing a guy from Quebec, actually. He’s some politician’s son. I don’t know.”
“Like Quebec in Canada?” I hadn’t seen that coming.
“Yeah. He’s French Canadian and superhot and a couple of years older.” She pulled out her phone and flashed a photo of a handsome man.
“Oh, snap. He is hot. How’d you meet?”
“We were at a hockey game, and the kiss cam landed on us.” She laughed. “We just happened to be sitting next to each other.”
“So, you met randomly in the stands?” One of New York City’s socialites sitting in the stands—unheard of. Everyone had boxes.
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “My sister’s boyfriend likes sitting in the stands and being cold and eating hot dogs. It was actually fun slumming it down there with the masses for once.”
“With the peasants, you mean.” I laughed.
“The peasants are crazy. It’s way more loud and exciting. Anyway. He asked me to have drinks after the game. I said sure. So, we all went to this club and had a great time. At the end of the night, when I gave him my number, he texted me and said it was the best hundred bucks he ever spent, bribing the kiss cam guy to make sure it landed on us. He saw me walking in, had the ushers make sure we were sitting next to each other, and then paid the kiss cam guy.”
“Oh my God.” My heart melted. “That is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard of. He put in so much effort for the possibility of one kiss?”
“I know, right?” She beamed, glowing from the story and the love. “His name’s Pierre, and his dad is some politician. I don’t know Canadian stuff. But he isn’t rich like us; he’s closer to being like you. He’s normal.”
“Oh.” I laughed inwardly at the like you. Always with the like you.
“Yeah, my real reason for the job and the apartment. In case my mom and dad try to pull rank and say we can’t date. I already got my trust fund, so whatever. They can disinherit me if they want. I don’t care anymore.”
“Well, hopefully they see that their own marriage wasn’t so hot, so who are they to give opinions?”
“Right, exactly. Anyway, we’re taking it slow and seeing where it goes.”
“Holy shit, look at you adulting. New job, almost done with school, getting an apartment, and with a solid boyfriend.”
“I also need to look like a responsible adult so his parents don’t think I’m a stupid socialite. They’re not business people, but scholarly, actually.” She chuckled. “He’s so mature. I have to really step it up.”
“Challenging. Interesting.”
“It is. It’s like dating someone who makes you better or wanna be better.”
“Holy goals. I wish. Every guy I’ve met in the last year makes me want to die alone.”
We both laughed. She knew. She’d seen the dating scene before.
“Well, we could be Carmen, dating someone we have to hide,” I added. “The whole ‘rich Juliet and poor Romeo’ thing would be harder if you were hiding it.”
“Yeah, I’m not hiding anything.” She shook her head, darting her eyes to where Carmen was clinging to her boyfriend. “At least he really is the sweetest guy in the world, though.”
“He is. Carmen’s lucky.” I glanced at them.
“He’ll end up doing amazing things, just like her. They’re both geniuses.”
“Yeah, even Mr. La Croix has noticed him. That’s something. I bet he gets swooped up and hired before he even grads.”
“Hands down,” Maya agreed. “He’s already in talks with some major company.”
“Okay, tell me you’re sharing your dirty stories and that you’re ready to get fucked up.” Marcia jumped back into the conversation. She didn’t have just new makeup, but also a completely different outfit. I didn’t know how she did it.
“We were just talking about hockey.” I grinned.
“Jesus.” She wrinkled her nose. “Okay, let’s do some shots before this turns into one of those parties.” She linked her arms in Maya’s and mine and shouted at everyone, “Shots!”
The crowd gathered as shots started lining the countertop, each glistening with the gold flakes in the bottom of the slender glass.
“To the last summer before school ends for most of us!” She lifted her drink in her hand as everyone else got one.
“And to you!” Monty smiled wide, his eyes dazzling as he looked at her.
“Fine, to me.” She smirked and drank back the shot as everyone else did. I handed my shot to Kami, who gladly took it for me before Marcia noticed.
Monty came and wrapped his arms around his girlfriend, making me and the rest of the crowd turn away. I strolled out to the deck to grab food. My head was spinning just a little, even with all the water I’d drunk.
“Nice night,” a familiar voice behind me said into my ear as I stuffed a massive mushroom cap into my mouth. Without choking or looking like a pig sniffing out truffles, I chewed a couple of times and swallowed like a snake, wiping my mouth as I spun around to find Jordan there. My whole body tightened.
“Yeah, should be a fun.” I tried to be cool and not give away the fact that I would not be going to the club. I needed to buckle down on spending, and I really needed a good night’s sleep.
“I don’t think I’ll be going.” He walked closer, staring at me. “You have some mushroom cap.” He wiped the side of my lip and licked the chunk of food off his finger, making me grimace. “What?” he laughed.
