“Bullshit.” We all turned to Justin, who had his head cocked as he studied Sebastian. “You’re forfeiting.”
“Do you see her by my side?” Sebastian asked.
“No, but you’re a shit liar with one dead giveaway that never fails. And don’t ask me what it is. I’m not stupid enough to tell you. Give me your phone.” Justin held out his palm to Sebastian while glancing at me. “Sorry, George, but like you said, a bet’s a bet.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Sebastian passed over his cell. “She’s not in there, dude.”
“What was her name?” Justin asked.
Justin thought Sebastian had gotten Isabella’s number and might still have this. I bit my bottom lip, then released it as soon as Sebastian glanced at my mouth. “Her name was Isabella,” I said.
Justin went through Sebastian’s contacts. “Hmm. Don’t see her.”
“Then that settles it,” Sebastian said. “Georgina wins this round.”
I sent up a quick prayer that this was the final round. I wasn’t sure I could handle another go at this.
“Wait a sec,” Justin said and scrolled the opposite direction.
“Justin,” Sebastian warned, finally looking away from me. “Leave it alone.”
“A-ha.” Justin held up the screen. “Cantina Santino Isabella,” he read off the screen. “It was under ‘C’.”
Sebastian rubbed his brow, his eyes on me. “Ah, yeah. But that was from earlier, not right now—she gave me her number before Georgina blew up my game.”
“Wow,” I said. “You work fast.”
“You’re not so slow yourself.” He tipped his head back for a sip of beer, glancing at me. “I always get the number right away. As you can see, Justin has burned me in the past.”
Justin side-eyed Sebastian before checking the notebook. “Sebastian failed. Judge rules—Georgina wins.”
Garth put his hands on my shoulders from behind and squeezed. “Nice work, boss,” he said. “You bested a pro.”
“Next drink’s on me, Keller,” Albert added.
I’d bested the best. Who would’ve thought? Happy hour was a success. I’d not only survived it but had come out on top. I’d been correct in assuming I’d make more headway with the guys tonight than I had all week at the office.
“No need, Al,” Sebastian said. “I’ll get Georgina’s next drink. After all, we never set any stakes.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. It seemed that the stakes had been set the first time I’d been introduced to Sebastian as my new co-boss. He wasn’t willing to make room for me in his office, much less in his world. It was me or him, and neither of us would go down without a fight.
9
SEBASTIAN
After a quick pick-up game of basketball with my sister’s husband in their driveway, Libby called us in for brunch. Sturdy trees with changing leaves flanked their Colonial-style home in Newton, a suburb of Boston. Aaron tossed the ball onto the lawn as we entered the house through the garage. My nephew sat on a stool at the kitchen island, picking lox off a bagel while Libby buzzed around him, setting out fruit, cream cheese, hummus, Bloody Mary mix, and more.
“How was the drive?” she asked when she saw me.
“Hardly any traffic,” I said, popping a grape as I sniffed the air. “Are you wearing perfume around your own house?”
“We just got back from synagogue. If I don’t dress to the nines, everybody thinks I’m the kids’ nanny.”
At five feet tall, my twin sister looked much younger than her actual thirty-three years. It was the same dark hair and complexion as mine that often got her mistaken for the help. Only our height and eye color set us apart—otherwise, Libby and I looked the same, talked the same, and saw most things the same way.
“It probably doesn’t help that you carry a jar of homemade salsa verde in your purse,” I said.
She checked a skillet on the stove. “When I was a kid,” she told her son, “your abuela made chilaquiles all the time for me and your uncle.”
“She made them for me too, Mom,” José answered. “I wasn’t a baby when she died. I was already four.”
Libby made the sign of the cross the way Mom used to. “Don’t play with your food.”
“I hate lox.”
“Have one bite.” She took a bowl with Saran wrap over the top from the fridge.
I peeked in and made a face. “You’re serving guac and lox?”
