The gilded, p.1
The Gilded, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by Whitney D. Grandison
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9884465-2-1
eBook ISBN: 979-8-9884465-4-5
Space Edition ISBN: 979-8-9884465-3-8
THE GILDED
Editor: Becky Barney at Fairest Reviews Editing Services
Cover Artist: Saniyyah Zahid
Book Cover Design: Val at Books and Moods
Interior Formatting: Whitney D. Grandison
Also by Whitney D. Grandison
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For the girls who know the hero is better for them, but fall for the tortured villain anyway
MakeDamnSure • Taking Back Sunday
Kids Again • Sam Smith
We Used to Be Friends • The Dandy Warhols
The Mixed Tape • Jack’s Mannequin
Super Rich Kids • Frank Ocean feat. Earl Sweatshirt
Too Many Reasons • B. Smyth
Miss You • Aaliyah
Thinkin Bout You • Frank Ocean
Remind me to Forget • Kygo + Miguel
Wolves • Selena Gomez + Marshmello
Waves • Normani + 6LACK
Right my Wrongs • Bryson Tiller
California King Bed • Rihanna
Save Your Tears • The Weeknd
Been Like This • Doja Cat
Violent Pictures • Dream On, Dreamer
Touch & Go • Tinashe + 6LACK
Somewhere Out There • Our Lady Peace
Playing Games • Summer Walker feat. Bryson Tiller
Kool Aid • Diana Gordon
Earthquake • The Used
Flames • Mod Sun feat. Avril Lavigne
The Good Left Undone • Rise Against
Best Mistake • Ariana Grande feat. Big Sean
Cough Syrup • Young the Giant
FOREVER • Jessie Reyez + 6LACK
Snooze • SZA
Cool People • Chloe x Halle
fOoL fOr YoU • ZAYN
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
Henry IV Part 2, Act III, Scene I
Focus.
Focus.
Focuuus.
I watched her head bob up and down, half counting the motions, half trying to stay hard enough to finish. Usually, Chloe could get me off in minutes. That Friday afternoon in the guest house wasn’t one of those times.
She was doing it just right. Warm suction, perfect amount of saliva, calculated breaks to just stroke me, and the eye contact with her I-Wanna-Inhale-You look. Still, I couldn’t concentrate.
I wasn’t really interested in the head to begin with, but Chloe was one of those girls who was better with something in her mouth. She’d come over to hang out, and this beat talking, or her attempting to get back together officially.
In a loud huff, Chloe suddenly leaned back on her haunches and glared up at me. “Okay, what gives? I’ve been at this for ten minutes and it never takes you that long. You’re barely even up.”
Frustrated, I pulled my joggers up and sighed. “I got a lot on my mind.”
Chloe scoffed. “So, I’m not enough?”
According to my dick? Apparently not.
She shoved my thigh and pouted.
The thing with Chloe was complicated. We made sense, in theory, but in reality, we were a dud.
Possessive, clingy, and annoying, I’d hit the jackpot on Bad. So, we broke up, but then I got horny and there wasn’t much groundwork I had to lay down with Chloe versus someone new—not that me being who I was would require any effort. Still, with Chloe, it was simple when it was just sex or head. Then again, Chloe never could keep it strictly physical.
So we fought. Back and forth. A string of hookups and fights. And her cursing my existence. In the end, Chloe wouldn’t go anywhere. It hurt her ego too much at the thought of someone else replacing her spot next to me. She was, in many ways, my equal. The proverbial queen at the top of the food chain. She came from money that would last until Hell froze over, and she even had an ice-cold heart to match.
Chloe came up on the bed, laying on her stomach beside me. Because it felt like a decent thing to do, I reached out and petted her head in appreciation for her efforts. At least she’d tried.
Chloe shrugged me off as she reached into her shirt and pulled out a shiny object that was tucked inside her bra.
To the untrained eye, she was holding a chrome tube of lipstick, but being privy to her little habit, it wasn’t a surprise to watch her tilt it over and pour some of what was inside the vial on the back of one of her hands and lean down and quickly snort it up. She did another bump before wiping at her nostrils.
I had a bedroom in our main house, but the guest house served its purpose for whenever Chloe was over for stuff like this. Not to mention, it was easier to get away with hooking up because she tended to get loud, and the last thing I wanted to do was chance Eloise—my father’s girlfriend’s six-year-old daughter—overhearing.
Chloe leaned over the side of the bed and gathered her Prada bag from the floor and began digging inside for something else.
“Is Aaron going to do another Uppers and Downers party?” she asked as she peered into her compact mirror fixing her appearance. I watched as she trailed her finger and thumb around the rim of her mouth to get any excess saliva.
I rested back against the headboard and shrugged. “You know Pharm. Wouldn’t miss a chance at some money.”
