Talk. The talk?
All I want after driving and helping my mom is relaxation.
“Do I have to wear a gown or anything?”
I’m not gowns and champagne. I’m old concert tees and beer. And it’s not like I keep a gown handy for emergencies.
“It’s semi-formal.”
I might have a black dress from my grandma’s funeral I could wear. God, that’s morbid.
“Will you come?” he asks again, his voice pleading.
How can I say no to him? After everything, I owe him this at the very least and an explanation about my avoiding him.
“I’d like that.”
He gives me the need-to-knows, and we say goodbye. As soon as I hang up, I hit Tay’s number on my speed dial.
Aidan and I arrive at The Grand Victorian an hour later. He looks nice in his suit and tie. Thankfully, Tay had a sophisticated, knee-length dress that fits me. She stayed to help me with my hair and makeup. I didn’t wear boots this time.
We make rounds, and I only speak when I’m spoken to directly. Other than that, I listen and hide the occasional yawn. We work the party until my feet throb. Fortunately, Aidan excuses himself when he sees another important someone. I hunker down at our assigned table and give my dogs a break from my borrowed heels, kicking them off.
“Is someone sitting here?” an older female voice asks.
I’m not sure which seat she points to, my eyes on my throbbing feet, but if anyone has a problem, they’re welcome to tell her themselves.
“It’s free.”
She selects the seat across from me. When my gaze rises from the floor to the woman, they grow with horror.
“Christina.”
“You’re looking very well, Evie.”
“Yes,” I mumble, swallowing down the shock. The last time I saw Christina, she was standing over my hospital bed hours after I’d given birth to her granddaughter, ordering me to leave Aidan’s name off the birth certificate. She blamed me for having the baby and not aborting it like she wanted. She wouldn’t even say her name. I haven’t the faintest idea why she’d choose to sit with me, let alone actually acknowledge my presence.
“I didn’t know you’d be here, Mrs. Channing.”
“Yes. I am.”
“You are what?”
“Mrs. Channing. I seldom remember these days with your mother acting the part.”
“I’m sorry? What you’re talking about?”
“Please, don’t play the naïve card, Evie. You’re a bright girl. Every yokel in this one-horse town knows Meredith is fucking my husband. She’s always wanted what I had, and Charles was no different. Is she enjoying him? Is she enjoying the privileges of being me?”
“Mrs. Chan—Christina, what happens between the three of you is none of my or Aidan’s business. You aren’t the only one who’s been hurt by your husband’s indiscretions. Because the plain truth of it is, Christina, he’s the one stepping outside of your marriage. Not my mother.”
Her already frosty, stiff posture becomes as frigid as an ice sculpture in a December blizzard.
“How dare you tell me what affects my son or where I should set the blame. You’re nothing more than a gold digging tart, sinking your Hathaway claws into the Channing men. You are your mother’s daughter.”
I stand with a calm poise, even though I’m vibrating with rage inside.
“We both know I want nothing to do with your money. I made that clear when you tried to pay me off. As far as your husband, if you throw your dirty laundry out for everyone to see, expect an opinion. Have a lovely evening, Mrs. Channing.”
I stride away without a chance of hesitation for her to give her two cents. I locate the bar and order a beer. I take a swig, wiping away spillage before it dribbles onto my borrowed dress.
“That looks good,” Aidan says, stepping up to the bar next to me. “I’ll take one, too,” he tells the bartender, pointing at the bottle in my hand. When the guy behind the bar hands it to him, he takes a big chug and moans. He leans his back against the bar.
“I’m guessing not many of these people drink bottled beer.”
He laughs.
“No.”
“Good,” I mutter then take another swallow.
“You are quite a vision, all prettied up, beer in hand. It’s perfect.” His eyes drift down. “Where are your glass slippers, Cinderella?” I glance down at my very bare feet and laugh. “I thought you were only supposed to lose one of them.”
“I forgot them at the table.”
“It works for you, really.” He laughs into his bottled beer, the wind making a whistling sound. I nudge him with my shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if I fit here.”
“You fit, Evie. You wear this life well, bare feet, beer, and all.”
“Your mother might disagree with you.” I draw on the barley water before I shove my shoeless foot into my mouth.
“My mother is here?” He scans the crowd of cardboard people, stretching his neck. “What did she say to you?”
“Oh, you know. She pretty much put me in the middle of our parents’ affair.”
God, that sounds so messed up. Then again, what isn’t messed about Aid’s and my situation?
“She didn’t.” His shoulders sink with disapproval.
“She did. And I’m sorry to say I may not have been very nice to her either. I can’t have anyone talking about my mother.”
“No. Of course not. I’m sorry she did that, Evie. She was way out of line.”
“Can you take me home? I’m not in the mood to be here anymore.”
“Yeah.” He sets his beer on the dark wood counter and searches his pockets for his keys. “What about your shoes?”
I refuse to risk another encounter with that woman.
“Leave ‘em.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more.”
Sorry Tay. I owe you a pair.
