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“Of course, but are you happy? Satisfied?”
His gorgeous green eyes met mine. “Are you?”
I saw the deflection for what it was, but something about the way he was looking at me shook up my thoughts.
“I . . . I am.”
“Don’t believe you.” He stirred up his beans, steam wafting off it in tendrils.
“Well, I don’t believe you are either, so I suppose that makes us even.” I took a bite, and a little piece of me died. It took all I had not to moan at the salt and spice of the meal.
“The older I get, the less I believe there’s such thing as happy. Or at least not like I thought would happen when I was a kid. Like one day we hit an age, ticked off a series of boxes, and boom, happy. It’s not a thing. Never was.”
I nodded, struck by his candor, though I’d learned this was just who he was. I only wondered if I’d ever stop being surprised by him.
“Life is weird,” he continued, absently turning his food over with his spoon. “When we’re kids, even in college, everything is possible. None of us know that all the little choices we make add up, or that sometimes one big choice can change your life in a way you can’t come back from. It could give you the world, or it could strip you of everything. And you usually don’t know which is which until it’s too late to change your mind. Guess that’s how cynics are born,” he joked. But he wasn’t joking. “This is my life. I wouldn’t change the choices I made, not for anything. And so, I’m content, and that’s good enough for me.”
He took a bite, turning his attention to his food.
I laid down my spoon so I’d stop shoveling red beans into my mouth like an animal.
“I suppose I’m content too. College was my favorite time because of that sense of possibility. But then I moved back in with my parents as an adult. Which meant taking on my responsibilities there.”
“Which is what?”
“Nothing,” I said on a laugh. “I shouldn’t say that. We mostly do charity work with my mother, and we’re able to help so many people, but it just feels empty. I don’t have loads of friends there, not true friends, and none like Cass.”
“To be fair, there aren’t a lot of girls like Cass.”
“True. But...I don’t know. I have a community, but I feel less and less like I belong. I thought things would click in and make sense, like you said. Tick the boxes and then you’re happy. But I’m as lost as I was when I left for college. Just older. Which makes being lost sadder.”
“What about your parents?”
“Father is...” I sighed. “He has very high standards and expectations of everyone, myself included. My older brother has been groomed for his position in politics since he was toddling around in a nappy. But I was schooled in the art of society, spending my time at teas and charity events. At least with my mother, there’s champagne.”
That earned me a laugh.
“My childhood was a strict, serious affair, but I wasn’t a strict or serious young lady. Whimsies like love and romance were decreed impractical. Father thought me silly and was more likely to stand me up like a soldier and school me with a whistle like the von Trapps than read me a story or—heaven forbid—play with me. Did Cass tell you I was obsessed with the occult as a girl?”
“Like witches?”
I chuckled at the thought of my father finding me doing witchcraft. “No, just things like tarot cards and Ouija boards. It was all so magical, full of hope that my life—which had been carefully laid out for me long before I was born—could be whatever I chose. I loved to read fantasy, dream of other places. It sounds so silly coming from someone born with so much.”
“No, I get it. It’s hard to be put in a box, especially when the box is locked.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. I’d smuggled contraband into the house, and when he found my cache, he lectured me in front of the fireplace as I was made to throw in the books, then the cards one by one, and the Ouija board last.”
I remembered the flames eating it up until only one word was left unscathed: No.
“We make our fate, Jessamine. Hastings don’t use foolish parlor tricks to decide our futures,” I said in my best impression of my father.
“That’s...” Remy’s spoon hovered over his dinner for a moment. “Frankly, I say fuck him.”
His attempt at a British accent was horrid. I couldn’t help but laugh. And then I sighed.
“We’re now in a place where the expectation is that I find a husband of good standing and breeding so that I might begin breeding my own successors.”
He was quiet as I took a bite of my red beans and rice, a salty slice of sausage setting off a chain reaction of flavors in my mouth.
