Brazen Mistakes (Brazen Boys #3)

24. Clara

Chapter 24

Clara

E tiquette is officially the dumbest thing I’ve ever had to learn. It’s even worse than when my fifth-grade music teacher tried to teach me to carry a tune, and just as pointless.

Because according to Trips, I can’t even sit right, let alone walk right.

“No, it’s supposed to be more glide, less purposeful,” he says for the third time in as many minutes.

The urge flares to take off one of the heels he insisted I wear for this painful enterprise and chuck it pointy part first at his handsome face. “How the hell are you supposed to get from one side of the room to the other if you don’t mean to go there? This is inane.”

“Inane, yes, but also necessary.”

“Who am I trying to impress, Trips? I’m not one of the debutantes you were talking about earlier. I’m a girl who was lucky enough to live in a rented two-story in an area with only a few gangs that weren’t too territorial. Etiquette was knowing which tables and halls to avoid at school, not gliding and sitting with my ankles in a particular way.”

RJ chuckles from the couch, where he’s been watching us while working on his laptop, a collection of empty Mountain Dews beside him. Jansen said something about popcorn a few minutes ago and disappeared. I can smell the buttery goodness, so I’m sure our peanut gallery will fill up soon, especially after Walker gets back from grocery shopping.

Trips drags his hand through his hair. “Most of the work we do involves the rich. Blending in is essential. You don’t need to impress anyone. You need to not stick out. And right now, you wouldn’t blend. Can’t you just mute your natural force a tiny bit?”

“My natural force?”

RJ looks up again. “Clara, once you’ve decided on something, you go for it. It translates to the way you move, the way you think, the way you analyze a situation.”

“Planning makes me move with too much strength?”

Jansen backs through the door, a huge bowl of popcorn in his arms. “Are we talking about how Clara moves like she owns the room? Because I think it’s hot as shit.”

Trips groans, and I wrap my arms around my torso. “Great. Now I’m self-conscious about walking.”

Jansen offers the bowl to RJ as he sits down, and RJ takes a handful.

“Walker said once that you can play with pieces of yourself like he does, that you can pretend to be something other than you are,” Jansen says .

“Yeah. I can. Not quite like he can, but it’s a similar thing.”

“Then be a flighty, rich, debutante version of Clara. You have gotten everything you’ve ever wanted without working for it. You know everyone in the room, and you know they all love you and any gossip you’ve gathered. Move like that Clara.”

The girl Jansen describes is so opposite of me I almost can’t imagine her. Trips starts on some bullshit, but I hold up a finger, trying to build that person in my mind. Remembering the best lie is the one closest to the truth, I pull from my mom and my aunt and cousin. Three women, all born with more money than I’ve ever seen, but only two of them kept it.

My mom lost hers and hates herself because of it.

I close my eyes, shifting with my memories of their movements, trying to play the part of fake hospitality that has made my skin itch at every family gathering I’ve been forced to attend over the years.

Ready, I put on what my mom likes to call her “secret smile,” which she tried to teach me in middle school. She explained I should look like I’m holding a small chocolate on my tongue and be thinking about how delicious it is, but that no one can find out I’m eating it.

She refused to give me chocolate to eat while she made me practice, however.

With all those weird feelings wobbling inside of me, I step forward, swaying, letting my body move more like a dancer and less like an athlete, keeping my weight back farther than feels safe in the towering heels strapped to my ankles .

The first step is too long, and I correct for the next few skittering steps, head slightly tilted, nothing genuine on my face, but nothing sour showing through either.

I make a circle of the room, and the peanut gallery cheers once I make it back to where I started, Trips not praising, but not correcting.

“Better.”

“I feel dirty. That woman is not happy with her life.”

RJ laughs. “Clara, she’s not someone else.”

“Well, if she’s a part of me, she’s a part that I hope I never get comfortable with. She’s so fake and brittle, actual joy would break her into tiny, crumbled bits.”

Trips pulls out his phone, tapping away on it. “She moves right, so her bitterness will have to be something you just deal with for now. Now, five more rounds of the living room. I can’t have you looking like you’re having an aneurysm every time you go to take a step. It’s got to look and feel natural.”

With only minimal grumbles, I do as he demands, circling the room, stopping to titter at RJ and Jansen, once commenting on the weather, another time asking them if they’d heard what Katie had done. Who is Katie? No idea. But there’s bound to be gossip about someone with that name at any party. There are too many Kates, Katies, and Katherines for that not to be the case.

Jansen and RJ snack on their popcorn, and I sneak a few handfuls while Trips is distracted, but it doesn’t taste as good as it usually does. Nothing does.

Just when I’m about to ask a series of leading questions to my peanut gallery to get them to make up gossip about my mystery Katie, Trips snaps his fingers at me .

Yeah.

Like I’m a dog.

I ignore that shit. I don’t care how damaged that particular boy of mine is—I deserve respect from him the same as from anyone else.

And while I might still be learning what that looks like, I know that skittering around like a well-trained Labrador retriever is not what self-respect looks like.

RJ must see that in my face because his eyes twinkle as Trips huffs from the other side of the room.

“Clara.”

I turn to him. “Yes, Trips?”

“I was trying to get your attention.”

“Oh. I assumed a cocker spaniel had wandered in and you were hoping to get a look at its tags.”

RJ and Jansen snicker behind me as Trips glares.

I wait.

Finally, one hand tugging his hair, he relents. “Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven.”

“Do you feel like you’ve got the walk dialed in?”

I shrug. “It’s not natural yet, but I’m getting a feel for it.”

“Want to learn to waltz?”

Trips slouches like this is by far the worst part of teaching me how to fit into his world, and it causes the guys to double down on their laughter.

“I’m a fine dancer, Trips. I don’t think this will be awful.”

“Maybe not for you,” he grumbles, and I can’t help the smirk that stretches across my face .

Because I like the bastard. And if he didn’t have shit for a father, I have a feeling we’d be a lot closer than we are right now.

But he does. So we aren’t.

And waltzing is apparently near torture based on the way he’s looking at me.

If this is the way it has to be, at least for now, then I’ll be on my best behavior. I’ll try not to make this harder for him. Things have been plenty difficult for him so far, and I’m the one who put myself on his dad’s radar when I called him this fall.

Of course, I didn’t know the risks then. But I do now. “Teach me. I’ll be good,” I say, the words more pleading than I intended.

“Right.”

Soft classical music pipes into the room before he sets his phone on the coffee table, moving both chairs out of the way. Once there’s space, he stares at me, hands limp at his sides.

And I wait.