Chapter 3
Liv
“Mom, I’m just not sure if I can make it tonight,” I say, yawning and pulling my dark waves into a messy top knot.
“Don’t tug on your hair like that, Olivia,” my mother says, scowling at me over FaceTime. She’s the only one who calls me Olivia—everyone else, even my dad, calls me Liv. “You’ll give yourself split ends,” she adds with a disapproving tut.
I’m not sure if that is true, but I let my hair drop to my shoulders and try to drag my fingers through the mess. I had finally slept, and by the looks of my hair and the pillow creases on my face, I had slept hard.
“You might benefit from a few highlights. Have you seen Ricardo lately?” My mother’s hair is platinum blonde—thanks to Ricardo—and perfectly styled, even though it’s barely 9 a.m. on a Saturday.
Then again, Marlowe Arden has probably already played a round of tennis and is getting ready for brunch, while I’m just now dragging myself out of bed after too many bourbons and sleeping like the dead.
“Maybe he can fit you in before the gala tonight.”
“Work has been intense lately,” I sigh and pour a cup of coffee from the machine on the counter. “I could really use the night to get ahead of the launch.”
“Olivia, everyone will be there. You need to make an appearance, or people will think there is some rift between us.”
I pause, struck by the irony of my mother bullying me into attending an event just so she can look like a good parent. But that’s my mom—as long as everything looks perfect, she can pretend it actually is.
Andy’s bedroom door opens, and she bounds out, looking way perkier than I feel.
She is wearing her favorite cartoon-sushi-roll-covered pajama bottoms and a thin cami that leaves nothing to the imagination.
But I had lived with her for the last three years and this was far from the first time I’d seen her boobs.
“Hey, Mrs. A!” Andy leans into FaceTime and waves at my mother, taking her own oversized coffee cup from the cabinet.
“Adeline,” my mother replies coolly, “How’s the glamorous world of leash-holding?”
“It’s great,” Andy says, spooning an ungodly amount of sugar into her coffee. “Better than chasing approval, Mrs. A.” She puts a smacking kiss on my cheek, and my mother turns away from the screen like Andy had stuck her tongue in my mouth or worse, used off-brand skin care.
“Olivia,” my mother continues. “Tonight is very important to your father. You need to take something seriously… for once.”
I slip out of the apartment and into the hall. Andy has witnessed my mother’s tirades more than once, and I want to spare her today’s edition.
I shut the door. “I am taking something seriously. My job.”
“Oh, Olivia, playing video games for a living is hardly taking things seriously.”
I’m not going to respond. Despite my repeated attempts to explain my job to my mother, she consistently reduces it to “playing video games,” “watching YouTube,” or, her personal favorite, “wasting the expensive college degree they paid for.”
My mother does not take the hint at my silence. “The gala starts at six; you need to be there by five thirty. What are you wearing? Not that yellow dress. That color does nothing for your complexion.”
“Mom,” I try to cut in, but she just pushes forward with her plans, disregarding anything I try to say…as usual.
“You know what? I can’t trust you to be on time. I’m going to have Peter pick you up. It makes more sense for you to show up together, anyway.”
What?
“Please tell me you didn’t tell Peter I was going to the gala.”
“Of course not. I did better. I told him you needed a date for the gala.”
“Mom!”
“What? Lord knows you would not bring a date on your own. I don’t know why you are being so difficult about Peter.”
“I don’t like Peter, and honestly, I don’t even think he likes me. You and Dad have to stop this obsession.”
“Nonsense, what does liking someone have to do with getting married?”
“Married? What are you talking about?”
I hear footsteps on the stairs out the front door, and I tuck in closer to my apartment door. I don’t need Cal, my upstairs neighbor, or that slightly scary woman from 2B, to overhear this conversation.
“Olivia, you aren’t getting any younger,” she huffs. “I’m done having this conversation. Peter will pick you up at five thirty and don’t wear yellow.”
“Mom!” I shout back into the phone. “I’m not going to the gala with Peter!”
The front door opens, only it’s not Cal who enters the lobby carrying a drink tray with two coffee cups.
It’s a man with dark hair and jeans that hug his thighs in a way that makes it impossible not to notice the muscle beneath.
Something about him is so familiar that I do a double-take. Those piercing green eyes.
“Button?” he asks, coming to an abrupt stop near the mailboxes.
“Why on earth not?” my mother’s voice trills through the lobby. She dislikes being contradicted.
“Because I am already bringing someone.” The words tumble out of my mouth before I register what I’m saying.
The stranger meets my stare, but I don’t miss the way his gaze flicks down my body before returning to my face—or the way he drags his bottom lip between his teeth. Then, he looks away with the same sweet blush across his cheeks as last night.
“You are?” my mother says incredulously. “Who?”
“My fiancé.”