“Mom, Brooklyn is the teen librarian at Golden Creek Library,” I say, trying to salvage this conversation. “That’s how we met, actually. We’ve been collaborating on a project between the library and the outreach center.”
Now even my dad is getting irritable, tossing his napkin on the table, and I realize that mentioning my work was a mistake. It’s been a point of contention ever since I opened the center, and I don’t know why I thought tonight would be any better.
“Really, Prescott, did you just come over tonight to rub salt in our wounds?” my father asks.
“Excuse me?”
“When are you going to get serious and live up to the Beaufont name?” he continues. “Isn’t two years long enough to slum it with those kids?”
My mom makes a pointed glance in Brooklyn’s direction and mutters, “Clearly not.”
I can see tears welling in Brooklyn’s eyes and my own vision is narrowing with rage. I stand up and hold my hand out to her. “Come on. This was a mistake and we’re leaving.” Brooklyn stands, takes my hand, and I look at my mother as I add, “And we’re taking our scones.”
They sure as hell don’t deserve them.
9
Brooklyn
I’m holding back tears by the time we get outside, and when Prescott puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me to him, I won’t meet his eyes.
“Hey,” he says, “I am so sorry about that. If I knew—”
“That your parents were going to humiliate me? That I wasn’t rich enough for them?” I ask. “Please take me home.”
“Wait,” he begs, and I steal a glance toward him. There’s emotion brimming in his eyes and part of me wants to accept the comfort, buy into the us-versus-them story he’s trying to tell me… but most of me just wants to go home and lick my wounds.
“Please, Prescott,” I say, “take me home.”
I don’t know what I ever thought I was doing with a guy like this, anyway. He’s clearly too perfect, and when I found out he was a Beaufont, I should have turned tail and ran.
They’re the richest family in Golden Creek, notorious for being flashy with their wealth and ruthless about acquiring more of it. And sure, I noticed Prescott’s nice car and the house that seemed out of the price range of a man who dedicates his time to disadvantaged teens. But I never guessed this was the reason.
Prescott drives me home, mostly in silence, and tries again to apologize when he drops me at my apartment building, but I actually want to be alone for once.
“I guess you were right,” he says sadly. “It was definitely too early to meet the folks. This isn’t the end though, right?”
I give him a pitiful excuse for a smile. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I fit in your world, Prescott.”
I go inside, polish off the rest of that bottle of champagne that Nora and Cassidy brought over on the night of the Casablanca screening, not even caring that it’s gone mostly flat. I spend the rest of the night wallowing and when I’m good and drunk, I get up the nerve to look Prescott up online.
I gotta find out just how wrong I was about all those insta-love feelings I was having for him. I have to open my eyes and see that we could never really belong to each other.
And it doesn’t take a very long scroll through Instagram to see that fact, plain as day.
Prescott hasn’t posted for a long time—over two years, in fact—but what’s there is evidence of the Beaufont lifestyle. Yachts, private jets, gorgeous, stick-thin women. It seems like every other photo, he’s in a new, exotic location, wearing fancy designer clothes and looking like he’s having the time of his life.
I flip over to my own Insta feed just to really drive things home for myself.
Every single one of my pictures was taken right here in Golden Creek, most of them with Nora or Cassidy pressing their cheeks against mine, plus a few with the teens I’ve gotten close to at the library, and of course, the Bakers. There’s one of Martha at a book signing at the little indie bookshop in town. One of Cory grilling up dinner for the whole family. Even a few throwbacks, pictures of Polaroids I took with my parents back in the day.
In the trailer park.
Not Bali or Jamaica or any of the other flashy places Prescott has been.
And how can I compete with that? The simple answer is that I can’t. I thought all this was too good to be true, and damn it, turns out that’s because it was.
The next day at work, I tell Cassidy and Nora all about that disastrous dinner, and the intimidatingly lavish life I found Prescott living on Instagram. Unfortunately, neither of them offers a shoulder to cry on.