Chapter Twenty
Julian
Can someone die from a case of blue balls? Would I be the first?
was due to visit Lorena on Sunday afternoon. We had an entire sheet of topics to cover that she’d emailed to me the night before. (Apparently you have a lot of time to create Excel spreadsheets in rehab.) I needed to get my head in the game but I’d hardly managed to sleep off my hangover from the day before. Every time I took a step, it felt like a donkey was dropkicking the back of my head, and I was still carrying around the weight of what could have been, thanks to the boat-ride-from-hell the day before. The next time Dean invited me on his boat, I was going to come prepared with a box of condoms, a padlock, and a port-a-potty for the top deck. For fuck’s sake, I’d been two seconds away from reaching the pinnacle of nirvana, and White Wine Wendy couldn’t hold her pee for a minute longer.
WE WERE ON A BOAT. Pee off the side dammit.
“Julian! My beautiful, annoying big brother,” Lorena sang as I pushed through the door to her room. She was sitting at her kitchen table with papers spread out around her, clearly ready to conduct business. Me? I was ready to stick my head between my knees and pray for the apocalypse. The fiery pits of hell had nothing on the pounding headache positioned right behind my eyes.
“C’mon. You’re walking like a snail. We have a lot to get done and I have a rebirthing ceremony at noon.”
I arched a brow. “Rebirthing ceremony?”
She shrugged. “They give you cookies. It’s the only time they give you actual sugar in this place. It makes no sense. I was addicted to cocaine, not sweets. Why do I have to pretend to be ‘born anew’ to have some freaking candy?”
“I’ll sneak you in some the next time I visit,” I promised, pulling out the chair across from her. The sound of the metal legs scraping against the floor felt like daggers stabbing my head.
I leaned against the seat and waited for the room to stop spinning. When it did, I was met with a smiling Lorena, clearly pleased to see how shitty I felt.
She looked more like her old self than she had in years. Gold bracelets encased her right wrist, jingling every time she moved. She was wearing bright green glasses and her hair was braided across the crown of her head. Her shirt read, “Black is the new black,” which I found funny even in my present state. She looked like the Lorena I’d grown up with, the creative genius that no one really understood.
“Do you have any new spaces for me to look at?” she asked, drawing the topic back to work.
I groaned and forced myself to get it together. I’d promised Lorena I’d take care of her business while she was in rehab, and I didn’t want to let her down.
Josephine and I had narrowed down our top three picks for her store. I passed Lorena a folder with photos and floor plans of the three spaces. She vetoed the first two right away, cursing their uppity locations. The third one—the location Jo had found during her morning walk—Lorena loved.
“And it’s within our price range?” she asked, scanning through the photos I’d brought along with me.
“It’s at the top, but the foot traffic would ensure that the storefront would pay for itself. We’d convert the back space to offices. I think people will like the idea of shopping at your store, knowing there’s a chance that they’ll get to meet you while they’re there.”
She nodded, enamored with the photos. “I completely agree. I can’t compete with Michael Kors, but there’s something about a designer you get to know. Everyone wants to brag to their friends that they bought a dress that the designer handpicked for them.”
“Exactly.”
“When can we move in?” she asked, glancing up at me with her bright hazel eyes.
I smiled. “Next week if we incentivize the landlord. It’ll take a few months to renovate, so the sooner we’re in, the better,” I said.
“Let’s do it then.” She dropped the folder and stared up at me, her features infused with excitement for the first time in months. “Next topic.”
I nearly slept with your one and only employee and now I’m worried she’s going to quit and leave us high and dry.
“Julian?” Lorena asked, eyeing me with suspicion.
“Oh, um,” I scanned down our itinerary, unable to focus on a single line.
“Did you talk to Mom? Is that why you’re off?”
My gaze shot back up to her. “No?”
“You still haven’t seen her since you’ve been in town?”
She seemed surprised.
“Why would I see Mom?”
Lorena flattened her hands across the edge of the table, collecting her thoughts. I settled into my chair, prepared for a lecture. When she pushed her glasses up onto the top of her head, I knew I was really in for it.
“I am the first person to throw Mom under the bus. Believe me, I barely like her at this point.”
For good reason. Lucy Lefray was from New York royalty. She’d grown up around the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers in the upper echelon of wealth, lived the life reserved for the top one percent of the one percent. From a young age, she’d groomed me to run a Fortune 500 company and marry some suitable socialite by the age of twenty-five. Lorena? My mother could hardly look at her. A fashion designer? Lorena might as well have been a prostitute for the way my mom sneered at her. I can still remember the day Lorena dyed her hair for the first time. My mother didn’t leave her room for a week. She acted as if Lorena had killed the family pet. Lorena had added blonde highlights to her brown hair. The horror.
“So if we both don’t like her then it’s settled.” I smiled and scanned down the list of items left to discuss.
Lorena cleared her throat until I finally looked up and met her eye. “She’s older now, Julian. Her edges are starting to soften and I think it would mean a lot if you stopped by to see her, or at the very least, let her know you’re back in town. It’d break her heart to realize that you’re in New York and you don’t even care to see her.”
“I’ll shoot her a text message.”
“Julian,” Lorena chastised.
I held up my hands. “Fine. I’ll think about it, Lorena. I have a lot on my mind, least of which is whether or not I should try to schedule a tea time with Mom.”
Lorena smiled and picked up her itinerary.
“Perfect. Okay, on to topic number two. I think it’s about time for me to meet our Employee of the Month!”
Jesus Christ. Someone get me a beer.