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I snapped my head up. "How did you know that?"
Jared smiled easily as he steered onto Mass. Ave. "My grandfather mentioned it the other night. Apparently, Maurice requested a meeting with him. Grandfather said he's fishing for clients in Boston."
I frowned. That was a little bit odd. Maurice worked for BNP Paribas, a massive bank headquartered in Paris. They had a big branch in New York, but as far as I knew, only had a small presence in Boston, and I couldn't for the life of me think why they would be interested in a tax law firm. Maurice was deputy CEO of the bank. Getting involved with what was essentially a satellite office was below him.
But it wasn't the only thing that was bothering me.
"Why does your family know who I am?"
Jared quirked his mouth. "Are you always this suspicious?"
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. With everything that had recently happened with my family, my instincts were verging on conspiracy-theorist levels. Poor Jared was about as harmful as a golden retriever.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "New Yorker. It's in the blood."
Jared laughed, a full-bellied shout that was almost too much for the remark. I smiled back anyway. At least he thought I was funny.
"But really," I said, "I am curious why your family knows my name."
Jared gave me a particularly boyish glance. "I, um, might have mentioned you a few times," he admitted. "I did have kind of a crush on you, if you remember."
The innocence in his eyes shifted for a minute to something slightly more aggressive.
I flushed and looked down to where I was clutched the thin leather straps of my purse. "Oh."
"Anyway," Jared pivoted easily, turning the conversation as easily as he turned onto Memorial Drive. "So, your mom is coming to visit? You must be excited. Isn't she some kind of hotshot artist?"
When we'd gone out on our one date, Jared had been particularly interested in my mother's "profession," although I hadn't been very forthcoming about the fact that she'd abandoned me and my father in supposed pursuit of that art. It was a bitter subject, especially since I also knew she hadn't really done a lot in the last several years.
"I think she's mostly just involved with her family," I said as I stared out the window.
Across the Charles River I could see the tall brick buildings of Back Bay, slowly giving way to the rows of ivy-covered brownstones clustered in Beacon Hill. It was one of my favorite neighborhoods in Boston, had been even before I became intimately acquainted with one of its most affluent residents. Brandon's house was so close.
"Are you planning to see her while she's here?" Jared pulled me out of my reverie as he steered past the MIT campus.
"Um, I don't know," I said, turning back. "We're not very close. Although she did contact me a few weeks ago. Sent me a graduation gift, actually."
"Oh yeah? What did you get? Not a car, I know that. Let me guess: a down payment on an apartment, maybe?"
I furrowed my eyebrows when I realized he wasn't joking. Jared's family clearly had some money, and, like a lot of my affluent Harvard classmates, frequently assumed that most of us had the same kind of wealth. He had a better reason for that assumption now that he knew who my stepfather was, and the truth was that Janette's gift was pretty damn extravagant, but still...it seemed a bit tone-deaf.
"Um, no," I said. "It was a piano."
"Oh, cool. Do you play?"
I nodded.
"That's so cool," Jared said again. "Maybe you can play for me sometime."
When I didn't respond, he drummed his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel while I continued to watch the river.
"So do you mind if I ask what happened with you and Sterling? I still can't believe he let you go, the loon."
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. There wasn't anything specific about Jared's comments that were that awful, but something about the way he said them made me feel like...prey. I bit my lip. Brandon and I were supposed to be keeping things on the down-low. But at the same time, Jared was a friend, and I'd already blown him off once before about Brandon. There was just something about the way he looked at me...it made me afraid of how he'd react if I did it again.
"It's complicated," was all I said. "I don't know that he did, really."
Jared pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. The movement made his hair stick out like floppy, light-brown ears so that he resembled a golden retriever even more.
