“Perhaps consulting work would be more complementary to your—you know, if you want to work at Power Regions, work there. I’m not going to try and tell you not to work. We decided we were going to support each other during this…association. So whatever works for us, is what we should do. You don’t have to be like anyone but yourself. Just like I don’t play golf, despite my late father’s repeated insistence that the real deals get made on the links, not in the boardroom. I hate golf, won’t play it. So I don’t do what the other CEO’s do either. As for what to expect, we’ll have to make it up as we go along.”
“Will you come home? I mean, most nights, when do you get in?”
“Sometimes midnight, sometimes later. I don’t want to bother you if you have to get up for work the next morning. That wouldn’t be very supportive. I suppose we could work out a schedule…” he suggested.
“A schedule? How about you come home, we have mind-blowing sex. Is that a schedule that works for you?”
“Unless it’s been a really long day or you have an early meeting or—”
“Look, that’s the schedule. Okay?” she said mischievously, and he finally cracked a smile.
“I love it when you smile,” she said. “It’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.”
He laughed and shot her a flirty glance.
Brandon pulled out his phone and tapped something into the notes he kept there, probably the positives and negatives she had listed for him about how to be in a relationship.
“I appreciate you sticking it out at the dinner as long as you did. I’ve dealt with these people so long that they don’t seem strange to me. I know my stepmother will be rude, and the food will be terrible, and she’ll have some random business associates there for the ‘family’ dinner,” he shrugged.
“Speaking of family dinner, is this like a Mob thing? Because I got to thinking when Lena called Randolph and the other one… What’s his name?”
“Simon,” Brandon supplied.
“Yeah, Simon, when she called them family, I thought maybe it was Family. Like the mafia.”
“No. I’m not sure what gave you that idea. We’re pretty…WASP, actually, and I’ve never once shot anyone or said anything in Italian beyond the names of pasta on a menu. Interesting take on my stepmother as a Mafia moll though. Could explain some of her more flamboyant choices, I suppose.”
“I’m from Jersey, Brandon.”
“Ah. I heard you tell Lena that you grew up near the museums and—”
“Yeah, that was total bullshit. I mean, I’m sure that you can get from where I grew up to the Met, but I never went there. My family wasn’t really into the cultural field trips.”
“Did you take long road trips to the national parks or something?”
“Sometimes we went to see my grandpa in jail. Other times, like when our car wasn’t running, my brother or I would ride on the back of the mower when my mom drove it to the package store to get booze.”
“Don’t kid like that, Marj,” he said, clearly astonished.
“No. It’s not. It’s just life, for a lot of people, Brandon. Horrific is stepping on a landmine or genocide. Horrific isn’t having drunk parents who don’t have money. I got out. I mean, clearly. I’m living in what’s basically a castle. So, yeah. It’s okay. Don’t start raising money for my people on a telethon or anything.”
“I know I had a very privileged upbringing. I just never imagined that people rode lawn mowers to liquor stores.”
“How else are they gonna get their booze if the car’s broken down or they lost their license? Once they’ve sweat out yesterday’s, it’s time for more to drink,” she said.
“That still sounds appalling to me.”
“You’re so cute. Did you think that I was raised by fluffy bunnies out in the Disney movie forest where birds curled my hair for me?”
“No. I just thought you had a normal family. That you lived in a house and maybe you didn’t have Wi-Fi or something, but you had vacations and Christmases and that sort of thing.”
“We had Christmases, all right. Sometimes better ones than others. There was the time Dad pawned my brother’s new Xbox. That was a shitty new year,” she said.
“I’m going to have to ask you not to tell me any bedtime stories if this is your idea of a fun walk down memory lane,” Brandon said.
“Oh, come on. It’s your turn. What was it like spending Christmas with Rich Dad and the Wicked Queen?”
“I wouldn’t know. I stayed at school or went home with a friend for holidays.”