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“Don’t worry, I get it,” Greer said.
“Cool.” Willa clasped her hands together on the table in a pyramid shape. “Anyway, Tobias King is pretty much the patriarch right now. He’s the one who controls the most wealth out of every branch of the family. So he’s basically like the king of America. I guess that would make Elias a prince. He sure acts like one.”
I snorted. “Please. We live in a democracy, not a monarchy.”
“Maybe that’s just what they want us to think,” Greer said with her brows raised.
“Oh, you and your conspiracy theories,” I said with a teasing grin. “Look, Elias King is just a stuck-up asshole with too much money. He can glare at me all he wants, but he can’t exactly hurt me or throw me in a castle dungeon like an actual prince could back in the day.”
Willa worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know. I agree with you about the Kings being arrogant asses, especially Elias—believe me, I’d know, because he’s friends with my brothers—but on the other hand, they’re still powerful as hell. I told you about Brad Wellings, right?”
“No.”
“He was friends with one of my older brothers. He got on the wrong side of a King a few years ago. One of Elias’s cousins, I think. Slept with his girlfriend. Next day, he was fired from his Wall Street job for no reason, and he couldn’t find a single lawyer on the entire East Coast who would represent him for unfair dismissal. Couldn’t find another job, either, even though he was really smart and qualified. He’d been blackballed. Last I heard, he had to move to Montana to work on a ranch.” She said the state’s name as if it were a dirty word.
“Hey!” Greer said indignantly.
“Oh. Shit.” Willa’s cheeks turned pink. “Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re from there.”
Greer reached behind her and messed up her perfectly-styled blonde locks. “Now we’re even.” She snickered.
Willa smiled at her, then turned back to face me. “Anyway, if Elias doesn’t like you, that’s not a good sign. He could ruin all sorts of stuff for you with nothing more than a phone call.”
I sighed. “I hope not, because I have no idea why he doesn’t like me, so I can’t exactly do anything about it.”
“Are you sure you’d never met him before my party last year?” she asked, forehead wrinkling curiously.
“Hundred percent sure. It’s like he just took one look at me and decided to hate me.”
“Maybe he has a thing for you,” Mellie said, leaning forward on her elbows. “It could be a love-hate thing. Like, he hates how much he loves you, and it drives him crazy.”
“I seriously doubt that. Besides, that whole ‘boys are only mean to girls they like’ thing is so junior school.”
“True. But I still think he might have a crush. I can’t think why else he’d stare at you all the time. He must think you’re super-hot. Which you are, by the way.”
My cheeks turned warm, and I knew I was blushing hard. “Thanks.”
“When was the last time you went on a date, anyway?”
I shrugged. “A few weeks ago. That blond guy from my media class. I haven’t seen him again, though.”
I’d actually been on several dates since I started at Roden. A ton of funny, interesting guys went here, and unlike high school, where I’d basically been invisible, they actually seemed to take notice of me. I couldn’t help but be a little concerned about my love life luck, though, or lack thereof.
The dates always seemed to go really well, but the budding relationships would fizzle out right afterward with the guys never calling or texting me again. One of them even quite literally ran from me when he saw me walking toward him outside a lecture hall the other day, and I wasn’t even going to speak to him. I was just headed that way for a class. He actually looked afraid, as if I might bite his head off for ghosting me.
No wonder I was still a damn virgin at the age of nineteen. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to have sex, it was more like the universe was conspiring against me in order to prevent me from ever having it.
Or maybe I was just a terrible date.
“So it didn’t go well?” Mellie asked.
I gave her a rueful smile. “It was fine. Really good, in fact. But he stopped returning my texts afterwards.”
Greer frowned. “What the hell? Isn’t this the fifth time this has happened with a guy?”
“Sixth,” I said miserably. “Be honest, you guys. Am I boring? Or unintentionally mean?”
“No,” my friends all said in unison.