by Harper Bliss
“A non-alcoholic IPA,” she says. “It’s all the rage.” Madison doesn’t seem cross with me for being late. She’s her usual relaxed self.
“Can I see?” She gives me the bottle. “This isn’t a Lennox beer,” I quickly conclude.
“Lennox doesn’t do non-alcoholic IPAs. I’d be surprised if you produced any IPAs at all,” Madison says. “If you do, they probably taste like dishwater.”
“Excuse moi.” I glare at Madison. We’ve been poking fun at my family’s business all our lives, but now that I actually work there—although not much actual work has been done so far—it feels somehow inappropriate. “That’s my company you’re talking about.”
Madison shrugs. “Now you’re back in the motherland, are you still export manager? Can you actually perform your exporting tasks from the great city of Los Angeles? You know, without deserting your best friend for years? If yes, you could have come back to me sooner.”
Father as good as made me swear an oath to not tell anyone about the real reason for my return. So far, I’ve obeyed. It feels weird to not tell Madison, who I’ve always confided in, even when I lived thousands of miles away. “I think we’re trying to figure out a new role for me,” I say. It’s close enough to the truth so I don’t feel like I’m lying to my best friend. I ignore her remark about my physical absence from her life for the past ten years.
I take a sip from her alcohol-free beer. “Not bad.”
“Maybe you can be in charge of non-alcoholic beer. Start by introducing it,” Madison says.
“Maybe.” I don’t give the beer back. It has become market research as far as I’m concerned.
We’re sitting on the patio overlooking the pool. A few people have stripped down and jumped into the water.
“It feels like I’ve gone back in time about fifteen years.” I glance at Madison. “A pool party.”
“Why not? This is L.A. This is what we do.” She bumps her knee against mine. “It’s hardly been any fun without you, Lennox.”
Madison knows why I needed to get away when I did. I can hardly claim I came back a different person, but something inside me has changed. Calmed down, perhaps.
A topless woman jumps into the pool, catching my full attention. When she emerges, her wet hair slicked back, I squint to get a better look at her face. “Is that Angel Ashby?”
“It is,” Madison says, and follows up with a chuckle. “You’ll never guess who she’s dating.”
“Wait…” I turn to Madison and study her face. “Not you, right?”
Madison shakes her head. “Do you really think that if I was dating Angel Ashby you wouldn’t know about it?”
“I’ve been away. You might be keeping things from me.” I smile at her. “Who?”
“Wendy Nichols.”
“Our Wendy Nichols?”
“It’s allowed these days. At least for B-list actresses. A-list is still quite frowned upon.”
“Wow.” I take another sip from the alcohol-free beer. It might be all the rage, but I could do with something stronger.
“Look at you all caught up in the gay glitz of Hollywood.” I wink at Madison. She recently had a part in Everything Right Now, a critically acclaimed but niche Netflix show about a bunch of jaded West Hollywood queers. When I watched it, I joked she was basically playing herself.
“I am the queen of gay glitz, darling,” she says.
“Oh, really?”
“Well, you were gone so what was I going to do?”
“Take my throne.” I glance at her again. “You’re very welcome to it.”
“So I sit here every weekend, surveying my queendom. It’s quite nice.” She looks at the people frolicking in her pool.
“You know everyone here, don’t you?” I follow Madison’s gaze. My eyes are automatically drawn to Angel Ashby. Growing up in L.A. hasn’t made me totally immune to Hollywood star power.
“Of course I do. No strangers in my pool.”
“She’s hot.” I know I can say whatever I want in front of Madison.
“Hands off, though. She’s with Wendy.”
“What do you take me for?”
“I take you for exactly what you are, Alexandra Lennox. A woman who always gets what she wants.” I feel Madison’s stare on me. “You haven’t always considered other people’s feelings, Ali. I’ve seen you put the moves on women who were not available plenty of times before.”
“Only because they made themselves available to me,” I joke. Although Madison’s right. Before I left L.A.—and quite a few years after—I wouldn’t have had any qualms hitting on someone like Angel Ashby, even if I knew she was with someone else.
“Obnoxiousness alert,” Madison says.
“I was just kidding.” I give her a look.
“Do you have a preferred type these days?” she asks. “Butch? Boi? High femme? Low femme? All or any of those?”
“Christ.” I turn toward her again. “We do love a good old label in the US of A. I have found that overseas, people are much less boxed in.”
“You know, even when you’re trying to say something profound, and maybe even potentially correct, you still manage to sound so fucking entitled.” Madison chuckles.
“It’s part of my charm, Mads.” I say it with confidence, but, lately, I have begun to question my privilege somewhat.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Madison insists.
I gaze around the garden—scanning for prey, as we used to call it. “I quite fancy myself some of that.” I discreetly point at a woman reclining in a lounger on the other side of the pool. She has legs for days and is wearing only a skimpy bikini. Her skin glistens from a recent stint in the pool. “Who is she?”
“A girl I know,” Madison says enigmatically.
