Twenty-Two
DALTON
E ssie and I haven’t spoken in ten hours; our parents are getting married in eighteen days. I’m trying to decide which of those timeframes pisses me off more.
“I’m getting notes of…fennel. Are you getting fennel?” Everett muses, nodding at Lander before he plunges the mere tip of his fork back into the small terrine on his plate—the third in this multi-course dinner. “Or maybe it’s the enoki.”
“Umami for sure,” Lander agrees, eyes oriented upwards in thought before he reaches for his water glass. “Wow, that’s good.”
Then they both go silent and look in my direction.
“You know,” Everett goes on, glancing at Lander before he fixes his stare back on me, “there may also be a touch of dead souls in here.”
“Sulfur too,” Lander confirms. “It reminds me of Dante’s Inferno. What do you think, Dalt?”
Drink in hand and glaring at my dark phone, I shrug. I have zero idea what these clowns are talking about.
“He’s not going to make fun of us,” Everett realizes, placing his fork on the table. “Not even a quip.”
“Should we call Alyssa?” Lander whispers, leaning toward Everett while he speaks, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
I push away my plate of deconstructed soup (or maybe it’s a reconstructed salad). “Do. Not. Call. My. Mother,” I warn. “This is, like, ten percent her fault. Twenty. No, that’s not fair. Fifteen? How do we feel about fifteen?”
Lander bobs his head. His bright blue eyes lock on me amid that sympathetic, sensitive expression he typically reserves for Valeria. “Don’t beat yourself up. It’ll grow back.”
I’m so confused that I put my drink down. “What the actual fuck are you talking about?”
His statuesque face, classically handsome and classically condescending in moments like these, is the portrait of obliviousness. “Were you not referring to your hair?”
“My hair is perfect,” I nearly spit, jabbing my finger onto the tablecloth right next to the pickled daikon (or blanched lemon). “My hair could start and end wars.”
“It’s just, like,” Lander raises his hand and hovers it over the side of his face, waving it over his own light brown hair while he appraises mine. “It’s edgy for an investment bank, no?”
“Get a job, Lander,” I snap, tossing my cloth napkin onto the table. Then I sigh. “But also, don’t get a job. I’m proud of you for prioritizing your mental health.”
“I know.”
“I’m just messing around. I do that.”
“I know,” Lander assures me, giving me a tight-lipped half-smile.
“I’d never be like, ‘Hey! Get a job! It’s super embarrassing that your fiancée makes tons of money by fucking your best friend’s fiancée while the two of you look at old pictures of yourselves at Harvard Law or whatever it is you do all day.’”
“Well, how could Essie not want you?” Lander intones, calling out what’s really bothering me while remaining effortlessly unfazed as usual. After all, that’s Lander’s thing: being a creepy, observant motherfucker.
“Yes, doesn’t she know how lucky she is to have attracted a six-foot-five tequila demon?” Everett tacks on, because that’s Everett’s thing: being a sarcastic, biting motherfucker.
“First of all, this is gin. Second, I’m six-foot-five and a half . And third, you’re both right. Essie’s done with me.”
“Doubt it. Essie adores you,” Lander reminds me.
“But somewhere between the free-use clause, putting my dick on her face and not letting her suck it, and ordering the wrong eggs at brunch, I made her realize I’m unsalvageable,” I deadpan. “And I don’t know…I love her. I’ve been in love with her since the moment I met her, and the idea of never being able to fully love her makes me literally want to die.”
Lander and Everett don’t react at first, which is annoying. They both just stare, expressions blank, before they glance at each other. After a beat, Everett faces me. “You know it’s not enough.”
Now I’m the one who’s quiet at first. “Are you saying I have to earn her? That’s what you two did. You—” I look at Lander. “You learned Spanish and took some dick pics. And you—” I face Everett. “I don’t know, Ev. You were basically throwing spaghetti at a wall. You tried, like, thirty-eight things, including some…light bribery.”
“Wasn’t light,” Everett replies, smirking.
“Look, I’m trying,” I insist. “After my parents’ divorce, I spiraled, I know, but I’ve been focusing on work, going to therapy, and I haven’t done anything but weed in eighteen months. Things were getting better, but then our parents got engaged—”
“Wait, is that why you two never hooked up?” Lander cuts in. “I thought Essie was the one who wanted to wait.”
“No, I knew she deserved better—”
“Hey, hold on.” Lander shakes his head. “Essie is exceptionally special to me. She took care of Valeria before I was around, and I’ll be forever grateful to her. I’d do anything for her.”
“Same,” Everett agrees, bobbing his head. “I sleep better at night knowing Cora still has Essie if anything ever happens to me.”
