6. Serena
Serena
“Serena, nice of you to finally join us.”
Henry, the creative director for Onyx’s property listings, is a short, balding man with a husband and three corgis, and he’s waiting for me when I come flying out the front door of the building. He ushers me with raised eyebrows into the company van behind the other shooting techs.
Inside, there’s the lighting guy, a videographer, and a pretty young woman who leads the Onyx property tours. Today, she’s wearing a tight black dress and impossibly high heels, texting rapidly so her nails click, click, click against the phone screen.
“Sorry,” I breathe as I plop down into one of the Sprinter’s soft leather seats. Henry climbs in beside me and motions for the driver to go. “I had a meeting with Mr. Oakley.”
Not quite the truth. It wasn’t so much a meeting as an ambush. Still, that statement catches everyone's attention in the van as we pull away from the curb. Even the tour guide lowers her phone, mouth dropping open.
“Mr. Oakley,” Henry says, dubious. “What did he want?”
A shiver runs up my arms, skirting over my elbows. Almost like the path his gaze took over my body once we were alone.
Pushing those ridiculous thoughts away, I settle back into my seat and regale my temporary co-workers with the simplest story of my break-up, barging into Oakley’s office, and the miracle of keeping my job.
“He must really hate his brother,” the videographer says. “Not surprising. I’ve heard things about that guy. No offense.”
“None taken,” I say, just as the tour guide speaks up, “Or, he just doesn’t care. Wouldn’t it be a pain to have to hire another photographer? That’s probably it.”
Henry sends a look my way. He knows as well as I do that this city is crawling with photographers, and plenty of starving artists who would be more than eager to take a paycheck from Onyx while working on their personal creative projects.
The conversation devolves into a discussion of the Oakley brothers—Travis, Alex, and the elusive Graham—and I tune most of it out, staring out the window, glad to have survived both the impromptu meeting and the interrogation afterward.
Unlike Bianca, I’m not an Oakley fangirl, but I know the basics.
I Googled Alex’s family after our third date. Our therapist might have called that a violation of privacy, but I did it long before we were getting professional help.
Three brothers, three different mothers, but the same dad.
Travis is the oldest, nearly a full decade older than me. Their father, Stephen, left his mom, Min-ji, when he was just four years old. Min-ji outlived Stephen, but is fiercely private about her life.
Graham is the second son, and a bastard, technically. The articles I found alleged that Stephen was having an affair with Bonnie long before divorcing Min-ji. Stephen never got to marry Bonnie, because she got sick and passed away, leaving Graham with Stephen as his sole parent.
And, finally, there’s Alex. The youngest of the brothers.
His mother, Priscilla, inherited the Oakley fortune and is a well-known Manhattan socialite flouncing around, starting charities, and spending ungodly amounts of money.
Just like with his brothers, Alex never introduced me to his mother, either.
My thoughts about the Oakleys are interrupted when we arrive at the property. It’s just like all of Onyx’s others. Sleek and modern in a way that screams CEO or tech mogul.
I’m thinking about all this while moving throughout the house shooting, catching the perfect angle to show off the geometric chandelier in the guest bathroom. I’m considering the condo’s character and the best way to demonstrate it in a photograph.
I’m not thinking about Travis’s dark, mysterious eyes. Not thinking about how his jaw ticked slightly when I stood up from my seat earlier. Not thinking about his luscious lips.
Christ. I haven’t been this turned on in… my entire life? It has to be the stress, the adrenaline.
He’s old, I remind myself, squeezing my thighs together and taking a deep breath in the elevator to another unit. He’s old, and my ex’s brother, and my boss. If that’s not an off-limits trifecta, I don’t know what is.
But the feeling between my legs doesn’t subside at that thought. Instead, it just grows steadier, more insistent.
Travis Oakley.
What a stupid idea.
Not even an idea. Just some reckless urge that I’m totally going to ignore. It’s not like I haven’t had bad ideas like this before.
As a kid, spit out by yet another foster home, I’d feel the need to do something. To take back some control. Sometimes, it was something small, like stealing a pencil from the cup on the teacher’s desk. And once, it was something really big, like catching a dumpster on fire.
It was an accident. And I put it out myself. But to my foster parents, that didn’t matter.
“Serena?”
I blink and look up. Henry stands just outside the elevator door, arm outstretched, keeping it open for me. He looks at me like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
But thank god he doesn’t.
Any thoughts about Travis Oakley are just childish impulses, and I’m not here to fantasize about my boss. I’m here to do a job, so I make myself act like it.
“Thanks,” I say, breezily, trying to keep it together.
When we get off the elevator, the hallway smells like fresh paint and money, and there’s a bouquet of red roses sitting in the entryway.
I raise my camera and frame the shot.
The house is a crazy mixture of smells and sounds when I push open the front door.
“Ser-ena!” Lillie sings from the kitchen, and I smile. I like the fact that she knows it’s me without even looking. It makes the house feel like home again.
My entire body relaxing, I walk down the hallway and into the living area. Our kitchen is old and messy and never 100% clean. This house is nothing like the sleek, flat condos I capture for Onyx.
And nothing like the lifeless places Alex dragged me to tour.
Still, even after everything, I feel a tinge of grief for the relationship. Late nights watching Disney movies and eating too many M&Ms. Peanut for Alex, mini for me. It’s not like all of it was bad.
“She’s back!” Grayson calls, throwing his arms in the air like touchdown! when I appear. He and Sid are sitting at the island, waiting for Lillie to finish whatever she’s cooking.
