Chapter 19: What Do You Take Me For?
That Evening
The Venus Residence
It was a genuine estate. The driveway alone took a full minute to drive from the gate to the fountain plaza at the entrance. Tall columns framed the front facade, and the marble floors caught the light in a way that made everything feel deliberately impressive.
Staff in matching uniforms moved through the space with practiced efficiency — all employees of a professional event company hired specifically for the occasion. The family's only job tonight was to look good and enjoy themselves.
"Okay," Emmett said quietly, taking it all in. "Okay."
"Sir, your invitation?"
A greeter stopped them politely near the entrance. Emmett opened his mouth, caught a glimpse of the security staff positioned near the door, and closed it again. He handed over nothing because he didn't have one, but stayed very still and let Adam handle it.
The greeter checked Adam's invitation, glanced briefly at Emmett, maintained a professional expression, and led them inside.
A second staff member appeared almost immediately. "Mr. Duncan? Miss Venus would like to see you upstairs." A pause. "Just you, sir."
"Go get set up," Adam said to Juno and Emmett. "I'll be right down."
He followed the staff member to the upper floor.
As the guest of honor, Gretchen was making a properly timed entrance — she'd been getting ready since that afternoon. Adam found her in front of a full-length mirror, a stylist making final adjustments to a designer gown that had clearly not been pulled off a rack anywhere.
"Adam! You made it."
She looked over with genuine warmth, and Adam looked back with genuine appreciation for what was in front of him, and kept both of those things completely separate from each other in his head.
They talked. It was easy conversation — she was sharper than her social presentation suggested, which he appreciated.
After a while he went back downstairs.
The party was in full swing by the time Hard Candy took their set. They performed and the room responded the way it had at homecoming, which told Adam the song had real staying power and also that its window was closing fast. Once it circulated through the rock scene — and it would, quickly — professional bands would pick it up and the amateur version would become a footnote. Tonight was probably the last time it would hit this hard coming from them.
That was fine. Tonight was enough.
He collected Juno and pulled Emmett away from a conversation he was clearly reluctant to leave, and the three of them headed out to Emmett's car.
Emmett had gotten his license the previous month and was extremely committed to using it at every opportunity, a commitment somewhat limited by the cost of gas.
"Okay," Emmett said, pulling out of the driveway. "What were you doing up there for that long?"
"Talking," Adam said.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Juno smiled at the window.
"How much did she pay us?" Emmett asked.
"Guess."
"Hundred each?"
Adam said nothing, just kept smiling.
"Two hundred?"
Emmett glanced over and immediately pulled to the side of the road. "How much?"
Adam pulled out a folded stack of bills. "Three thousand."
Emmett stared at it. He took it, looked at both sides, held it up to the window as if checking it against the streetlight. "This is real. This is three thousand actual dollars." He set it carefully in his lap. "That's a thousand each."
"Right," Adam said.
"She must have really liked the performance," Juno said, with a particular inflection that made Adam look at her.
"She hired the band," Adam said evenly. "She paid for a professional service. Three thousand is reasonable for what we did tonight. It's not that complicated."
Juno nodded very seriously. "Of course."
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"Like what?" Juno said innocently.
Adam exhaled. "Gretchen is—yes, she's attractive, yes, she was being friendly, and no, nothing happened and nothing was going to happen. Is that what you want me to say?"
"I didn't ask you anything," Juno said.
Emmett, who had been counting bills with great concentration, looked up. "She is really attractive though."
"Not helping," Adam said.
He leaned back and stared at the roof of the car while Emmett pulled back onto the road.
The honest answer — the one he wasn't going to say out loud because it would take too long to explain — was that he simply didn't want the complications. This wasn't high school shyness or some principled stance. It was a practical calculation.
He'd watched enough of these social dynamics play out, in television and in life, to know how they tended to go. Friend groups where everyone had dated everyone else. Relationships that collapsed and rebuilt and collapsed again in configurations that left everyone involved slightly worse off each time.
He thought about the revolving door of Ross and Rachel, Ted and Robin, the entire overlapping web of the How I Met Your Mother and Friends casts — people who genuinely loved each other, tangled into knots of their own making because they kept circling back to the same small pool.
He didn't want that. He especially didn't want it while he was trying to build something that required his full attention.
There were other things worth having besides romance. Good friendship, for one. The kind that didn't come with a two-year expiration date and an awkward aftermath.
He looked out the window at the passing streetlights and thought that a thousand dollars was a genuinely excellent start to a medical school fund.
End of Chapter 19
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