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“Have you thought seriously about the guys your mom has been trying to set you up with? Have you at least thought about going ononedate? Who knows?” She flutters her lashes suggestively at me. “You might even find yourself liking him.”
Because Sophie did, that’s what she’s trying to say. I’m twenty-three, and being a rebel will get old and boring, and I need to think about my future seriously. With a husband to pay all my bills. Like she did. Like our mothers did.
I force a smile, nodding along as Sophie gushes about her wedding plans. I will miss her, but I don’t know how long she will keep responding to my texts. I would bet my car that it won’t be longer than a few months.
“Here!” Sophie grabs my arm, finally shutting up about the color flowers she will have. “At least make nice.”
Make nice? Oh, fuck no. My eyes widen as the Wolf Pack descends. I can’t even escape. Sophie is holding me fast, wedged against her. Kill me now.
“Ladies,” Brian smirks, tipping his whiskey glass at us. “Looking good.”
He manages to make it sound sleazy – it’s a talent he has – his eyes dropping to take in my evening gown.
“What did you think of the speeches? Fascinating stuff, huh?”
Sophie nods along, gushing about something one of the speakers said. I couldn’t tell you a single thing that was spoken about. I tuned them out after five minutes.
The purpose of tonight issupposedto be about raising funds to help disadvantaged youth, but it’s really a networking event for the great and the good of Pinedale.
Most speeches were two seconds of ‘what we’re doing to help’ – writing a check – and twenty minutes about what our companies actually do – encouraging rampant consumerism and criminally underpaying wages.
As they all chat about whatever boring aspect caught their attention, something occurs to me. Someone ismissing.
“Where’s Hank?”
My question cuts across Ryan as he’s spouting nonsense about best practice HR policies. You can’t convince me that the HR department at his daddy’s company, where he works, doesn’t have a whole drawer on him.
“He was attacked by a criminal at your family fun day in San Remo. That whole city is a write-off. Pinedale should build a fucking wall.” Brian is on a roll, sounding incredibly pissy. I’m surprised any criminals showed their faces there. Merch would one hundred percent have fucked them up.
“And the police didnothing,” Brian whines. “Just took the biker’s side.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Hank got beat up by abikerat the fun day?”
“Yeah.” Brian’s face darkens. “And the cop toldusto stop botheringthem. Can you fucking believe it?” He obviously can’t.
“Uh, weren’t those bikers, like, security? If they roughed him up, he must have donesomethingwrong.”
Even Sophie is staring at me like I’ve grown another head. Her eyes are wide, and she’s shaking her head slightly. Brian glares at me.
“They broke his fucking nose.”
Ouch. I wince. Was it Merch? I hope it was Merch. Hank totally would have deserved a punch from Merch. My lips tug into a tiny smirk before I can swallow it down.
Brian notices, glowering at me. “He has had to have plastic surgery. There was a fuckingbend.”
I can’t catch my smirk this time. I do manage not to giggle, but it’s a close thing. Hank always was a bit of a narcissist about his looks. Surgery after being punched in the face seems a little excessive.
None of them answered my implied question. They aren’t claiming that this biker walked up to them and started punching indiscriminately, so Hank had to have donesomethingto earn a beating.
“What did he do?” I persist. Brian’s eyes narrow, and he shrugs offhandedly.
“He made a harmless comment about Annalisa Arquette.”
The others are all nodding like that makes any sense. Annalisa Arquette. There was a ton of gossip about her a few years ago. My mother never shut up about her. She was always thrown out as a warning against going to the wrong parties.
Annalisa was a few years ahead of me at Pinedale Prep Academy –so around Hank and Brian’s year.
“Didn’t she go blind or something?” Sophie asks as I frown. Yeah, she had alcohol poisoning or something? I can’t exactly remember the story. I feel like every time I had a warning about not doing what she did, the story was different. Like a bogeyman.
