Cruel Money (Cruel 1)

I stumbled into Penn’s apartment on the Upper East Side, pushing one of the suitcases in front of me. He was carrying the other one while holding Totle’s leash. We’d barely spoken on the drive over. He’d turned on music from one of his playlists on his phone, and I’d drifted through delirium as I stared out the window.

My tears had dried up. The dizzy feeling of pressing anxiety remained. And something else was clogging my throat and holding me under.

I dropped my suitcase in the living room, peeled my jacket off, and fell face-first into the couch. “My life is over.”

Totle’s tags jingled as he rushed across the room and jumped onto my back. Then he crawled forward and licked my face.

“Yes, yes, you. I know. I’ll love you.” I squeezed him into my side until he flopped his head down on the couch and huffed.

Penn stood with his hands on the back of the chair. “Your life isn’t over.”

“It feels like it.”

“We can fix this.”

“We?” I asked with an arched eyebrow. I released Totle and sat up. “There’s no fixing this, Penn. This is all over. I have no job. I have no place to live. I have nothing.”

“We can get my mother to come around.”

I snorted. “Your mother is not coming around on this.”

“Well maybe not on your job, but we might be able to get her to not call the agency. Then you could still get another job somewhere else,” he said hopefully.

For a realist, Penn was being unbelievably optimistic.

“She’s probably already called. It’s over.” Anger bubbled up inside of me. “Everything I’ve worked for in the last eighteen months is just gone. Poof!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect this to happen.”

“Of course not. Why would your mother even come out to the beach house?”

He frowned as if he hadn’t even thought about that. Fury crossed his features and then dissolved. “I don’t know. She wasn’t scheduled.”

“Do you think, if she was scheduled, I would have let you even stay today?” I snapped.

“Hey, I’m trying to help. I want to figure this out. Figure out a way that we can salvage this.”

“We can’t solve this problem, Penn. I have no leverage to fix this. And you can’t do anything to help,” I told him. “This isn’t a problem you can throw money at.”

His eyes rounded. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means. As much as you might have tried to get away from your roots, you are still money and used to using it to get you in and out of everything. You can take the boy out of the Upper East Side, but you can’t take the Upper East Side out of the boy.” I waved my arms around the room as proof, letting my anger fuel this argument.

“That has nothing to do with this.”

I jumped to my feet. “It has everything to do with this! You want to fix this. You want to make it all better. But you can’t. You can’t make any of this better.”

“Natalie…”

“Money fixes your problems, Penn. But it only causes mine.”

I picked up the closest thing to me, which happened to be a coaster, and hurled it against the wall. It thudded noisily before dropping to the floor.

“It’s just cruel…cruel money,” I said, my voice going shallow and fierce. “I’m seen as the help, white trash, a project. Whatever, but I’m not like you. I’m not one of you. As you said before…I don’t belong here.”

“You belong with me.”

“Do I?” I asked with wide, conflicted eyes. “No one else seems to think so.”

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” He stepped forward, taking my hands in his. “I only care about us.”

I wrenched my hands free and listlessly paced around the room. “Of course you only care about us. Because you have never had to consider what all of this means to someone without. What did your mother say? Diddling the help again, Penn? Again?”

He sighed. “Yeah. That was before.”

“Before what? You tried to become all enlightened?”

His jaw clenched. “You know that I’ve changed.”

“But is it really that different?”

“Yes. Of course it’s different. We are different, Natalie.”

I shook my head and tried to hold it all in, but I couldn’t. I felt so helpless. So utterly useless. I’d put all of my eggs in one basket, and someone had shattered them.

“Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?” he asked.

“Because this is my fault. I should have never let you stay that day. I should have done something else. Should have turned you away.”

“And where would we be now?”

“I’d be employed!”

“Is that more important than us?” he demanded. “You don’t need a job right now or a place to stay. You can stay here with me for now.”

“I don’t need your charity,” I hissed.