by Ella Fields
“Callum has a gift for you,” she said, dabbing at her chin delicately with her napkin.
That had me pausing. Callum had barely looked at me since they’d arrived.
I almost coughed. “Sorry?”
Callum smirked, then reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, retrieving a little box and pushing it over the table.
I blinked at it, unsure what game he was playing at now.
“Go on,” my mom said, nudging me with her elbow. “Don’t be rude. Open it.”
Slowly, I reached over the table, taking the silver box and opening it.
Inside sat a locket. My mother gasped, her hand going to her chest as I freed it from the box.
“You should open the locket later,” Callum said, picking up his fork and spearing some vegetables. “You know, when you’re alone.”
Our mothers both made similar sounds of swooning.
With my hand shaking, I deposited the necklace back inside the box and set it aside.
“So sweet,” my mom practically wept.
“I know.” Lucinda smiled, her brown eyes crinkling in the corners. “I might’ve helped him just a little, but what’s on the inside, well, that was all his idea.”
“Do you still have that girlfriend?” Mom asked Callum, no hesitation whatsoever.
My dad laughed. “Valery, leave the boy alone.”
“He does,” Lucinda said with a roll of her eyes. She picked up her wine and took a hearty sip. “Though I suppose they both should have a little fun before they’re shackled to one another for life.”
Our mothers laughed like a pair of old crones, our fathers smiling as if the prospect of an arranged marriage was normal dinner conversation.
One look at Callum had my stomach sinking. His head was down, eyes staring into his food while his fork no doubt left imprints on the inside of his fist.
“Callum, don’t look so forlorn.” Lucinda swirled her wine, taking another sip. “One would think you didn’t have a set of eyes in your head. Renee is stunning.”
“Luce,” Kian said, a stern yet humorous timbre to his voice.
Lucinda waved a hand at her husband. “You’re the one who agreed it’d be a great thing for our families.”
Kian tilted a shoulder. “It would, but leave it be for now. You’re likely scaring them.”
Ignoring him, my mom smiled at Lucinda, whispering none too quietly, “Arranged marriages are all the rage again. Did you hear about the Everton’s boy? He married this tiny wraith of a thing …”
“Have you got that proposal ready?” Kian, Callum’s father, asked mine, effectively talking over our mother’s voices.
“Yes, it’s here in my office. Though we’ve got a few snags we’ll need to iron out.”
The conversation turned to business, and our mothers quieted, playing the dutiful wives until they could be excused to the parlor for more wine and raucous laughter.
Before that could happen, Rosa appeared with a cake, setting it down on the table, then collected some dinner plates.
My father took the lighter she deposited, lighting all fifteen candles as I felt Callum’s fire-filled gaze on my profile.
“Strawberry cheesecake?” Kian asked, inspecting it as my father sat back down.
My mom smiled. “It’s been her favorite since she was old enough to request it.”
It was true, though after a quick look at Callum, whose tongue was poking his cheek as he drilled holes into my face with his eyes, I worried if I took one bite, I’d hurl up everything I’d managed to eat tonight.
My mother and Lucinda started singing, and I painted a smile on, my fingers toying viciously with the hem of my dress beneath the table. Thankfully, everyone was so lost in their conversations, they paid no attention to me and the way I left my piece of cheesecake untouched.
No one besides Callum, who licked a smear of cream from his upper lip before excusing himself.
Scooping up the little box, I soon did the same. Callum was nowhere to be found as I strolled down the hall toward the staircase. Unfortunately, I found him upstairs in my room, hands trailing over the fabric on my desk. “You sew?”
I left the door open, walking in and inspecting my room, trying to see what he saw as he looked around. Books piled high on my tall white bookshelf that took up the entirety of one wall. A plush peach-colored rug beneath a small table where craft and fashion magazines sat atop, and a white armchair next to it.
My bed was on top of a small dais, it’s four white posts surrounded by bright veils of mosquito netting. Not to protect me from mosquitos, but just because I liked them.
I felt like a princess surrounded by luminous curtains, and my raised bed provided me a heart-stopping view of the dense, green woods outside my floor-to-ceiling window.
“I do,” I finally said, thinking it was obvious and wondering what he wanted.
Callum removed a lid on a glass jar that held numerous buttons of all different colors, shapes and sizes.
I watched, my mouth agape, as he turned the jar upside down and sent them scattering to the desk and floor. “Whoops.”
Vile words curled behind my teeth as anger set my bones stiffening. I swallowed them and asked with too much calm, “What is your problem?”
He set the empty jar down, a few lone buttons rolling across the floorboards to hide beneath the desk.
Without even so much as a backward glance at them, or me, he strolled over to my bookshelves, a low chuckle reaching me as he plucked out one of my comics.
“Sailor Moon?” His brow arched as he looked at me. “Really?”
With my teeth grinding together, I concentrated on breathing slowly through my nose. I wouldn’t let him pick me to pieces.
“You don’t strike me as the comic book type,” he murmured, tossing it back on the shelf haphazardly. I tensed, hoping it wouldn’t slide off the shelf to the floor.
“You don’t strike me as the type for small talk. What do you want?”
