“Oh, my God, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” Brielle jumps back into me.
“I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Mr. Whitewater apologizes. “But there’s a woman downstairs that’s asking for you. Are you expecting anyone, Mr. Wild?”
I shrug, shake my head. “Brielle?”
She shakes her head no.
Mr. Whitewater explains. “The woman downstairs is claiming to be your mother.”
“Mom? Mom?” Brielle rushes past him and runs down the stairs. “Mom?”
From the top of the stairs, I see a woman dressed in a blue suit and a matching wide-rimmed hat standing in the foyer.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Brielle asks. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, of course!” Brielle’s mom hugs her. She then gives her a peck on each cheek, careful not to smudge her makeup.
“Wyatt, this is my mom,” Brielle says without actually giving me a name. “Mom, this is Wyatt.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Cole,” I shake her hand. Her hand is warm and firm, and her whole way of occupying the room reminds me of one of my favorite aunts.
“Oh, please, call me Danielle.”
“Danielle,” I repeat the name to burn it into my memory. “It’s so wonderful to finally meet you. Brielle, why didn’t you tell me that your mother looks like she could be your sister?”
Both Brielle and Danielle blush. Women always do when I say something like that to them. The only difference in this statement is that I actually mean it. Danielle looks so young and full of life that an unsuspecting stranger could actually confuse her for Brielle’s sister.
“What a beautiful home you have here Wyatt,” Danielle walks around the foyer. She carries herself with a familiar strength and confidence that reminds me of my mother and sister, but the likes of which I’ve rarely seen in strangers entering the house.
“This vase, it’s absolutely marvelous!” Danielle points to one of my mother’s favorite vases standing tall on a side table. Its history stems back all of the way to the seventeenth century.
“You’ve got an excellent eye, Danielle,” I say. “It used to belong to my great great great grandmother who came from Virginia.”
Suddenly, I notice the strange expression on Brielle’s face.
“Mom? What are you talking about?” she whispers.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. Danielle walks to the other side of the room were I doubt she can hear us.
“I don’t know who this woman is,” Brielle whispers to me.
“What are you talking about? Isn’t this your mom?”
“Yes, of course! But it’s also not her. I don’t know. I don’t know why she’s dressed like that. Or how she knows about 17th century vases.”
“I know about 17th century vases because I watch a healthy amount of Antiques Roadshow,” Danielle says. She either has excellent hearing or must not have been far enough away to be out of our earshot. Brielle blushes.
“Mom? Can I talk to you, in private?” Brielle asks.
“No, Brielle. That would be rude,” Danielle waves her hand in a casual manner that I’ve often seen my mother and her rich girlfriends do to their servants.
I feel the tension between them building, at least on Brielle’s side, and step in to broker peace.
“Ms. Cole, I mean, Danielle, would you like to join us for lunch? My sister’s visiting us as well, and I know she’d love to meet you.”
Danielle quickly agrees, and I excuse myself to make arrangements.
An hour later, we all sit down for lunch – Brielle, Danielle, O, and I. This was not the way that I’d planned the day to go. The last thing I want to do is spend more time with O, who still hasn’t apologized for her rude behavior. And who, I am yet to forgive. But the presence of Brielle’s mother at lunch is quite interesting. I’ve never met this woman, whose life I saved, or rather my money has saved, and a big part of me is eager to get to know her more.
Danielle makes herself comfortable at the head of the table and talks almost non-stop about how well she’s doing and about her new husband.
“Luke and I have been practically living together for these last two months,” she says with an exuberant flair that reminds me of O.
“Luke?” Brielle asks.
“Yes, Luke. Remember, I told you about him?”
“Yes, you told me that you were seeing a guy named Luke, but you haven’t really mentioned him for a month.”
Brielle is steaming. Anger is bubbling up from some dark place within her.
“Tell me more about Luke, Danielle. What’s he like?” O pipes in. She can’t help herself, can she? What I can’t figure out is why is she doing this? Is she doing this because she hates Brielle? Or just for fun? And what reason can she possibly have to hate Brielle?
“Oh, my darling, Ophelia. Luke is fabulous! He’s Swiss, and he lives in France. He’s got plenty of money, and he wants me to move to France with him as soon as possible after the wedding.”
“What are you talking about, Mom?” Brielle’s face grows pale. “You’d just met him! And now you’re moving to France?”
“Brielle, I know that this seems sudden. But Luke and I are in love. I know that I might seem a bit different to you—“
“A bit different?” Brielle gasps. “It’s like you morphed into some rich, stuck up princess overnight.”
“Now, there’s no need to be rude.”
“Yes, yes, there is, mother,” Brielle says. She uses the word mother in a derogatory way, the way preteen girls on television usually say it. “It’s like you’ve lost your mind or something!”
Danielle shakes her head and looks away.
“So how did you meet your Luke?” O asks. At this moment, I’m thankful that O is here with us. The tension between Brielle and her mom is growing, and I’m not pretty certain that it will result in an explosion. The only thing I’m not sure about is whether I can stop it.
