Sophie (The Boss 8)

“Your entryway is as big as our whole house,” she marveled. It was a bit of an over-exaggeration, but I didn’t correct her. I remembered how it had felt going to Neil’s penthouse for the first time when I had still been under the impression that all New York apartments were tiny. This would have blown my mind.

The formal living room and dining room likewise stunned her. She stood at the windows gazing out at the sea view. Her gaze dropped to the terraced lawn below. “I can’t believe you have a pool when the ocean is right there.”

“There aren’t sharks in the pools,” I reminded her.

“Pools?” She emphasized the plural.

“There’s an indoor one on the lower level,” I explained.

She rolled her eyes, and our resemblance struck me even harder than before. “You can say basement, Sophie. It’s not poor.”

That struck me, too, in the wrong way. “Oh, I don’t say that because I want to sound rich. I just don’t think it counts as a basement. Although, technically, it kind of is a walk-out basement. I’m just used to that word meaning ‘dirt hole with a water heater in it.’”

She nodded, but I couldn’t tell if she accepted my reasoning or if she still thought I was a big ole snob.

“Come on. I have to show you the most important room.” If anything made us appear grounded and routine, it was our kitchen.

Or, maybe not. It looked a lot different when I stepped inside, way too big and roomy and, yes, bigger than the trailer I’d grown up in. The copper ceiling was a little “too much” suddenly. And why did we have a pasta arm? Was the sink super deep? Did the stools at the island need to be tan leather with brass embellishments?

“Hi, Neil!” Molly said, alerting me to his presence.

“Molly, welcome!” He straightened from where he’d been leaning over the table, helping Rashida with her homework. “How was your flight?”

“Amazing. I watched TV with my feet up the whole time.” She beamed at him, so clearly, she wasn’t as ready to construct a guillotine on the lawn as I’d feared.

“Molly, this is Rashida, our—” Neil stumbled over his sentence. “Friend El-Mudad’s daughter.”

“Friend,” Rashida said, making air quotes.

“Where are you guys from?” Molly asked. “Your sister and you both have accents but not like…”

“Not scary ones?” Rashida joked. “We’re from France.”

“Ugh, I want to go to France so bad,” Molly lamented.

This was a much better exchange than we’d had with Amal.

“Did you see your room already?” Rashida asked, pushing back her chair. “I can show you.”

Neil bent his head and said sternly, “Will this algebra finish itself?”

“Will she benefit from your help with algebra?” I asked with a snort before I could stop myself from undermining his parental authority.

With a beleaguered sigh, he assented. “All right. But we will finish this before dinner, so don’t be long.”

Rashida and Molly left together, the former telling the latter, “All the rooms on the first floor are taken, so you have to be upstairs. But those are nice, too.”

When the door closed behind them, I turned to Neil and whispered, “God, I hope they didn’t pick a room we’ve had sex in.”

He frowned, eyes cast upward as he pretended to think. “Is there a room we haven’t had sex in?”

I gave him a playful push. “At least one of the girls was nice to her.”

“Judging from the timing of your arrival, any lack of politeness on Amal’s part stemmed from other sources,” he said dryly.

“Yeah, we saw. What were they fighting about?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, it’s not any of my business, but it seemed pretty serious.”

Neil seemed unconcerned. “I’m sure we’ll find out in our post-game wrap-up.”

The post-game wrap-up was the affectionate moniker we’d given to our evening chats about what was happening with the girls. Often, I spent that time painting my toenails, only stepping in to offer the perspective of someone who had once been a teenage girl, herself. “I know Amal didn’t mean to make things awkward. But damn, that was awkward. A lot of stuff has been awkward today.”

“Oh?"

“For one, I forgot how our house and our cars and jets and helicopters might look to someone working class.”

“We don’t have jets and helicopters,” Neil said breezily. “We have a jet and a helicopter.”

“That’s one more jet and one more helicopter than most people. And that’s not even true anymore. El-Mudad has at least one plane. Maybe more.” He was mind-bogglingly richer than Neil could ever dream of being. “I guess I’m going to be writing another wealthy person guilt check, huh?”

“As long as you don’t overwhelm poor June at the food bank again,” he said sternly.

So, I’d accidentally saddled a volunteer treasurer with a huge donation that had incredibly stressed her out and given her an asthma attack that had sent her to the hospital. “That was my bad. But I hired the accountant for them, didn’t I?”