Page 36 of More Than Pen Pals

I don’t know how Randall already knows about Diego Sanchez. I only found out an hour ago, and I haven’t had time to tell him.

Mom sniffs. “That’s nice.” She hates that Dad made me work with the PR firm instead of doing what I really want to do.

“What’s new with you, Mom?” My brother gives me a look that tells me he’s purposely taking the focus off me.

I give him a begrudging nod.

“Working on the next Junior League fundraiser, planning your sister’s graduation party, and trying to convince your father he needs to get more sleep. The man thinks he’s still forty.”

Dad turned fifty-five last month, and Mom is right. He refuses to admit he’s not as young as he once was.

“Has he been sleeping at the office a lot?” I ask, although I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

“At least once a week here lately. He’s going to drive himself to an early grave. I keep telling him to hire more people.”

There’s no good reason for Dad to stay overnight at the office that often. I try not to think about what it might mean.

“Have either of you been to Chez Patrice yet?” Mom asks. “I made your father get us a reservation there for tomorrow night. It’s all Bitsy Barlow can talk about since she and Morty went a few weeks ago. I doubt it lives up to the hype, but I want to check it out for myself.”

Randall shoots me a pointed look. He’s not going to give me up, but I can’t lie to Mom.

“I was there last night,” I tell her.

“Oh? Business dinner?”

“No.” Too late I remember Leslie works for Carter-Jenkins, and Wendy set it up, so I could’ve said yes without it being a complete lie.

Mom gives me an expectant look.

“I was there with a friend.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No.” She doesn’t technically know Leslie, though if I said her name, she’d undoubtedly recognize it from all the envelopes going to and from our house years ago.

Randall raises an eyebrow but keeps his mouth shut. I take a drink of the Coke Mom ordered for me and wait for her to ask who the friend was, but miraculously she doesn’t.

Instead, she says, “Your father tells me a woman at Carter-Jenkins has her eye on you.”

I almost spit my Coke out.

She points a finger at me and wiggles the tip. “You haven’t been dating this woman and not telling me, have you?”

After a moment of panic, I realize Mom must be talking about Wendy. Leslie hasn’t been around long enough, and I’m confident she would’ve told me if she’d met my dad. I have no idea how Dad knows about Wendy, though.

“No, I’m not dating her.”

My brother smirks at me.

“I’m not sure I like the idea of you being with someone in PR anyway,” Mom says. “That’s always seemed like a shady type of business to me. You don’t need PR if you’re not doing anything wrong.”

A few days ago, I might have agreed with her, but now I feel defensive. “PR isn’t only about sweeping bad stuff under the rug, Mom. And some people would say law is a shady type of business.”

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, son. Or houses you. Or clothes you. Or sends you to Harvard.”

“You didn’t have to shell out a penny for my higher education,” I retort. I feel guilty I received full-tuition academic scholarships when my family could well afford to pay and leave the scholarships for people with lesser means, but I’m not above using my own accomplishments to my advantage.

“Don’t get smart with me, young man.”

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