©2020 Danielle James.
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
ONE
What, and I can’t stress this enough, the entire fuck did I do to piss off the universe?
I came outside to my precious Audi getting hitched to a tow truck while some grungy asshole stood there watching for sport.
“Hey! That’s my car!” I shouted, rushing to the scene. My Stuart Weitzman heels were not built for running, and let’s be honest here, neither was I. I hauled my ass over there to the greasy gentleman in blue overalls though.
“It’s getting repossessed, sweetheart. You didn’t pay.”
“Um, okay? I’ll pay right now just don’t take my baby. Oh, you’re going to scratch the paint,” I pouted.
“You’ll pay whoever your car is financed through and then they’ll release your car and you come pay me.”
“This is bullshit!”
“Sign here.” He leaned forward, handing me a clipboard and a grimy pen that I was not putting my damn hands on. I turned my head to fend off the scent of old earring backs wafting from the man’s face and scrunched my nose up.
“No thanks.”
“Xari, what the hell is going on?” Thank god my big sister, Navy came out of the nail salon behind me. She was much better equipped to deal with shit like this.
I pressed my hand to my racing heart and shut my eyes for a moment to gather my thoughts. “This lovely hygiene-challenged man is towing my car.”
“You didn’t pay your car note? Are you serious?” She frowned.
“Serious as a heart attack, little lady.” The tow drunk driver smiled at Navy baring one mustard yellow tooth against a row of canary yellow teeth. What the hell did he do to that one tooth? I stared in awe before blinking and shaking the disgust from my face.
“Can you tell me where it’s being towed so I can pay the fee and we can get this taken care of?”
See? Navy was amazing. She knew how to act when I was clueless and ready to resort to either insults or tears.
I watched the driver hand her an oil-smudged business card that she tucked away in her bag before smiling at him. I spun to face her with a scowl pinching my face.
“You mean I have to watch my car get dragged away kicking and screaming?”
“The only thing that’s kicking and screaming is you, Xari and for the love of God, I wish you’d stop. This is your fault. Who doesn’t pay their car note?” Her top lip curled in disgust and my feathers ruffled in response. Heat pricked the tops of my ears. I cut my eyes at Navy and folded my arms.
“Mom and Dad are supposed to…”
“Mom and Dad cut you off, remember?”
“They say that every week and…”
“And this time they did it.” She pulled out the keys to her Benz and hit the unlock button. “You need a ride?” The question slipped out with a thread of laughter tied around it.
“Yes,” I huffed, tipping my nose in the air.
I couldn’t believe my mother and father cut me off. They’d been threatening me with it since I graduated from Julliard but I never expected them to follow through. I mean yes, I was a little irresponsible and I took things for granted but didn’t every child? I didn’t plan to live off their money forever, just until I secured a seat as a principal harpist.
Maybe I could convince them to let me off the hook.
“Xari, you have to get your shit together. We’re all tired of bailing you out of situations you put yourself in. I’m sure if you were doing what you were supposed to do, Mom and Dad would still be helping you out.”
“Spare me the lecture, please. I’m going to call them and grovel.”
“Or you could get a regular job like you said you would until you get a seat on an orchestra.” Navy’s hand flew up, irritation staining her words gray.
“I can’t find anything,” I shrugged. I pressed the phone to my ear and waited for my father to pick up. He was much easier to talk to than my mother. She was like Navy. She didn’t let me get away with shit. I had Daddy wrapped around my little finger though.
“Has your car been towed yet?” He asked the moment the call connected. I blinked a few times with my mouth open. No words came out.
He knew?
“Xari, you there?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m here. You knew my car got towed?”
“I knew it was about time. We haven’t made a payment and the bank doesn’t take that lightly.” My knee bounced up and down as Navy followed behind the tow truck with my car hitched to the flatbed.
“Why would you risk tanking your credit just to prove a point?” I whined.
“The car isn’t in my name. Good lord child, you didn’t even pay attention to who your car is registered to? You assumed that me and your mother put the car in our names?” His laugh was a gut punch.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“No. We thought you’d have enough sense to hold up your end of the bargain which was what?” He paused and waited for my answer making me feel like a toddler repeating the rules.
“To get a job until I got a seat as principal harpist.” My lips were heavy and poking out.
“You haven’t done that, sweetheart. You know I’ll always go to bat for you but you’re in the real world. You have been for six months now. You graduated and you’ve been running amok ever since. Life is not about shopping sprees and vacations, Xari. You were supposed to find a sustainable job, get a credit card in your name, build credit on your own, and start taking over payments for rent and your car note.”
Fuck. Rent.
“Wait…Daddy, if you guys let the car get repossessed, what about my apartment?” I stayed in a beautiful studio apartment in a neighborhood that boasted celebrity and politician neighbors. Living in Maryland meant I was D.C. adjacent. I got to see all the fine senators and congressmen. I did not want to give that up because my parents had something to prove.
