Chapter 1
HARLEY
"Should we have your cleaning lady order us a pizza?" Gianna asked. She was lying on the couch staring into her phone that she never looked up from. She spent the majority of every day posing and staging for whatever shit she posted to Tiktok or Instagram. The other part of the day was spent filming apology stories for her shitty behavior. She had millions of followers and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what people found so fascinating about her.
"Use an app, Ms. Patterson doesn’t come on the weekends. She cooks for dad too so there isn't really much to eat around here."
"It must suck that your dad doesn't have help twenty-four-seven any more," Gianna said as she looked at herself in the mirror. “Are you expected to like, go get your own groceries and make food yourself?”
“Something like that,” I muttered. I may have grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth, but my mother taught me the basics and I wouldn’t starve if I was on my own. I couldn’t say the same for my friends who went into withdrawal when their colorist was out sick. My mom was Italian and food was important to her. She was a great cook and I missed having her around with her magic touch in the kitchen. After my mom passed, Carlotta had always been there to take care of me. But now Carlotta was sick and I was finally getting a taste of being independent.
I kind of hated my friends. Or I guess what I hated were their lives, just like my own, their days overflowed with trivial bullshit, but lacked any real sustenance at all. We spent money, lots of it, wore designer clothing, lived in multi-million dollar homes, yet complained on the regular about how much our lives sucked, how we were bored, how Wexler was the armpit of civilization and we were unlucky to be stuck her. Alexandra wasn’t quite as bad as Gianna, but that wasn’t saying much.
I’d grown up with these girls, we’d taken dance classes together, rode at the same stables, summered in the same East Hampton neighborhood and attended all of the same private schools since kindergarten. That was my life, and I really didn’t have any right to complain about it. But truth be told, I would have traded the wealth for just about anything else. Raw talent, natural style, cool hobbies or passions, all of the things that money can’t buy are what appealed to me the most. Sure, I could hire a designer, but I would have killed to be able to do something for myself. The ugly truth was, I was good at nothing and felt horribly empty inside. My pockets were full, but my heart was empty. But nobody wants to hear a sob story from a girl who has everything, so I kept my mouth shut and played the part dutifully ever since I could remember.
"Who's the guy on your lawn?" Gianna asked. She’d finally gotten up and was staring out the window that faced the front lawn.
"The landscaper?" I asked. I walked up behind her and saw a seriously ripped shirtless man walking away from the house.
“I think he just turned on your hose,” Alexandra said. The three of us stood shoulder to shoulder watching the man. He picked up the hose and doused himself in cold water, holding the nozzle right above his head. The water gushed in rivers down his athletic physique and when he set it down, he shook his head to release the water from his dark hair.
“Whoa,” Gianna said. “Who the hell is that?” The three of us watched mesmerized by his water show as he made his way back to the driveway dripping.
“Oh, I think that’s Wyatt, the guy who works on my dad’s cars. He’s usually in the garage, but Dad said something about the climate control in there being down. He has this fancy system for his babies, and I guess it broke. It’s probably about a thousand degrees in there by now.”
My father collected cars, there were as dear to him as his children. He pampered his cars more than any real human being. As a kid, I once accused him of spending more time with the cars than he did with me.
“Harley, my babies don’t expect anything of me. They never complain, they never ask me for money or talk back. They just exist to give me pleasure and do whatever I say,” I remember him telling me. Pretty loaded answer to hand a lonely five-year-old.
He definitely treated those cars better than he treated anyone else in his life, including me. Most days, I was certain that if he had to choose between me and a car, I’d be replaced by four wheels and transmission with a fancy Italian name in the blink of an eye.