Pre–Dinner Drinks
“Where are you going?” Cruz asked as he looked up from his phone. It started buzzing not five minutes after they’d finished what he’d started. Now he was collecting his things to take a shower.
“I’m dressed. I’m going to go down to the lounge and get a drink. I need one if I’m going to have to pretend to like you for an hour.” She needed out of there before he realized she’d removed the handle to the hot water.
“You could wait fifteen minutes, and I’ll come down with you. We can have a drink together.”
“No.” She shrugged.
“Hey,” he reached for her as she started for the door, “you look beautiful. The dress is perfect on you like! knew it would be. You know,” he ran his knuckles down her cheek, “you could consider for a moment how amazing we are together, drop the anger and we could try to build something special. We have incredible chemistry, Presley. You can’t deny it.”
“I can deny a hell of a lot of things and this chemistry you speak of is right at the top.”
He kissed her forehead surprising her. “Go have a drink. Watch all the beautiful couples in the lounge and then when I come down to see you, tell me you don’t wish we were a real couple.”
“Sure,” she walked away from him and grimaced as she noted Algernon coming out of his room. He opened his mouth, and she pushed the door open so he could see Cruz standing there bare chested, “don’t be long, Cruz. I’m getting hangry.”
“Yes dear,” he called back.
Algernon quietly followed her to the elevator and then hissed, “he is a very large man, no?”
“Huge.”
“And he really has two p*****s? I cannot stop thinking of his comment about his two penises.”
“He does. It comes in really handy when I tell him to go f**k himself.”
Algernon’s eyes widened.
“How is your wife?” Presley questioned as he started to lean closer to her.
“Angry. She is always angry. She has been angry since the dawn of time. It is why we are getting divorced. I see you too are not wearing your engagement ring still.”
“I’d be angry too if my husband was hitting on women at the beach asking them to go f**k in the sea.” As Algernon turned bright red she shrugged. Traveling alone she needed to be careful, but now she was traveling with a man the size of rhino. “You should know, I did tell my fiancé you offered to take me into the water. He wasn’t impressed. He said something about asking you if you wanted him to take you into the water.”
Algernon swallowed and when the elevator opened, he raced out of it.
“Creepy bastard.”
Her phone buzzed and she looked at the text message and grinned.
Where is the handle for the hot water?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
< Pre–Dinner Drinks
I have open wounds on my foot which need to be cleaned out. Come on, Ladybird. Where did you hide it.
Put the door back on the bathroom hinges and I’ll put the handle back on the hot water.
How do we get closer if we have closed doors between us? I’m trying to take the barriers down, Ladybird, not give you places to hide from me.
Enjoy the cold shower, Cruz.
She made her way to the lounge and sat at the bar and smiled at the bartender. He immediately approached, “I’ll have a Cosmo please.”
“You look beautiful this evening, Miss. The colors of your dress suit you perfectly.”
“Thanks,” she blushed at the compliment.
“All alone this evening?”
“No. Waiting for my date.” She made a face.
“You do not look happy to be going on a date,” he shook the martini shaker and smiled at her. “You could cancel your date and sit and keep me company all evening if you like.”
“I wish,” she sighed angrily. “I’m supposed to be on a solo trip resting after a long and complicated period of work and now I’m dealing with things I really didn’t want to deal with.”
Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her bag expecting it to be Cruz again whining about the shower handle, but she didn’t recognize the number. She answered it hesitatingly. “Hello?”
“Presley?”
“Odin?” she shriveled up her nose. “What do you want?”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Why are you calling me?”
They spoke over each other.
“Dad said you won’t be here for brunch. I need my payment in ten days.”
“I’m on vacation. Sucks to be you. You should learn to budget. I won’t be back until July.”
“I have rent to pay.”
“Borrow money from Dad like the loser you are.”
“You stupid b***h. You should have told me you were leaving.”
“It’s none of your business what my schedule is.” She took a sip of the drink the bartender set in front of her and gave him a thumbs up. “Also, you should talk to Dad about the conversation he and I shared today. I’m pissed off with him. I won’t be doing brunch for months to come, maybe ever. Whatever his father thought he was doing to try to force us to spend time together is beyond me, but I won’t be attending any more brunches.
“You have to, Presley! How am I supposed to get my trust fund? We have five more years of this shit.” “Not my problem. I have a job and a steady source of income. I’m not going to starve. I don’t live outside my means, and I do pretty well for myself. I don’t need the inheritance from your grandfather.”
Pre–Dinner Dunks
“He was your grandfather too.”