He hooks an arm around my shoulders, hugging me close to his side, and escorts me out.
“Can we stop somewhere?” he asks after a lengthy silence.
Why interrupt it with meaningless dribble?
“I’m not sure—” After the last few weeks of disappointments, I need time to meditate and register everything.
No bullshit. I want to be with Holt right now. He’s the only person that ever seems to make things better, but he’s mad at me.
“You’re the only other person who understands what I’m going through, what I’ve been going through for years. It might be good for us to talk about it.”
It would be good to talk to someone who understands, even if it’s the son of the man my mother is having an affair with, the unknowing father of my child, and the only man I’ve ever given my heart and body to—Well, the last one is partially true.
I nod my head, and he pulls onto the old road and up to the old bridge. It’s this red rickety covered bridge barely wide enough to accommodate two cars going both ways. It sits over the eerily black river, calmly passing under its cover.
We park on the grassy shoulder of the road, near the bridge entrance, and climb out. Taking a seat at the opening in the middle, our legs hang over the edge. We look onto the river, with forest-lined grassy banks. Even with its calm currents, the river silences the world around you. That’s why it’s a perfect place to reflect.
If you want to forget everything, drown your thoughts, the untamed river gets louder further from town, closer to my house, with towering boulders and trees and moss blanketing everything. It’s breathtaking. The kind of beauty most people only ever experience in nature magazines, a beauty that could never be captured on film. It’s the kind of place you have to see in person to truly appreciate it.
We quietly watch the water move under us, taking assurance in its steady repetitiveness.
“Evie,” he says after such a long stretch of silence, I almost forgot he was beside me. “I’m sorry about the last time we spoke.”
“It’s alright, Aid. The truth might suck, but it’s better than ignorance any day of the week.”
I’m a hypocrite.
“Maybe so, but I didn’t want to tell you like that. I wanted the situation to be right.”
“Aidan, there are no right situations to break shitty news. Even if there was, it just ruins a perfectly good time.”
“That’s an interesting way to put it.”
A big, fat, lying hypocrite.
Why can’t I take my own advice?
Why can’t I say, Aidan, I’m the mother of your child. She’s beautiful and perfect and the best thing we’ve ever done.
But I don’t say any of that.
“How do you stand to be around your father after discovering he cheated on your mom?”
“I didn’t, remember?”
“Oh,” I let out a lazy chuckle, “yeah.”
“You’re stronger than me, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I didn’t see it firsthand. It has to be ten times harder actually walking in on the situation. I can at least block out visuals.”
“Yeah,” he shutters, “you’re lucky there.”
We glance at each other from the corners of our eyes and chuckle.
“It must’ve been hard hiding this secret all these years.”
I guess we’ve both been keeping things from each other.
“Not being able to talk about it made it that much worse. But the one person I should’ve told, you, I couldn’t. Deep down, a part of me stayed away from here because of you, too. I couldn’t bear to hurt you more than I already had. I’d done that enough.”
Knife in the gut.
“You did.”
“I can’t apologize enough for that.”
“There’s no need, Aid. I got over it years ago.” I still haven’t gotten over it. “We were dumb kids who got together at the wrong time in our lives.”
“And now?”
“And now we have to figure out where we fit.”
He takes my hand and stares down at it, his thumb running over the knuckles.
“I really do care about you, Evie.”
“I care for you, too, Aid,” I admit, watching our touching hands.
When we look up again, his eyes are reflecting something I haven’t seen since our night together. He leans in to kiss me, and without thinking, I lean toward him. Our lips barely graze when I halt him with a hand on his chest. “Wait,” I stutter, my face dropping. “I can’t.”
“Is it because of our parents?”
A million and one reasons keep me from him, each worse than the last.
“It wouldn’t be fair if I did.”
“Um, you’re going to have to explain how it would be unfair if I kissed the girl I’ve been in love with since we were kids.”
“That’s kind of another reason why I can’t.” I scoot over a foot, putting space between us. “It wouldn’t be fair if I kissed you knowing fully well how you felt.”
He shakes his head. “Evie, you aren’t making any sense. Are you sick?”
“Yes,” I answer with a groan of anxiety, “to my stomach.”
“Would you like me to take you home?”
Home.
Holt.
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than home with Holt. Unfortunately, no matter how much I want it, it doesn’t matter because he isn’t speaking to me anyway.
I hurt him.
If I want to fix things between us, I’ll have to hurt Aidan, too. But I don’t want to hurt him more than I have to. Why pour salt on a wound by telling him there’s someone else? At least this way, he won’t be emasculated by the choice of another man.
“I have to tell you this first.” I clamp my eyes shut and take a deep breath before I blurt out, “I—I don’t think of you that way, Aidan. I’ve enjoyed these past weeks with you, but I don’t have the same feelings for you I once had.” I open my eyes, expecting a heartbreaking expression on his face, but he’s staring off with a muted look. “I’m sorry.”
He refuses to acknowledge me. I see him fighting the urge. He trains his focus on the river rushing below our feet instead. I wait him out, hoping he’ll say something, anything.