“That was disgusting.” I wiped my own face, feeling the greasy spot where the cheesy lump had been.
“I suspect your face is fairly clean.”
“You shouldn’t. It might be dirty.”
“From what?” The humor in his eyes mocked me.
“City pollution.”
“If it’s in the air I’m breathing, then it shouldn’t make a difference if I lick it off your face.”
“Shouldn’t you be saving your lewd gestures for your girlfriend?” I asked, bringing us back to sobriety. His talking about licking me was making me uncomfortable. And not in the way it ought to, considering his girlfriend was paying me to get dirt on him.
“It’s Friday, so that means it’s been a whole week since I learned not only of her existence but also that I would be forced to date her. If this is true love in your book, then yeah, I guess we’re all doomed.” He laughed at the last part. It was weird.
“Wow.” I didn’t have a thing to add to that.
“Yes. Wow is about the only thing to say to something like that. Wow. Gross. How sad. Jeez, Jordan, your life is pathetic.” He was losing it in front of me.
“Why don’t you just refuse to take part in this?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Because I’m from the lower levels?” I lifted my brows at the backhanded comment.
“No, yes, well—you don’t have expectations placed on you at birth to date and be with the ‘right’ person. Your family doesn’t use you as a pawn to further their placement in society. So it’s impossible to understand how that feels.”
“No, you’re right.” I laughed at him. Here he was feeling sorry for himself, like his problems were so huge. Meanwhile my brother had cancer.
“How is any of this funny?” he asked, annoyed maybe that I was laughing at him.
“Not to be a complete dick, again, but if I were in your situation, I’d just be a man about it and do what I wanted. There’s nothing less attractive than seeing you rich guys play along, like your mom is carrying your balls around in her purse because you can’t stand up to your family and be a success in your own right. Honestly, is being a self-made man so much worse than disappointing your horrible parents? Maybe it’s just my poor white trash slipping out, but seeing a man be a man and do what he wants in life, fuck everyone else, is hot. Hotter than any Ivy League education and trust fund. It’s like I told you before: fuck ’em!” I slipped past him. “Excuse me.”
Shit!
I’d done it. I’d unleashed a lot of meanness again. Why did I insist on using this guy as a punching bag for all my issues?
I hurried across the deck and through the door to the elevator and pushed the button like a crazy person. I needed to get away from him. If I was going to do the Test Dummy right, I was going to have to drive a wedge between us and stop acting like we were even acquaintances. Even if he needed to hear that he was being a pussy if he couldn’t just suck it up and end it with his pretend dating.
“Wait.” It was spoken on my neck, he was so close.
I closed my eyes, needing to Zen the fuck out in the elevator and not be near him. “No.” I didn’t spin around or even give him a side-glance. I waited for the elevator and prayed Marcia wouldn’t see me. She would be so pissed if she knew I was leaving. Better to ghost and text tomorrow. “Just go away,” I pleaded more than anything.
“Don’t go. You’re right.”
“I know,” I scoffed, and stepped into the elevator as it dinged and the doors opened. He stepped in, too, and blocked the panel of numbers as the door closed. His face was flushed with what I assumed was anger. But then he did something weird. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill.
“This is yours. I meant to give it back to you.”
“Keep it. Put it toward buying a new pair of balls.” Apparently I wasn’t finding Zen after all.
“My balls are perfectly fine.” He stepped closer, his eyes ablaze. He shoved the fifty dollars in my hand. “I think you need it more than I do. You can put it toward buying yourself some manners.”
The elevator started to move as he said it, trapping us together.
He glared at me, hovering over me by at least six inches, even in my huge heels.
“Fuck you,” I growled, throwing the fifty at him. It bounced off his chest while his eyes tried to murder me with his stare.
“Fuck me?” He laughed bitterly. “You honestly want to say fuck me? You’re the one laughing at me and mocking me for not thinking it’s so easy to walk away from my own family. Could you just walk away from yours?”
“I don’t know, my family wouldn’t do this to me.” I took the challenge, even stepping a little closer, forcing myself to crane my neck more.
What was I doing?
Why couldn’t I let this one go?
Why was I taking this so personally?