“Online. We met up in downtown LA and have been inseparable since.”
Brielle shakes her head. She’s about to say something, but I put my hand down on her knee to stop her.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’s going to be okay.”
Somehow, we make it through the rest of lunch. I manage to calm Brielle down and give space for O to connect with Danielle. By the end of lunch, they seem inseparable. They are laughing at each other’s corny jokes. I’ve never seen O act this way with anyone else except for her close friends and never our own mother. It’s as if Danielle is the mother that O never had.
“I don’t know who that person is in there,” Brielle says to me when we are finally alone in my bedroom. O is showing Danielle around the gardens, and I sneak away with Brielle. It gives her some breathing room.
“What are you talking about?”
“That woman is not my mother,” Brielle says, sitting down on the bed. She buries her hands in her hair. I try to rub the back of her neck, but she pushes me away.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say. “She seems perfectly lovely.”
“You don’t fuckin’ get it, do you, Wyatt? She’s not my mother. She looks like her and sounds like her, but it’s not her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what this Luke wants, but he wants something.”
“What could he want?”
“Something. Why else would he be with her?”
That hurts my feelings. She doesn’t even know what she’s saying, but her words cut deep.
“I don’t want anything. And I’m with you.” I say and turn away from her.
“That’s not what I meant,” she whispers. She approaches me, wraps her hands around my shoulders, but this time it is me who brushes her away.
“You think that I want something from you?” I ask. Looking far into the horizon, I see Danielle and O laughing by the rose bushes.
“No, that’s not what I meant. But then again…”
She lets
her words trail off. I wait for her to explain. Finally, she does.
“But then again, I am here because you requested my presence here.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“No, not anymore. But I did originally come here to pay off a debt.”
“Fuck you, Brielle. Everything I did for you and your mom was because I wanted to. I asked you to come. I asked you. I didn’t demand you to. You could’ve came or not. And you can leave at any time.”
I turn around to walk toward the door. She catches up with me.
“Wyatt, please. I’m sorry.”
But I’m not in the mood to forgive.
“You can go anytime,” I say and head for the door. Before I get there, she stops me. She forces me to turn around. I didn’t know that she was so strong. She pushes herself up to my lips and presses hers onto mine.
Something takes over me. I’m mad at her; I don’t want to kiss her. But I do. My cock grows large as she rubs it, and she unbuckles my jeans and lets them fall to the floor. We kiss as if the world is going to end in a minute and rip our clothes off, with the same ferocity.
I want her.
I need her.
She wants me.
She has to have me.
My shirt falls to the floor. Her shirt lands on top. I undo her bra and grab her breasts with my hands. She moans from pleasure. I rip off her panties and step out of my underpants.
She buries her fingers in my hair, kisses the back of my neck. She lets her hands slide down my washboard abs and squeezes my cock. I wince from the mixture of pain and pleasure.
With one quick motion, I toss her on the bed and spread open her legs. Within another second, I’m in her again. I pull in and out, and pleasure builds within my thighs.
“Oh Wyatt,” she moans as I pull gently on her hair. Her moans get louder and more powerful. I’m getting closer too.
A few more thrusts and I collapse on top of her. Satisfied. From the smile on her face, I know she is too.
“Thank you,” she says.
“No, thank you.”
After sex, I try not talk about her mother anymore, but that’s the only thing that is on Brielle’s mind.
“I just don’t know why she’s acting like this. Why she’s dressed like that? Why she’s hanging out with Ophelia? Do you think she’s having some sort of mental breakdown?” She rants.
I’m only half listening. I’m sleepy and tired, and all I want to do is turn over and go to sleep. But I nod along and try to be supportive. I don’t know much about women, but what I do know is that they want their men to be supportive. And being supportive means listening along to their rants and nodding in agreement.
“So?” Brielle stops talking. I open my eyes and look around the room. She’s already fully dressed in the same thing she was wearing only an hour ago.
“So what?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Brielle,” I shrug. I already told her what I thought, and she didn’t want to hear it.
“I really want to know.”
“I already told you what I thought,” I say. I’m trying to avoid actually saying the words, but all signs are pointing to the fact that this might be inevitable.
“I want to hear it again. If it’s still what you think,” she says cautiously. She’s no longer ranting. If I do this, I’m going to have to proceed with caution.
“I don’t know your mother, Brielle, but the woman I met today seemed fine to me. She seemed happy. Maybe she seems so different to you because she’s actually happy for once. She’s no longer worried about her cancer or dying. Maybe she’s just trying to live her life to the fullest.”
Brielle doesn’t say anything. I wait for her to process what I said. Her face remains expressionless, and, after awhile, I start to get worried that this was the wrong way to proceed. She’s not getting this. She’s not in agreement, and we’re going to get into another big fight. But then she surprises me.
“Maybe you’re right,” she shrugs. “I’m going to go downstairs and talk to her.”