Georgie is behind them in the living room, sitting on the couch, her face buried in one of her textbooks. Her dark hair is pulled back in its signature ponytail, a look Sid calls the future doctor slick-back.
“I’m making lasagna just for you,” Lillie says, and I take in the mess of the kitchen: minced garlic cloves on the cutting board, bread sliced and on a baking sheet, tomato sauce splattered on the backsplash.
“It smells delicious.” I breathe in deeply, happy to be home. “Where’s Bianca?”
Lillie glances at Grayson, who glances at Sid, who looks at me and shrugs, “Out, I guess.”
“She hasn’t been around a lot lately,” Lillie says quietly. When she opens the oven, it lets out a puff of hot, garlicky air as she slides in more bread. “Not sure why—maybe stuff with her grandpa?”
Bianca comes from old money with conservative traditions. She’s always struggled to earn her grandfather's affection, who maintains that unless she’s married and making babies, her contributions to the family legacy don’t matter.
I’d always assumed she was living with me after college because of our friendship—that she would take the cheaper rent for a little more fun—but maybe there’s something more. I make a note to talk to her about it.
“How was the shoot?” Georgie asks from the couch, glancing up briefly with flash cards balanced on her thigh. Of course, she remembers what I was off to do today. Georgie remembers everything.
I hesitate, then tell them all about barging into Oakley’s office. Lillie squeals, Grayson covers his face with his hand, and Georgie shakes her head at me.
“It all worked out,” I shrug.
“There’s more good news,” Sid says, standing up from the barstool and stretching so his shirt rides up, exposing some of the tattoos on his pale stomach. When he finishes his stretch, he reveals the good news. “Your stuff is mostly dry.”
On the far end of the room, we set up two folding tables, over which we spread my rain-damaged things last night. A fan whirs steadily beside it, oscillating and clicking as it sends a current of air over everything. Sid painstakingly took a hair dryer to each of the vintage record sleeves.
“Thank you,” I say again. Apparently, I said it too much yesterday, because they all got annoyed with me.
“You’re acting like we wouldn’t fight a dragon for you,” Grayson had said, waving a bedazzled folding fan at me, “Drying out some books is no big deal.”
Now, I cross the room to the tables, fingers reaching for the record player at the very end. When I glance at Sid, he winces and shakes his head. At first, he’d assured me that his one-year stint at an electronics store made him qualified to resuscitate it.
“Sorry, but this thing is less electronic than I thought. Must have belonged to a great-grandma first? It’s more mechanical. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.” Sid reaches out and touches the brass horn sadly, and I bottle up the disappointment that rises inside me.
Alex wasn’t a fan of the way it sounded, so I hardly used it when we lived together. And now I’ll never use it again.
“I might be able to find someone interested in it just for decor,” Lillie says, pointing a spatula at me from behind the counter. “We could talk to the people at that one antique?—”
“No.” The word rushes out of me. “Thank you—I mean, I’ll keep it. It’s okay.”
The room goes quiet, and I know they’re all looking at me. This is a chance for me to let them in. I could tell them about my grandmother. About losing her. Explain why the record player is so important to me.
But I can’t get the words out.
Years ago, when Bianca and I were cocooned in the dark of our freshman dorm, I was able to do it. To use the night as a shield, to tell her about the foster homes, and the day my grandma found me. The strange, surreal feeling that maybe even that would fall apart, too.
I told Bianca about losing her, about being grateful for having known her, about being pissed off at the universe. About the sense that I was cursed to lose everyone I loved.
I also told her about the record player, sitting in a storage unit I could barely afford. How she would put on her records and dance in the mornings, and how she had to teach me joy. Had to show me that I could make it for myself.
This is the moment—I could open up to them. Share even a small part of it.
But instead, I plaster a smile on my face and turn to Lillie, who’s looking at me with a hopeful expression. “Did someone mention playing Monopoly?”
Sid’s face lights up immediately. “Yes! I knew it would be good to have you home!”
He disappears into the hallway, no doubt heading for the closet that contains his many, many versions of the game. Lillie makes a face at me, and Grayson throws his arm over his eyes. “Why can we never have a movie night?”
From the couch, without looking up from the note she’s highlighting, Georgie deadpans, “Because you’ll make us watch something like that boring black and white?—”
“That was Citizen Kane, and it’s a classic?—”
“Yeah, but our living room isn’t film school,” Lillie laughs. “Thank god.”
Grayson glowers as Sid returns with Animal Crossing Monopoly. “I know this is your favorite, Serena,” he says, setting it down reverently on the coffee table.
It’s not, actually. No version of Monopoly is my favorite. But I’d rather play a board game any day than open up about my life and my feelings.
The lasagna comes out of the oven. Grayson stops pouting and sinks down beside Sid, reluctantly agreeing to be the little man with the fish. Georgie sits this one out, focusing on studying for yet another exam, while occasionally chiming in about the technical rules for the game.
“Aren’t you supposed to be out of school now? Didn’t you just have finals?” Lillie whines, leaning against me as Sid rolls.
Georgie barely glances up, “I always take classes over the summer.”
I open my mouth to point out that Sid is—like always—cheating at the game when my phone chimes loudly. Cheeks heating, I quickly pull it from my pocket. I never take it out of silent mode, so I have no idea why it’s ringing now.
“That better not be Alex,” Grayson says, his tone far too dark for his boyish face. Sid, however, actually manages to look properly menacing.
“It’s not,” I breathe as I pull down the notification bar and read the text that just came in. I look up at my friends, stunned, and say, “It’s Travis Oakley. Asking me to meet him early tomorrow morning, in his office.”