“All I do know is that you hit on me, while you’re fake dating some girl.” And there it was, why I was taking this personally. “So I think you’re expecting the usual from me, that I’ll be your side chick like the little drummer boy is with your girl? Like you so blatantly pointed out, I’m not one of you, so clearly you, who worries so much about his family, isn’t going to date me and bring me home, or even ask me out. But not being from your world means I don’t have to play by your rules and live some demented version of happiness. I’m free to be with whomever I want. To only date guys who think I’m worthwhile enough to ask out on a date and who would bring me home to meet their parents. And I love my life. So if the person coming into it isn’t an improvement, then they’re not coming in. You rich boys”—I pointed and stabbed him in the chest with my nail—“are all the same.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. You think you can have your cake and eat it too. You have the girl you date for your parents and the girl you date for fun and the girl you fuck because she’s a wildcat in the sack. And you never have to grow up. You get to live this insane double standard for your entire lives, because you were born with a silver spoon lodged in your ass. You think I don’t know who your dad is, who your brother is. I would never be the kind of girl they would approve of.”
The elevator dinged, and we both turned sharply, glaring at the couple standing in front of it. I knew them, so they both smiled and then stopped themselves, stepping back from the open door when they saw our faces.
“Hey!” I greeted them fiercely as I stormed out of the elevator with Jordan’s heavy footsteps hot on my heels.
“So what?” He grabbed my arm and spun me in the foyer. “You know who my piece-of-shit dad is, so you think you know me?”
“Why are you hitting on me all the time if you don’t want to hook up? Clearly it’s not to bring me home to Captain Jack or your gross dad or your doormat mom. I’ve heard people talk about your dad and your perverted brother, and I’m sorry if you’ve been lumped in with them as being gross and you’re really not. But you are hitting on me, dragging me into bathrooms, while fake dating a girl to get her family’s money. You’re not really trying to be different, are you? You think Mr. La Croix hasn’t spent half my life warning me about boys like you? Warning me to make something of myself that a guy would be proud to date, not fucking in yacht bathrooms when no one’s looking?”
“You don’t know me!” he snapped, looking like he might pull his hair out.
“I don’t need to. I know your type.”
“No.” He shook his head, stepping closer and grabbing both my arms with his, not hard but firmly, like he wanted me to listen. “You don’t. At all. When I said you were right, I was admitting that I need to be a man and tell my family to fuck themselves. I need to walk away and be an orphan and lose most of my friends and probably not see my grandpa ever again. And yeah, he’s gross, but he’s the only real father figure I’ve ever had, which might say some things about how Stephen and I turned out. And yeah, maybe your awesome family wouldn’t put you in this position, but mine would. Do you have any idea what it was like coming home from college to be handed to some strange girl? You’re right, I need to choose my life for me and be a self-made man and walk away from everyone I love. Sorry I didn’t do it the second this card was dealt to me, sorry I didn’t just walk away from my family casually, like I don’t care about them even if they are ridiculous. You’re right. Happy?” He was firm in his speech.
“No.” I pulled free. “Stop including me in your little games. And don’t hit on me until you’re single.”
“So you want me to hit on you?” He laughed like he might cry.
“Oh my fuc—”
“Just don’t leave.” He stepped back, lifting his hands in the air. “I swear to God I won’t hit on you or give you any attention that you don’t want. I’ll be cool. You can see for yourself that I’m not a philanderer like my dad or a man whore like my brother used to be.”
“Used to be? Nice try,” I scoffed.
Boys like Jordan Somersby were exactly the reason why I was still single and probably would be forever. They said the right things and did the right things and swept you off your feet. But it was when you weren’t looking that the sleight of hand kicked in, crushing your heart before you even knew they were holding it.
“Good night, Jordan.”
“Lacey.” He followed me. “You shouldn’t walk home alone.”
“Oh, I’m not walking,” I muttered. “There’s a thing you rich folk don’t know about called the subway.”
“Fine. I’ll make sure you get there.”
“Please don’t.”
“Let me get you a car, then.”
“No, I don’t want anything from you.” I spat my words and continued toward the subway.
“You can’t stop me from being in a public place.” He followed me the block and a half to the station and down the stairs. When we got to the platform, I folded my arms over my chest and stared at the graffiti mural across from me.
“What will it take to get you to listen to me?” he finally said, not cutting the tension but adding more to it.
“Morals and a code of ethics.” I gave him the side-eye I’d practiced. It wasn’t as good as Marcia’s, but it was close. “Stop being a giant wuss.” I accidentally let it go too far again, fully mocking him.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say to you to make this better. Regardless of my sharing something incredibly personal and painful with you, you’ve offended me in so many ways I don’t think I’ve even processed them yet. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll wake up with new bruises to my ego as some of your zingers land late on my weak mind. But you should know, I am sorry for making you think I have no integrity. You win. I’ll leave you alone. Have a nice night and a nice life, and goodbye.” He stepped back and left me there, alone on the platform with a couple of other girls eyeing him, watching him go.
As I stepped onto the subway, I felt worse than I had in ages. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever felt worse than this in my entire life, except of course when I found out my brother had cancer. That was always going to be my lowest of lows.