“Have you paid the rent, Xari?” He asked quietly.
“No…” I never saw the rent. I assumed it came out of my parents’ account automatically every month.
“Have you gotten any eviction notices?” He quizzed. He was far too calm for this conversation. My heart was about to pop from uncertainty.
“I don’t think so. I haven’t checked the mail. Do they send stuff like that in the mail?”
“God, Xari. We did you such a disservice. No more. That stops now. Better late than never,” he huffed. “Go home. Check your mail. You need to know if you’re getting evicted.” The call ended and I sat there holding the phone in a daze. All the luxuries I’d been afforded blinked in my head like blaring red lights.
My phone.
My internet.
Netflix. Hulu. Amazon Prime.
Oh my god. My Neiman Marcus card.
“So, as usual, you have no idea what’s going on in your own life since it doesn’t revolve around music and shopping?”
“What if I get evicted, Navy? Can I live with you?” I stared at her with wide, hopeful eyes.
“Um, no.” She pulled onto a gated lot and parked on a gravel lot before getting out. “Come on, you’re going to learn how this goes. Pull up the bank information for whoev
er Mom and Dad make your payments through.” She looked at me before opening the door to the small, rundown building and sighed. “Oh my god, you have no idea what I’m talking about do you?”
“I know what you’re talking about. I’m not stupid. I just don’t know the login information. I’ve never had to put it in.” I felt my cheeks turn red under Navy’s judgmental gaze. I’d never hated myself so much for not paying attention to simple adult details that most people paid attention to daily.
“Okay, call Dad back and get the information.” For the next twenty minutes, I felt like a complete ass having to be walked through the process of making a payment online then having to pay the tow company their fee once the payment was processed. It was slow, torturous, and it made me never want to ignore a car payment again.
“Thanks, Navy for having my back.” I hugged my sister before she got into her car, which was current on all payments.
“Uh-huh. I love you, Xari but I expect you to pay me back. I just came up off twelve-hundred dollars between your late payment and the towing fees.”
“How am I supposed to pay you back? How am I supposed to pay this shit next month?” My heart was racing again.
“Looks like you have a lot of growing up to do in a little bit of time, sis.” She gave me a polite smile before getting in her car and driving off.
…
Turns out, I’d missed so many weeks collecting mail from my mailbox that they returned it all to the post office and I had to go pick it up before they closed for the night. I walked into my apartment with an armful of mail. I was quickly starting to regret every decision I’d ever made when it came to ignoring responsibilities.
I never needed to be responsible before though. Navy or my parents were always there to take care of things. All I had to do was get good grades and excel at playing the harp, which I did. I got a scholarship to Julliard when I was fifteen. I started as a freshman when I was only sixteen and graduated last year at twenty.
Was it wrong that I wanted to celebrate a little bit? Whenever I worked hard, my parents let me play harder. Because of that, I was lavished with the finer things in life and maybe…maybe I got a little spoiled. That didn’t mean I should be abruptly cut off like some side baby though.
I fell over on my slate gray leather sofa and kicked off my heels frowning at the haze of dust coating them.
Stupid fucking gravel parking lot.
I hadn’t been home for ten minutes and I was already tired of sorting through mail and figuring out what the fuck everything was. Didn’t bills get paid online now? Why did I have so much paper to go through?
I called Navy and whined into the phone. “Don’t they tape pink eviction notices to your door if they’re going to kick you out?” I asked.
“You live at The Alpine, Xari. They’d never tape anything to your door. They should have sent you a notice in the mail if you’re going to be evicted or you can check your app.”
“Oh shit, they tell you stuff like that in the app?” I put her on speakerphone and opened the app for my apartment building.
“Yes, look in your messages tab.”
“Have you lived here before?” I asked, amazed that she knew all this.
“No, but I researched the complex before you moved in and I saw they had an app that told you important billing information, building notifications, and social gatherings.”
“I knew about the social gatherings,” I said proudly.
“I bet you did, Xari.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “They do have an overdue notice here.” Just as I skimmed over it on the app, I plucked an envelope from the mile-high stack of crap on the coffee table. It was bright pink and even I knew that wasn’t good.
“So how long before you get kicked out?”
“Um…” I skimmed the lines of text and my eyes widened. “The end of the month.” I dropped the letter and swallowed a hot and sticky lump in my throat. “Let me call you back, Navy.” Something wasn’t right. How the hell could all this pile up in just a month? I had to call my mother. I didn’t want to sit through her lectures but at this point, maybe I needed to.
“I figured you’d be calling soon after your father told me about the car getting repossessed. Let me guess, Navy bailed you out.”
“Of course she did. She didn’t want to see me fall flat on my face, Mom.” My voice was ripe with indignation.
