Loving The Enemy

“Calm down. Do you really think I haven’t thought of all that already? The shipping boxes should be here sometime today, all we have left to do is set up business shipping with the post office, grab you a PO Box and voila.”

Shit, I forgot about a return address. Crazy Simone had used the physical address of our old high school for the website and I hadn’t thought much of it, I was just happy not to be using my own. “I’ll be right there once I get my ass out of this bed, see you in a few.”

True to her word she’d been here an hour later, helping me sort through orders and keeping me from losing my mind. Once the boxes had come in later that day I realized that she’d been thinking about this for much longer than I first believed. Pink boxes with Diva’s Closet emblazoned in silver with a butterfly clasp; my signature if I ever had one.

“You planned this? What if I’d said no?” She gave me her resting bitch face and her patented look that said ‘no one messes with the princess’ making me laugh. “Then I would’ve made you do it because it’s for your own good. I never doubted. You’re a sensible woman, I only surround myself with sensible people haven’t you noticed?”

She had a point. It’s the reason she never hung out with my friends and I on a regular basis. Her barbed tongue had started many a feuds in our little world over the years, but she and I have always been close. Her dad had once sued a magazine for splashing her picture on their front cover and had actually won, even though she was eighteen at the time. I still don’t know how he’d pulled that one off, but ever since then no one else ever dared. Whereas the rest of my crowd lived to have their faces splashed across every conceivable surface.

We’d set up business shipping online, and I learned I could ship everything from the privacy of my home without ever having to step foot outside.

With the first set of orders neatly packed in their boxes with purple tissue paper lined up against the wall, ready to be picked up my the mail person, we’d had a celebratory drink of champagne which she’d brought.

There was a cool forty grand in my account and I didn’t even let the thought that that was a little less than my monthly allowance, get me down. Those days were obviously gone. And the orders kept coming in all that day and into the evening.

Now it was day two and I was down to five pieces of the fifty or so that I’d first uploaded. I knew that this money would barely breach the surface of the debt my dad had left behind. Bills that I never knew existed, of which I was now ashamed, needed to be covered. He’d seemingly taken care of the bigger loans and such, but we were still about half a million in the hole with household expenses and then there was the mortgage. At least he hadn’t taken out a second one.

I knew we might be forced to sell the house at some point but was afraid of what that would do to mother. I never realized until now just how fragile she is. For that matter I’d never been very aware of my own strength. Sure I could hold my own in a fight, but this was different. This shit was worse than an episode of Survivor.

5

Emily

I got to about midmorning before thoughts of Jason Storm began to crowd my mind once again. Like I said, I’ve heard his name in the past, even well before daddy had mentioned his business dealings with him, he was on the lips of many of my friends. As a new transplant from back east, his money, not to mention his good looks, had made him a hot topic for months.

Funnily enough, though I had the reputation of a bubble headed socialite, a breed thought to flit from bed to bed with a new man on her arm every other week, I was quite the prude. Not many knew this, except for my closest friends, but I’ve never seen sex as the harmless pastime so many took it for.

Between a flighty mother whose only interest was her next designer shopping spree and a dad who was always hot on the heels of the next best deal, I had a nanny who’d instilled her own values on a young impressionable me. I’d lucked out there, and Estelle was my one true regret of this whole mess. Well except for my dad and his horrible end.

After I’d outgrown my use for a nanny, I’d insisted that Estelle be kept on in some capacity or another and so she’d become the head housekeeper. A position she’d held since my first day of kindergarten until a week ago when I had to tell that wonderful woman that I could no longer afford her services. She’d cried and offered to stay on free of charge until I got myself together, but I couldn’t ask that of her. I’d only just begun to learn how hard the real world is.