Cameron had settled himself by the couch, leaning against the back and watching me with
hilarity while my mom carried on about the Jacobsons and their son: they were pronounced to be
such a good family, and Damien was absolutely delightful and well-bred and … not to mention
that he was staked to succeed his father in taking over the family empire. I was biting my
tongue a lot.
“I’ve been talking to Damien, and he is just dying to see you. How quickly can you catch a
plane to come meet us?”
There it was—the reason for the niceties. The only time my mother was ever “motherly” was
when she wanted something. The only time my mother spoke English to me and didn’t force me to
speak French to her was when she was trying to impress someone who was listening. This time I
assumed it was both. I couldn’t imagine what embellishments my mom had told Damien for him to
be just dying to meet me. The truth was that I remembered Damien Jacobsons all too well. We were
seven years old, and I had been forced to go to one of those stupid family picnics for one of my
dad’s clients. Damien had decided it would be good fun to play connect the dots with my
freckles—when I dared to protest, he stabbed me in the back of the arm with a pencil. I still
had the scar to prove it. I doubted that someone like Damien Jacobsons would remember that small
fact, but, unfortunately for him, I never forgot and I was really good at holding a grudge.
“Mom, Europe is just not an option right now and—” Cameron had curiously raised an eyebrow.
But my mom didn’t let me finish with my attempts at finding more excuses. “Oh, here he comes
now. He wants to talk to you.”
“No. Mom! I don’t want to talk to this Damien—”
“Hello? Emily?” A deep voice rang through the phone.
I cringed. “Yes. Hi. Damien.” Cameron’s interest had picked up when I had said Damien’s
name.
The clanging and chatter noises became more distant on the other side of the line. Damien had
clearly walked away from the rest of the party. “So did you ever grow out of your polka dots?”
he said.
So he remembered me—and had apparently not matured past the age of seven. “No. I haven’t—
actually, it’s gotten worse. Much worse. How about you? Are you still eating your snots when
you think no one is looking?” I wondered out loud.
Cameron practically choked on his own saliva.
There was awkward silence on the other end of the phone. Damien then cleared his throat and
continued the conversation, unfortunately. “So … you should totally come meet us here. A bunch
of us are spending the summer chill-axing in the Riviera. The whole gang is here—Chuck, Jimmy,
Lance, Chrissy, Angela …”
Images of the “whole gang” came into my head—all of them had, at one point or another, pulled
my hair or taunted me in some horrible way when I was a kid. “Sorry, I’m really tied up right
now.”
Damien wasn’t listening. “My Dad had the yacht sailed to port in Monaco. I’ll take you
sailing—just you and me. Come on … it’ll be great!”
Nothing about being alone with him where the only way to escape was to drown trying to swim to
shore sounded fun. I would have picked drowning any day. “Damien, sorry, my phone is about to
die. I’ll get back to you on the boat thing. Say—bye—to—my Mom—for me …” I hung up and
threw the phone at the foot of the bed. I fell back onto my pillow, worn out.
“Emergency averted. Happy?” I said to Cameron.
“Yeah. I am,” he said with a grin that almost reached his eyes. “That was more entertaining
than I thought it would be. I didn’t know Europe could be an emergency.”
When you’ve had everything handed to you on a silver platter, it was surprising the things that
became a crisis. “Weren’t you afraid that I would tell my mother where I was?” Not that I had
any idea where I was.
“Would she have believed you?”
He had a point.
I heard music booming in the distance. “You’re working today,” I mused, surprised by my
automatic connection.
He nodded yes, but didn’t look like he was in a big hurry to go. “So, who was this Damien
fellow you were talking to?” I thought I had glimpsed jealousy—or maybe it was just wishful
thinking.
“His parents’ money is friends with my parents’ money,” I explained wryly, but Cameron
looked lost. I sighed. “Just some boy my parents would love to see me settle down with.” As I
said this, another thought occurred to me. “You know, you and my parents would probably get
along quite well.”
“Oh?” Cameron fell into my ambush this time.
“You both try to control my life and seem to think I’m better off sticking with my own kind,
whatever that is.” I threw the blanket back over my head before he had time to respond. “Do
you have any more orders, or can I go back to sleep?”
“I wasn’t ordering you. I was just concerned that—”
“Whatever,” I interrupted coolly. Now I was in a really bad mood—a common side effect of my
mother. “Can you let Meatball out when you leave?”
I exhaled loudly—my indication that the conversation was over.