by Imani King
She sneered at me over the rim of her glass. “Well, well… look who’s taken an interest in current affairs all of a sudden.”
My mother’s glare was venomous; had she been a snake, I would have been struck dead right over my empty plate.
“I’ve taken quite an interest in how you’ve turned my father’s business empire into a complete circus.” I took a long sip from my own glass of wine, my eyes never leaving my mother’s. “I can only imagine dear old Dad rolling in his grave after what you’ve done to his baby.”
“Your father,” she snarled, and I could have sworn she was about to spit at the very mention of him, “didn’t know two wits about running a business, let alone how to maximize his profits—that was always my area of expertise. But your father never liked my ideas, always going on and on about his moral compass.”
“Dad had standards,” I shot back at her, trying to maintain my decorum in front of my new bride, who increasingly looked as if she might sprint straight through the floor-to-ceiling windows and make a break for the nearest taxi at any second. “Dad actually had a soul.”
My mother waved her hand. “You father was a bleeding heart, Dorian. A fool who loved his hopeless causes.”
“He was your husband,” Gigi piped up, her brow creased. “Doesn’t that matter at all?”
“He was a means to an end,” she snorted, shooting a glare over at Gigi, “Just like you are.”
Okay. She could talk to me however she pleased. That was our relationship. But Gigi? That made my blood boil. “Mother!”
My mother swept her arm so wide and so quick I was sure she was going to take out the rest of our glasses on the table. “You don’t think I see what this is, Dorian? A way to weasel out of your grandfather’s dying wishes? This isn’t a marriage, it’s a business deal—just like mine and your father’s! And it’ll turn out just the way ours did… with the two of you at one another’s throats until the other one files papers or dies trying.”
“And what if it is a business deal?” I shot back at her, my fists clenched beneath the table. “So what? What do you have to lose from it?”
“My good name, Dorian! My reputation, that’s what!”
“Which is worth what, exactly?”
“More than you’ll ever understand, son.”
“Please, let’s not have this discussion here,” Gigi said, trying to defuse the situation and stop my mother from causing a scene.
Mother laughed. “Oh, your little ghetto-bunny has come to be the voice of reason, has she?”
“What did you just call me?” Gigi asked, her eyes wide, incredulity scrawled across her face.
“Would you like me to use something more direct? How about—”
“Enough!” I hissed, reaching across the table and seizing my mother by her bony wrist. “You won’t dare use that word. Not to her. Jesus Christ, not to anyone. Show some damn decorum.”
Something came over my mother’s expression, a shadow of anger that passed in a second, giving way to placidity. That calm look scared me more than the rage ever had.
“You’re right, Dorian,” she said, her voice one of the utmost civility. “How rude of me. Where did my manners go?”
“Dorian…” Gigi said, her voice filled with anger.
“It’s all right, Gigi,” I told her, though I wasn’t certain it was.
“Gigi,” my mother mused. “How quaint. You have a nickname.”
I growled a warning. “Watch yourself, Mother.”
“Oh, Dorian, don’t pretend you don’t see how funny this all is. I mean, you must have known just how much of an embarrassment that girl would be to our family if this marriage continues, don’t you?”
“An embarrassment?” Gigi asked, narrowing her eyes. “What is she talking about?”
Mother turned to her then, a little smile working at the edges of her thin, pale lips. “You can’t really expect to be welcome in our circles, can you dear? I mean, really, a girl like you would never fit in! You’d be a laughingstock.”
Anger sped into me like a blade twisting in my guts. “This girl went to Harvard. Graduated from Harvard on her own dime. She’s intelligent, and she’ll fit in just fine. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mother.”
“Don’t I? Your escapades since college were all well and good—typical for young men from our cut of society to have their reckless years, sowing their wild oats and all that. You’ve had your wild parties and strange women. I mean, even your father had a taste for the more exotic fare.”
I heard Gigi make a sound in her throat, a mix of disgust and contempt that I wholeheartedly shared.
“But in the end,” Mother continued, “you can’t bring that into your real life. Once you’re a man, you need to learn who your prospects are, and not just picking some gutter-trash lawyer to be your wife. Affairs are one thing, but your wife is more than just some vows before a priest. It’s a strategic decision—one that is not made at the drop of a hat, least of all for something so silly as love.”
“And that’s all you and dad were, wasn’t it? A strategic movement? Like you were playing a game of chess?”
“Were? Dorian, I’ve never stopped playing. Every single thing I have done from the moment I met your father has been a game of chess between me and everyone else on this planet. And I’m very good at chess, son.”
“That’s all that ever really mattered to you? Dollars and cents? Strategic positioning of your resources to get you the most profit?”
“It’s how our people see the world, Dorian. We are the upper class, the true nobility of the modern age. You can’t expect to survive with this anchor dragging you down, can you?”