“I have culture coming out of my ears,” she said, stopping in the pantry for a clipped bag of chips. “Unlike some people, I’m proud of my Hispanic heritage. My children will be too.”
Libby’s jabs were never subtle. By some people she meant Mom and me. There’d been times we as a family had tried to hide our background to make things easier on ourselves, but Libby had never subscribed to that—especially when it came to names. She’d given her husband no choice but to defend their children’s traditionally Mexican names to his Orthodox parents. She’d convert to Judaism for him, but damn if she wouldn’t put our family’s stamp on things. She’d even been using her full name, Libertad, since Mom’s death.
Aaron balanced Carmen on his hip, dragging her playpen into the kitchen. “Things calmed down at work yet?” he asked me.
I visited Libby whenever I had a free weekend, and every time they asked about work, I answered with some version of “the usual.” Today, my mind went to Georgina. She was a disruption to my routine, a routine I liked and one that had served me well up until recently.
“Why are you hesitating?” Libby asked as she plated the food.
She and I weren’t the kinds of twins who finished each other’s sentences but sometimes, she was a little too in tune with me. “Work has been better.”
“It hasn’t been very long,” Aaron said, one-handedly mixing Bloody Marys as he carried Carmen around the kitchen. “Don’t let all that stuff bring you down.”
“What stuff?” My first thought was Georgina, but there was no way they could’ve known about her.
Aaron lowered his voice. “Your sister set a Google alert for your name.”
The fucking exposé. I hadn’t mentioned anything about it to Libby, hoping I could avoid the exact look she was giving me now. She clucked, shaking her head. “I can’t say it surprised me,” she said, setting a hot dish in front of me. “What Modern Man prints is mostly inoffensive, but sometimes things slip through that have me scratching my head.”
“You’re just saying that because everyone else is,” I said after a bite. “I never heard any complaints from you before.”
“Your sex advice column—”
“Is called Badvice because it’s bad advice,” Aaron explained. “It couldn’t be more obvious. I don’t understand how people don’t get that, or why it wasn’t detailed in the exposé.”
“Thank you,” I said, throwing up my arms. “They misprinted the name to make it look as if my column was titled Bad-Vice, with a capital V, when it’s a portmanteau of bad and advice.”
From the enclave desk in her kitchen, Libby picked up a magazine I’d hoped I’d never have to see again. “I’ve got it right here.”
“Oh. Fantastic.” Feeling a character assassination coming, I took my niece from Aaron’s arms and hugged the nineteen-month-old like a shield.
Libby spread out the offending feature on the island and slipped on her reading glasses. In most ways, my sister had me beat. She and I had spent our formative years around Boston’s upper crust, and while Mom had cleaned, Libby would sneak into piano lessons, ballroom dancing, book clubs, or whatever other extracurriculars were on tap for the school year. She’d used all that to start a business, a boutique nearby. At least I’d one-upped her in one way—my vision had always been twenty-twenty.
Libby flipped through the magazine until she found a pull-quote from Badvice to read aloud. “‘Date a coworker. In fact, date two or three. The office is an unfairly maligned breeding ground for men who don’t want to work too hard to g
et dates.’” She glanced at me over her glasses and continued reading. “‘An excerpt from BadVice, a monthly sex advice column aimed at men, curated and often written by Quinn, a notorious womanizer.’”
“That was a joke,” I said. I knew that. Everyone at work knew it. Our readers knew it. But my vilification was no picnic to hear aloud. Especially knowing these kids, and my own, might see it one day.
“What about the intern who showed us behind the curtain?” Libs asked, sliding her food across the island. “It says here she’d taken off her shoes after a long workday and gone to the breakroom. When she returned, she caught an editor fondling them.”
I chuckled to myself as I shifted Carmen to my hip and picked up my drink. “Classic.”
“Why are you laughing?” she asked as she chewed. “That’s disgusting!”
