2. Capri
C apri~
I loved my stepmother, but I hated visiting her.
She was like a blackhole of pretentiousness that just sucked the life out of you.
At least, that’s how I felt when being around her for longer than necessary.
Nevertheless, after having lost my mother to some self-healing guru when I’d been only four, Ines was the only mother that I knew, so I did my best to endure her vapidness.
It also didn’t help that my father, Drummond Cohen, was a bit hard to love.
Money was his god, and now that I was an adult and saw it for myself, it was hard to blame my mother for leaving him.
Granted, she could have taken me with her, but her life had lacked the stability that was required by the courts, so my father had won full custody, reducing my mother to a random phone call every now and again.
At any rate, Ines had come into the picture shortly after, and I could admit that she’d done her best to fill my mother’s shoes, but like most human beings walking the planet, Ines had demons of her own.
Where my father cared about nothing but money, Ines cared what people thought of her, and so she spent all her time being the quintessential socialite of the elite.
She was involved in every-damn-thing, and I still had no idea how she found enough hours in the day to do what she did.
It was also her way of pretending that my father didn’t neglect her for work.
If she was also super busy, then it was okay to never see her husband, right?
As for my father, he was the CEO of Martha Holdings, an investment firm that’d been started by my grandfather, then handed down to my father when he had retired.
Yoseph Cohen had the sharpest mind of any person that I’d ever met, and he’d been so in love with my grandmother that he had named his company after her.
Then, five years ago, he had retired after we’d lost her, and if anyone told me that real love didn’t exist, I’d tell them to go visit my grandfather.
Real love was watching my grandfather age rapidly after the loss of his wife, and as much as I visited him and tried to get him back into the real world, nothing worked.
He missed my grandmother, and that level of love scared the crap out of me.
That being said, I was safe in that regard.
You had to date to fall in love, and I didn’t have time for either.
Once my grandfather had retired, putting my father in charge of Martha Holdings, I’d been promoted to vice president of the company, and I did my best to prove that nepotism would pay off in this instance.
Luckily for me, we had a lot of long-term employees working for us, so they’d seen me work my way up from the mailroom to the position that I currently held.
Still, there’d always be those little whispers of negativity that constantly pushed me to do more than most. So, yeah, dating wasn’t a priority.
Which was why I was sitting in my car- parked on the side of the road, mind you -after having just had lunch with my stepmother at their place on the beach.
Honestly, when she had invited me to join her, I’d thought that it was going to be her classic complain/grateful/complain/grateful spiel that she usually delivered, but it hadn’t been.
It’d been about my upcoming birthday.
I was thirty-eight, and I’d be turning thirty-nine in three months, and that was just too close to forty for her liking. How could I be knocking on forty’s door with no husband or children to speak of? Honestly, all the girls at the country club were talking about it.
She’d actually said that to me.
Seriously.
However, what she didn’t realize was that this wasn’t twenty years ago.
Dating in this day and age was an absolute nightmare, and I wasn’t interested in any of it.
Now, if Ines had been able to have children of her own, then there’d be other bullseyes available to her, but since there was only me, that left me in her crosshairs a lot.
A lot.
It also didn’t help that my best friend, Tori Lyons, was already forty and married with kids.
Of course, it hadn’t been hard for her to capture and hold onto her husband because Tori was five-foot of absolute perfection.
She had blonde hair, bright blue eyes, had curves for days, and she was a jewelry designer, and a very successful one at that.
Her husband, Henry, was a realtor, and they really were the ideal suburban couple, and I absolutely loved them both to death.
I’d been lucky enough to meet Tori about ten years ago, and I considered the encounter one of the greatest blessings of my life.
We’d both been at a newly opened hair salon, and Tori’s stylist had decided to change Tori’s style without her permission, and I’d been the one to step in and keep Tori from getting arrested for assault and vandalism.