One of my best friends, Aaron Prinze, was an heir to a major pharmaceutical empire, BioPrize. It wasn’t a surprise when he himself took an interest in drugs, hence the nickname “Pharm.” A whiz in science, he’d designed his own line of LSD, and he had serious connections to get his hands on everything from weed, pills, coke, and more. If you were looking to score, you hit up Aaron. Not that I used anything. I had this masochist thing going where I just endured the plight that was my life.
The price of admission to one of Aaron’s parties was usually twenty bucks, but the access to endless amounts of alcohol and drugs was worth it. Our friend Barry Castle provided a suite on an occasion, adding more allure to the Uppers and Downers event. Spiked punch, laced candy, and a lavish hotel room made for a perfectly good time. Other times we’d thrown it down at the beach, when the weather permitted us to do so, and the party favors weren’t too much of a risk.
One summer, a junior got too fucked up and almost drowned. Shit got way too real after that. The kid spent a week in the hospital and beach officials started cracking down on after-hour activities.
“Good, I need to re-up.” Chloe sounded groggy as she put her stash away and sniffled a few times.
What she needed was to lay off that shit for a while. She’d have a hole in her brain before the end of the year at this rate.
“Okay,” Chloe drawled dramatically, propping her head up on her hand. “What’s wrong with you? What’s fogging your mind?”
“Do you think I played good in the game yesterday?” We’d won our first football game of the season with a 28 to 17 score, but I worried I hadn’t been on my A game. That I hadn’t stood out enough.
Chloe’s face fell in disdain. “I’m sucking your dick and you’re worried about last night’s game?”
The shock in her tone was almost enough to make me laugh. “This is senior year. I gotta go out with a bang if I’m getting any scholarships, especially a full-ride.”
“Beyond the fact that you’re, like, the smartest guy I know—and guaranteed to get a scholarship—your dad is Douglas freakin’ King.” Chloe gestured to the setting around us to emphasize her point. “You don’t need a scholarship, but you’ll be fine.”
She didn’t get it. It wasn’t that simple.
The comedown from sex, or lack thereof, always left us here. In this listless state of not really knowing each other in depth. It wasn’t entirely Chloe’s fault. I didn’t open up and she didn’t push. We just were. Two stenciled in caricatures to fit a cliché picture. Football stud and the cheerleading queen and all that.
School started in a week and as far as I was concerned, we were still not together. It was better this way. No fighting. No drama. No one to answer to for any little thing.
I sat up. “I’m heading in.”
Chloe didn’t protest as she was quick to grab her stuff. “Yeah, I gotta go anyway. Fallon and I have appointments to get ready for.”
For as long as I’d known Chloe, nothing about her had ever been out of place. Without makeup, her golden-brown face was blemish-free. With makeup, she was put together in a way that was effortless. She kept her hair and her nails done, and she always
But that wasn’t Chloe’s style.
Outside, the heat that August afternoon was mild, not overbearing, but that perfect in-between. The sight of Hillcrest Lake—our city’s own portion of Lake Erie—behind our property provided a tempting lure down to the beach. The sound of the waves hitting the shore called to me. But nah, I wasn’t quite in the mood for a swim, so I shifted my attention forward, across our massive green back lawn toward my house.
But it wasn’t where I wanted to be either.
“Aren’t you gonna walk me to my car?” Chloe asked when it was clear we were headed in different directions.
Not changing course, I said, “You know where it is.”
“Fucking asshole!” The echo of Chloe’s chunky sneakers trailed behind her as she stomped over to the driveway, but I paid her no mind. She’d be back. She always was.
My first thought was to shower, but upon stepping in through the patio doors, I found Eloise inside at the kitchen island.
In just my joggers and Nike slides, I went and took a stool at the island on the end. Eloise was eating lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut in half. Banana slices and a glass of milk were in front of her as well. While I loathed everything about my homelife, I at least liked Eloise. Enough so, I reached out and stole a banana slice, eliciting a response from her.
“Hey!” She furrowed her tiny brows and frowned, scooting her porcelain plate from my reach—as if it were a challenge for my long arms.
My father’s girlfriend entered the room, further souring my mood with her arrival. In Jocelyn’s hands was the day’s mail.
“Afternoon.” Jocelyn gave me a cursory greeting as she came up to the island on the other side. “I thought you’d be at football practice.”
“Coach has us meeting in the morning,” I said.
My response was for naught. Joce was busy glancing at the mail. Eloise returned to her lunch and I prepared to book it from the room. Eloise I could tolerate. Jocelyn not so much.
“No word yet from Georgetown,” Jocelyn sang sadly as she finished sifting through envelopes and advertisements.
The mere mention of Georgetown University set the tension in my shoulders deeper. I didn’t want Georgetown. Hadn’t even applied. But I couldn’t say that.
