17. Rule #17 When he says we can’t, show him that we can.
Amelia
Ihate meetings. Most of my work with the club is done but I still have to attend the monthly meetings and, at the very, very least, the quarterly ones.
For the most part, it’s just my brother, Jack, and Phoenix talking.
Weston and I take up space next to each other in the corner until someone asks us a question.
Elizabeth shows up even less than I do, but no one gives her shit about it. But then again, Elizabeth does whatever she wants anyway, and being sort of a bitch, on purpose, gives her the liberty to. I guess.
I don’t know.
Maybe I should try to be a bitch, and no one will bother me as much. The thought makes me laugh.
At the end of the day, I’m really nothing like Phoenix or Elizabeth. If anything, I’m more like Phoenix’s twin sister, Austin, flighty and carefree, but I haven’t seen her in years. After they graduated from high school, Phoenix came here, and Austin became an internet star.
She’s some big travel and lifestyle influencer, traversing the globe with her hot rugby-playing boyfriend, Liam. And other than some birthday messages and comments on her posts, we sort of lost touch.
She left me here with the rest of them. The adults. Now I have to sit in meetings and listen to Phoenix talk about reports and revenue. She uses corporate jargon like leverage and synergy and bandwidth.
I’ll never forgive her for this.
“How was your date Saturday night?” Weston whispers while my brother gets in a mini argument with Jack.
Date? What date? All I remember is Matis’s lips and hands and the tune of an old French song I thought I didn’t even like. Now I love.
My shoulder lifts in a lazy shrug. “It was okay. The bar we went to was overcrowded.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
I glance over into my friend’s eyes. He means Jacob, but I’m thinking Matis.
I could tell West about what happened later in the evening. He was the one who suggested it in the first place, but I’m not ready to make it real yet. Matis obviously panicked when reality hit, and I don’t want to relive that. For now, I’m keeping the good and ignoring the bad.
“I don’t know,” I mumble.
“What about Matis?” he asks, sparking my attention. I shift in my seat as I glance back at him, wondering just how much he knows. “Did he have a good date with the sister?”
Oh. He’s asking about the double date.
“I think so. She was a little obnoxious for my taste,” I reply with a slight scowl on my face.
Weston only smirks at me with knowing eyes. “Someone sounds a little jealous.”
Me, jealous of her? I was the one who got a private tour of the city, complete with macarons and some light groping.
If anything, that night made me realize that Matis sees me as more than a girl.
He kissed me and touched me and wanted me like a woman.
The idea of a date with Jacob now feels like a waste of time.
I told Jacob I would text him the next day, but I never did.
Hopefully, he gets the hint and moves on.
He was nice, but next to Matis, he doesn’t compare. My heart will never beat for one like it does for the other.
Now, more than ever, it feels like there’s hope.
I could tell when Matis dropped me off in my bed that he was no longer broody and cold about the kiss. He called me his treasure, and we were us again.
“I’m not jealous,” I reply bitterly.
“Got something you’d like to share with the group?”
I glance up from the bracelet I’m picking at to see Elizabeth glaring at me with sharp, cold eyes. Everyone else at the table is looking our way too, but less villainously.
“Sorry,” I mumble as I fold in on myself.
My brother shoots me a wide-eyed get it together look. West and I stay quiet for the rest of the meeting, and when it’s our turn to give any updates, I have nothing.
Everyone starts to pack up as a thought suddenly occurs to me.
“Actually,” I say loudly as I straighten up in my seat. The team freezes and glances my way. Suddenly with all their scrutinizing gazes, I start to wonder if this idea is just really stupid and I’m being delusional or juvenile to even suggest it.
“What is it, Mel?” My brother, bless his heart, is the one to give me the most attention and genuine curiosity.
“So I have this…program thing that I want to apply for. I mean…I am applying for it. It’s an incubator.”
Eyebrows wrinkle as looks of confusion grow.
“I know that’s a weird term, but it’s not important. The important part is that I have to provide some sort of visual project. I mean, every project is visual, though, right? So that’s a weird name for it.”
“Get to the point,” Elizabeth says with a sigh, making me shrink in my seat. Her brother shoves her arm, but I wouldn’t consider her following expression very apologetic.
Get to the point, Amelia.
“My point is…that I could maybe hold a fashion show…here?”
Julian smiles coyly but doesn’t speak first. It’s Phoenix, surprisingly, who actually shows a little interest. More than I expected.
“A fashion show? Designed by you, I assume.”
