tenses. A surprise is one thing, but she can’t hide the guilt on her face.
“Are you shanghaiing me?” I demand, grabbing for her phone. She holds it away and I resort to tickling her, nervous peels of laughter squeaking from her. But before I can elicit a confession, the car slows down. I stare at the doors to the resort.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask as a bell boy opens the door. I don’t wait for her to respond instead I walk the opposite direction back toward the street. There’s no way I’m going into the West.
Josie catches me by the arm before I make it past the entrance, but I don’t stop. We’re both in impractically tall heels, which means one of us is going down. Spoiler: it won’t be me.
“Em,” she pleads, “just hear me out.”
But there’s no point to listening. “I thought you understood the social food chain, but let me make it easy. We’re on bottom. If my dad finds out I’m here he’ll disown me.”
“It’s the end of the year party. Everyone will be there!”
“Everyone who was invited,” I correct her. My name will never be on a West guest list and I’m one hundred percent okay with that, considering that the price of admission is your soul.
Josie produces a small card from her purse and flourishes it inches from my face. “We’re invited.”
“Where did you get that?” My anger ebbs into annoyance. That invite is probably enough to get us past security but that’s only the first test. The rest of the gauntlet is composed of Monroe and her bitchy minions.
“It doesn’t matter. This party is going to be packed.”
In Josie speak that means everyone is going to be there, including all the people she’d like to impress.
“You do realize that even with that”—I point to the invitation—“we’re not welcome up there.”
That finally extinguishes the hopeful glimmer in her eyes. I can’t call it a victory because now she just looks pissed. Josie crosses her arms, still clutching the invite, and glares at me. “Since when do you care what people think?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why not crash, drink their booze, and ruin their nights.”
“Well-played.” Josie has a point. I can’t help but picture Monroe West’s face when she discovers the breach in her castle walls. It will be even better to see her horror in person. “Fine, but we stick together and we don’t stay long. I have to make a cameo at brunch tomorrow to appease the maternal monster.”
I can think of about a million things I’d rather do than spend the evening with a bunch of Housers, including washing my hair, getting a pap smear, and tearing off my own fingernails. Girls just wanna have fun, right?
Meanwhile Josie is positively vibrating with excitement. I let her take my hand and lead me to the entrance of the casino where we’re greeted by another uniformed lackey. If only he knew he was letting a Southerly walk inside the West empire. Yeah, we might have just cost him his job, but it’s not my responsibility to provide a PSA to the newbie.
Emma Southerly, daughter of Jake Southerly, the mortal enemy of Nathaniel West, owner of the West Resort and Casino.
It sounds melodramatic but it’s true. The feud between my dad and Monroe’s father goes back from before I was born. They’d been high school buddies. In college they scrounged up every penny they had between the two of them to invest in a start-up. When the start-up took-off, my dad assumed they’d both made it big until he found out Nathaniel had invested it in his name only. Nathaniel West became a venture capitalist super-star and left my dad to take over the family pawn shop. My father had instilled hatred of the type usually reserved for rival sports teams in me my whole life. Since I’ve never met Nathaniel, I do my part by loathing his daughter. Every one has a role to play after all. Plus Monroe is easy to hate.
Inside the revolving door, the cacophony of the casino floor greets me immediately. Cigarette smoke, dealers calling for bets, hundreds of melodic slot machines. It’s enough to make me want to turn tail and abandon Josie but she marches us through the crowds toward the bank of sleek elevators on the other side before I can process any of it. But let’s face it, there is no processing it. It’s a world of distraction meant to keep you so overwhelmed that you