“She deserves the best of everything,” Lander continues. “Full stop. Money. Love. Happiness. All of it. In fact, she even deserves a guy who woke up thirty minutes early every day until college because he wanted to make sure his best friend didn’t wake up alone after his parents died.”
“Agreed. And she also deserves a guy who brought dinner to his two best friends every night for months while they were studying for the bar,” Everett adds.
“Guys—”
“And she deserves someone who picked Valeria up from the airport at three in the morning when I had strep throat, stopped to get her food, and also did her laundry while she was asleep so she could wake up to clean clothes and an empty suitcase,” Lander continues.
“And she definitely deserves someone who Cora Flores has officially referred to as ‘her favorite person she’s never fucked.’”
“Shit. High praise,” Lander mentions, facing Everett.
“Right?”
I dip my chin. “Essie said as much about me too,” I admit, remembering her calling me perfect . “But it’s hard. My dad—”
“Is irrelevant at this point,” Everett interjects, and his green eyes narrow like they always do when he thinks about his father. “Trust me: If a shitbag dad isn’t willing to do us a favor and die like Lan’s did, it’s your right to cut him out.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay, let’s say I’m good enough for her. She still doesn’t want to be together, but she’s set on this camming arrangement. I just…I’m missing something.”
“It’s debt,” Everett concludes. “Have you offered to pay her loans? Or her brothers’ loans?”
“She said no.”
“Because of her pride?” Everett chuckles. “Don’t know what that’s like. Cora just takes my money.” His expression is delighted.
“It’s because Essie doesn’t have any loans,” Lander comments, dropping that little nugget like it’s nothing.
I freeze. “What?”
“Last month, she said she was considering buying Cora’s condo after she graduates,” Lander explains, “and since it used to be mine, she asked for a copy of the inspection report. She said she has enough for the down payment.”
“So…she lied to me?” But before I can speculate about why, my phone lights up. I’m hit with a wave of optimism that it’ll be Essie saying she wants to talk, but the wave flattens into foam when I see a text from my mother.
“Are you going to ignore that one too?” Everett asks, eyeing me. “I know you’ve been ignoring both your parents’ texts. Keep ignoring Frank—”
“God please ,” Lander chimes in.
“But your mom…” Everett sighs—and I get it. She’s not just my mom; she’s basically theirs too. Hell, she’s the closest thing Valeria, Cora, and Essie all have to a mom.
I’ve been such a dick.
Mommy
I looked at the financials for Maverick today. Great returns, as usual. You always impress me.
Wow. Maverick is a company I led through IPO a year ago, and I still manage a part of their asset portfolio. Their annual financial report went public a couple weeks ago, and my mom obviously downloaded it, read it, and sent me this message.
It’s not indulgent. It’s not overly saccharine. It’s just… Mom .
Me
I went bigger on forex and startups. Risky, but I saw the writing on the wall.
Mommy
Of course you did. You always do.
Me
Thank you.
Love you.
Mommy
Love you too.
“Everything’s fine,” I assure them, putting my phone aside. “I don’t say it enough, but it’s great having a mom who likes finance.”
Everett scoffs. “Dalt, your mom hates finance.”
“What are you talking about? She loves it. We’ve been talking about it for years.”
Now, Lander is snickering, and Everett is looking at me like I just asked if he wanted to go halfsies on a plate of veal. “She legitimately hates it. She only knows her shit because she loves you, and you love finance.”
“No way. And I don’t give two shits about finance or investment banking,” I reply, swirling my drink before I take a sip. “I just happen to be exceptional at it.”
Lander’s eyebrow skyrockets. “Then why are you so happy? You’re literally beaming at your phone,”
“Because with this commission, I could buy the goddamn Halcyon for Essie if I wanted to. Trust me, if you made this much, you’d be beaming at your phone—”
… Oh .
I’m sitting here and smiling at my phone… like Essie did the day after Halloween.
“—too…” I finish, trailing off.
I don’t forget things about people. Maybe I don’t always know what to do with the information, but I have it. I keep it stowed away for when I need it, usually when I’m closing deals and earning commissions that make my salary look like petty cash. It’s my favorite part of the job because I don’t like finance—at all. I just fucking love making money.
And as it dawns on me—as I realize what I’ve overlooked—my phone lights up with another text. I’m expecting Mom again, but I’m wrong.
This message makes my fists clench.
“Shit,” I mutter. “I have to go.”
Before Lander and Everett can even ask what’s going on, I’m out of my chair, pulling out my wallet, and dropping a few hundred-dollar bills on the table. “You guys can keep the change.”
Lander tries to grab the money. “What the fuck—you don’t have to pay for us.”
“Neither of you have jobs,” I remind them before I head to the restaurant’s exit and into the November evening, ready to make a metric fuckton of chaos.
And maybe—if she’ll let me—I’m going to keep that chaos at bay.