“That’s Justin,” I said. “He wasn’t fondling them. He was trying to hide them.”
“Dude,” Aaron said. “How is that better?”
“You have to understand the history there. They had a thing going, and he was over it. The last woman he’d ended things with had thrown a heel at him and nearly given him a concussion, so he never breaks up with a girl while she’s wearing shoes.”
“That is so utterly ridiculous and immature,” Libby said. “And sounds exactly like something Justin would do.”
“Look, we’re not perfect,” I admitted. “We’ve got some changes to make. But everyone’s acting like the sky is falling.”
Libby closed the magazine and picked up her fork. “This is bigger than Modern Man, Sebastian. You guys need to get with the times and have somebody hold you accountable.”
“Oh, believe me,” I said, “we’re being held accountable.”
“By your editor-in-chief?” Aaron asked.
“The board hired a consultant.” Talk of Georgina had a history of riling me up, so I lowered my niece into her playpen. “Also known as a glorified babysitter.”
Libby raised an eyebrow. “A publicist?”
“She calls herself a ‘publishing consultant,’” I said, “but I call her a pain in the a-s-s.”
Aaron laughed, but Libby didn’t even crack a smile. “I think you could use some pain in your ass, hermanito.”
I nearly rolled my eyes. She only called me “little brother” to irk me. I’d been born six minutes after Libby and four after midnight, which technically made her a day older. A fact she never let me forget. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means sometimes, I worry you’ve forgotten where you come from.” She turned to Aaron. “Did you know he once paid twenty dollars for a cocktail? And that he and Justin are considering renting a place in the Hamptons next summer? And that he’s been on three dates in a single night?”
She had a point about the cocktail. Twenty dollars was excessive, especially for a drink that’d been tossed in my face. Come to think of it, that’d been the night of the three dates, but that was well over a year ago. “That shit-for-brains ‘journalist’ called me a womanizer,” I said defensively, “but I’ve barely dated since . . .”
Libby and I had already done the anniversary thing over the phone, and I didn’t want to bring up Mom’s death again.
Neither did Libs, it seemed. “He used to be scrappy and pinch pennies,” she told Aaron.
“Wasn’t this countertop like a hundred dollars a square foot?” I asked.
“This is my forever home.” She stood and moved the skillet from the stove to the sink. “And we’re not talking about me.”
“Mommy,” José said, twisting on the barstool. “I want ice cream.”
“Not until after supper,” she said automatically, and then to me, “So you’re not a womanizer?”
Aaron moved his Bloody Mary as his son tried to dip a finger in it. “Don’t get on Seb’s case or he’ll never bring anybody over.”
Libby picked up her dishes along with Aaron’s. “The day my brother introduces me to a girlfriend who isn’t five-foot-ten and a hundred-percent full of herself is the day I’ll back off.”
I shrugged. “There’s a motive I can work with.”
“So, is the consultant helping?” Aaron asked.
“Of course not. She’s not the one responsible for the bottom line. Georgina wants to implement these pie-in-the-sky ideas supported by her own research—obviously, it’s going to be biased.”
“Georgina?” Libby asked, perking up like a dog offered a bone.
“Yeah. Her proposed changes will send readers fleeing and leave me to clean up the mess with advertisers. We publish what sells. Modern Man never claimed to be hard-hitting news.”
“Can I please, please be excused, Mom?” José asked.
Aaron finished off his cocktail and stood. “How about another game? Uncle and nephew versus the dad?”
“Sebastian’s going to help me clear the table,” Libby informed her husband.
“I tried,” Aaron muttered to me before herding José out back.
Libby stooped to get plastic wrap from a drawer. “You’re sensitive today.”
“How? I’m just answering your questions.”
“Normally you shrug me off with a joke.” She recovered the bowl of guacamole. “Something’s bothering you. I can tell. It’s the whole twin telepathy thing.”
“We don’t have that.”
“Of course we do, Sebastian. You can be so cynical sometimes.”
