My dad can never get straight to the point. He has to tell me everything that has gone wrong with his day, give me a ten page essay on the current state of the business that I didn’t ask forbeforetelling me why he’s really calling me. Today’s conversation has a little kick to it, though.
Every once in a while, my dad will talk about my mom, Junie Sylvester. She’s not like a Voldemort situation where we can’t say her name. If anything, talking about her brings the mood down.
As much as my dad has a hard exterior, I know he’s a soft puppy on the inside. I was there with him when he cried over her. My dad misses her, and I miss her too. I usually save all my talk about my mom for a late night in the comfort of my bed when I'm missing her, but today my dad wants to poke some old wounds with his infected finger.
Unlike most cases with spouses in our family that latch onto a Branson for a sense of security and wealth, my mom decided to run the other way. Literally. It turns out that constant press about your relationship with a Branson CEO and anything else you do, isn’t for everyone. I don't blame her. I know she loves me, and I know she still does, wherever she is.
Still, I wish she stayed and gave me a better goodbye than a stupid letter that I’ve had since I was twelve. If I really wanted to find her, I could. Similarly, if she wanted to find me, she could. I’ve never been good at making the first move and I feel like getting the ‘closure’ my therapist aspires for will only open more wounds that I don’t need to deal with right now. As much as I miss her, I’ve moved on and matured. If in a few years from now, I’m desperate for her contact, I’ll find her. Right now, I’m good.
That’s why I’m shocked that my dad has been talking about her for the last fifteen minutes, talking about everything from her giving birth to me, their successful marriage until the moment it suddenly imploded. My dad made sure that all press would leave her alone as that was the one thing she requested when she left. In a weird way, his ego was bruised that she didn’t even try to steal from him or ask for any money. She’s probably started a new life, making her own money out of the spotlight.
I finally interrupt his rant on how my mom was too good for him.
“Okay, Sammy,” I say, using her nickname for him to reign him back in. “What do you really want?”
He clears his throat. “Do I have to want something to talk to my only son?”
“When you’re talking about mom, yes.”
I push my back closer to the wall, sighing against it. Scarlett probably thinks I’m trying to ditch our study session, but I’ve been trying to put an end to this conversation for the last half an hour. It’s a pretty busy day in the library with the freshmen panicking about their first assessments of the semester and I want to get as much work done as possible.
“I just wanted to see how things are going. You know, with the Voss girl,” he says in a hushed tone.
“She has a name,” I bite, hating the way he talks about her like that. I’d be like this with anyone. I know what it’s like to only be known by a last name and when that name starts to mean something bigger than you could ever imagine, you realise that you’re nothing without it. I don’t want that to be the case for her. Or for anyone, really.
He ignores me. “I haven’t heard anything from you since you said that the jewellery store stakeout was a bust.”
“Yeah, because nothing has happened,” I say truthfully. We haven’t had time to discuss what happened that night and that was my plan for today, until my dad called me, a disruption as always.
“Well, you need to make something happen. And quick. We can’t have the press finding out about this before we get a hold on it,” my dad explains like I don’t know this already. You try coaxing information out of a girl who only opens up to you when she’s hungry and tired and spends the rest of that time giving you the stink eye. “Are we clear, son?”
“Crystal,” I murmur. He’s silent on the other end for a few beats. “Look, dad, I’ve got to go. These A’s aren’t going to get themselves.”
“Good boy,” he coos, and I roll my eyes, ending the call on him.
When I quietly slip through the library doors, Scarlett is exactly where I left her. She’s sitting at one end of a brown bench, tucked into the far corner of the bookshelves in the collaborative study area.
Because she’s Scarlett Voss, she manages to pull off a black dress and an oversized blazer, her wavy hair tied back into a messy low ponytail, with small gold hoops in her ears. When she got up to use the bathroom, I got a look at the loose ribbon in her hair. This time it's a deep red one to add some colour.
Her style is so unique to her that I’m convinced that people are afraid to dress like her. It’s not like it’s so out of this world, it’s just not what you usually get from girls here at NU. It makes me wonder why she doesn’t have many friends when she has such a good sense of style, she’s smart, she’s pretty and is casually a millionaire at age twenty.
“You took your time,” she mutters without looking up at me as she writes in her notebook.
I take my seat across from her, placing my phone face down on the table. “My dad can talk for the whole of America,” I respond, pulling my papers back to me. “Have you got anything new yet?”
We are yet to make a breakthrough for this project. Which is concerning considering we’re both from families that have their own clothing line that are famous internationally, but Anderson is being a dick and said we can’t use our own businesses for inspiration and have to start from scratch. So, we’ve been circling around the same basic ideas for the last few days.
“Not yet,” she says, finally looking up at me. “I can’t really focus.”
“Did Anderson drain you out, too?” I ask, sighing. She nods. “Ah, so you admit it?”
Her right eyebrow quirks. “Admit what?”
“That you’re normal like the rest of us,” I say, humour lacing my tone.
“What makes you think I’m not normal?” She pins her arms across her chest, leaning back in her chair. She tilts her head at me, nodding at me to continue.
“You always act like you’re better than everyone in the class, Angel. You’re the first one there and the last one out. You hand in your work early, but not as early as me, and when you do, you’re always bragging about how easy it is.”
