Sophie (The Boss 8)

To my surprise, she accepted. “Why not? My shoulders are permanently locked up from hearing that same fucking BTS song over and over again. Which, by the way, will be a major relationship hurdle for your sister and me.”

Though it was a cute remark, innocent and light on the surface, the potential complications of a teen romance began to set in as we walked across the sand toward the main house. “Look, I know that young love is...strong and fraught and complicated. If this goes wrong—”

“Don’t worry. If we break up, I won’t make things weird when Molly comes to visit. Again, porcupine,” she reassured me.

“And you have to tell your dad,” I added quickly. “You have to tell him because I can’t know something about you that he doesn’t know. That would be weird.”

She rolled her eyes. “You really, really don’t know how to be a mom.”

I tilted my head. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Chapter Twelve

Molly’s visit to us wasn’t just about sun and sand and pretending everything in the Kingdom of Scafatiwood was sunshine and roses. The purpose was college—and her audition for the American Music and Dramatic Academy. I had to make good on my promise to help her nail it. Holli put me in touch with a top Broadway musical director to give Molly a two-hour lesson in perfecting her audition song. While she studied with him, Amal, Rashida, Mom, and I set out to find the perfect audition outfit.

Well, Amal was in charge of actually picking out the outfits; I was just there to hold my tongue and hand over the credit card.

“I can’t believe you’re not letting this poor girl pick out her clothes,” Mom said, shaking her head as she picked at a blouse on the rack.

“She said she trusts Amal with fashion advice more than she trusts me.” That still stung my pride. “Me, the woman who worked for Porteras and founded Mode.”

“You, the woman who’s thirty-two and still wearing last season Marc Jacobs.” Amal looked away from the Jonathan Simkhi cropped sweater in her hand to give me a pointed once over before walking off again.

My mouth hung open and a fully-offended, “uh!” came out.

Mom patted me on the shoulder. “Teen girls are the cruelest creatures on the planet. Don’t take it personally.”

“I will, thanks. Because I was a teen girl once. So were you. And we never started any world wars or shot up a supermarket,” I reminded her. “I think the ‘cruelest creatures’ award goes to white men.”

“Fine,” she surrendered, raising her hands. “But trust me, I didn’t give your grandmother an easy time of it. And you didn’t give me one, either.”

“Yeah, but she cursed you. ‘I hope you have a daughter just like you!’”

Mom repeated my grandmother’s oft-used hex right along with me, adding, “And that’s why you have Amal.”

I didn’t argue that she wasn’t my daughter. If I’d ever had a daughter, she would have been like Amal. Quibbling over a title was pointless when she was my karmic payback already.

Rashida bounded up to me with a golden-yellow leather Oscar de la Renta ankle-length skirt. “Sophie…”

“How much?” I interrupted her wheedling tone.

“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” Rashida said with a sweet smile.

I quirked my lips. “Mmm, no. I think it means you can’t afford it because you blew through all of your allowance money already this month.”

“What must these kids get in allowance?” Mom muttered under her breath.

It wasn’t that Mom hated the girls or anything. She didn’t even really have a problem with how they spent their father’s money like water or held lofty opinions on worldly matters. She blamed El-Mudad for “spoiling” them.

How she expected a man who’d received a tiger for his fourteenth birthday to raise frugal daughters who weren’t materialistic, I had no idea.

I wasn’t a parent, so I was allowed to spoil them in a tiger-free capacity. “I’ll buy it. But you have to tell your father that you’re out of money. I thought he was trying to teach you how to budget?”

“The man with an airplane hanger full of supercars is going to teach me how to budget?” Rashida asked, sounding far, far too much like me.

I snatched the jacket. “Whatever. Now scram.”

“Scram and find more clothes,” Rashida teased. “Got it.”

Mom watched over my shoulder at Rashida bouncing away. When she was out of earshot, mom leaned in and said, “Is there a secondary airplane hangar she was referring to, or did you just call Neil her father?”

“They’re doing that now.” I took the sleeve of a sheer green blouse and held it against my arm. Not my color.

“And how do you feel about that?”

The question stopped me. How did I feel about it? Was I supposed to feel a way? “I’m not sure I get to have feelings about it, do I?”