“Watch your tone, little girl. I’ve been taking care of you and funding your carefree lifestyle for years.”
“I wonder how I got that lifestyle.” I folded my arms tightly across my chest and pressed the phone to my ear with my shoulder.
“Oh, you got it honestly. However, we had an agreement once you accepted that scholarship. We sat down and talked about it. This wasn’t something we did in passing.”
I felt the lecture coming and I rubbed my temples, bracing for impact.
“We sat down over the course of weeks and mapped out this plan. You were supposed to go to school and get good grades, which you did. Once you graduated, you were to apply for a seat in the orchestra of your choice. If principal wasn’t available, you were supposed to find a job that would support you until the seat opened up. You had three months, Xari.” Annoyance creased her voice turning it sharp.
“If you at least tried to find a job, your father and I would have continued to support you but you didn’t. In three months, you went to Aruba and racked up thousands of dollars of charges in clothes and shoes.” Memories of Aruba’s sweet humid air and lush beaches flashed against my mindscape. “You ordered food every night, you stocked your bar every weekend, and you had several spa retreats.”
I cringed hearing everything laid out. Was I that spoiled?
“See, when you say it like that it sounds bad but I was just celebrating being done with school.”
“That’s not what you were supposed to be doing though. We offered to help you find a job but you turned us down time and time again.”
I heard myself telling my parents to back off and let me find a job on my own. Again…cringe.
“Wait…wait you cut me off three months ago?!” My words squeaked out louder than I expected.
“That was the deal. Three months and you didn’t even try to find a job. You’re only noticing now because things are finally catching up with you.”
“Wow, you could have told me you were going to cut me off. I’ve seen you countless times in the past three months.”
“Yup, and you never once asked what the state of finances was. Maybe it’s abrupt, Xari but you needed it. Me and your father have always coddled you because you were so gifted. This will teach you to pay attention and to honor the agreements you make…especially with your parents.”
“Mom, where am I supposed to live? I have until the end of this month to come up with the rent and it’s…” I looked down at the letter from the rental office and gagged on the price. “Nine thousand dollars.”
“Wow. That’s a lot, baby. You know how to sit down and budget though. We’ve shown you.”
“Yeah but I’ve never had to actually…do it.”
“No time like the present. Listen, I have to go. Me and your father are having dinner at our favorite restaurant.”
“The one with the cream puffs and blackberry tea?” I asked, pouting.
“That’s the one.”
“Can I have an order of cream puffs?”
“Do you have cream puff money, Xari?” I looked at the phone like I was speaking to a stranger. Who was this woman?
“No, Mom. I can’t even afford to live in this apartment. Oh my god, why did y’all let me rent this place? It’s so expensive. How was I ever supposed to afford it?”
“Your father mentioned that to you but you told him you’d find a way or did you forget about that?”
“Okay, thanks for rubbing that in my face. Have fun at dinner.”
“Thanks, sweetie.”
She really hung up. Just like that.
Everything cra
shed down around my ears and I felt helpless. It wasn’t like all of this hadn’t been staring me in the face ever since I was offered the Julliard scholarship though.
Even though I was fifteen at the time, Mom and Dad sat down and told me by the time I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I’d be a grown woman and they’d have higher expectations even though I was still their little girl.
I should have taken their warnings seriously. Navy told me to look for a solid job while I was still in school but I brushed her off. Evidently, I’d brushed everyone off that ever made even a lick of damn sense.
I was living high off my accomplishments in school though. Nobody did what I’d done at such a young age. I played the French horn, the piano, the violin, and a multitude of other instruments but the harp was my true love. I’d been on so many talk shows and morning news spots that I’d lost count. I was the epitome of a child prodigy. I was used to being fawned over.
Having the rug snatched from under me was foreign. It made me feel ordinary and basic. It made me feel like…Navy.
Now, don’t get me wrong…my big sister is kick-ass but she had to fight tooth and nail for everything she got. Nothing came easy to her and when we were little, she used to resent the fuck out of me for just…knowing things.
Navy was dyslexic in school and by the time Mom and Dad realized it, she’d already started to force herself to work twice as hard as everyone else because she thought she just didn’t understand things. She’d sit up for hours reading a book over and over when I could just flip through it once and practically memorize.
She had to stand by while I got all sorts of offers based on my reputation alone while she had to work her ass off to even get an invite. I understood why I got under her skin. That didn’t stop me from looking up to her though. She was still my big sister. I admired how hard she fought for everything.
Now, being thrust into the real world as Dad called it, I felt like I’d have to work twice as hard to be where Navy seemed to effortlessly be in life. For the first time, I was the one who didn’t get it. Sonatas and concertos were walks in the park for me but bills and budgets? They were foreign and dangerous. I wanted no parts of them.
Whiskey and Regret Page 1
