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29
SURPRISE!
HUDSON
We’re having a family dinner at my parent’s house in Scarsdale for their 22nd Anniversary.
Matt and Taylor are together in the living room, cuddled up on the couch across from me like they’re waiting for someone to hand them a fucking Oscar Award for the best act of the year.
“So how’s law school treating you, H?” Taylor asks, batting her fake eyelashes at me. “I heard it’s tough.”
She calls me “H” as if she knows me for years. I also see the way she stares at me when Matt isn’t looking or for example that one trip to the Grand Canyon where we went hiking, Taylor mistakenly flashed me and her excuse was that she never “see” me. Her tits weren’t that memorable anyway. And the way she subtly touches my thigh or hugs me for longer than five seconds. It’s clearly more than inappropriate. Besides, even if she was the last person on this planet, I wouldn’t fuck her. Not unless I was desperate.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “It’s really tough.”
“I always wondered how you never followed in Matt’s footsteps, you know? With your dad’s flourishing company and everything,” Taylor says.
Which is exactly why you’re here, gold digger,I silently think.
I stare at her for a long moment, trying to figure out how Matt can sit and listen to her all evening. I would never be able to put myself through that kind of torture.
Ordinarily, I’d tell her that I would not follow in Matt’s footsteps because Matt has simple plans for life and I don’t settle for simple.
“I guess I’m an overachiever,” I tell Taylor instead, before getting up from the couch and leaving the living room.
It’s beyond me why Taylor has to be here for every family celebration or holiday. Unless she’s really hellbent on marrying Matt and dreaming of making tabloid headlines as the next Mrs. Saylor-Tyne.
As I step into the kitchen, I can hearWinterby Antonio Vivaldi playing in the background. My mother is busy preparing some Italian pasta dish with clams, which is a rare sight because she never cooks. She rarely cooked when we were kids.
She always listens to Vivaldi when she’s thinking about something deeply.
I take a seat at the barstool and grab a
breadstick from a bowl on the wooden countertop and watch as my mother curiously stares at her tablet screen, trying so hard to get the dish right, just like the chef from the YouTube channel.
“I don’t think I made the sauce correctly,” she says, wringing her hands. “It looks so simple in the video.”
“Let me taste it and I’ll tell you what I think,” I tell her as I bite one end of the breadstick.
“What if it tastes horrible?” She scoops some of the creamy sauce into a soup spoon.
“Let me be the judge of that.” I take the spoon from her to taste the sauce.
“And?” She’s holding her hips impatient for my answer.
It’s creamy and smooth. And pretty good actually.
“It tastes good, Mom. I swear. All it’s missing is a little salt,” I tell her.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I think you’re lying. You’re just trying to make me feel better, right?”
I sit back in my chair and shrug. “I said I swear.”
She smiles as she moves back to the stove and then to the fridge to grab freshly cut lettuce leaves and olives.
“How are things with school? How’s that pretty girl you brought to the steakhouse?” she asks.
My phone buzzes in my jeans pocket, so I reach for it. “School’s okay. I got my Bar exam coming up for finals but that’s okay. I’m not too stressed and Parker is okay. We’re okay.”