I curl a lock of hair behind my ear, but it falls back into place. “I mean…yeah. We don’t have to. It’s just an—”
“I love it,” she interjects.
“You do?”
“Yeah,” she says with a shrug. “We’re always talking about wanting new ideas to expand our use of the club, and supporting a female-driven industry and one of our female owners is the exact thing we need.”
If my jaw was hanging any lower, it would be on my knees. “Well…it would be a small event. Invite only, I guess. We’d need some models…”
“My dancers could do it.” This time, it’s Elizabeth who drops into the conversation, and I stare at her for a beat too long, wondering which part of that sentence was supposed to be sarcastic, because none of it actually sounded so. And her being genuinely supportive just wasn’t on my radar.
“Really?” I ask.
“Oh, they’d love it,” she says. “We’ll have to pay them for their time, of course. But they’ll eat up any opportunity to do something different. And if you let them keep a few items, they’d be really excited.”
“Would that suffice for your visual project, Amelia?” Jack asks from the head of the table.
“Yeah, actually…it would.”
“Excellent,” he says as he gently shuts his laptop. “Why don’t the three of you work together on it? I think it sounds like a great idea.”
“Wow…thanks,” I mumble to myself. This didn’t go at all how I expected it to. As everyone packs up their things, I bite my bottom lip and stifle a smile. All the while, I can’t help thinking about how excited I am to tell Matis.
There is a roll of fuchsia fabric wrapped around my waist and about a hundred pins holding it in place when my brother walks into my office at the club.
“Don’t they have mannequins for that?”
“Come here,” I order him, ignoring his question. “Let me use you.”
He opens his mouth to argue but then closes it with a sigh. He pulls off his jacket and walks toward me with his arms outstretched.
From as early as I could remember, my brother was my only model. We used to raid our parents’ closets, and he would let me put together items on him like my own living doll. Dad’s neckties wrapped around Mom’s blouses. And even when he hated every second, he never complained.
As soon as I wrap the fabric around his waist, I realize it’s not going to work. It’s too stiff and doesn’t hang correctly on his narrow frame.
“I need something more drapey.” I tug off the fabric and start browsing through my collection in the large closet.
“I heard you had a date Saturday night,” he says flatly.
“Uh-huh,” I reply mindlessly.
“Is that why Matis carried you home at dawn?”
I freeze, my hand on a roll of purple silk. When I don’t respond for a moment, trying to quickly put together an innocent answer, my brother picks up on my hesitancy.
“I still have the doorbell app connected to my phone. You know Mom and Dad could never figure it out.”
“It was a double date,” I say casually, hoping it covers my nerves.
It’s not like Julian has any reason to suspect that I was making out with our godfather and felt him grope my ass.
But there’s something in the way he’s questioning me that sounds like suspicion. Like I’ve been caught.
“That’s a late date,” he states.
I spin around with a huff of frustration. “What is your point, Jules?”
His hands go up in surrender. “I was just curious. Why are you acting so defensive?”
“Because you’re acting so accusatory!” I bark at him.
He chuckles, giving me that nefarious smirk. “Sorry. I was just giving you a hard time for clearly overdoing it and needing our pseudo dad to carry you home.”
Full-body cringe.
“He is not our pseudo dad. Don’t call him that.”
“So I take it the date went well then?” he asks as I drape the new fabric around his waist, sticking it in place with a pin from around my hips. The fabric of my makeshift dress falls to the floor.
My mind is flooded with the taste of rose-flavored macarons and Matis’s cologne and “La Vie en Rose.”
“Yeah, it went really well,” I mumble to myself.
“Good. I’m happy for you. Freya has been dying for you to be in a relationship. I think she wants to double-date.”
“She’s getting bored of you two already.”
“Probably, although Archer is the least boring person I’ve ever known.”
I stand up and raise my brow as I reply, “Just bored with you then.”
“Ouch,” he replies, looking wounded.
We each start laughing quietly when I hear footsteps down the hall. Glancing up, I watch Weston enter with a look on his face that chills me to the bone. It’s a very mischievous smirk, and if I know Weston at all, then I know the only thing that makes him smile like that is watching drama unfold.
“Oh God. What?” I ask.
“Someone’s here to see you,” he replies with glee.
“Me?”
He nods.
“Are you going to tell me who?”
“It’s Matis,” he replies, and I freeze, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“And?”
“He brought a couple friends. A couple of Americans…a brother and a sister.”
My fingers drop the fabric as I stare at Weston, hoping to hear him say, Just kidding.
But he doesn’t.
Which means…Matis really did bring Jacob and Olivia to the club.