5. Jane
CHAPTER 5
JANE
“How was the interview?” Mom demands as soon as I step into our house.
I turn so she can see the state of my clothing. “It was a disaster.”
“Tell me over lunch,” she says, and I do, including the part about meeting Adrian.
As soon as I mention tabloids, she gets her phone out and starts searching.
I sigh. For a while now, Mom and I have been more like friends than mother-daughter—for better, and sometimes for worse. She’s only thirty-nine, so she obviously had me when she was way too young, and because we’re so close in age, we have problems that are pretty similar: dating, job searching, et cetera.
I’ve seen her be motherly to my younger sister, Mary, and I sometimes feel a little jealous.
“He’s hot!” Mom exclaims.
I sigh. “Did you not hear the part where I didn’t get the job?”
She waves that off. “You’re brilliant. There will be another library. There’s probably not going to be another scrumptious billionaire who will fall right into your lap.”
I’m glad Mary isn’t here for this pearl of maternal advice. “That library would’ve been perfect.”
Mom narrows her eyes at me. “You weren’t prickly toward Adrian, were you?”
“Prickly?” You bring a date home once, and now there are these insane accusations.
“You heard me,” she says. “It’s like you never grew out of the phase where you tease the boys that you like.”
“I don’t like him,” I say with a confidence I don’t really feel. “Nor did I ever tease boys I liked.” It was more like I was too shy to speak with them at all.
“Sure, you don’t like him,” Mom says. “That’s why you agreed to go to dinner with him.”
I roll my eyes. “Am I too old to get emancipated from you?”
She tosses a bookmark at me. “Where is he taking you?”
I tell her.
Her eyes widen. “That famous Japanese chef’s place?”
I nod, a suspicious feeling creeping into my stomach.
Mom searches on her phone for a few more seconds, then exclaims, “Their omakase costs fifty times what they charge for the all-you-can-eat buffet at our favorite sushi place.”
“Show me,” I demand.
Heavens. It’s true. This is like the damned boutique all over again.
Miss Miller thinks the gentleman may expect something untoward after that kind of dinner.
I reach for my phone to send Adrian a text, but Mom snatches it out of my hands. “Don’t you dare not go.”
“But that’s too much money,” I say pleadingly.
She pulls the phone away when I try to grab at it. “He’s a billionaire. It might cost him more money to waste his time coming up with a new place to take you.”
Hmm. Does she have a point? I look it up on my phone and learn that some famous billionaires earn up to eight thousand dollars per minute, which, if true in Adrian’s case, would make Mom right. Maybe the cost of this dinner isn’t worth bugging him about. The suit might not have been either. Not that I will admit that to him.
The door slams shut downstairs, so we wait until Mary runs into the room, brimming with enthusiasm as always.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mom says. “Did your dad feed you already?”
Despite looking like my ten-year-old clone, Mary is my half-sister and has a dad who has chosen to stay in her life, unlike the sperm donor who spawned me.
“We had salads,” Mary says. “I made sure he finished his.”
That’s Mary, the child who makes the adult eat his vegetables—and she does it with me and Mom as well.
“How was the interview?” Mary asks me.
I make a sad face.
“Oh, no,” she says. “But that library would’ve been perfect for you.”
“See?” I look at Mom pointedly. “That is what you were supposed to say.”
Mom bristles. “It’s not like they said you didn’t get the job.”
Mary narrows her eyes at me. “They didn’t reject you? Why do you think you didn’t get it?”
I explain how I was covered in mud, arrived late, and had to face an interviewer channeling Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
“But didn’t Anne Hathaway get the job in that movie?” Mary demands.
“She did,” I say sheepishly.
My sister spreads her arms in a “I rest my case” gesture.
Mom grins proudly. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this kid will rule the world one day.”
The alarm on my phone beeps.
“That’s a reminder,” I say. “I have to get ready for the silly dinner.”
Mary looks from me to Mom and back again. “What dinner?”
“Jane has a date,” Mom says conspiratorially.
Mary makes a face. Though in most things she’s ten going on forty, she still thinks boys are yucky—and sometimes I wonder if she might just be wiser than Mom and me in that regard.
“Help me with her makeup?” Mom asks her.
My sister’s eyes light up. “A makeover?”
“No makeovers,” I say sternly. “But you can do a little makeup.”
“Sure,” Mom says and winks at Mary. “Just a little.”
Yeah. Sure. They’ll be satisfied with just a little—right after they also sell me the Verrazano Bridge.