Chapter Sixteen Portland, OR 2009 #3
Scarlett gave a tsk of annoyance. She did, in fact, enjoy dukes rescuing damsels, but she’d never admit it to Grimshaw. Especially since he was clearly trying to give those dukes a run for their money in the rakish asshole department.
“I meant about Chrissie giving you money to take me out. All those Ms. Pac-Man games and frozen yogurt and stuff—she paid for it? Not you?”
“I mean, yeah. I’m a college student. I don’t have extra cash lying around to blow on my girlfriend’s best friend’s birthday. She paid for my gas down here, too.” Grimshaw shrugged. “It’s not like it means anything to her. Her parents are loaded.”
Mitchell gave an uncomfortable cough. “What Grim means is that Chrissie would do anything for you—”
Scarlett cut off the younger cousin by flinging up her hand.
“I don’t need you to tell me what Chrissie would or wouldn’t do for me.
She was my friend long before she ever heard the name Grimshaw Pemberly.
” Tamping down the urge to grab the art book and bring it down on Grimshaw’s head, she said, “Did she tell you to keep this a secret from me? To pretend like this was all done from the goodness of your heart?”
“Chill, Scarlett. What difference does it make where the money came from? It’s not like anyone is asking you to pay it back.”
“How much did she pay you for gas?” Scarlett demanded.
“I dunno. Another hundred, I think? It’s a long drive from Seattle, and I had to blow off two classes to be here. Her parents gave her the cash, so it’s not a big deal.”
“Okay. Then I’d like to go home now.”
She spoke the words without inflection—a rare thing for her, as if she was channeling her inner Chrissie.
The sensation was uncomfortable, like wearing a skin that was three sizes too big.
For that brief moment, she wasn’t a useless granddaughter who was making her friend pick up all her slack.
She wasn’t a straight-C student with no real prospects for the future and dreams as wide as the sky.
She was just the person who got things done, who quietly and carefully picked her way through life as though determined not to disturb anyone’s peace.
“Of course you do,” Mitchell said. He patted an awkward hand on her shoulder. “We’ll take you back, won’t we, Grim?”
Grimshaw, who would have benefited from his cousin’s less polished but more authentic manner, merely smirked. “No can do, I’m afraid. I have my orders. You can go home at five o’clock and not a minute earlier.”
“Fine.” Scarlett turned on her heel and pushed past the crowds of tourists to the door. “I’ll take the bus. You can pocket any leftover cash your girlfriend paid you to entertain me. Your services are no longer required.”
“Scarlett, don’t be like that.” Grimshaw loped after her with his long, easy strides. “I’m sorry, okay?”
He didn’t sound sorry—not even a little—but Scarlett stopped and waited for him to catch up anyway.
“Do you have any idea how much she hates asking her parents for money?” Scarlett asked. “How much she hates asking them for anything?”
“Uh…no?”
Of course he didn’t. Because he didn’t know Chrissie the way Scarlett did—deeply, viscerally, like she was the twin she’d once absorbed inside her cell by cell.
“They don’t deserve her, and neither do you,” she snapped.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered Mitchell touching her elbow in concern, someone else jostling her other elbow as they pushed out of the bookstore.
Something fell to the pavement next to her—a bag of books, probably—but she wasn’t aware of anything but her own seething whirl of emotion.
I don’t deserve her, either. None of us do, but that doesn’t stop us from taking what we can anyway.
“Is…everything okay?” Mitchell asked, looking back and forth between them. “Are we going to the party now?”
“It’s up to Scarlett,” Grimshaw said. He shrugged in a way that showed just how little he understood about this situation, his girlfriend, the whole freaking world.
“If she wants to ruin all Chrissie’s plans over a few hundred bucks that her parents can definitely afford, I’m not going to stop her. ”
In that moment, Scarlett desperately wished she was the kind of person who would get on that bus—who could stick to the force of her convictions and refuse to take anything else from the friend who’d already given her so much.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t even close. In the end, she was just another greedy, self-important, boring-ass Grimshaw Pemberly.
“No, we can wait until Chrissie is ready.” Scarlett’s voice sounded defeated even to her own ears. “She’s obviously put a lot of time and effort into this party. The least we can do is show up when she’s asked us to.”
“Thatta girl.” Grimshaw slung his arm over Scarlett’s shoulder and led her back into the bookstore.
He squeezed as though to say he understood just how far she’d fallen—and just how willing she was to accept this state.
“Now let’s go get you a cheap, trashy romance novel—emphasis on the ‘cheap.’ If we don’t at least pretend to make it look like I care enough about you to get you a birthday present, then we’re both screwed. ”