It Had to Be You, Georgia Clark [phonics reader TXT] 📗

The surf rat smiled at Darlene. “Ripper of a set. You guys were on fire.”

Australian. How soon till this idiot mentioned kangaroos?

Darlene smiled back modestly. “Thank you so much.”

“Yeah, you had me bouncing around like a bloody kangaroo.” Australia ran a hand through his hair just to show off his bicep. “Buy you a drink, gorgeous?”

As if Darlene was going to go for this peroxide prole. She only dated men with brains the size of planets. Her last boyfriend, Awful Charles, was a smug git who was constantly publishing articles about what an intellectual wanker he was. With his scrub of ginger curls, and Father Christmas paunch, Charles was no pinup, but he was a celebrated mind, and he and Darlene dated for what felt like forever. So Zach was more than surprised when Darlene accepted the offer. “Vodka tonic. But we need to load out first.”

Australia grinned. Zach readied himself to step in, but before he could, someone slung an arm around his neck. “Hey, lady-killer.” The female version of Zach—summer-blue eyes, thick brown bangs—smirked at him. It was his older sister, Imogene. Behind her were their parents, Mark and Catherine.

“Guys!” Zach hugged them one by one. His family had seen him and Darlene play only once or twice over the past two years. “What are you all doing here? You didn’t tell me you’d be in town!”

“I had meetings in the city.” His dad’s voice boomed over the noisy club.

“And Mum’s helping me with the never-ending search for a wedding dress. Honestly, kill me.” Imogene was getting married to Mina Choi, her girlfriend of five years and fellow overachiever, at the family’s Hamptons estate in September. In Love in New York had been hired a year and a half ago to plan the wedding. The key vendors had all been locked in before Eliot passed, but Zach hadn’t quite gotten around to sharing the current state of the business, purely out of loyalty to Liv. Fortunately Imogene had been more focused on finding a dress that wasn’t a giant marshmallow.

“We wanted to surprise you, Zach.” His mum’s vaguely pretentious habit of elongating random vowels produced his name with an extra syllable: Za-ach. Catherine looked formidably refined in a snow-white sheath dress. Her pale blond hair was expertly twisted into a cross between a seashell and a croissant. His mother’s bloodline boasted some distant dukes, but in his parents’ circle, that ancestry was as common as pennies and postmen.

“We’re starving,” Imogene announced, hooking her arm into his. “C’mon, Zook: let’s go stuff our faces with pasta.”

Relishing the chance to interrupt her conversation with the Aussie tosser, Zach asked Darlene if she’d mind handling load-out so he could have dinner with his family. “I swear I’ll make it up to you,” he said, bribing her to stop by for a cocktail or two before she went home, with the promise his father would pay. “Best negronis in the city.”

Darlene rolled her eyes but agreed, so Zach guided his family to Babbo, an elegant Italian restaurant a few streets over, slipping the maître d’ a fifty to secure them a prime table.

Zach’s father, Mark, had met his wife, Catherine, at Oxford while studying business. Zach and his sister had grown up in a London neighborhood chosen for its proximity to good restaurants and gilded theaters. He’d spent his childhood in box seats at the Royal Opera House and all-ages gigs at the Roundhouse. Zach was permitted to study his first love of music, as long as it was at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music. There he was a middling student academically, but very popular socially (If Zach applied half the attention he gave to the female students to developing his own considerable talent… et cetera). When Imogene got into Harvard Law School, Zach followed his big sister to America, settling in New York. His parents soon followed, buying a house in the Hamptons and a pied-à-terre in Chelsea, after Mark received an offer as managing director for a New York–based venture capital fund. His mum sat on several charity boards, but her idea of philanthropy was largely attending black-tie balls. Zach was on a visa and still felt close to his English roots. The accent, after all, was a bloody effective aphrodisiac.

“So, Zachary,” Mark began, after the wine was poured and they’d all ordered mains. “How are things?”

“Same old, same old.” Zach leaned back in his chair, still feeling high from the show. “Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll.”

His father’s mouth hardened. His mother looked openly appalled.

“Guys, I’m kidding!” Zach said. “I play jazz, not rock ‘n’ roll.”

Imogene laughed.

His parents traded a coded look. “What about grad school?” Catherine’s question was as delicate as the pearl drop earrings hanging from each lobe.

“Grad school?” Vague memories of tossing this out at a previous family dinner emerged. “Yeah, that’s on the back burner for now.”

His father had both hands flat on the table. “That’s what you said last year.”

“I didn’t realize we were keeping score!” Zach tore off a hunk of bread and drenched it in olive oil. “Grad school isn’t in the cards for me right now.”

“So grad school isn’t in the cards.” Mark ticked off his fingers. “And neither is a full-time job, or an internship, or any kind of postgraduate education.”

“Way to make a guy feel bad,” said Zach, even though he didn’t. His phone buzzed. Not Darlene: just a random girl.

Catherine fingered her neckline of her sheath. “What about… relationships?”

Zach almost choked on his bread. “I’m sorry: it sounds like you’re inquiring about my sex life.”

“Zach!” his mother hissed, glancing around. “Please. We’re just worried about you. Might we remind you that by the time Genie was your age—”

“Please don’t drag me into this, Mum,” Imogene said.

“Yes, we’re all aware how brilliant Imogene is,” Zach muttered.

“She was clerking for a Supreme Court justice!”

“C’mon, guys,” Imogene said. “Zach’s just having the fun I never had because I was so busy being boring and studying all the time.”

“Zach is twenty-six,” Catherine