“You’re a real piece of shit,” Gigi whispered, her voice trembling. I reached over and took her hand, glaring at my mother as she took another sip of her wine.
“But I’m a rich piece of shit, darling.”
“That’s it—” Gigi growled, rising up suddenly from her seat.
As much as it pained me to do it, I had to stop her. “Gigi, no. This is what she wants.”
Sure enough, my mother had a smile on her face, her eyes locked onto Gigi’s triumphantly, begging for her to go any further. I couldn’t believe how my mother would really try to make someone assault her just to prove a point.
“Careful, Georgia. A temper like that must run deep—wouldn’t want it to get you into trouble.”
“You bitch,” Gigi hissed, her nostrils flared in anger. I gently tugged at her shoulder, encouraging her to take her seat again. I glanced around, making sure no one was looking our way. I’d been lucky enough to get us a table farther removed from most of the other diners—that was the magic that a few hundred strategically placed dollars can buy you, I suppose.
“Harsh words, dear, I’m only being realistic. You’re a terrible move for my son, and I’ll make sure he knows it before this is all over.”
I shook my head and grabbed Georgia’s hand beneath the table, stroking her knuckles with my thumb. There was nothing I wanted more in all the world than to comfort her, except maybe to make my mom shut the fuck up. “You’re wrong about this,” I said angrily.
“I’m never wrong, Dorian. If this marriage is more than just words on paper, why don’t you prove it? Do you love this woman, Dorian?”
I hesitated as silence fell over the table, trying to come up with the right words to defuse the situation. I was about to answer when I felt the heat of Gigi’s glare. Where my mother was cold as ice, Gigi was like a furnace, a sun unto herself. And right now, she was burning me up with her rage.
“Fuck you both,” Gigi said, standing up and pushing her chair back. “I’m not going to sit here and take this shit! I might not have been born wealthy, but I’m not beneath either of you. I thought you might be different Dorian…”
Without another word, she picked up her purse and walked toward the door, nearly knocking over the maître d’ on her way out. Now, of course, the entire restaurant was abuzz with convers
ation, their eyes on Gigi as she headed out the door and down the street back toward the courthouse where our cars were parked.
“It won’t last, Dorian,” my mother said. Her smile was utterly insufferable, a grin that stretched from ear to ear and mockingly shouted wordlessly that she’d won this round. “This little charade of yours is going to crumble all around you, and there won’t be anyone to blame but yourself.”
“I’m done listening to you,” I said, standing up from the table to follow after Gigi.
“You’re going to come back, dear. You’ll learn that in the end, your mother was right all along—this marriage of yours is a mistake, they all are. Mine and your father’s included.”
I turned toward her one last time, my fists clenched so hard that I could swear blood was seeming from little crescent cuts in my palms.
“I’m nothing like you.”
I jogged up behind Gigi, her shoes in her hand as she made her way back toward the courthouse. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides as she walked, shoulders tight with her pent up anger over the shit show of a dinner.
“Go away, Dorian,” she said as I came up alongside her.
“Gigi, where’re you going?”
She snorted at me. “Home. Where else would I be going after that?”
“Do you know where home is?” I asked.
“Of course I do, I’ve lived there for—”
“Not your home,” I said, “our home.”
She stopped and turned on me. “You can’t be serious. You can’t actually think I’d ever consider a place with you home. Not after that fun little experience…”
I grabbed her hands before she could finish, enclosing them in my palms. “Gigi, I am an idiot, and I’m sorry about my mother. We have this… toxic relationship, and I’ve let it cloud my judgment for too many years.”
“I’ll say,” she muttered and looked away. I let go with one of my hands to turn her face back toward mine, staring deep into her eyes.
“I was an ass for letting her join us. I just thought maybe I could get her on our side… From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know how deeply, truly sorry I am.” I took a deep breath. “And I can understand if you don’t want to come home with me. But it is our home now, and per our contract…”
“I know,” she said, pulling away from me. “I get it. Just another part of the job.”
I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t. I wanted to explain that even if she had to come home for the sake of appearances, she didn’t have to talk to me for the rest of the night. Or forever, if she didn’t want to. I’d understand.
But I couldn’t expose myself like that. Not out here in front of all these people. So I put my arm around her and led her back toward the parking garage.
“Come on. You can follow me in your car and you can pick out where you want to sleep. I have no shortage of rooms.”
The drive over to Dorian’s penthouse gave me plenty of time to think over this crazy situation I’d gotten myself into. How had I actually thought that a scheme like this would work? Nobody was going to understand how I felt. Everyone was going to see this as a marriage for money. I looked like a first-rate gold-digger, but with none of the class, and Dorian couldn’t even muster up a response to the ‘do you love her’ question.
