Unbridled rage boiled within Peter upon finally seeing this guy in the flesh. The guy who had been pining after his girlfriend ever since she set foot on campus.
He approached Daniel, intending to catch him before he broke away to another tent. Peter wasted no time getting his pseudo-competition’s attention, but maintained a respectable distance when the young man whipped around.
For now.
“Daniel?”
His umber brows rose, straining to produce a lone wrinkle in the middle of his forehead. Yeah, there was no way Ryleigh liked this guy. “Sorry, have we met?”
Peter retired his hands to his pockets so he would not be tempted to brand his knuckles across this pretty boy’s face. He manufactured a smile so fake, it was painful. “No, we haven’t, but you’re much more than acquainted with my girlfriend, from what she tells me.”
Daniel’s features relaxed only to usher in the restoration of a default smugness. He exuded a disconcerting aura of cockiness, as palpable as a foul odor.
“That must make you Peter.” He glanced at the Michigan Press Association badge clipped to Peter’s sweater, proclaiming not only his credentials but also his place of work. Shaking his head, his mouth snaked into a rotten grin. “You work for the Times?”
The amusement plastered on the jerk-off’s face gave Peter pause. How could his place of employment be amusing in any way?
He stared at the student with indifference. “Yeah.”
“Oh, man. That’s rich.” Daniel forced a laugh. Crossing his arms over his toned chest, he said, “I thought, and kind of hoped, that Ryleigh was making you up all those months.”
“It’d be for the best if you left her alone. She has enough to worry about. She doesn’t need someone harassing her around every corner.” Peter gestured to the lawn, proceeding. “There must be, what, close to 20,000 girls at this school? You can find another one to chase after.”
“Hey, chill, man. I realize that route has been exhausted.” Daniel held up his hands in mock surrender before scuffing one of his Top-Siders against the pavement. “And in a beautiful twist of irony, I actually have a little something going on with her roommate. She is hot. Oh, but you’d know that. You met her, sort of. Though, as I understand it, the circumstances were...how did she put it?” He tapped his lips. “Compromising.”
Min-ji, you cereal-smacking traitor.
Peter supposed it could have been worse. Had Min-ji brought Daniel home that night, the four of them would have been met with an even more awkward wake-up call.
“Stay out of my business, kid.”
“Can’t help what the lady friend passes along.” He backpedaled, conjecturing at the last second, “Enjoy having Ryleigh in your life while it lasts. Who knows, tomorrow she might wake up and realize that she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life tethered to some 45-year-old, washed-up journalist. Carpe diem, you middle-aged fuck.”
“I’m 36, asshole,” Peter called across the way. The curse or the simple fact of his yelling turned a few heads.
Daniel’s expert jab stirred buried insecurities within him. It was a sore spot, a scalpel nudging scar tissue. The likelihood of such a scenario used to be a source of concern for Peter when they first got together; but as their relationship developed and he grew more confident in their love, he learned to let go of the, somewhat, irrational worry.
As he stood rooted to the cement, towering and lanky like a misplaced campus lamppost, buried doubts crept forth from the corners of his mind.
Would Ryleigh, in fact, wake up one day, only to regret everything between them? Could she suddenly develop a revulsion toward his age?
His heart insisted the notion was ludicrous.
A smaller, albeit relevant, fraction demanded there was nothing but truth in Daniel’s words.
“Thanks for coming tonight,” Peter said as he helped Ryleigh out of her parka.
Mindless socialization at Ms. Reyes’ home was about the least appealing evening he could have conjured. One glance at his date, however, and the nerves were quelled; Ryleigh looked like a high fashion model running late for a runway show rather than an unfortunate plus one at a newspaper’s staff dinner. Her black dress was short but modest, clinging to her shoulders and chest before dropping into a voluminous, layered skirt.
“Like I would turn down any invitation from you.” Ryleigh hung their coats on one of the two rolling racks set up in the foyer. The metal racks clashed with the sumptuous vibe of the home. Straightening his tie, she asked, “Do you realize how handsome you are?”
