Benkinersophobia: A Potterhead?
Durga: God, your lack of knowledge of pop culture references is horrifying. You could always change your username. Perhaps ‘Underwhelming’ would be more accurate.
Benkinersophobia: Underwhelming. I’ve never heard that complaint before, but don’t trust the Yelp reviews. You’re welcome to try for yourself.
My lips parted and my cheeks flushed before I reminded myself I didn’t even know what he looked like. I typed out a response, deleted it, typed out another, deleted, then settled on one word.
Durga: Rules.
Sweat lined my palms as I remembered the gift he’d sent me—a vibrator I kept tucked under the corner of my mattress. He’d found a way around the Eastridge Fund’s anonymity rules by sending it to me through a gift list service that made recipient addresses anonymous. As if we needed a middleman to broker my nightly pleasure.
Benkinersophobia: Fuck the rules. And no, I’ve never considered changing the name. Change implies regret, and I do not regret.
Durga: Ever?
Benkinersophobia: No.
Durga: I call bullshit.
Reed groaned out. “Emery, are you even listening to me?”
Oops. How long had I been ignoring Reed?
Remorse had my fingers twitching. Reed didn’t know about Ben. No one did. That was the point. Hell, it was the single rule the Eastridge Fund swore by. Anonymity. That meant no meetings and no discussing identifying details.
I placed Reed on speaker again, tossed my old smartphone on my raggedy mattress, and massaged the back of my neck. “Yes. Sorry. I spaced out.”
“You’ve been doing that a lot.”
His evident frustration settled in my chest, the guilt nothing new to me. Reed and I had made a pact to attend Duke together. Instead, I’d left for Clifton University in Alabama without telling him.
The people of Eastridge hated my family—and me by default. The same people that had followed Reed to Duke. I’d needed to get out of North Carolina. As far away from the Prescott brothers, The Winthrop Scandal, and Eastridge as my wallet would take me.
Four years ago, that would have been far.
Then Dad became the subject of a very public F.B.I.-S.E.C. joint investigation for embezzlement and stock tampering, and the textiles business he owned—the same one that provided jobs for almost everyone in town—went out of business.
Dad still had money—a lot of it—and so did Mother, but I wanted nothing to do with the dirty money that, as far as I was concerned, had become blood money as soon as Reed’s dad and Angus Bedford had died.
“Who calls someone to read their emails? I’m not your assistant,” Reed complained.
It was almost odd how we pretended everything was normal, that my dad’s actions hadn’t led to his dad’s death, even if indirectly. I knew Dad hadn’t forced Hank’s heart to give out… just like I knew it never would have happened if he hadn’t been so stressed about losing his life’s savings and had to work three jobs to make it—and Reed’s college tuition—back.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I bit my lip and let my apology linger, because as always, I meant it as more than what I was supposed to be apologizing for. I’m sorry I’m too chicken shit to read my own emails. I’m sorry I screwed your brother. I’m sorry about your dad. “But I literally can’t bring myself to read the email.”
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Each click-clack of his keyboard sent my anxiety skyrocketing.
“Okay.” He let out a heavy breath. “Headline: Emery, prepare for your successful repayment.”
Next door, my neighbor’s chihuahua barked as if he could sense my anxiety. I heard my neighbor yelling at the puppy through the thin walls, but he barked louder. My spirit animal was a three-month-old chihuahua who weighed one pound and three ounces and responded to the name Muchacha.
(Muchacha was not, in fact, a young woman but a male dog with a very real penis I’d witnessed him licking on occasion.)
I switched my phone off speaker and drew it to my ears.
“I know what the headline says,” I snapped after Muchacha finally stopped barking. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Here’s something people often say about being poor but you never fully understand until it happens to you: being poor is stressful.
Unpaid bills always found a way into your mind, and when you stood in front of a grocery store cashier, holding up the line as she read out a number you were a few bucks short of, the desire for the ground to open up and swallow you whole became a permanent fixture of your life.
In reality, I knew what the email would say. I’d graduated a semester early, and my six-month student loan grace period would end soon. I needed a job. Preferably one away from home, not that anyone in the state would give me one.
The Winthrop name was radioactive in North Carolina. For good reason. Too many lives had been lost, including—I reminded myself for the millionth time—Reed’s dad.
“You good, Em?”
I could never thank Reed enough for his patience, especially when I got Hulk-like, which was often lately.
“Yeah. Continue, please?” I toyed with my hair, which I’d let grow back to its natural roots. For starters, I had no money for highlights and hair dye. Also, I’d never thought I looked good as a blonde carbon copy of Mother.
“Once your loans leave the grace status, your Monthly Payment begins. Blah. Blah. Blah.” I waited for him to finish reading. “Basically, your loan payments start in about two weeks.”
“Shit.”
I cursed myself for getting a degree in design when the present market for clothing designers in the South was practically non-existent and for not accepting the minimum-wage job I’d been offered last week. In my defense, at those rates, I might as well work for Daffy Dee’s Diner as a waitress on rollerblades, which was my current hustle.
“You could work for Nash,” Reed suggested, but I could gather how much he hated the idea.
I didn’t understand what had happened between them. I didn’t feel like it was my place to ask either. No matter how curious I was. A part of me always wondered if it had to do with me, but no way.
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
Because four years later, I’m still mortified.
I hadn’t talked to Nash Prescott since that night in Reed’s bedroom. Not that we’d talked much before that. He was always Reed Prescott’s older brother to me. Unattainable. Forbidden. Something I’d never even considered.
Until he had given me the best sex I’d ever had, and I still revisited that night in my head when the Alabama nights got too cold and I had nothing but fantasies to keep me warm. One night, when Ben had sent a slew of dirty messages my way, I’d come to the image of Nash over me.
I shook my head and picked at the cheap threads of my swap meet sheets. “Because he’s your brother, and that’s weird. Plus, you hate him.”