Billionaire Happy After

Six

*****

Even though I was supposed to leave the day after for the road trip, my mom still made me attend my session with Damon on Sunday.

When I arrived he was talking to a woman with long brown hair in the lobby. She looked vaguely familiar, but before I could get a good look at her, Damon noticed me. "You can go wait in my office, Georgia . I'll be right with you."

A paranoid part of me thought they were talking about me, since that's what Mom and Dad had done for months after I started seeing Lucas. Ask me to wait somewhere else while they talked about me in hushed tones. Then logic and common sense kicked in and I realized there were tons of more reasonable explanations as to why Damon  didn't want me around while they talked.

Like maybe she was a movie star (since I was almost certain I had seen her in a film or something once or twice) and he didn't want to risk me taking a picture of them together and selling it to the media. I wouldn't, but I didn't expect him to trust me that much.

Or maybe he just wants privacy. Like a normal person.

Just as I pushed the door to Damon  office open, I heard him say, "-can look after Summer-" The door shut behind me, cutting him off.

See Gigs , they're not talking about you. Stop being a paranoid b***h. I took a seat across from Damon's empty armchair, staring at the thin folder with my name on it. Damon walked in then, and sat down on the other side of the table.

"Was that your girlfriend?" I blurted out before I could stop myself.

For some reason, I couldn't picture him having a girlfriend, or any semblance of a personal life. I couldn't imagine him doing anything except sitting at his desk, arms folded in front of him ashe listened to some teenager drone on about their problems.

Damon raised an eyebrow. "No."

"If you're worried about me telling the media, I won't," I volunteered.

Does he even have a personal life? Maybe he just works a lot.

"We're not in a relationship," he told me firmly. "Anne is married and I have a boyfriend."

"Oh. Okay. Sorry."

He gave me a curious look. "Do you do that often?"

I blinked at him. "What?"

"Make up stories like that."

"It wasn't a story, just an assumption," I corrected. "It was a valid question."

"Do you like stories?" he ased.

I shrugged, not quite sure where he was going with this. "I'm not much of a reader." Not anymore. I had read a lot throughout middle school but that stopped since I started getting busy with school.

Damon nodded, then flipped open my file and made a note of something on a blank sheet of lines paper before looking back up at me. "So how are you feeling today, Georgia ?

"Fine," I replied.

"Excited for the road trip?"

I shrugged. "Not really."

"How do you feel about Christian Harvey ?"

I bit my lip. "He's okay.

Damon raised an eyebrow, but if he was annoyed by my nonchalant attitude and short answers, he didn't show it. "How do you like California?" he asked instead.

I hesitated. "Fine? I'm not really sure how you want me to answer that."

"Just answer honestly," he told me

"Well I've lived here all my life," I pointed out. "It's kind of hard to imagine living anywhere else."

"You've never considered going away?" he asked, tapping the end of his pen lightly against the desk.

I shrugged. "I don't know," I stalled as I tried to figure out what the point of asking me these questions was. Then it clicked. "Are you trying to give me the college talk?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's more of a discussion than a talk," he admitted. "But yes, your parents did ask me to talk to you about it."

"What happened to not being an advocate for my parents?" I demanded, folding my arms across my chest.

"It's not a bad thing to talk about," he replied. "If your parents hadn't asked me to mention it, I still would've asked you about it."

"Can't we talk about it later?" I asked.

"With the road trip tomorrow, it seems particularly fitting today," he pointed out.

I sighed. "I have no idea where I want to go, okay?" When I was younger, I had all these dreams, Stanford or Yale, or some other equally prestigious school, and they had even stayed when I started high school and realized how difficult it would be to get into an Ivy League. But with the marks I had now from last year, there was no chance of them doing anything more than looking at my application and laughing before tossing it in the trash.

Even when Mom and Dad had screamed about it, my honor roll marks hadn't seemed like a big thing to give up to spend more time with Lucas.

My future was just another thing I had f****d up for him.

"Where does your brother go?" Damon asked.

"Cornell. Which Dad's ecstatic about," I replied shortly, rolling my eyes. "It doesn't make sense, you know? Abel was all set to go to Berkeley. He got accepted to both, but he said he wanted to stay in California. Then suddenly at the beginning of August he takes off and calls two weeks later, telling us he's transferred to Cornell."

"Maybe he changed his mind," Damon offered. "And didn't want to inform your parents until he was certain."

I shook my head. "There wasn't any reason for him to hide it, though. It's not like Mom or Dad disapproved."

"How's your relationship with your brother?" he asked, changing the subject.

I shrugged. "Fine? We get along." Now so more than before. In elementary school I had hated having a brother who was a year ahead of me that all the teachers compared me to, and he had hated having a little sisted follow him around, but now neither of us really cared.

"Did your brother like Lucas ?"

I shook my head. "Definitely not." And that had hurt, that he had taken Mom and Dad's side without even trying to get to Lucas for me.

"Do me a favor, Georgia . Try and remember when your first instinct was to tell the truth and not lie to cover for that piece of shit."

That had been the most hurtful thing he had said to me. At the time, before I had realized it was true, it had hurt that he implied Lucas was changing me for the worse. Looking back at it now, though, I guess I couldn't blame Abel. Especially considering what had happened that night.

I had just been too jaded and confused to see it.

It was Lucas nineteenth birthday.

I couldn't remember exactly who I had found that out from, but I knew it wasn't him since I had been disappointed that he hadn't told me.

I went to his house with a cheesy mini chocolate cake that said 'Happy Birthday Lukas' with a 'k' because the decorator hadn't thought to ask before writing his name.

"What are you doing here?" Lucas asked when he answered the door. The first thing I noticed was the stench of alcohol and slightly unfocused look in his eyes.