The compliments had been coming in droves, and Peter wondered if she somehow knew that he had made a dent in his regaining efforts or if it was entirely unrelated. He liked to think Ryleigh noticed the fresh pounds on his frame, that the comments regarding his looks were indirect praise for righting himself. As he considered this, all of the tension invading his body dissipated as he marveled at his girlfriend’s bright eyes, alight with love and adoration; and for a moment, it was as if it were just the two of them, standing alone together in the entryway of the swank home.
“No, but I’ve heard it enough from you to start believing it.” He laced his fingers through hers and they wandered through the dimly lit hallway, guided by the distant hum of conversation.
Most of his coworkers were present, few of them accompanied by their elusive significant others. Some were sprawled on the tan leather sectional, while others hung around the floor-to-ceiling windows which overlooked a lake, the outdoor lights from the house along with the moonlight refracting off the lightly rippling water. Peter spotted Dominic lounging with several of their photographers on the deck, a beer in one hand and red-tipped cigar in the other. So far, there had been no sign of Ms. Reyes, but since the party was at her house, he had no right to feel relieved.
Alicia wasted no time greeting Ryleigh and Peter, bounding over to them in a floor-length, light pink dress which suited her constant, irritatingly upbeat demeanor that never failed to stir up a craving within him to scoop his eyeballs out with nothing more than a cold, metal spoon and unshakeable determination.
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater!” she squealed, nearly spilling her red wine on his crisp shirt. Ryleigh tried to suppress her amusement, but Peter knew she was about to crack due to the profuse reddening of her cheeks. Alicia addressed her: “We’re desk buddies. Oh em gee, can I just say, you’re even more beautiful in person.”
“Um,” she glanced at Peter and he nodded, “thanks.”
Alicia’s eyes darted between the pair, clasping a hand over her chest. “You two are so adorable. I never thought I’d see Peter without his impenetrable RBF mask.”
Someone called to her across the way and she departed with a twitchy flutter of her fingers. As Alicia disappeared among the mingling crowd, Ryleigh stifled a laugh.
Peter shot her a confused look. “That woman is a walking nightmare. What’s RBF?”
“Resting bitch face.” She smirked, tugging on his hand.
“I hate both of you.”
He shook his head, though he grinned like a maniac. Peter craned down to kiss her cheek, but was halted by a familiar voice that raised the hair on the back of his neck.
“Rosenfeld? I wasn’t sure you would turn up.” Ms. Reyes halted before them at an entirely inappropriate proximity.
Was it inappropriate, or was his assessment of the space skewed? Had Alicia stood that close, it might not have phased Peter. No, he knew with absolute certainty that it would not have affected him to such a degree: scalp prickling as if someone were sewing each one of his hair follicles into place.
The usual fire dwindled in Ms. Reyes’ eyes as she shifted her attention to Ryleigh. “Is it safe to assume this lovely young woman is your girlfriend?” She extended a hand. “Nora Reyes. I’m Peter’s boss.”
His girlfriend accepted the handshake and played the part of a good sport. “Ryleigh Branson. Nice to meet you.”
Despite the cordiality laced in her words, Peter
could feel the simultaneous vexation and curiosity radiating off her petite body like some sort of undiscovered though decidedly harmful ray. And he would be the first to uncover its side effects.
“I was on the way to the kitchen, would the two of you like something to drink? We have champagne, pinot grigio, malbec—”
Ryleigh cut in: “I’m not old enough to drink.”
Bursts of chatter paused and heads turned as if on cue. Thank God there were no undercover reporters on their staff, because none of the gawking goons in that room could have filled the unsuspecting position.
Skin flushing beneath his shirt, Peter attempted to pluck at the collar but the quest for relief was thwarted since it had been buttoned up to his neck. It would have come as no shock if steam leaked from his ears.
She whips out her fake ID at dinner with my parents, but has to call me out in front of the entire office?
Ms. Reyes righted her agape mouth and extended the drink offer again, exclusively to him.
“No, no. I’m not drinking this evening.”