“No. See I decided I don’t want anything to do with the Brookmore men anymore. You keep hurting me and I’m done with it. Grandfather knew you abused me and yet forced me to do monthly brunches. Now, I’ll say the same thing to you I said to dad today. I don’t have a brother. I don’t have a father. I’m cutting ties with both of you. I’m tired of being the family punching bag. You blame me for things I wasn’t part of. I didn’t ask your father to screw my mother and knock her up. It wasn’t my fault yet I’m the one you come and get your friends to jump on board. I’m done with it, Odin. You don’t like me. You sure as heck don’t love me or treat me as a sister so why do I try so hard to play along with you so you can get the money your grandfather left for you? I’m out.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“You need to be here. Fine, I capitulate to your need for a vacation but the day you come back we’re having brunch.”
“No. You don’t seem to get it, Odin. Dad once again took the side of you and your minions of torture, and I’m done with it. I’m tired of him making excuses for the shitty behavior of you and your friends. I’m not allowing it to happen to me any longer.”
“You selfish b***h! You’re destroying my life, again.”
“You destroyed your own life. If you want to blame someone, blame your foolish grandfather for thinking you
were redeemable and could find yourself capable of becoming a decent human being and appreciating the
fact you have family who love you despite the fact you’re a giant waste of space. Take your complaints to
Dad but I’m done.”
“You and your mother.”
“Oh, stuff it,” she cut him off. “Your father seduced the hell out of my mother because his wife was gay and wouldn’t let him touch her but was too scared to admit to him why. His wife encouraged him to take a lover, and he found mom. Mom f****d up her birth control, but your father could have used a condom. Mom takes all the blame, but he is the one who approached her. He’s the one who lied to her and said he was getting a divorce. He was the one who didn’t use backup birth control. Everyone is over it but you, you slimy toad. Because of your hurt feelings, and the trauma you spout you suffered because your parents got a divorce when you were six, they all brushed aside your tantrums and bullshit but I’m the one who got the brunt of it. I’m done taking it up the ass by the family.”
“Presley,” he cleared his throat. “I need this money.”
“I don’t give a s**t. Maybe if you and your friends weren’t such terrible people, I wouldn’t care more but I don’t.
“I’m calling Dad. He’ll make you understand.”
“You’re an i***t. Go ahead and call him. He’ll tell you what I said to him today when he betrayed me.”
“b***h!” he screamed into the phone.
She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the device as a slew of obscenities came pouring out at her. Before she could respond the phone was ripped from her hand and she looked up in surprise as Cruz, his face furiously set as if he was barely hanging onto his temper by a hair growled.
< Pre–Dinner Drinks
“Odin, you’re going to shut the f**k up right now and if you ever speak to your sister like this again, consider our friendship over.” He paused his nostrils flaring as he listened to something Odin said and then he commented, “it doesn’t matter why I’m with her. What matters is I am, and I am not going to tolerate your vitriol directed at her again. I’m hanging up. Do not call her again unless it’s to offer a very sincere apology He hung up the phone and passed it back to her. “Block his number. Now.”
She did as he told her to, feeling the rush of sensation heading straight to her v****a at the overprotective way he leaned over her and kissed her temple before taking the seat beside her. His hand rubbed up and down her back as if comforting her and he was pulling his own phone out. She watched as he sent Anderson a text telling him to find a way to block Odin from calling or texting Presley because he was an abusive prick and Anderson replying with a thumb’s up emoji.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“The hell I didn’t.” He muttered furiously. He motioned at the bartender and asked for a shot of tequila. “Does he always talk to you like this?”
“It’s the first time he’s ever called me,” she admitted. “I didn’t recognize the number and answered it, and he tore into me because I won’t be there for the June brunch.”
“What is the amount he gets paid each month for his stipend?”
“Twenty grand and change.”
“A month?”
“For ten years. Our grandfather left us each two point five million in trust to be paid out over ten years, monthly following a shared meal. I told him I wasn’t doing any more brunches at all. I don’t need the money so bad. We’re halfway through. I haven’t spent any of my money. I give it to Halima, and she invests it for me.” He did the shot of tequila and then shook his head before wiggling his fingers at the bartender for a second one. “He’s lucky he’s not in front of me. I think I’d knock him into next f*****g year.”
“He’s your best friend.”
“A man who talks to a woman the way he just did you is no friend of mine. Ladybird, he called you a w***e, slut, and cunt. You are his sister. This isn’t some teasing or prank playing. It was straight out abuse.”
She shrugged and looked at her martini glass, “how come you are down here so fast?”
“My shower was the fastest one I’ve had in years because it was cold enough to freeze a penguin.” When she giggled, he laughed, “finish your drink Ladybird and we’ll go have dinner.”
His hand was still rubbing her back consolingly and she was forced to admit, having him here to comfort her after the horrible conversation she’d been part
