✓ 𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐎𝐔𝐒, adam banks

01. devil's food cake

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
chapter one: devil's food cake

[a/n: let the fun begin!]

tw(s): none
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★ ━━━ LESTER AVERMAN AND Leslie Averman-Oakes were two peas in a pod. They were Bill and Ted. Thelma and Louise. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. She was the black cat and he was the golden retriever. His cheesy jokes and her dry sarcasm fit hand in hand. From skating at the lake, clad in knit scarves, mittens, and heavy-duty coats, to tagging along with their mothers at the mall, trying on hair bows and pink fleece hats in the girls' accessories section, they were an unbeatable duo.

Their mothers were just as close. From enduring the spitballs and wet willies of elementary school as a team, to battling the wildfire whispers and the burgundy lipstick-covered devils of high school, Tasha Sterling and Martha Oakes were inseparable. The absolute best of friends since they met on the kindergarten playground. They both married a pair of brothers, the Averman brothers. And when they had their children, who were mere months apart, they agreed to coordinate their babies' names and raise them almost as twins.

Now, one thing to understand was that Tasha Sterling was the daughter of a school janitor, and Martha Oakes happened to be apart of one of the most well-off families in the state. Her mother was Edith Oakes, a highly praised fashion designer, and her father was Edgar Oakes, a booming business magnate. 

Martha grew up a silver spoon, a gated community. Tasha was raised on a farm, no, it wasn't a mansion. It was just living room dancing and kitchen table bills.

But this fact went unnoticed to their young children. You see, Martha wanted to teach her young Leslie about humility and hard work, so she made sure they lived adequately, but not glamorously. Other than the occasional snap of the camera for the whole wide world to see, Leslie was practically normal. Or so she thought.

A wrench was thrown in both of their lives when Leslie's father, Michael Averman, was offered a high-paying job opportunity as the CEO of a company in California. Now, her abundance of money was a lot harder to ignore now that it had crept into her immediate family.

He eventually gave up the company to another suitable candidate, and ventured off to start a company of his own: Averman Insurance. Averman Insurance eventually became one of the top five wealthiest businesses in the country. Martha ran for California state senator and won the vote with flying colors.

Leslie went to a nice school in California, a nationally renowned private school in the richest neighborhood around. They purchased a multi-million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills, with a steel gate with the Averman-Oakes name carved in it and a sprawling driveway for twenty garbage trucks and ten maids that seemed to rotate every few weeks. Martha decided that good habits had already imprinted themselves on Leslie by now, so she embraced her husband's new luxurious lifestyle.

However, Leslie was miserable. She sulked around with sweat-soaked hair in the west coast heat, and her eyes studied her shoes more than they studied her books. Michael was a busy man now, and he hardly noticed, and frankly, hardly cared. His main focus now was fending off the press and yelling at their house staff. He no longer sat with her on the couch with a small TV, letting her command the remote and laughing at her frustration with all the buttons. He had a dynasty of his own to control now, he said. She had to understand. She would understand once she inherited it.