Well, Peter would not be drinking there, anyhow.
The formal dining room could not accommodate the number of guests, resulting in the setup of additional tables in neighboring rooms, giving the space a restaurant-like ambiance. Nora sat at the head of the table, with Peter and Ryleigh off to her right. A slew of other staff members occupied the remainder of the table.
An empty chair remained on Nora’s left. According to Peter, she was undergoing a divorce, so it was safe to assume her husband would not be joining them.
Who the hell was that chair intended for?
Ryleigh picked at her plate, which contained food that was far too elegant for her consumption. Besides that, her mind was much too scattered to focus on a task as basic as eating.
Nora Reyes.
Surely, it was just a coincidence that she and Daniel shared a last name. This was a heavily populated area. There had to be a considerable number of families bearing that particular surname. Right? Nevermind the suspicious, connective evidence that Nora headed the Times and Daniel headed the student newspaper.
Shit. Ryleigh realized then, stealing glances at Nora, what was so familiar about her. She and Daniel had the same sparkling, champagne eyes.
No sooner than Ryleigh had registered this information, Daniel swept into the dining room, claiming the chair beside Nora.
Upon noticing the younger Reyes, Peter stiffened in his seat, thin lips reduced to nothing as they pressed into a white slash. Ryleigh laid a hand on his thigh, signaling for her boyfriend to be cool. Telepathy would be useful here.
Nora glanced around the table at her employees. “I asked my son, Daniel, to join us. I hope you all don’t mind.”
Daniel flashed Peter a tight-lipped, menacing smile as he flourished his garnet napkin over his lap. Confusion graced Nora’s features for a beat as she noticed the interaction. Ultimately, she said nothing, but the unvoiced inquisition was answered in an instant.
“Did you finish your paper for Sansbury? The spine of my textbook is going to need a generous duct-taping if it gets thrown across my room one more time.”
Dizziness carried Ryleigh away to another dimension. The faces seated around the table blurred until they were reduced to warm and cool toned smears as her legs went weak at the ankles and she fought to remain unaffected in that chair, which now felt disproportionately large in relation to her body.
“I finished it last week, actually,” Ryleigh said, hardly above a whisper, stealing a sip from her flute of bubbling ginger ale. If only the glass held something stronger.
Nora cocked her head to the side. “You attend UMich as well, Ryleigh?”
She nodded. “I’m a freshman.”
Peter, whose eyes had been glued to the table for a disconcerting period of time, volunteered a change in subject. “What are you majoring in, Daniel?”
Ryleigh knew, with unquestionable certainty, that Peter did not care one bit about what Daniel was studying, but she appreciated his effort to redirect the conversation away from her in light of her public humiliation.
“Communications, naturally.” Daniel’s response earned a few laughs from the staffers. “Ryleigh’s undeclared, as you know. I suggested anthropology, since she has an obvious fondness for relics.”
Ryleigh squeezed her boyfriend’s thigh. He was seething, rearing to spring up from the chair, launch across the table and end Daniel. While she was tempted to swoon over his sudden protective nature, she did not dare relax until signature snark replaced Peter’s rage.
“That she does. You shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up that she’d study something more contemporary.”
“Oh, Danny, don’t tell me—”
“Mom, please,” Daniel said rather calmly, but there was no masking the mortification that had slipped over his face, ashening the usual warmth of his complexion.
Had Daniel told his mother about her? Oh, how elementary. Ryleigh had had quite enough of this meal and the second course had only just been served.
The evening’s antics brought to mind the disastrous dinner when Peter had officially met her parents, and though it had not turned out how she had hoped, much good had—eventually—come of it.
Would this evening be like that, initially full of setbacks while paving the way toward understanding and reconciliation? Would it lead to Daniel dropping his obsession toward her and shed light on the weird vibe Ryleigh was presently getting from Peter and Nora’s exchange of flitting looks and minute shifts in expressions?
Squaring her shoulders, she siphoned a steadying breath as she clutched the rumpled napkin in her lap and lightly clicked her heels beneath the table, wishing she were somewhere far, far away.
