Gilded Lily

by Hart, Staci

  I could still feel the scrape of his calluses against the unworked flesh of my palm when we shook hands. Mine had disappeared into his, making me feel dainty, delicate, which was a feat of skill. I was no pixie, and my hands were proof—my fingers were slender and longer than my palm. Witch hands, Ivy called them, elegant and with the potential to wreak ruin or riches, depending on my mood. Which, of late, had been less than pleasant.

  A pang of guilt niggled at me for giving Kash Bennet such a hard time. It was just the pressure of my job. Now, I loved my job—warts and all, as it was its own form of witch—but until I got a promotion, I worried I’d be impossible to endure.

  We’d just landed the wedding of the decade. One of the Felix Femmes had met former-actor-turned-emo-rockstar in Aruba a month ago, and they were getting married. In eight weeks. Which meant I had a lot to do and not enough time to do it.

  The Felix sisters were a quartet of socialites starring on a show titled Felix Femmes, a reality show documenting the daily lives of the infamous sisters. Their parents were one of the it couples from the nineties—Romanian supermodel Sorina Felix and her husband Adrien, a French socialite and retired playboy—and as such, the girls had been born with impeccable bone structure and an obscene wealth that afforded them a charmed life. And by charmed, I meant they were spoiled, entitled, and an absolute shitshow.

  Alexandra and Sofia, the eldest, had been married and divorced half a dozen times between the two of them. Angelika was the third—and our client. And Natasha, the youngest, was every bit the party girl, gracing every tabloid in America with her beautiful face and-or beautiful vagina, depending on her outfit of choice. They were inhumanly gorgeous, with hard cheekbones and full lips and sweeping blonde hair, none of which were real. They had created fashion and makeup lines, perfumes and designer handbags. In essence, they were a household name of astronomic and notorious status and the clients that would likely test the limits of what I was willing to endure for my job.

  For instance, at their engagement party last week, Alexandra had given a tipsy, passive-aggressive speech, halted by a glass of champagne in the face—courtesy of Angelika. Natasha, drunk, pelted them with pistachios while Sofia tried to wrestle them apart, resulting in a broken heel.

  When she’d fallen, she’d taken Angelika’s strapless dress with her.

  Like I said, I had my work cut out for me, and until this wedding was over, I was likely going to be a nightmare, one fueled by my boss’s breath on my neck as she waited to push me in the fire to keep herself warm.

  Speak of the devil …

  One of my texts was from Addison Lane, the senior coordinator in charge of ruining my life.

  Johanna Berkshire was just in here with her lawyer. I told them I was handling it, so I hope for your sake that you fixed the flower issue.

  A sharp inhale and flex of my jaw accompanied the tap of my fingers. It’s handled.

  Of course Addison had and would continue to take credit. This was the crux of our relationship: I did all the dirty work—particularly dirty today—and she got all the kudos. I also got blamed for everything that went wrong whether I’d done it or not.

  God forbid Addison actually owned up to a mistake. She was so far up our boss Caroline Archer’s asshole, she’d taken a bag of Doritos up there with her and made a nest, and the last thing she would ever do would be to tarnish her perfect reputation, especially with our high-powered boss. Addison lied easily, manipulated without thought, and held the keys to my career in her evil, ambitious talons.

  So, I took all the garbage she dumped on me with a smile and an internal promise to someday ruin her. Someday, we’d be equals. Or—if I played my cards right—I’d be her boss. I smiled at the thought of her retrieving my dry cleaning and picking up coffees that I could send back for lack of proper foam. She could take the fall for my screwups. It’d be so nice to be infallible.

  But as satisfying as that might be, I was all talk. I defaulted to honesty and fairness to the point of personal injury—mine or others, depending. But the impulse sometimes made it hard to get things done.

  Never was a fan of the easy way.

  With a glance down at my screen, I cleared out the rest of my notifications and sighed, looking out the window as the city slid past.