“I applied elsewhere, just in case,” I half told the truth.
Jocelyn fixed me with a good look. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll get in. Georgetown is a wonderful school. Maybe with your father being an alumnus, he could pull some strings.”
She spoke in code, but I was understood. Georgetown was a “wonderful school,” aka far away enough for her not to see me regularly.
Jocelyn would never admit it.
She was something out of a throwback Disney movie. She didn’t care for me, I could tell, and if she had it her way, she’d have my father ship me to a boarding school. Guess my father wasn’t that whipped because here I was.
They’d been dating for two years, her and my father, and she had graduated to live-in girlfriend with access to his credit cards. She came with a daughter from a previous marriage. Eloise, the only nice thing about her.
We weren’t a family, though. In reality, Jocelyn was a mere place holder. Here to play the mother figure role while my father spent time out of state attending to his company, or hauled up in his home office working all day.
Rawness in my gut caused my fists to clench up.
She could never play mother for me.
“Your dad will be flying in tomorrow, so maybe you can talk to him about putting in a good word,” Jocelyn pushed on.
Shit. He was coming back from New York already? Just what I fucking needed.
“It’s not neces—”
Notifications from my phone caused me to dig it out of my pocket. Almost immediately my stomach dropped and I rolled my eyes.
Barista was a bitch.
Someone, some unknown source at my school, Remington South Prep, created a blog and an anonymous Twitter account to drop dirt on all of us. Tea House was the name of the blog, and the one person manning the account was called Barista.
One glimpse at her Twitter profile and it pissed me off. Who the fuck did she think she was?
Her latest post was a snapshot of me and Chloe separating just ten minutes ago.
Fucking stalker.
Hillcrest was annoying enough without this bitch reporting to anyone who would listen about my every move. I didn’t subscribe to her Twitter or her blog. I wasn’t interested in idle gossip about my peers or my friends, let alone myself. That didn’t stop her followers, the “Tea Party,” from tagging me every now and then when she was reporting about me. Or, supplying her with tips on my whereabouts and actions.
Being king of Remington South, it came with the territory, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
I had no time for this shit.
I sent Chloe an “I’m an asshole, and I’m sorry text,” because I had been a dick. And then I shot out a tweet to squash Barista’s claims and let it go.
“Something the matter?” Jocelyn pressed, appearing concerned. Even Eloise was watching me.
I scrubbed my hand down my face. I couldn’t catch a break.
Pushing off from the counter, I stood and forced a smile on my face. “Yeah, I’m straight.”
I left the room before Jocelyn felt obligated to double check on my mental state.
We had the biggest house in Hillcrest. There was more than enough room to get lost, with plenty of things to do: in-house gym, theater, game room—my own private space. Still, it wasn’t what I needed. The air of King manor was suffocating me as the walls closed in.
After making a pit stop in my room to get my running shoes, I grabbed my AirPods and slipped them on and turned on an album from Bring Me the Horizon and headed outside for a jog.
I needed to clear my head.
It’s easy to pack up and leave when you own nothing.
I learned that trick after our third move. In a bind, nine times out of ten, you only take what you can carry.
When my mother announced we were moving that past June, I thought nothing of it. We were rolling stones. It was a regular reoccurrence at this point. I didn’t have a heavily stamped passport, but I’d been all over the state of Ohio. For each city we stayed in, I drew a collage of my fondest memories in my sketch book.
Because we never stayed anywhere for long, I never bothered with friends. That was another lesson I learned early in life, that saying goodbye was more painful than being alone.
Not that I was one of those types, you know, too good for other people, namely girls. It would’ve been nice to have a girl friend, a solid female bond who I could go to for everything under the sun and vice versa. Had I a best bud, then I wouldn’t have gone through the whole tango I had with Ross Frost. He lived across the hall from me—mistake #1 because he was easily accessible and always there, which made our little rendezvous what it was: awkward.
Ross was a couple of years older, handsome, polite, the furthest thing from toxic, and for a while, I thought he was the one. Except, naturally, he wasn’t. My mother once taught me that women were paragraphs and men were sentences. You could text a guy what’s in your whole heart, just for him to respond with a few simple words.
That was Ross’s issue. He was easy enough to talk to about sports, movies, music, but the deep stuff, actual blood rushing feelings and heart splitting emotions? He was a lost cause.
Still, we’d been in Akron for a year and I thought Ross was the closest I’d get to a decent guy, so one pitiful night after watching the Nets game, I slept with him. He was gentle and sincere, but there hadn’t been any sparks or explosions on my end. And after two more tries at it, I deduced that it just wasn’t in the cards for us.
We hung out here and there after, with him trying to make it work, but I was over it. Really, moving couldn’t have come at a better time.