“I’d better get you home,” he says, stands, and starts toward his SUV before I protest. But why would I? The night is officially over.
softening of sharp edges between colors, fusing until no division is apparent
When Aid drops me off, he doesn’t get out of the vehicle to escort me to the porch like usual. I honestly didn’t expect him to either. Every light in the house is on, emanating a golden, hospitable glow. I haphazardly drop my purse in the entryway, shuffling back to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Listening to the motionless house, I slump against the sink with the glass frozen in my hand, my eyes glazed over in reflection. Holt walks through the swinging door, stirring the silence. Our eyes lock, his face stone-cold. After an uneasy thirty seconds (I counted), he finally moves to the fridge and takes out a pitcher of whatever the hell he came in here for. I turn away from him. I’d die if he saw the hurt splashed in bright red and pink shades across my face. It would give him a reason to gloat.
He sets the pitcher on the counter with a thud and reaches for a cup from the open cabinet. He sets that down with force as well. Luckily, they’re both plastic. Otherwise, they would’ve shattered in his hand from the contact. He pours himself a glass of ice tea, refusing to acknowledge me past the awkward eye-contact when he entered.
He doesn’t leave once he’s gotten his drink. He stands at the counter, silent, avoiding me, drawing out my misery.
“Have a good time with your boyfriend?” he grumbles with a snicker at the end.
“You have your drink,” my voice quakes angrily, “so leave already.”
“Turn around.”
I don’t.
He clinches my shoulder and makes me, noticing the tears glinting in the corners of my eyes.
“Did he try something with you?” he asks, his mood swinging from anger to concern.
“No,” I murmur, my face sinking when the slippery suckers fall from my eyes. I hate crying in front of people. It makes me feel weak. Not wanting him to see me like this, I try to escape, but he steps in my path, blocking me.
“Please, not now,” I plead, keeping my face from view of him.
“Evie,” he rests his hands over the sides of my face, coaxing it up with an urging touch, “did he hurt you?”
He runs his thumbs over the wet trails of tears streaming down my cheeks, examining them with a knitted brow.
I shake my head. “The opposite.”
“What happened?”
“I need time alone, to think and get out of this damn dress.”
He presses his forehead into mine, rubbing the pad of his callous thumb over my cheekbone. His face sinks into my hair when I turn mine away, trying to find my center. Our hands clasp as I walk away, the last pieces of us to retain a connection.
“Come to me tonight,” he says.
I agree with a nod before our fingers unlock.
Once I’ve undressed and taken an hour for myself, I trek up to the attic. I don’t knock. When I make it to the top step, I don’t notice him on first glance.
“Hey,” he says from behind me. I spin around and spot him lounging on the couch of his living room, a book in his hands. Max rests on the floor beneath him.
He studies me.
I study him.
“It wasn’t what you thought,” I blurt.
Good job. You sound like an idiot.
He has an identical expression to the one he gave me the night I got drunk and danced around the attic like a mad woman. I would, too.
“I wanted you to know. What I last said to you about hurting Aidan, it didn’t come out the way I meant. What I wanted to say was, it wasn’t fair of me to carry on a relationship with him when I want you.” He rises and steps toward me, his mouth open and ready to speak. I hold my hand up to his lips
. I need to finish. “That’s why, when he leaned in to kiss me tonight, I stopped him.”
He grips my wrist and removes my fingers from his lips slowly. His eyes focus on me firmly.
“You want me?”
“Is that all you got from that?”
“It’s the only thing that matters.”
His lips move toward mine.
“Wait.” They stop. “We need to talk before this goes any further. However far that may be.”
He brings my palm to his lips and kisses the center.
“Where would you like to start?”
“You knew I was with him tonight. How? Were you spying on me?”
“Give me credit,” he says, offended. “Who else would you get dolled up for?”
“I could’ve been with Tay.”
“The only time you wear dresses is when you see him. The rest of the time you’re in jeans and an old T-shirt. Plus, I might’ve seen you get into his car earlier tonight.”
“Making notes of my habits, Holt? Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“I’m observant.”
“What about you and Kayla?”
“There is no Kayla and I. Never has, never will.”
“You asked her out the night of my date with Aidan, you invited her to our house, to spite me.”
“I never asked Makayla out.” He pauses. “Our house?”
“It’s a general ‘our’. And that’s not the point.”
“She asked me after you came home, on one of my trips to the hardware store. She was building toward it for weeks. Since her dad owns the only supply store in town, I couldn’t piss her off. I’d have to drive to Hanover every time I needed a nail. I guess I’ll have to now. It doesn’t matter, though.”
“Did anything—ensue between the two of you?”
“Ensue?”
“Did you sleep with her in the woods that night? I mean…Not that it’s any of my business. And every guy wants her, so it’s understandable. She’s beautiful,” I ramble because I’m terrified to hear the answer.
“Yes, she is beautiful.” Ouch. Hurt. “But I didn’t have sex with her.” He pauses, watching the tension drain from my face. “Want to know why I didn’t?”
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