I stacked Aaron and José’s empty plates by the sink to avoid Libby’s side-glances. It was no coincidence that she was piling on today, accusing me of forgetting my roots—it seemed as if I’d been called into question or questioning things myself ever since the exposé. Was I really such a bad manager that the magazine needed a handler to help me run things? Would everyone forget the work I’d done if Georgina’s plan succeeded? And after the way I’d spoken to her in the café and at the office, did Georgina doubt my character like everyone else seemed to?
“Do you think I’m a different person than I used to be?” I asked.
She moved fruit from a platter to Tupperware, pausing to bite into a strawberry. “Of course.”
I frowned. “You answered that really fast.”
“We’re both different. Especially after Mom’s death.” She leaned her elbows onto the island and had another strawberry. “You can be in touch with who you used to be and still be different. The idea is to keep getting better.”
“And you think I’m not?”
“Since when do you care what I think?” she asked, tossing the stems into the garbage disposal before capping the Tupperware. She knew full well I cared what she thought. More than anyone else in the world, now that it was just us. “Tell me about this Georgina person.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’d mentioned her once, and now Libby was peering into my eyes, trying to read my thoughts. I wanted to look away, but then I wouldn’t be able to read hers. “I already did. Like I said, she’s a pain.”
“How so?”
“How long do you have? For one, she’s fucking messy. She’s always losing stuff, walking around my office barefoot while she eats gummy bears of all things, and she can’t even read her own handwriting. Last week, she handed me her notepad and asked if I could decipher her last entry.”
“And could you?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point.”
My sister smiled to herself. “Cute.”
“Cute?” I gaped at her. “What’s cute about trying to turn the whole office against me?”
“I highly doubt she’s doing that,” Libby said.
“Want to bet? During her first meeting, she read excerpts from the exposé to everyone, then at happy hour, she drops a bomb on my game in front of all the guys.” Fuck. As soon as the words left my mouth, I understood my sister had just tricked me into revealing too much information.
With an annoyingly smug smile, she finished moving perishables into the fridge. “So, a new girl shows up at your office, questions your work and your character, and
now you’re asking me for the first time in years if I think you’ve changed? Is she pretty?”
“It’s not the first time in years.”
“Whenever I ask about your personal life in Manhattan, you go monosyllabic. So, most of what I know comes from Justin or what I see in the society pages.” She plugged the sink and turned on the faucet. “Then this exposé pops up . . .”
“Not true. We talked about my love life after what Mom said those last few days,” I said. “You agreed I need to settle down and meet a nice girl.”
She squirted dish soap into the rising water. “Is Georgina a nice girl?”
I snorted. “Not in the least. Exactly what Mom warned me against.”
Libby tilted her head. “Really? Your usual type?”
“No,” I said before I realized that answer was contradictory—and would only incite Libby’s curiosity.
“Was she like your last girlfriend—what was her name? Wenchy?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, Georgina is like Wendy—minus several inches, plus a real job. And if Wendy dyed her hair red, had freckles, wore suits, and was fucking rude.”
“Wendy was rude.”
“So is Georgina.”
“To you or to others?”
“Both.”
“Then if she’s a bitch, forget her.” She pulled on yellow rubber gloves. “What’s bringing all this up?”
“Take your pick.” Scratching under my chin, I listed, “The one-year anniversary of Mom’s death. For the first time in my career I’ve stumbled, and now I have a handler. I’m entering my mid-thirties. Given all that, I’m allowed some introspection.”
“Okay, so what have you been introspecting?”
“I work hard, Libs. Mom taught us the importance of that, but she never reaped the benefits. I tried to get her to retire, but she wouldn’t. So why are people on my case for enjoying what I’ve earned?”
She began scrubbing the dishes. “Your values will change once you meet someone. Everything I do is for Aaron and the kids.”
“I don’t have that yet. When I do, I’ll settle down.”
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