Their drive back into the city was set to a tense silence; Peter’s eyes were steely and his jaw tightened with no sign of letting up. Ryleigh welcomed the quiet like an old friend, whose comfort she needed to wade through the raging river of thoughts separating the rational from the irrational.
As much as she fought to ignore it, to will it out of existence, she could not shake the subtle, frequent looks between Peter and Nora; and while Ryleigh wanted to believe her boyfriend’s intent had been to shut it down, perhaps his dissenting glances had instead meant, ‘not here.’ The possibility knotted her stomach, a condition worsened by the fast-moving car and brooding man behind the steering wheel.
Something had to be said, not so much to smooth things over between the two of them but to ensure a less appetizing rendition of her half-eaten dinner did not end up splattered all over the cabin of Peter’s new car.
“Are you alright?” she started gently.
And it was the utterance of those three innocent words that unleashed a side of him Ryleigh rarely saw, the side that he so easily defaulted to at the slightest disagreement with his father.
Brows shooting toward his hairline, he muttered, “Am I alright?” Then louder, “Are you serious? Were we at the same party?”
A pang struck her chest.
“Wait, are you mad at me? What did I do?”
“What did you do?” He laughed; the dark, throaty one that crept out whenever he was upset. Except this was not like the other times, because he had never directed such blinding fury at her. “I’ll tell you what you did. You think it’s cool to parade around with your fake ID in front of my parents, but you have to call out our ridiculous age difference in front of my colleagues? In front of my boss?”
Peter’s speech became a dagger, digging and carving its way into her exposed heart. Her own rage grew in tandem with his animosity, planting its venomous roots in every sector of her body until it had total control.
“Good to know you think our age gap is ridiculous. That makes me feel great about us.” Ryleigh’s throat constricted, voice on the verge of cracking. “And since you want to mention your boss, what’s the story there? Because she looks at you like you’re a piece of meat.”
At this, his tone dropped. “Nora is fli
rtatious, I’ll give you that much. There’s no story beyond that. Guess that trait runs in the family, huh?”
She ignored the jab and fired off her own scathing accusation: “Maybe Nora’s a more viable option. You know, seeing as you two are closer in age and everything.”
Peter slammed his palm into the top of the steering wheel. If the act inflicted any pain, he did not show it.
“Goddamnit, Ry.”
Tears spilled onto Ryleigh’s cheeks. Her teeth gnashed on her tongue to prevent the inward sobs from becoming audible, instead choking them down where they were banished to a private shitshow of shame and self-pity. Arms wrapped tightly around her trembling frame, she shifted toward the window and squeezed her burning eyes shut, giving in to the incomprehensible ache victimizing her heart.
Peter had hurt her, really hurt her, for the first time.
He had been right all those months ago in her bedroom: sex does complicate things.
Ryleigh had not spoken to Peter in three days. She did not give him the courtesy of explaining the extended silence. If he could not figure out the hitch in their communication, well, that was his problem.
Funneling every burst of energy that came her way into coursework may have been a futile attempt to distract from her bruised heart, but it was all she had so she revisited it over and over again, scanning lines in her textbooks until they blurred together and staring at the pixels on her laptop screen until A Clockwork Orange grade damage had been done to her retinas.
Through this productive means of distraction, Ryleigh managed to get a week ahead in all of her classes. Being ahead was comfortable for her, an academic homeostasis. While she had not fallen behind by traditional standards since Peter’s arrival, she had struggled to stay a day or two ahead. She could hardly keep her head above water in the all-consuming sea of his love.
Even amid their argument, she drowned in him.
She could not shake the way he had yelled at her. The feeling lingered, its memory striking a grotesque pain in her gut. Peter had shouted at her on a few other occasions, but there was a distinct edge to his irateness that evening that frightened Ryleigh. She only hoped that his combustion had not been solely set off by her transgression but instead had been the result of the dinner party, knowing his hatred of social functions. Still, the mere possibility of her being the lone cause hurt like hell.
Having Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Duet Book 2) Page 9