Chapter 17 - Wyatt
That night at dinner, things between Brielle and Danielle are at a stalemate. Brielle spoke with her mother in private, and I don’t know what was said. All I know is that somehow things got worse. They are no longer fighting, just ignoring each other.
Danielle was planning on leaving before dinner, but O, of course, got in the middle of it all and insisted that she stay.
“You can’t leave now, you just got here. Please stay for dinner. You must stay for dinner!” she said grabbing her arm. Much to my and Brielle’s dismay, Danielle agreed.
Dinner becomes divided into two camps. Brielle only speaks to me and Danielle only speaks to O. O doesn’t bother to speak to Brielle, whom I’m now convinced that she hates wholeheartedly, but she does speak to me. Brielle doesn’t speak to O nor her mother. I try to speak to both O and Danielle, but when I do, Brielle ignores me and stares at her plate.
Awful. Shitty. Ridiculous. All words that come to mind to describe this dinner, one of the worst ones of my life.
Finally, when the dessert comes, I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s almost over, I say to myself. You just gotta hang in there for half an hour more. Forty-five max.
“Ahem,” Danielle stands up and raises her glass. “I’d like to make a toast.”
O leans forward in her seat, exhibiting the eagerness of a first grader on her first day of school. Brielle, on the other hand, shrinks in her seat as if she wants to disappear.
“I would like to thank you, Ophelia, for being such a wonderful hostess. I know that I came without much of an announcement, but meeting you has been quite a treat.”
“No, please,” O blushes. “It has been my pleasure.”
“I would also like to thank you, Brielle. You aren’t as excited about me being here as I thought you would be, but nevertheless, it has been wonderful to see you again. I really missed you, honey.”
I look closer and there are small tears pooling at the bottom of her eyes. Brielle looks at her, too.
“Thanks for coming,” she manages, which seems to be enough for her mom, who smiles widely.
“And finally, I would like to thank you, Wyatt.”
That’s unexpected.
“Thank me? For what?”
“For everything, of course. For my life. The money that you gave us. No, that you gave Brielle for my treatments. It has been a lifesaver, in the truest sense.”
“What money?” O perks up.
“Oh you know, the money that Wyatt gave me to pay for cancer treatments. Our insurance company refused to pay for the experimental treatment and, if it weren’t for that money, I’d be dead right now.”
I shake my head.
“No, I’m serious, Wyatt. I would be. You save my life. And of course, I have to go back and thank my little Bree for taking care of me during all of those years and for finally getting out of the house, so that I had some space to date and find myself a man.”
“Mom,” Brielle shakes her head. But Danielle ignores her.
“I’m terribly sorry that my daughter is acting like this,” she says to Ophelia and I. “I’ve taught her to behave better than this, that’s for sure.”
“Oh really? Is that what you did, mother? And when was that? When I gave up my future to stay home and work at some shitty diner to take care of you when you were dying of cancer? Or when I came here to pay off the debt for your cancer treatments?”
How did this nice toast suddenly get so out of hand?
“Debt? What debt?” O turns to me. “What is she talking about, Wyatt?”
She finally got it. I can’t believe it took her this long. But then again, she’s always been a bit slow.
Damn.
Fuck.
Shit.
How the fuck did this come out? Why didn’t Brielle keep her mouth shut?
“Nothing, no debt,” I mumble. My mind races to find just t
he right excuse that makes sense to this story.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
No one says anything for a few moments.
“I don’t understand,” O says. “How much money did you give them exactly?”
“Not much,” I shrug.
“Oh my God, no! It was a lot, O,” Danielle insists. Fuck her. Fuck her!! I want to scream.
“But how much, exactly?” O asks.
“You didn’t tell her?” Danielle turns to me. “You were so generous and you didn’t brag about it? O, it was $250,000. Can you believe that? It was more money that I’ve ever seen. And your wonderful brother, he just wrote Brielle a check after meeting her only a few times. His heart is so big.”
I can see the anger building within O. She purses her lips. Narrows her eyes. “That’s definitely one way of putting it.”
“What? Whatever you’re going to say just say it already, O. Come on out with it.” I can’t stand this anymore.
“Oh, you want me to just say it? Okay. Fine. What about me?”
“What about you?”
“You knew that I needed money. That mom and dad cut me off. And instead, you just chose to give that money away to strangers. How could you?”
“They needed it for something better, O. All you would do is go shopping and party.”
“Fuck you, Wyatt! I’m your sister. Who cares what the hell some strangers in a diner need the money for? That’s their problem. This money, it’s our money. Our family’s money. And you had no right to give it away just to get some pussy.”
“That’s not why I did it.”
“I don’t care!!” O is hysterical. She’s walking around, pacing, screaming. I’m keeping my distance. I feel like she’s going to explode at any minute.
O and I continue to scream at each other. It’s like we’re children again. Nothing matters now, but to yell at each other. Who ever says the meanest, loudest thing wins. Wins what, though? Neither of us knows.
“I can’t believe you did this for her!” O’s face is flushed. She feels like she’s losing. I know because she always starts to bring in other people into the fight when she feels like she’s losing ground.
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