This was such a mistake, I thought, clutching the steering wheel as I followed Dorian down into the underground parking garage beneath his building. How could I let myself get talked into this backwards relationship? I feel like such an idiot.
My insides were tying themselves into knots as I parked beside Dorian’s BMW, cutting the engine so that only the sounds of my own breathing and heartbeat filled my ears. I closed my eyes, hands still clasping the wheel as I leaned forward. I tried so hard not to cry, to not let the feelings I’d held inside for so long come bursting out like a shaken-up soda can. I thought I was going to explode.
A tap-tap-tap resounded against the driver’s side window, jolting me from my silent breakdown and back into the horror of reality.
I looked up to see Dorian standing there, his eyebrows knitted together and marring his otherwise charming features. I tried to give him some kind of reassuring smile, but the only thing that I managed to offer was a pained grimace.
I sighed and opened my car door, stepping out into the cool air of the parking garage. I didn’t speak as I shut the door behind me, instead heading toward the elevator without affording Dorian another glance. I wasn’t sure whether I could handle looking at him after the things he’d said that night.
“Gigi,” he called after me, coming up alongside as I made it to the elevator.
“What?” I asked, pressing the knuckle of my forefinger against the “up” button a few times. I knew it wouldn’t help speed things along, but the act of forcing my will on something gave me some infinitesimal amount of release.
“Tonight was supposed to be different.”
I swallowed, trying to work past the lump in my throat, my eyes burning with held back tears. I wasn’t sure how, but his words just seemed to make me feel worse. Of course it was supposed to be different. You’re not supposed to get married to some rich guy to pay off your student loans, even if you do like him... You’re supposed to get married for love. True love.
“It’s not like I haven’t heard it before, Dorian,” I said, my voice strangled and tight. “I’m always someone’s embarrassment.”
I couldn’t hold it back any longer, closing my eyes as a stream of tears began to flow. I tried to breathe through it, to keep myself under control, but my feeble attempts at calm only turned into loud, ugly sobs.
“It’s always the same… I’m never the one that people love. I’m just the person who’s most convenient.”
The elevator opened and the two of us went inside. Dorian hit the button for the top floor as I tried to put as much distance between us as possible.
“That’s not true,” Dorian said, trying to move in to hold me. I pushed him away and he frowned deeper. “I don’t—”
“It’s the whole reason you chose me, Dorian!” I shouted, tears running down along the line of my jaw, dripping down onto my feet. “You had a problem, and I was on hand, ready to be used. You’ve never had to plan ahead in your entire life. This was never about anything more than money for you—an easy way for you to get your inheritance without having to actually put any effort into caring about someone. And I went along with it, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Because all my life I’ve been beaten down for doing the right thing. I just wanted to take one little shortcut for a change, and this is what I get for it.”
“That isn’t fair,” Dorian said, his own voice tightening. “No matter how this started, I do have feelings for you, Gigi. I trust you, and every time I see you, my heart beats a little faster. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
“Or you just don’t want your little marriage plan to fall apart. Maybe you mother’s right, Dorian,” I mumbled. “Maybe this won’t work.”
Part of me wanted to accept that and move on. But another, stronger part of me wanted Dorian to object, to tell me I was wrong. To fight for me like nobody else ever had. His silence only made the tears flow faster.
The elevator door opened onto a luxurious entryway, marble tile stretching out through a pair of double doors to my left into an equally opulent foyer. My heart stopped beating for a moment as I stepped out of the lift and into the gorgeous penthouse that I would be sharing with Dorian for the foreseeable future.
“Listen,” Dorian said, gently turning me toward him, taking advantage at my dumbstruck state at the sight of his home. “I get it. You have every right to be angry with me for it. But I mean it with every bit of my being when I tell you, Georgia Lynn Devereaux, that you are in no way an embarrassment to my family—to anyone. Least of all to me. Maybe it’s fate that put us together, maybe it’s just dumb luck, but I feel something and I know you feel it too. There are dozens of women who wo
uld stab each other in the back to take your place, but I didn’t want them. I wanted something real. I don’t know if we will work. All I’m asking for is the chance to find out.”
I took a few deep breaths, looking up into Dorian’s eyes as he spoke. It felt good to finally hear those words after so many years of doubting my own importance and worth. I felt a weight lift off of my chest as I forced a smile onto my lips.
“But what are we going to do about your mother?” I asked, wiping at another stray tear. “She’s not going to just sit back and take this.”
“I was hoping she wouldn’t realize what I’d done until we had a chance to spend some time together… Look, we’ll deal with her when the time comes,” Dorian said, rubbing my arms. “You just have to remember that the only reason that she’s doing all of this is because she feels threatened by you—by us.”
