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“They were in Paris, remember?” he asked.
Ah, no wonder he was so tightly wound. With them away on a business trip, and me missing, all the work shit fell on his shoulders.
“Right. Well, I’m really sorry, Nazzy,” I said, giving his shoulder a light punch which was about as affectionate as I got. “I took an unplanned trip. It wasn’t supposed to be long, but I lost my damn wallet with all my identification in it,” I told him, rolling my eyes.
“How did you get back without your wallet? Did you cancel your cards? They could be racking up debts like crazy by now.”
“The cards are all handled,” I lied, but watched as his shoulders relaxed a little at the news. “But you know me, I am resourceful. I found a way back. I literally just got back to the States a couple hours ago. I stopped home to get my backup cards and take a shower, then headed right here. What needs to be handled?”
“Oh, just about everything,” Nasir said, waving at the building as a whole. “I’ve been working day and night, but with no one else here to help me with—“
“Breathe, Nazzy,” I said, taking a deep breath with him. “It’s going to be okay. There’s no way the whole family business collapsed because of a few days without us. I’m sure you managed to douse all the fires. And I’m here now. We can figure the rest out before your parents get back.”
As I suspected, Nasir had kept the ship sailing perfectly. Of course he did. He was too anal and anxious to let anything fall apart. The only thing that wasn’t done was the design I had to finish for the new line we wanted to get out before Christmas. I’d had a last-minute idea that my aunt and uncle had fallen in love with, so they’d added it on at last minute to the production. We were only going to produce five of them, so it was still doable. If I got the design done.
“Told you, Naz, you didn’t drop any balls,” I told him, noting the way his shoulders had relaxed since I’d looked over everything.
See the thing with my cousin was, he would never not worry. Even if I was around and his parents were there pulling their weight too. He would still stress about every last minute detail, but he would feel more able to handle it when one of us was there to remind him that it would all shake out.
I didn’t say this to him—or my aunt and uncle—but I was pretty sure all of Nasir’s issues stemmed back to the highly competitive scholastic environment he’d literally been born into. His parents had literally had him enrolled in all the “right” schools before he’d even been born.
And going to those very expensive private schools meant you had to bust your ass to compete against the brightest and best youths the area had to offer. You always had to do your best or they were going to call in tutors and specialists to see why you weren’t living up to your fullest potential.
He’d never had a chance to breathe.
After a while, that stress and anxiety and anal attention to detail just became a part of who he was. And since he’d gone into the family business instead of branching out and moving away, getting the chance to really become whoever he wanted to be, he was trapped in that cycle.
I suddenly wished I had some of Bellamy’s blackout pills.
If anyone needed to be drugged and dragged on a forced vacation on an over-water villa he couldn’t escape from, it was Nasir.
So to attempt to ease his burden, I stayed late to finish the design, feeling dried-out and exhausted from the travel and the work, but also happy to be back on track, back to my life.
Sans Bellamy.
Whoever he was.
“Hey,” Nasir called as I unlocked my car.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget about the gala over-morrow night.”
Over-morrow.
I’d teased him about that word when I first got to know him. That was, in my opinion at the time, a private-school word. The rest of us just said “the day after tomorrow.”
“Ugh,” I grumbled, having happily forgotten about it, albeit temporarily.
“You have to go,” Nasir said, giving me a firm look, and using the big brother voice on me, despite not being my brother.
“I don’t wanna,” I grumbled, playing the part of the younger sister, foot stomp and all.
“Mom and Dad are coming back specifically for it. You have to be there to—“
“Rub shoulders with the rich folks,” I finished for him.
“You say that as if you aren’t one of the rich folks,” Nasir said with an indulgent smile.
“I’m… comfortable,” I objected. I mean I certainly wasn’t over-water-villa-mansion-in-the-Maldives rich.
“That’s exactly what a rich person would say,” Nasir said, letting out a little chuckle, and it was the most relaxed I’d seen him the whole day. “You did get a gown, right?” he asked, right back to worried.
