Page 6 of Trust Fund Baby

Then my inbox pinged.

But it wasn’t my work email. My brow furrowed as I looked down at the confusing notification. The email address, [email protected], was one I’d set up when I was a teenager. It had been years since I’d received anything to that inbox.

When I was thirteen, I believed it sounded professional, precisely the sort of email address a twenty-something living in New York would have. I pictured myself exchanging correspondence with editors and gallery curators. Instead, the only emails I’d ever received on that account were from long-forgotten online forums, chain letters my grandmother sent, clothes stores offering discounts, and Sebastian Whittaker.

Subject: Long time, King

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

I gasped. I hadn’t seen that email address in years. It felt like a memory from a previous existence, much like the CDs he burned for me and the notes we exchanged in class.

I tapped on the awaiting message.

The message was short. Only one line:

I see you’ve graduated from sneaking out of windows to running out of front doors.

My neck pulsed as I stared at the screen, the words blurring before my eyes. The significance of those words would be lost on everyone but me.

The red glow of my alarm clock read 12:07 AM. My ears strained, listening intently for any sound that someone was still awake on the other side of my bedroom door, but only silence answered. I slipped my feet into my worn Hunter boots and slowly crept toward my bedroom window. The odds of successfully navigating past my parents’ bedroom, then the creaking grand staircase, undetected, were slim to none.

The window it was.

I inched the heavy wooden window open, just enough to swing one leg over the sill. I fumbled, searching for the familiar grip of the weathered trellis that climbed the brick exterior. Securing my foot, I then lowered myself further, adrenaline pumping.

It was early summer, and the night air still held a slight chill that snuck underneath my sleep shorts, raising goosebumps along my legs as I slowly descended the side of the house.

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to use the front door?” A voice, laced with amusement, cut through the quiet of the night.

I glanced over my shoulder to see Sebastian Whittaker standing near the rose bushes in my backyard. He was wearing his navy-blue lacrosse hoodie, our school’s emblem emblazoned across the front. It was a stark contrast to the crisp blazers and perfectly pressed dress pants I was accustomed to seeing him in.

“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked, the words a whisper in the still air, as my feet finally touched the cool grass.

“I brought the good stuff,” Sebastian announced, producing a bottle of chilled champagne from behind his back, the silver foil glinting in the moonlight. “Shall we?” A mischievous grin played on his lips, a silent invitation.

I hadn’t revisited those nights in my mind for a long time. I’d locked them away for a reason. Those nights contained a pain I couldn’t articulate and a sorrow I desperately tried to outrun. Vivid images flashed behind my eyelids—the flickering candlelight and the hushed whispers. Each memory, a shard of glass, threatened to cut me if I dared to reach out and touch it.

My fingers hovered over the keypad. To answer the question, to rekindle the memory, to pull those ghosts from their shadowy prison. It felt like a bad idea.

But I couldn’t bring myself to delete the email.

Instead, I closed the app and slammed my phone down on the desk, the sound echoing in the sudden silence of the gallery. It was a desperate attempt to escape Sebastian’s presence. I needed to get away, to breathe, to clear my head before I did something I’d regret.

Like entertain responding.

I tried to focus on the mountain of admin I still needed to do for the gallery, but my mind couldn’t shake that stupid email. I didn’t know what surprised me more: that Sebastian, after all these years, still had access to that ancient, forgotten email account of his, the one he’d used when we were barely old enough to have one, or that he still remembered my stupidly formal email address. I guess his contact options were limited, since he didn’t have my number and I only used a seldom-checked social media account for my photography.

The email itself offered no context, no explanation, just a single line, a half-remembered inside joke that sent a ripple of confusion and a strange, unwelcome nostalgia through me.

“Excuse me?” I glanced up to see a woman dressed head to toe in designer clothes with a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on her nose. Her perfectly coiffed blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders, framing a face that, despite the sunglasses, I suspected was impeccably made up. A Birkin bag, in a shade of electric blue that screamed expensive hung elegantly from her arm.

I’d never been happier to have a rich person walk through the art gallery’s doors, and that was saying something. I desperately needed the distraction.

“Can I help you?” I asked, forcing a smile and trying my best to forget about the email still sitting in my old inbox.

“I sure hope so,” the woman replied. Her voice was tight, her face a mask of barely controlled fury. “I just found out my husband has a mistress, and I’m here to spend all of his money.”