A flash of something I couldn’t name rippled over his features before he schooled them. He stepped closer, and I kept my eyes steadfast on his. “Did you open the locket yet?”
“No, and I don’t want it.” Fed up with the tension and his disarming presence, I marched over to him and shoved the box in my hand to his chest. “Here, take it back. I know your mom arranged it anyway.”
“True,” he said with a smile that was less than comforting. “No need to be rude, though. It’s probably really expensive. A family heirloom.” With another cursory glance around my room, he added, “And it appears you sure do like expensive things.”
“And you don’t?” My hand, still holding the locket, dropped to my side as he stepped away and strode for the door without answering me.
“Call it a peace offering.” He gestured to the locket. “I’m done playing games, Renee. Get your mother to back off and you won’t need to worry about me again.”
I scoffed. “I never encouraged her.”
He raised a brow.
“You don’t believe me?”
A shrug, then, “I’ll believe you when I stop hearing about all their ridiculous plans.”
I leaned back against my desk, staring down at the locket. He wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said or did. “Your ego knows no bounds. I’m not interested in you.”
He remained quiet, but I could still feel him standing there across the room at my door as I stared down at the silver box.
With a sigh, I flipped it open, removing the locket from its soft pillow and staring at the intricate silver engravings on the outside. Unable to help it, a tiny gasp slipped from me. “It really is beautiful.”
Callum made a sound of agreement. “My great-grandmother’s.”
I looked over at him then. A family heirloom indeed. “I don’t have to take it.”
He scratched at his head. “I think you’d find it would cause too much drama between our mothers if you didn’t.”
That was true. My nail caught the tiny latch, flipping
it open.
I screamed, the locket flying from my hand as a black spider unfolded itself and jumped at my chest. In a panic, I brushed it to the floor, my heart racing and my breath stalling as I stumbled backward, trying to skirt around my desk.
The spider scuttled away, heading for my wardrobe as a loud crash resounded behind me.
I turned and saw my new sewing machine on the floor. “No!” I fell beside it, taking in the broken casing and twisted needle shank. “No, no. My mom got me this when we moved here. I’d been waiting forever.”
Callum cursed. Enraged, I glanced over my shoulder to find him with a shocked, pinched look on his face. “I didn’t …”
“You didn’t what? Do that on purpose?” I laughed, my breath catching as my vision blurred. “Get out.”
“Renee—”
“No,” I cut in, standing and whirling on him as fury dried the tears that’d welled in my eyes. “Did you ever stop to think, just for one fucking minute, that I might actually want nothing to do with you? Huh? That all your stupid games, the torment, the hateful glares could be unwarranted?”
He didn’t say a word, just stared at me as if he’d been slapped.
“Get the hell out of my room, my house, and my fucking life. Now. Before I scream the house down and tell my parents everything you’ve done.”
His lips parted, his hand diving into his thick brown hair before he finally spun and headed out the door.
I locked it behind him, then slumped against it and stared at the remains of my sewing machine with my heart in tatters.
Sixteen years old
“Renee and her parents will be arriving soon,” my mother called down the hall to my bedroom where I was slipping a shirt over my head.
“Fuck,” I spewed the word under my breath.
I’d seen Renee in and outside of school plenty of times, but over the past eleven months, we hadn’t said a word to each other. Not one damn word.
Not since I’d left her in her room on the night of her fifteenth birthday, heartbroken over a sewing machine.
Such a thing would usually make me laugh, yet as I watched her face morph from horror to despair, all I could do was stare. I remembered it all as if it happened just yesterday. Not sure why, but it was something that played out behind my closed eyelids many times and stalked me in the halls and classrooms whenever I saw her.
She never looked at me, didn’t even offer a scowl. Not even at our family’s get-togethers, where she’d dutifully act like the good daughter and ignore our mothers’ continuous chiding with a simple crack of laughter.
I didn’t exist. Even as my name was dragged around school after I called it quits with Tara two weeks after Renee’s birthday. Even when the girls talked of my philandering ways at parties. Even when I made pass after scoring pass at each of our games.
I was a ghost.
Which was fine because it was what I’d wanted. I wanted to be left alone to live my own life and not have to give in to my mother’s fanciful ideas of marriage and two point five kids followed by taking the reins of my father’s company.
It was one thing for my father to control my career, but another thing entirely for him to control my personal life. In hindsight, I knew I’d probably overreacted, but I wanted to play ball professionally. And marriage? Marriage was something no fifteen-year-old guy wanted to think about, let alone be forced into.
The backyard was bedecked with twinkling lights, and the band my father chose warmed up on the makeshift stage by the pool. Spying some seats in the corner near the fence, I settled into one and pulled out my phone to log on to social media.
News about the party was all over school. I didn’t think my parents quite knew what they were getting themselves into when they decided to throw me a birthday bash for my sixteenth.
My teammates arrived first, laughing and catcalling as they watched my mother bend over by the pool to fix a string of lights that’d fallen to the ground.
“You guys are messed up,” I grumbled as they belted me on the back and wished me a happy birthday.
“So many things I could say to that.” Mike laughed, taking a seat beside me. “Serious milf.”
