The Proposition by Amelia Wilde

4

Charlotte

This could not be worse.He could not be worse. The rain. Mason Hill. The falling-apart car. The falling-apart life. What am I supposed to do?

It takes forty extra minutes to get home. The rain comes down in bucketfuls, too fast for my shitty wipers to keep up with, and I crawl along the highway and into the suburbs. Storm clouds have sunk down to street level. It’s probably all the rain that keeps coming through the vents and hitting my cheeks. Definitely not tears. Not over Mason Hill.

Our driveway is overflowing when I finally rattle onto it. Water collects where it’s not supposed to, drowning the grass on either side. Ditches are starting to form in irregular places in the yard. The lawn service stopped coming last August. The landscapers before that. I never knew that lawns could deteriorate like this.

Nothing I can do about it today.

Hot tears threaten at the corners of my eyes, but I’m done crying for today. I’m done. Done forever. I’m never going to think about Mason Hill again. Never going to think about the suit that fit his body so well it made my mouth water. Never going to think about those green eyes. I caught a bit of every shade in those eyes. Striations of dark forest and new leaves. The kind of color pattern that calls for a simple garment because it’s so complicated.

The adrenaline goes out of me as soon as I pull the car into the garage. Rain beats at the roof. My hands are sore from gripping the wheel. My hair’s wet from the walk to the parking garage. Worst of all, I imagined that night in his luxury apartment. How forbidden it would be. How wrong. The things he might do before the sun rose.

I’ve never done anything like that before. Nobody has ever made me feel breathless or needy enough to do it. And with Mason Hill…

I didn’t hate the idea. For a second, I didn’t hate it.

What is wrong with me?

The car door slams behind me—too hard, Charlotte—and my cardboard shoes squeak against the concrete on the way into the kitchen. It’s bright in here. Cheery. Recessed lights under the cupboards shine down on pristine countertops. They’re naked countertops. Bare. Every kitchen appliance that could be sold has been, all except the coffee maker.

My heart sinks at the pile of bills, waiting right where I left it. No one else has gone through them. Why would they? Neither of my parents are in a position to do anything about them. My mother’s observatory is empty. She’ll be upstairs, taking a nap. The sound of rain gives her migraines, she says.

“Are you home, sweetheart?” My father’s drunk. Four words is all it takes to know it. He thinks he’s hiding it by making his speech more precise and not less, but it’s a dead giveaway. He might as well be slurring and stumbling from one room to the next. My father doesn’t slur, and he doesn’t stumble. Maybe it would be better if he did. Maybe then someone else would have noticed.

Someone did notice. Mason seemed to know plenty about it today.

“Yes,” I answer. “I’m back.”

“Come talk to me.”

I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anyone.

Too late now. I’ve already had the worst conversation of the day. I kick my shoes off and gather them into my hands. “Hi, Daddy.”

He’s sitting behind his desk in his office.

According to the house plans, this room was meant to be a library with floor-to-ceiling shelves. He left the shelves but made it a private office instead. I used to think this was the best room in the house. I’d find excuses to be here on the weekends. I’d work on sketches of dresses I wanted to make, and he’d work on real estate deals. Never mind that half the time those deals ended in raised voices and threats to ruin the other person.

My dad looks up from the laptop perched on the desk in front of him. “How was the office?”

“Good,” I lie. “Things are going to be back on track soon.”

His eyes are too bleary to care one way or the other. He lifts a heavy glass from the desk and uses it to gesture at my outfit. “You make that one, too?”

“Last night. I thought it might be nice to wear for meetings.”

A sip out of the glass. He can pretend he’s not drinking the whole bottle when he does it a little at a time. I’ve never seen him with more than a finger or two of alcohol in front of him.

It’s exactly why he doesn’t go to the office. Doesn’t go to any of these meetings. He might not look blackout drunk, but he is. He signs things without remembering them later. He didn’t notice that the foreign investor had backed out of Cornerstone for two months.

It’s better that he doesn’t remember.

“You don’t have to make your own clothes, Charlotte. It’s small time. Your talents are better used at Van Kempt.”

I take the seat across from him.

Up close, it’s even worse. His hand has a subtle tremor around the glass. Unlike Mason Hill, he couldn’t insist on standing for a meeting. He’d have to sit down to cover up the times when he forgets he’s standing at all.

“I’m using all my talents all the time,” I tell him. “I wanted to ask you a question, actually.”

His dark eyes gleam. Another sip from the glass. Here, in his office, he’s not a failure who’s let his family down. He’s a businessman who’s taking time to plan. “Which manager do you want to fire? Give me his name, and I’ll place the call myself.”

I put on a smile I don’t feel. “It’s not about firing anybody, Daddy. Have you ever heard of a man named Mason Hill?”

His lip curls back, eyes narrowing, and for a split second it looks like he might snarl out loud. By my next blink, it’s gone, and my father’s sipping at his drink again like nothing happened. My heart thuds. What the hell was that? “I’ve heard the name before. Mason Hill.” He tests it out, his eyes sliding to the left. “Someone in real estate?”

“I think so.”