  Honestly, I had everything I wanted. I had the perfect job planning weddings for the biggest firm in Manhattan. I had the perfect apartment in the Flatiron District on the perfect block with the perfect coffee shop downstairs. I had the most perfect boyfriend—who would propose any day now, I was sure. We’d been saving to buy our own perfect home together. And once we moved in, I’d have the perfect wedding to kick off the perfect life.

  As I stepped out of the cab and into my building, that thought had me forgetting all about my spill into the flower bed or my filthy pants or my stupid boss or the myriad brides hell-bent on making my job as difficult as possible. Because I was on the threshold of all the beautiful and wonderful things. All I had to do was walk through the metaphorical door.

  I slipped my key in my very real door and opened it, touched by the familiar scent of home and the sound of my perfect boyfriend fucking Natasha Felix against the wall of our entryway.

  I didn’t feel my fingers let go of the keys, nor did I hear them hit the ground. I was too busy listening to the huffing and puffing and grunting as Brock drilled her into the wall, pants puddled at his ankles, shirttail covering most of his ass as he thrust. It was a small ass, I noted distantly, smaller than I’d realized. That ass was foreign to me, as were the noises he made and the sight of his hands on the twenty-year-old reality star’s waist.

  Natasha opened her doe eyes and smiled at me like a porn star, twisting her fingers in his hair.

  And yet, I felt no pain. I felt a number of things, like a sad sort of pity for the pathetic visage of the man I’d thought I loved pumping her like a Chihuahua on a throw pillow. I felt a raw fury, mostly at the audacity that he’d deceived me, accompanied by a rush of shame at my stupidity for placing my trust so carelessly.

  But there was no pain, a realization that dawned on me like sunrise over a mountain peak. In fact, under all that fury, I noted the dim sense of relief that I’d moved out of the way in time to miss getting hit by that particular train.

  I hung on to that half-truth with the same tenacity with which I grasped a candlestick and hurled it at the wall, and when I walked through the door once more, it was with a slam that shook the stars.

  3

  Bawdy by Nature

  KASH

  The shower cut off with a squeak. Steam had gathered in tufts and whorls at the ceiling, diffusing the light and fogging the mirror as the dirt from the day, muddying the banks of streaming water, slipped toward the drain in cloudy eddies.

  My mother would insist that her filthy Bennet boys were the reason she required a maid service three times a week, but we all knew a cover-up when we saw one. Truth was, Mrs. Bennet was a terrible housekeeper, as evidenced by the piles of orphaned things lining the walls as I exited the bathroom in a towel, propelled by a pulse of steam. Piles of books leaned into each other between the occasional cardboard box filled with more things with no home. Glancing into one might reveal a whisk, several lost socks, a stapler, loose photographs, a pair of shears, floral wire, fabric scraps. Mom needed places to stow things like a magpie, lost things, extra things. Things without status but not unimportant enough to throw away. She always held hope she’d find that extra sock or that she’d remember to return the whisk to the kitchen, not knowing why she’d brought it up two flights of stairs in the first place.

  The Bennet home—a five-thousand-square-foot Victorian brownstone—had been in our family for a hundred and eighty years, passed down through generations of women. It occupied the space next to and above the flower shop, purchased along with four properties on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, behind which my predecessors had built our greenhouse.

  We were a novelty in the Village, the only green
house of its kind and size in Manhattan. It had once brought us fame and fortune. My grandmother had sold the properties adjacent to ours in the seventies, which had previously been rented out to fund the expansion of Longbourne to include a handful of shops throughout the city. But under Mom’s rule came the internet boom, the introduction of 1-800-ROSES4U, and the rise of Bower Bouquets, our rival flower shop. The Bowers bought into the internet bouquet business, and as they flourished, we withered, retreating slowly until only our flagship remained.

