Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
I look like shit, I feel like shit, and the lipstick I found rolling around in the bottom of my Birkin bag is the only thing giving the illusion I tried.
Vogue won’t be calling me for a feature spread anytime soon, not that they ever have before—but I looked the part, at least. Right now, I don’t know what the hell role I’m supposed to be playing.
Outside my glass office wall, the gallery hums with life. Staff members in sleek black outfits flit from one end to the other, adjusting track lighting and arguing over placement for an incoming installation. Phones ring off the hook at the front desk, and somewhere in the lobby, a patron raises their voice over a billing error. The symphony of chaos plays on, even as I pack my exit into cardboard boxes in the room that still has my name on the door.
This office—my office for nearly the past two decades of my life inside the most popular and successful branch of Bishop Galleries—has been a place of comfort and confidence since I was eighteen, working part time as a lowly receptionist fielding calls. I built my career on sweat and fumes until I was the sole person running all the Bishop Gallery locations in the domestic and international markets, and if it weren’t for my blood and tears tinting every facet of operations, there’d be a different damn color on the walls.
And look what good all that sacrifice did you…
My throat tightens reflexively around thickening moisture, but I snort to clear it, swipe my hand down my face, and grab the next stack of newspapers. Tears are not allowed. Sarcasm is my armor, and I’m keeping it on.
My phone lights up on the desk, and I briefly glance at it to see three text message notifications populate.
Logan: Breezy, please. Just pick up.
Logan: We need to talk.
Logan: Where are you?
I have two younger brothers, and for the vast majority of my life, managing them has been my second job.
Logan, the youngest of the three of us, is thirty-two but still plays the baby like it’s his full-time job. Though, I suppose, his actual career as a famous Hollywood actor fits his dramatic, self-serving MO perfectly.
Bennett, on the other hand, is thirty-six and hasn’t been on speaking terms with Logan since an arson-scandal-turned-cheating-scandal blew everything up. As the art prodigy of the family, Bennett achieved world-renowned success as a barely legal adult, and our father pushed and pushed him until he hit rock bottom and cut off everyone in the family but me. He escaped to a small town in Vermont called Red Bridge with a medically fragile newborn daughter in tow—a long, painful, bitter story involving an ex who wanted nothing to do with a sick child and just enough pent-up rebellion to turn him into a full-blown recluse.
He’s doing better now, despite a literal ton of heartbreak and loss that robbed us all of my sweet niece Summer over two years ago.
Our mother, on the other hand, wanted us as babies but traded in any pretense of maternal responsibility for flings half her age after our parents divorced decades ago. Basically, Colleen Bishop is busy sending me tropical selfies with her twenty-eight-year-old surfer boyfriend—whose name I can never remember—while my whole life is going up in flames. Lovely symmetry, really.
And our father, Henry Bishop, is dead.
A month ago, he had a massive heart attack on a European vacation with his twenty-seven-year-old wife Serena, died, and as I’ve come to find out, made one of his most personally vindictive moves to date by leaving all of Bishop Galleries to Logan in his will.
Logan, who couldn’t tell a Basquiat from a Banksy if his life depended on it.
Logan, who’s probably Googling “how to run an art gallery,” in between firing off texts to me.
I ignore my phone, packing away the evidence of my life wasted until the boxes form a sad little cityscape around me. One more box, I tell myself. One more sharp turn toward a dark road I’ve never driven before.
The slam of my office door is violent and jerks me out of my thoughts with no finesse.
Sunglasses shoved into his hair, his leather jacket unzipped, and his usual Hollywood persona of cool at war with unrest, Logan stands in the wake. He looks irritated, but I’d win a contest in that department today.
Seeing as he lives in LA, the last time my baby brother was in New York was at my father’s will-reading two weeks ago, and I haven’t spoken to him since—not that he hasn’t tried.
He’s called and texted ad nauseam since I stormed out after my father’s lawyer announced that he’d gifted Bishop Galleries to Logan—before the rest of the inheritance bullshit was finished—and since it was just the three of us, my absence put quite the dent in the estate attorney’s captive audience. I’ve got a feeling he still needs me to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, but for some enraged reason, I’m not feeling like making it easy.