“Why do you ask?”

I could say that someone brought up Mason’s name at the office, but judging by that change in his expression, that would get someone fired. “His name was in one of the magazines we get at the office. One of the architecture ones.”

“He wouldn’t know a damn thing about architecture.”

So he does know about Mason.

The glow from the lamp on my father’s desk doesn’t seem bright enough to combat his mood, or the gloom in the office. I get up and go around to the other side of his desk. Lean down to kiss his cheek. There’s so much alcohol in the air that it stings my throat. “I’m sure he wouldn’t. I’m going to go up and get changed. Want me to bring you anything?”

“Look in on your mother.”

He’s glowering into his glass when I leave.

It’s a relief to be out of that room, but it’s short-lived. Now that the deal with Phoenix Enterprises is going nowhere, it’s time to figure out where we stand. The pile of bills from the kitchen counter is heavier in the crook of my elbow than I thought it would be. Some of them slip out when I get to the top of the stairs, fluttering to the floor like thick feathers.

Every one of them has FINAL NOTICE printed on the front.

I shouldn’t waste the water on a second shower, but I have to scrub the humiliation and disappointment off me. I’m lucky our water heater hasn’t broken. I’m lucky there was a sale on my favorite scent of Suave shampoo. I’m lucky, lucky, lucky to be able to do this for my parents.

Ironically, the last expensive item of clothing I have left is a lounge set in cashmere. No one would buy it because it doesn’t look like it’s worth anything.

Maybe Mason Hill didn’t want the deal because I don’t look like I’m worth anything.

No. Stop. I won’t think like that.

My mom is a still crest in the sheets, her hair spread out on the pillow behind her. The two of us have the same blonde hair. She kept hers shoulder length for years with monthly trims from her personal stylist, a man named Chris who came to the house with a team of three other people. One person’s entire job was to be on hand if my mom wanted a drink. Now it’s down past her shoulder blades. If it gets any longer, she goes to the Great Clips at the strip mall and refuses to take off her sunglasses so that no one will recognize her.

I’ve tried to tell her that this is impossible—no one we know would ever go to that strip mall. That conversation ended in tears. I haven’t brought it up again.

My phone is vibrating when I get back to my bedroom.

“Hi,” Elise says as soon as I answer. “I was going to wait to call you, but I couldn’t. How did it go? Did you knock their socks off? Of course you did.”

“Well.” Tears ball up in my throat, but I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to break down over this, or sob, or panic. “Nothing got signed today.”

“Is that a good thing?” Elise’s cautious but optimistic. “Like, maybe you’re still negotiating the terms and it’ll be a done deal by next Friday?”

“Not with Phoenix Enterprises.”

“Who did you meet with?”

“A man named Mason Hill.”

She gasps. “Are you serious? He’s not just at Phoenix. He owns Phoenix. I can’t believe they didn’t tell you you were meeting with him.”

“Yes, I’m serious.” I flop down on my bed and watch the rainclouds roll overhead through my window. “He was an asshole. Not interested in the deal after all.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her what else he said. A night at his apartment. His vile suggestion.

But then—

He didn’t actually say anything. I was the one who made it seem dirty.

“What a dick.” Elise’s pissed. I can hear her pacing back and forth in her apartment. “A total dick. How could anyone look at you and not want to work with you? What the hell?”

“When I got there, he said the original deal wasn’t good enough. He wanted a majority stake in the company. And… he wanted a time commitment from me.”

“Wait. Wait.” Her pacing stops. “Like, he offered you a job?”

“It wasn’t really a job.”

Not a job at all. His apartment for a night—that’s not a job. That’s an arrangement. That’s—

I won’t let myself think of it.

The words hover in the air. I think about telling Elise, about her getting offended on my behalf. She’d probably march over to Mason Hill’s office herself and tell him off. Does it count as sexual harassment if I don’t actually work for him? “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “He was an asshole. A major asshole. The deal’s never going to work.”

“Shit,” she says on a sigh.

“Yeah.” I pull the envelopes onto the bed with me and rip open the first one.

“Uh-oh,” says Elise. “Going through the mail?”

“Not mail. Just bills. Just a huge stack of bills.” She stays on the line while I open envelope after envelope. More money owed in each one. The water bill is overdue. The electricity will be past due next week. The bank wants an updated repayment plan for Cornerstone. Everyone wants money. I don’t have any. Above my head, a shingle detaches from the roof in the rain and rattles down the side of the house. Everything is falling apart. “I can’t pay these.”

“I’m sorry,” says Elise.

“But…” The papers cover my lap and half of the bed. I’ll have to dig my way out before I can do anything. “If Phoenix was willing to offer me anything, then someone else might.”

“Who?”

“Someone. There has to be someone out there. A company that wants to be part of the Cornerstone Development. And this is a chance—this is a chance to find them. I’ll take the proposal I did for Phoenix and send it to my father’s old contacts. Somebody will bite.”

Someone other than Mason Hill.

“Of course they will,” says Elise. “Maybe you’ll even get Hill to reconsider.”

“I don’t care if he does. I’m never going back. I’ll do this myself.”