  We only stayed afloat because Longbourne was a staple in our community, supplementing our income selling wholesale flowers to local shops. None of my siblings knew how bad it was, only me. I was here in the trenches—literally—and knew. Or suspected at least. It coincided with the progression of Mom’s rheumatoid arthritis and the gradual loss of her hands, her duties sliding on a slow scale into Tess’s lap. It was easy to ignore, as I spent my days in the greenhouse with Dad, avoiding the shop. But my brother Marcus figured it out when the deposits into our trusts dwindled. And when he really looked, he found the shop was in ruin.

  So everyone came home to help save Longbourne, and at the lead was my little brother, Luke. He and Tess had given the shop the makeover to end all makeovers, and just like that, we were back on the map. Of course, that was just one step toward recovery—Marcus, the moneyman, assured us we’d be in debt for half a decade. But it was a start.

  Luke had seen to that. We were twins of the Irish variety—though we looked it too, harboring the trademark Bennet blue eyes and black hair—born in the same calendar year and in the same class in school. Our old room was a time capsule of our boyhood, complete with bunk beds and baseball posters. The desks were still topped with relics, like Luke’s Batman paperweight and a row of classic Hot Wheels I’d lined up next to my lamp. When Luke came home, we shared this room again—I’d moved into our sister Laney’s room when she left, and she reclaimed it on her return. But Luke had moved in with Tess, leaving me alone again.

  Of course, solitude never bothered me like it did Luke. He couldn’t stand to be alone. I could just as easily not see another human for a week as I could share bunk beds with Luke without committing homicide.

  I was pulling on my shirt when I heard the thunder of feet on the staircase and the word, “Dinner!” from Laney’s mouth, two syllables stretched infinitely as her voice faded away and up the final staircase.

  We all had our jobs around the house, and Laney’s was the town crier.

  I raked my hand through my damp hair to put it in place before exiting my room, making my way down the old, creaking staircase. Just before I reached the landing, I heard Laney coming and braced myself—a wise move. She jumped onto my back like a spider monkey, clamping my neck in a puny excuse for a sleeper hold.

  I hooked her legs and kept going. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

  “Meathead.”

  I trotted down the stairs with an exaggerated bounce, squeezing the giggles out of her with every thunk of my feet. I put her on the ground when we hit the main floor.

  “How’s the garden?” she asked.

  “I’m digging it.”

  A chuckle. “You’re going to make the best dad, you know that? You’ve already got a treasure trove of jokes on hand.”

  “I learned from the best,” I said as we turned for the dining room. “How’s social media going?”

  “Well, we just hit thirty thousand followers on Instagram, and considering we had no presence a few months ago, I’d say it’s going well. That article was the ticket, and Tess’s pictures are just too good. Really, she's made my job easy.”

  Like I said, we all had our jobs to do.

  Laney—Elaine, named after our grandmother—had come from a high paying, stable job in Dallas to run Longbourne’s social media. Jett, or Julius if you were itching to get popped in the nose, had been working the last few years managing a bookstore bar, Wasted Words, on the Upper West, but came home to help around the house, since Mom could no longer cook, her hands too gnarled to manage anything requiring fine motor skills. Marcus—who sat at the table across from Dad in a suit, scrolling his phone and watching the Dow, no doubt—was our independently wealthy financial genius, having abandoned his Wall Street job to day trade, then to manage the shop. Luke and Tess managed design and production in the shop.

  As for me, I worked in the greenhouse, as I always had. Because some things never changed, and I was one of them.

  I wandered into the kitchen behind Laney to find the rest of the brood—Jett at the stove, Mom at the breakfast table talking Tess’s ear off, Luke sitting on the counter, watching Tess with a goofy, lovesick smile on his face. Honestly, he took up the entire counter, the edge hitting him mid-thigh. He was a beast, the tallest of all of us, which was saying something. The Bennet boys were well over six feet of muscle, sharp jaws, and irreverent smiles—well, except for Marcus. His smiles were hard-won and reserved for only the most patient of women.

  I followed my nose to peer into the sizzling pan around Jett. “Smells good, Janie,” I snarked, flicking Mom’s ruffly pink apron tied around his neck, dotted with big red begonias.

