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“Your job offer comes with a lot of strings, Owen.” I don’t like this power trip Walt is on. He’s being reckless. I narrow my eyes across the table. Lovestruck Dee isn’t far behind.
“I’m not parting with your salary for any less than a guarantee you won’t shoot it up your arm.” Nate’s voice is low and hard, and I’m momentarily shocked. Guess he’s not as mellow about this as he seems. Walt has always been able to recognize authority. He recognizes it now and sits up straighter. “My offer isn’t charity, Walter. It’s a hand up, not a handout. You want to work for me? You’ll have to work hard. You’ll have to prove yourself. Eventually, you could be running one of my job sites in Dubai if you want, but we have to build trust from the start.”
“You’re in Dubai?” Walt asks, flabbergasted and impressed. So am I.
Nate only smiles, liking that he caught us off guard. “Not yet.”
I excusemyself to the backyard after dinner. I need another opinion. A woman’s opinion. Preferably a woman who knew both my brother and me well and will agree that no, Walt doesn’t need money for a place and yes, marrying a woman who’s fresh out of rehab is a horrible plan.
I position myself under the porch lights, which frame me in an unattractive yellowish glow, but Marnie will forgive me. If she’s available. Fingers crossed.
I text her and ask if she has “a moment to video chat before I lose my mind” and then I check the windows and find Nate fiddling with the knobs on a speaker. I can’t make out what song he’s playing, but the bass vibrates the glass. He’s granting me privacy. I like that about him. Or maybe my brother drove him as crazy as he drove me and this is his way of coping.
My cell phone rings in my palm and beautiful, flawless Marnie takes up the screen with her perfect face.
“Auntie Em,” I say in greeting.
She lets out a throaty laugh. “I’m en route to the fridge,” she says as she slides through the kitchen and pulls open the door on a wide, stainless-steel refrigerator. “This sounded like a conversation for wine.”
“It’s also a conversation I should have had a week ago before I fell into fantasyland.” I hold my phone in one hand and a wineglass in the other. I poured a chardonnay the second my brother and his fiancée left.
“Ho boy. Let’s hear it, sister.”
“I feel like I only call you with problems.”
“Vivian. I’m here.”
She is. No matter how long I go without reaching out, she’s happy to take my calls. I love her for that.
I summarize dinner with my brother and Dee and then mention Chicago and where we’re going to bury my father. Then I admit I’m living with Nate and how it’s borderline suffocating. I breathe out the entire diatribe in one whooshing breath while pacing the yard. My face on the screen goes from half-lit to fully lit to completely dark.
“Okay, okay,” Marnie says, her presence calming. Or maybe admitting all that stuff aloud is what calmed me. “Take a breath. A big one.”
I obey. And then take two more like she instructs.
“That always helps me.” She’s now lounging on a wicker chair by her crystal-clear in-ground pool. She lifts her white wine to her lips for a quick sip. “Let’s start with you staying at your billionaire boyfriend’s house.”
“Ugh.” I collapse into a chair and sit much less elegantly than my friend. “Have I leapt from the pan to the fire?”
“Not unless he’s embezzling money.” She smiles. I smile. It feels good to smile.
“Am I blowing everything out of proportion?”
She shrugs one slim shoulder “If you feel you need to stay close to Walt, honey, you should. He’s your family. He’s important.”
“He told me I’m making a snap judgment about Dee. He said I’m doing the same thing people did to me after Dad’s trial.”
She seesaws her head in thought. “Sort of but sort of not. See, Dee is guilty of what you’re accusing her of—using to the point of detriment. You were accused of stealing money and you never did. Not the same thing.”
“So, what, I refuse to let Walt leave?”
“You don’t want that either. But if he ends up taking a job elsewhere, who says you can’t go with?”
I sit up straight. “Yeah, who says?”
“You haven’t committed to anything, Viv. You didn’t agree to live with Nate forever. You haven’t taken the job he offered yet. You can do whatever you want.”
“Right. You’re right.” I’m not trapped. I’m not committed.
“Unless you’re having feelings for him…” Marnie raises her eyebrows in question.
I shake my head, both to communicate I haven’t developed feelings for him and to keep out any stray thought to the contrary.
We chat a while longer about her wedding plans, and she invites me to the small gathering. It’ll be intimate, she tells me, with around twenty-five people in attendance, and it’s not until next year. She jokes that I can bring whatever man I like as a plus-one, and I joke that I might show up stag.
But when I look through the windows at Nate, part of me warms at the idea of him being around next year.
I shove the thought away, and remind myself family comes first. Self-preservation, though, is a close second.