Thankfully, Tori’s hair had grown back quickly enough, and as a reward for keeping her out of jail, she had embraced me as her newest bff, and we’d been best friends forever ever since. Luckily, we had also managed to find a new hair salon, which had worked out best for all involved.
Truth be told, I didn’t require a lot of upkeep.
While I got on the treadmill each morning, that was enough to keep the pounds off, and while I tried to look my best at work, on the weekends, I was an absolute sloth about how I looked and what I wore.
The complete opposite of Tori, I had black hair, ice-blue eyes, and curvy I was not.
I was a respectable b-cup at best, and while my hips were feminine, they weren’t sexy enough to write home about.
All in all, I wasn’t ugly, but I also wasn’t anywhere near close to walking a runway, which was a good thing since I hated the necessary evil of high heels.
At any rate, no matter my looks, even if I was brave enough to wade in the waters of the dating pool, I didn’t have time.
I worked a good sixty hours a week, weekends something that only the lucky got to experience.
Even if I was interested in finding someone to build a future with, it wasn’t like I’d ever get to see him, much less get pregnant to give Ines all those grandchildren that she kept hinting at.
My father wasn’t my grandfather, and I had more responsibility on my plate than any sane person would want.
Nevertheless, Ines wasn’t trying to hear any of that.
There was some fundraiser happening at the Coral Country Club this weekend, and Ines was very adamant about the embarrassment that it’d cause if I showed up alone.
When I’d been rational enough to point out that I didn’t need to attend at all, the woman had clutched her pearls, gasping at how it would look if representatives from Martha Holdings didn’t attend.
It’d been on the tip of my tongue to remind her of who she was married to, but I’d chosen to keep my mouth shut because it wasn’t Ines’ fault that my father was a neglectful tool.
Too lost inside my own head, I hadn’t bothered to sync my phone when I’d gotten into my car, so now I found myself digging through my purse to call Tori. I needed backup right now, and no one was better at rationalizing my family’s crazy than Tori.
Luckily for me, she answered on the third ring. “Hey, chickee...what’s up?”
“I just had lunch with Ines,” I sighed, my voice saying it all.
“Ouch.”
“There’s a fundraiser at the CCC this weekend, and what will people think if I arrive alone?” I repeated.
“That you’re too smart to get sucked in by a smooth-talking, egotistical, self-centered, money-hungry corporate douchebag,” she retorted.
“You would think,” I agreed, chuckling.
After a sigh of her own, she said, “I’m sorry. I know that Ines thinks that she’s trying to help you, but she’s hardly the best judge of character when you consider who she married.”
That got a smile out of me. “According to her, my father is the best husband that’s ever lived.”
“The best husband that’s ever lived is the husband that still loves you while you’re pmsing,” she huffed. “Trust me, I know.”
“Are you free for a drink or fourteen?” I asked, really needing Tori’s brand of comfort right now.
“Woman, you’re timing couldn’t be better,” she answered. “Henry’s mother is demanding a family visit, and if I tell him that you’re upset, he’ll let me out of it.”
That got an actual laugh out of me. “You’re such a supportive wife.”
“Henry knows that his mother is a walking-talking pillow that’s ready to smother anyone that gets too close to her,” she went on. “He’ll understand why he should just take the children to visit and leave me at home.”
“You’re a gem, Tori Lyons,” I said, already feeling much better.
“I really am,” she agreed, making me laugh again.
“Text me when you’ve got Henry convinced to leave you at home,” I said, finally starting my car again.
“Will do, chickee,” she replied before hanging up.
Now, was drinking my weight in beer going to get me out of the fundraiser?
No, not at all. However, it would make me feel better right now, and right now was all I cared about at the moment.
Plus, I could always come down with a cold, forcing my dad to have to appease his wife, so there was still hope to be had.
Pulling away from the curb, I headed on home, wondering if I could rent a guy for the night. I mean, men did it all the time, so where was the harm?
I mean, what could go wrong, right?