  His elbow fired into my rib cage, knocking the wind out of me. “Been slaving over it all day, Kitty.”

  My hand clamped his shoulder as I caught my breath. “Don’t let me stop you,” I croaked, using the distraction to sneak a piece of chicken out of the pan, spinning away before he could grab me around the neck.

  “Hope you burn your mouth,” he shot.

  I’d never admit that the chicken was molten lava, covered in cheese that I swore was a trillion degrees and razed every tastebud in my mouth. Instead, I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, heading to the breakfast table.

  “I don’t care what Lila Parker says,” my mother started, nose in the air. “You all have done an exemplary job handling the demands she’s put on you. Really, to come in and complain about the shade of flower that she chose? Wedding planners are notoriously difficult, I’ll admit, but she takes the cake.”

  “The business is good,” Tess offered in Lila’s defense. “It’s the best kind of publicity for the shop, and there’s so much money in it, far more than we can make just on the storefront or deliveries.”

  Mom sighed. “Weddings and funerals—the bread and butter of any flower shop and work we haven’t seen much of in the last decade.”

  “It’s taken years for Ivy to convince Lila to use us for weddings, but she wouldn’t even entertain the idea until the article came out in Floral,” Tess said. “It probably doesn’t help that Ivy’s her sister. It blurs the professional boundaries normally in place, leading her to believe she can march into the greenhouse and bawl Kash out about the color spectrum.”

  I chuckled. “She can bawl me out all she wants. Won’t bother me.”

  Tess shook her head. “I don’t know how. If she talked to me like that, I’d talk right back.”

  “I’m sure you did before she trucked into the greenhouse,” I said.

  “I tried,” she answered with a tilted smile.

  “Let her get it out of her system. I’ll be the family dog.”

  Tess’s brow quirked. “The family dog?”

  “Yeah, you know, Dad has a bad day at work, comes home and yells at Mom for burning dinner. Mom yells at the kid for spilling milk. Kid kicks the family dog.”

  She frowned. “That’s so sad.”

  Another soft laugh. “Oh, it’s not so bad … I’ve got nothing to complain about. Sounds like Lila’s getting it handed down to her and she’s gotta vent it off. It’s not really about us. It’s about her.” I shrugged again.

  Tess shook her head. “You’re so laid back, you’re practically horizontal.”

  “It’s genetic. You’ve met my father, right?”

  The room laughed.

  “You do your fair share of fighting, Kassius,” Mom said, turning to Tess. “Don’t let him fool you. I’ve broken up too many fights to harbor any illusi
ons about who’s starting them.” She gave me a pointed look.

  “Luke starts them. I’m the one who finishes them,” I noted.

  “Because you cheat,” Luke added.

  “Cheat or outmaneuver?” I asked.

  “Cheat,” Luke and Jett said at the same time.

  “Kassius, how was your date with Verdant Osborne?” Mom asked eagerly. “You’re the only one who entertains my matchmaking with enthusiasm. Which is why you’re my favorite,” she said archly, glancing at my brothers.

  Luke and I shared a meaningful look. Mom had a knack for matching me with the easiest of lays.

  “We went to dinner and a movie,” I said, not mentioning the fact that I couldn’t tell you a single thing that’d happened in the show. We’d spent a hundred and nineteen minutes finding various ways to get each other off in the back row of the theater, fully clothed. “It was educational,” I added.

  “Well, she does have her PhD from Columbia. I’m sure she has a thing or two to teach you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Luke coughed to cover his laughter. Jett just shook his head at the cheesy chicken. Tess rolled her eyes.

  Mom, however, beamed. “She’s such a nice girl. Her mother was just telling me at garden club about how she works weekends, volunteering at the library. Isn’t that lovely?”

  “Lovely,” I echoed, nodding.

  Verdant was nice, well-read, and educated, just as my mother had said, but neither of us had any interest in another date. She was the kind of girl who was in the market for a doctor or lawyer, not dirty gardeners their rich moms found for them at garden club.