“Oh. Does that mean hands-off?” I look her in the eye.
“Nah. It’s over.”
“You were with her?”
Madison nods. “Just for a little while.”
“You stayed friends, obviously.”
“Sort of. I didn’t really think she’d come tonight and… flaunt her wares like that.”
I giggle at how she puts it. “You’re not over her? What’s her name?”
“Bethany,” Madison says wistfully.
“Is there anything I can do to make Bethany like you again?” I bring my face close to hers. “Do you want me to kiss you to make her jealous and realize what she’s missing out on?”
“We’re not in our crazy twenties anymore.” Madison pulls away from me.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that I don’t play games like that anymore. Either someone likes me, or they don’t. And if they don’t, I’m mature enough to deal with it in an adult way.”
“What you’re really trying to say,” I look into Madison’s eyes again, “is that you’ve gone off kissing me.”
She scrunches up her lips. “You were gone a long time. We both had some growing up to do.”
“I guess.” Nodding, I look over the garden again, at all the women I can’t have—well, at least two of them. If I’m being completely honest, it gnaws at me a little. But I try to resist the impulse of, as Madison just put it, taking exactly what I want. I’m trying to actively resist my family’s sense of entitlement, which, try as I might to ignore it, is part of the fabric of my being.
4
Jill
“How’s the boss’s daughter working out?” Linda asks.
She’s worked at Lennox as long as I have, and lost her reverence for the people in charge a long time ago. She’s also the only one in my department I trust with all my confidential documents.
“The jury’s still very much out on that.” Ali’s only been back a week.
“She’s late.” Linda taps her watch ostentatiously.
“Only an hour.” I know better than to get upset about one of the Lennoxes being late. Although, even in his eighties, Jeffrey’s often at the office before I arrive.
“What’
s the old man thinking, putting someone like that in charge?”
“Ali has potential.” I have to believe this. “It’s my job to bring that out.” I allow myself a small sigh. “You can’t really blame her for being who she is. She’s never had to take responsibility for anything in her life. She and her brother basically grew up without any formal parenting so…”
“It’s a tough job you’ve got,” Linda says. “Trying to transform a trust fund brat into someone capable of running this company.”
“You and me both.” I smile widely at Linda.
“Leave me out of it, please. I’m very happy working for you, as long as I don’t have to deal with the top brass directly. It’s not my scene, you know that.”
“Ah, and I was going to have her follow you around today.”
“It’s bad enough that Sebastian walks into my office as though he owns the place at least once a day…”
“Well, technically, he does.”
Linda sighs as well now. “Don’t you wish for universal basic income sometimes?”
I roll my eyes. “That would barely cover the monthly bill for my parking space.”
“You get off on it,” Linda says. “It’s the only way I can explain you.”
“Explain me?” I start pacing. Ali’s blatant lateness is beginning to annoy me despite what I said to Linda. “Since when do I need to be explained?”
“You’re quite a normal woman, Jill. You shouldn’t really fit in with the Lennoxes so well, yet you do. It’s always been a bit disconcerting.”
I need some time to process Linda’s perception of me. “You’re basically saying I’m too average to mingle with the one percent?”
“Clearly not.” Linda flashes me a big mischievous grin. There’s some stumbling in the hallway and then Ali barges into my office.
Linda quickly slips out, giving me a meaningful look as she does.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ali says. “Bit of a rough weekend.” She pushes her shades higher up her nose. “Madison threw a party on Friday evening and it never really ended.” She slumps onto the cracked-leather sofa at the far end of my office.
“Are you hungover?” I ask.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it hungover. In fact—” She slaps her palms onto the top of the coffee table. “Did you know that alcohol-free beer is all the rage these days? It’s, like, everywhere, Jill.”
I suppress a sigh. “It doesn’t look like you partook of much of it.”
“Well, no, of course I didn’t. It gets tiresome after a while and you know how much I adore an expertly mixed cocktail, but—” It’s as though Ali only now realizes she’s at work. “Anyway, how was your weekend, Jill?” she asks.
“That’s none of your business.” I stand behind my desk, wishing I was in possession of a more towering presence. I need to find some sort of authority to wield over Ali if this is going to work. I can’t let her walk all over me—and turn up hungover on a Monday morning.
“Ouch.” Ali slings one long leg over the other. Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail. She’s wearing a tailor-made light blue pants-suit that shouldn’t really look good on anyone, but it does on her. For all the time I’ve been around rich people, I’ve never been able to fathom the secret to them looking so good all the time, as though it takes no effort at all.
“Your father and Sebastian are at the brewery today so at least you haven’t incurred their wrath.” I sink into my chair. I might as well. When I was first told that Ali would be transferring to head office, I was excited at the opportunity I saw ahead of me. Now, it feels more like I’m babysitting a thirty-something child who’s refusing to grow up. But I always knew it would be a challenge—and I’m always up for one of those.
“But I do seem to have incurred the wrath of Jill Gold.” Ali slants her head. “How about I take you to brunch to make up for it?”
