“Mother,” I say softly. “Tell me.”
She looks a little surprised. I don’t often stand up to her. Which is probably why she actually listens for once.
“His name is Gavin Waller, and he’s not appropriate, not appropriate at all.”
I don’t recognize the name, but Peter laughs out loud. “Waller! He’s that young guy, made a mint selling guns to the military before making even more on the stock market.”
“It wasn’t guns,” my mother says. “He sold flooring laminates.”
“Boring. I prefer the guns,” Peter says.
“Was that him?” I ask my mother. “Talking to Belinda just a second ago.”
She pauses and nods. “That was him. And Sadie, he isn’t appropriate for you. No, not at all. We’ll go with Milo.”
“He won me,” I say loudly with more force than intended.
It surprises me almost as much as it surprises Peter and my mother. They both stare at me like I’ve gone insane.
My mother snaps out of it quicker than Peter. “Sadie, what did you just say?”
“He won me,” I repeat, a little softer. “And he bid a lot of money. The hospital needs that money. I’m going on that date.”
She stares, shocked. “You absolutely are not.”
Peter laughs and grins at my mother. “She has a point, mom. That was a lot of money. If she backs out, imagine how it’ll look?”
Peter nudges me, and I understand where he’s going with this. “We’ll look stingy,” I say. “Like we don’t care about sick children. It’ll be a scandal.”
The dreaded “s” word brings my mother up short. She chews her lower lip for a moment, thinking. “We can’t afford to appear like we hate sick children,” she says slowly.
“Mother, Sadie simply must go,” Peter says.
“He’s right. I have to go. It’s my duty.”
Mother agrees, nodding. We just played on all her weaknesses. Image, duty, and the fear of scandals are all serious motivating forces for our mother.
“Very well. We’ll figure it out.” She looks away. “Come on. Let’s go join your father.”
Peter grins at me and I feel a thrill run through me. I don’t get my way very often in this family, and it feels good to finally stand up for something.
Even if that something is a strange man who I’ve never met before.
I float through the rest of the evening, acting like the upper class woman that I’m supposed to be, but inside I’m thinking about things that would make my parents disown me.
The truth is, I have very little experience with men. All through school, I had only two serious boyfriends, and we never slept together. We fooled around, of course, but they were too afraid of who my parents were to really push further. They were nervous boys, and my relationships with them never lasted long.
That’s my deepest, most secret, hidden shame: I’m a virgin. I’m twenty years old and I’ve never had sex. So many of my peers were having sex all the time, but I just never did. And now I’m stuck at home, barely seeing anyone my own age, and I’m frustrated as all hell.
Now suddenly, this handsome stranger walks into my life. He’s not a nervous boy, not at all. He’s an actual man, an older man, and he clearly has experience. I’d be lying if I tried to say that wasn’t part of why I want to go out with him.
I want to see what it’s like to be with a real man. I want to live a little bit, experience the real world.
And this man might be able to give me that experience. He’s definitely handsome enough to make my stomach turn. Plus, my mother doesn’t approve, and that only makes it so much better.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with this date. It’ll probably be chaperoned and boring, but I don’t care. I’ll be doing something my mother doesn’t want me to do, and I’ll be doing it with a handsome older man. Maybe he’ll be totally unlike all of the other rich assholes I meet in my life. Maybe I’ll actually like him.
I can’t stop thinking about that glimpse I got of my future date, and I can’t wait to actually go out with him.
3
Gavin
I’ve never felt nervous for a date in my entire fucking life, but here I am, sitting in the back of my town car and waiting for Sadie Tillman, feeling like a fucking teenager again.
I don’t know what it is about this girl. It’s not her family, that’s for sure. After I won the date and wrote the check, my office was flooded with calls about the Tillman girl. People wanted to know what the hell I was thinking, going up against the Tillmans like that. But I didn’t see it that way. I didn’t see it as pushing back against a powerful family.