“Damn right, she is,” my dad’s voice sounded, making the four of us freeze and look up simultaneously. He grinned, looking at each one of us as he said, “Don’t think I forget what it’s like to be a teenager. I was barely an adult when you came along.” He gestured to me with his whiskey.
He loved to remind me of that. Of how he’d managed to finish college, support my mom when she had me in her junior year, and learn the ropes at what was once my grandfather’s company all at the same time.
“Got a spare one of those, Mr. Welsh?” Steve piped up, eyeing his drink.
My dad’s grin fell. “Nice try.”
He stalked over to where my mother was talking to one of the guys in the band. Fluffing her hair and laughing, she was taken by surprise when my dad looped an arm around her and brought her flush to his chest.
I groaned. “God, really?”
The guys snickered, Mike thankfully distracting me with questions about the kind of car I would get.
“Dad said he’s not buying me one until I’m seventeen.”
“Why?” Mike grabbed a soda from the cooler, shaking the water from it over the grass.
“Fuck knows, he said something about me being more responsible then.”
Steve guffawed. “How much can seriously change in a year?”
At that moment, Renee’s parents stepped outside. Renee was slow to follow as she paused between the opened French doors.
“A lot, I guess,” Mike muttered, eyes locked on Renee as she adjusted her emerald green cocktail dress. She was wearing black pantyhose and white heels.
Who the hell wore white heels with black pantyhose?
Renee did. The white bow atop her red hair drew your eye as it sat there without moving as if it were superglued to her hair.
She glanced over at us, then immediately looked away.
“Anyone going to say hi?” Mike asked.
When none of us answered, me because I couldn’t, he shook his head and made his way over to Renee. My hand clenched around the can of soda, the metal clang barely registering as she smiled up at Mike.
Mike. Since when did she smile at Mike?
The band started, and more guests arrived. After an hour of enduring conversation with my parents’ friends and random people from school, we managed to sneak away to my bedroom with the bottle of vodka that Wanda kept hidden beneath the kitchen sink.
“Tara’s going out with Jed now, know that?”
I took a swig from the bottle, passing it to Mike with barely a tilt of my shoulder. “Don’t particularly care. We broke up fucking ages ago.”
Steve belched. “Yeah, but she didn’t date anyone for ages.”
“Mhmm,” Mike agreed. “You were each other’s firsts and shit, so I guess it’d be understandable if you still felt something for her.”
“We can mess him up after school on Monday,” Pat said, his tone casual as he inspected my comics on the bookshelf.
“No need.” I sat up from where I’d been lounging on my bed and staring out the window at the pool below.
We were each other’s firsts. Some of them, I supposed. Tara was a cool chick, but I stopped feeling anything for her months before I’d finally cut her loose.
“Is Mandy here?” Steve asked. Lying on the rug, he tossed a football into the air and caught it with his eyes closed.
“Mandy?” Pat asked, confused.
“She’s in our grade. You seriously don’t know her?” Mike asked.
“Nope,” Pat said, no fucks given.
I couldn’t give a shit who was there. My head felt a little heavy. We were used to drinking every now and then but not straight vodka. I needed to piss. And to get some water.
Out in the hall, the noise of the party tried to break through the thick walls and old arched windows.
I d
id my business, then made my way downstairs to the kitchen.
White and red caught my eye, and I paused at the foot of the stairs, peering around them to find Renee huddled on the bench seat tucked behind it. She was sewing something.
“Did you ever get your sewing machine fixed?” I hiccupped over the last word, rubbing my eyes as she paused to glance up at me.
It was darker behind here, but I could still see it. Her green eyes blazed a few shades darker, matching the emerald of her dress, for a second, only a split second, before she schooled her features into indifference.
“I did.”
“What did you end up telling your mom?” I plonked on the other end of the seat, my thirst forgotten.
“That I saw a spider and accidentally knocked it off the desk.”
The way she was freely providing me answers made me smile. “You clever little liar.”
“It’s not a lie, though, is it?” She looked over at me for a second, giving me the full effect of her stare. Her pink lips parted, the bottom one fuller than the top. When they joined, they sat perfectly pillowed. A perfect bow.
“Huh?” I scratched at my chest, my shirt, or maybe my skin, itching.
Her brows scrunched. “You’re drunk.”
Not a question, so I didn’t answer it.
She shook her head as she returned to her … “What is that?”
“A cross-stitch. What, you’ve never seen one before?” She poked the needle beneath the round disc, pulling it through the other side.
Chuckling, I hiccupped again. “I have now.”
I watched her thin fingers work around the disc until I made out a shape. “Roses. Isn’t this something your grandmother would do?”
“My grandmother is in the Bahamas, getting drunk by the pool with men half her age and attending discos every other night. So, no, it’s not something she’d do.”
That made me chuckle again. I drifted sideways, almost rolling into her shoulder as I tried to right myself. “My grandfather died two years ago.” I vomited the words. “My grandma had already left him years beforehand for some younger guy.”
Seeming kind of dumbfounded, Renee muttered, “Oh, sorry.”
“Don’t be. He was kind of a bore and had little patience for me anyway.”