“How about, instead of playing truant at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, we put some rules in place. Otherwise, I don’t really see how this is going to work out.”
“Ah, Jill, you’re such a spoilsport. The male Lennoxes are out of the house. I’m the only Lennox left. Let’s do something fun. Something female and fun.”
Next, she’ll propose we take a spa day. I shake my head.
“I’m having a party at my new house this weekend. You should swing by. If we’re going to work together in all the ways you propose, we should get to know each other better.”
“I don’t think so, Ali.”
“My dad invites you to his house all the time. Why won’t you come to mine? Is it because I don’t live in Beverly Hills?”
“I’ll think about it, but… believe it or not, some people actually have a job to do. That includes you now.”
“Hey.” She lowers her shades and glares at me from over the rim. “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my job for today. Hell, for this week. Alcohol-free beer! Let’s rake in the cash.”
I can no longer hold back my sigh. “It’s already in development. We’ll be launching it soon. What do you think we do here all day long?”
She hides behind her sunglasses again. “Shit. Who came up with that idea? Please don’t tell me it was Sebastian?”
“We have an actual market research department.” An idea takes root. “We have many departments in this company.”
“Duh,” is all she says.
“How about I arrange for you to spend a few weeks at each one?”
“What? Like work experience?”
“Yes, exactly like that.”
Ali shakes her head. “Nah. I don’t think I’ll be a huge fan of that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think. I think it’s important for you to experience first-hand how each department works.”
“Does my father think it’s important?”
“He will if I tell him that it is.”
She deflates a little. “Let’s make a deal,” she says. “I’ll do my tour of all the departments without complaining, to you or my father, if you come to my party next weekend.”
This is what my life has consisted of since I started work at Lennox Breweries: endless negotiations with people like Ali.
“Fine,” I say, having no actual intention of going to her house. In my job, I can always come up with a last-minute excuse to get out of something. In fact, over the years, it has become my specialty. “I’ll come. But for now, it looks like the market research department really needs you.”
5
Ali
I’m not sure how I’ve found myself in my brother’s apartment, but here I am. It’s large and starkly decorated with lots of white and black—no room for any grays, it would appear.
“There’s a helipad on the roof,” he says.
“Of course there is.”
“You could have moved into this building.” He drops a few ice cubes into a cut-glass tumbler. “I bought the floor below as well.”
“As much as I would have adored living underneath you, it wasn’t to be.”
Sebastian hands me a glass of Scotch on the rocks. Either he has forgotten I don’t drink Scotch or he’s messing with me. I don’t react and just put the glass on the table.
“Your loss.” He sips from his drink and then leans back into the white leather sofa.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. I glance at him from the corner of my eye. Sebastian is two years younger than me and sometimes, if I look at him from the right angle, I can still see a shadow of the little Sebastian I remember.
“Why did you invite me here?” I ask when I can no longer bear the silence.
“You’re my sister. You lived abroad for ten years. Maybe I feel we should spend some time together.” He doesn’t look at me when he speaks.
“In contemplative silence?”
“You can speak if you want to.” He reaches inside his blazer and produces a small translucent bag with white powder inside.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’re not going to do your drugs in front of me,
Seb. Fuck that. I won’t have it.”
“What? Now you’re not even drinking anymore?” He eyes my untouched glass of Scotch. “You’ve come back having fully processed all the Lennox traumas and you don’t need an easy escape anymore? Because you’re going to be CEO and that makes you better than me?”
“What are you even talking about?”
Sebastian throws the little bag onto the table. I’m no expert, but it looks like coke. How very nineties.
“You left. You just fucked off, Ali. To someplace where you didn’t have to deal with my or Dad’s grief.”
He’s going straight for the jugular. I have to give him kudos for that.
“It was my right to leave. I had my own grief to deal with.”
“Maybe, but you could have come back once in a while. Leah dying aged Dad beyond his years.”
“Beyond his years? He’s eighty-three. He’s old. He was old when she died and he’s ten years older now. That’s how it goes.”
“It’s all fucked, anyway. It doesn’t matter.” He eyes the baggie of coke.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay. Leah and I…” I stop explaining myself. Seb knows. He’s my brother, he should know. Then again, there appear to be plenty of things I don’t know about him. Like my leaving fucking him up as well. Next he’ll tell me I’m responsible for his coke habit.
Because it’s all I can think of to do, I reach for the glass of Scotch and pretend to take a sip. The mere scent of it is enough to make me queasy.
“Now you’re back, and all Dad can see is you,” he says.
“He asked me to return.”
“So? That doesn’t mean you had to come. Why did you?”
“Because… It was time.”
“It’s really bad timing for me.” He empties his glass and pulls a face as the liquor slides down his throat. “If I’d had another year, a few months even, to get my act together…”
“Dad doesn’t have another year. He should take it easy. He looks frail.”
“He’s Jeffrey fucking Lennox.” Sebastian shakes his head. “I always thought he’d live forever.”
