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I snorted again and kept stomping.
“What the hell are you doing right now?” JT demanded. “It sounds like you’re hiking up a mountain. Or possibly bullfighting. Or… rappelling down the Brooklyn Bridge in the wind.” He hesitated. “You’re not dangling from a bridge, are you? I’m imagining some New Year’s resolution about nighttime adventure sports to delight your followers?”
I huffed out a laugh that sent more white vapor billowing. “Definitely not. Though that might be preferable to what I’m actually doing. I’m in rural West Virginia, and I’m walking around a truck stop parking lot so I don’t freeze.”
“Dear god, why?”
“Why am I in West Virginia? On a quote-unquote business trip. And I’m on a business trip because… did you hear about the Nova Davidson debacle?”
“The what? Who’s Nova?” he demanded, sounding just like someone’s crotchety grandma.
I filled him in on everything that had happened last night—to Nova, at least—and the plans for PennCo’s goodwill tour I got roped into. “Since she was wearing that shirt made from PennCo Fiber’s new fabric, we need to do damage control, hence the impromptu trip,” I explained.
“PennCo decided the best way to get their message out was… going door to door, meeting industry reps?” JT’s familiar laughter helped the muscles of my shoulders loosen.
“More or less,” I agreed sourly. “I tried to explain the concept of social media—even offered to handle the campaign myself—but nooope. Bus tour it is.”
“Ooof. Don’t believe a word they say about how backwards textile companies are, you guys! They’re sophisticated as fuck. Why, just today, my brother told me about an exciting opportunity that’s taking him through… checks notes… rural West Virginia.” He paused, then added gleefully, “I bet the folks there are gonna love your Balenciaga smoking jacket and Swarovski-encrusted Crocs.”
“Please. I don’t own a Balenciaga smoking jacket,” I said with an affected sniff. I kicked a hardened chunk of ice into the darkness. “And those Crocs were a gift, which I obviously did not pack. I’ve been doing campaign tours for years, JT. Longer than you ever did. I’m not totally incompetent, thank you very much.”
JT’s voice immediately lost its teasing tone. “Whoa, where’d that come from? I know you’re not. What’s going on, Rea?”
Leave it to a sibling to cut through the bullshit and leave you naked and exposed. “You mean besides being stuck on the press tour from hell with the boss from hell on the bus ride from hell because everyone else in the office was too sick to go?”
“Yes, besides all that. Because you’re right—you have been on a billion of Dad’s campaign tours. You’ve probably spent time in places a lot colder and less exciting than wherever you are now. And I thought you liked Mr. Pennington?”
JT’s reference to the man by his honorific instead of using his first name was a reminder that we primarily knew the man as a friend of our parents—as someone we’d called “Mr.” during our teenage years—which only served to remind me of how wrong it had been to hook up with him last night… something I would never in a million years admit to doing, especially to my perfect, flawless, beloved-by-the-world brother.
“It doesn’t matter if I like him because he doesn’t like me. Actually, correction: he doesn’t care about me one way or the other. In all the weeks I’ve been in New York, he hasn’t come by my cubicle once to say hello or ask how I’m settling in, he ignored my ideas at the team meeting earlier today, and he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want me on this trip with him. His bus driver’s been friendlier to me than he has. It’s like he’s trying to pretend I’m invisible.”
Except last night, of course. When I was naked in his bed, Thatcher had most definitely been paying attention. Which only made me feel worse about myself. I was valuable as a sexual partner but not as a professional contributor to his corporate team? The thought hurt. Badly enough to fuel my anger.
“I should tell him where to shove his shitty-ass PR campaign,” I muttered.
“Sure. Because acting like a bratty teenager and mouthing off has worked so well for you in the past,” JT agreed.
“I wouldn’t actually,” I said defensively. “I don’t do that anymore.” I remembered my confrontation with Thatcher earlier and winced. “Not on purpose anyway. Sometimes I get frustrated, and things just… come out.”
“Uh-huh. But when you lash out, you end up getting hurt. So you need to find a different way to be heard. A better way.”
I knew JT was trying to be sympathetic and big-brotherly, and I appreciated it. But he made it all sound so damn easy when it wasn’t.
“Better how?” I demanded. “I’ve been trying at work, JT. Really trying. And I thought this time would be different, but I can’t get anyone to take me seriously?—”
“Yet,” JT interrupted. “You’ll convince them. I mean, since when does Reagan Wellbridge take no for an answer? Remember the time Ashley Waitrose refused to let you race her mother’s Lamborghini, so you put on your tightest swim trunks, went up to Mrs. Waitrose herself at the club pool, and offered her double-shot mojitos until she begged you to take her for a ride in her car?”
I winced. “That, uh… might not be the best example of doing better, Frog.”
I remembered the woman’s hot mouth on my dick later that afternoon and the sun beating down on my bare back as I slid my hand into her bikini bottoms. I also remembered the cold sting of vodka in my eyes from the drink Ashley threw in my face when I came back to the club later with her mother’s lipstick on my neck.
My brother must not have known that part of the story. I sort of wished I could forget it, too, along with all the other bad choices I’d made over the years. All the things that had led to this moment, when it seemed like no one in the world had any faith in me anymore…
Including, sometimes, myself.
“I’m just saying, do the same thing with Mr. Pennington that you did with Mrs. Waitrose. Be tenacious.”
The dry winter air clogged my throat, making me sputter and choke. “Er… thanks, but no,” I wheezed. “I’m not taking my tenacity anywhere near Thatcher Pennington.” Not again.
