“Some pub down the way. I forgot the name,” he was distant.
“I thought you didn’t like pubs.” I didn’t mean to sound as accusing as I did.
“They’re alright,” he shrugged, “wasn’t so bad.”
He kept his eyes on his plate but I frowned at him anyway.
“But you’ve always hated drinking, since your dad—”
“Look,” his head shot up, his fork pausing in mid-air,“I would really appreciate it if you don’t bring my dad into this. Not today. You know how I feel about it, and I’m not in the mood.”
He shoveled the food into his mouth and chewed like he meant it. I clenched my jaw and looked down at the fruit salad I had dished myself.
“You should go see Olivia,” I tried something else, trying hard to keep my tone light, “wouldn’t be right for you not to say hello.”
“I’ll go later maybe.”
“Please, Andrew. You know it’s important to me, she’s my sister.”
He dropped his fork on his plate and it clattered loudly. A servant behind the buffet glanced our way and I could feel crimson creeping up under my collar.
“I don’t actually know that it’s important to you,” he said, apparently not caring that he was drawing attention to us.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, keeping my voice low in the hopes that he would lower his too. If I didn’t shout he couldn’t shout back, right?
“You haven’t seen you sister in over three years. It can’t really be that important to you then, can it?”
“Andrew, please,” I looked around, faces were already turned our way, “You know why I haven’t seen her.”
“I don’t understand you,” he grunted and carried on eating. The conversation was dismissed.
The guy from yesterday’s reception walked into the dining room, and my blood turned to ice in my veins. A fight was the last thing we needed right now. I glanced nervously at Andrew, hoping he didn’t see him. There was no trace that he had. I looked at the guy from the corner of my eye, letting myself breathe out in relief when he headed towards the door, but then he saw us, grinned a skewed grin and turned to us. I dropped my head into my hands, closing my eyes, wishing I could be anywhere else but here.
“Hey Andy,” he said and clapped Andrew on the back.
Andy? Andy? Andrew never let anyone call him Andy. I looked up at him, expecting trouble, but Andrew was grinning right back.
“The boys are talking about hiking up the river later, you game?”
Andrew’s eyes flitted towards me.
“I’ll let you know.”
“Better get back to me soon, I’m only working half-day shift then we’re headed out.”
“Sure.”
I cleared my throat, feeling left out of this little reunion. Andrew looked at me suddenly remembering I was there.
“This is Claire. My wife.” He added the last bit like it was an afterthought. He waved a hand and the guy turned his unbalanced smile towards me.
“Gavin and I had a drink together last night,” he said to me.
“Oh,” was all I could say, I took Gavin’s offered hand limply.
Gavin sauntered off.
“Well that was… nice. Andy.”
I felt left out of everything and the fact that I didn’t know what was going on made me feel ridiculous. That familiar burn flared through my chest.
“He’s an okay kid,” he shrugged.
We finished breakfast in silence. When we were back in the room, I turned to Andrew, concentrating very hard on keeping my voice low and reasonable. “Please just go and speak to my sister. Just say hello. It doesn’t have to be long.”
“Why can’t she come say hello to me?” he was being difficult. I hated it when he drank.
“Because she invited us, Andrew.”
“I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” he sat down on the bed.
“You’re the one that’s refusing to be polite, and I’m making a big deal out of this?”
“You don’t even like her!”
“Keep your voice down, this whole place is wood. What if she hears you?”
“So what if she hears me? At least I’m honest about it. I don’t understand why we had to come all this way for her stupid wedding when you hate being around her.”
I could feel my blood heating up under my skin. “You know exactly why my sister and I don’t spend time together. She couldn’t stand me being happily married—“ he laughed sarcastically, “and you know very well that I can’t miss this wedding. It’s family obligation, Andrew. I thought that’s the one thing you would understand.”
“If your sister can’t be happy for you when her life is blowing up in her face then I don’t see why you should be happy for her. You can’t compare your family with mine. My mother and I had nothing else, we had to make it work since my dad left. If we didn’t stick together we wouldn’t have made it. I hate when you bring family into fights.”
“Oh, but it’s alright for you to fight about mine?”
“You don’t care about yours!”
“That’s not fair, Andrew, and you know it. I have issues with my family, but that does not give you the right to be an asshole about it.”
He shook his head, and stuck both hands into his hair, knotting his fingers in it. Then he got up and walked to the door. A sudden panic clutched at my throat.
“Where are you going?” my voice had lost all the authority of a moment ago.
“I’m going to tell Gavin that I’ll join them on that hike after lunch.”
I took a deep breath when he left the room, trying to steady myself. It was so much different to be the one being walked out on, instead of being the one to walk out. It felt like a vacuum had opened up in my chest. My hands were trembling lightly, I could never help it and it annoyed me, and the room expanded around me, leaving me in a burning void.
I grabbed my handbag from the night stand and stormed out of the room.
I wouldn’t stay in that damn room if he was going to out and have fun with his new friends. I couldn’t stand this place any longer. It was stretching and pulling at me, not knowing if it wanted to desert me or crush me. I had to get away from anything that had Andrew on it, and right now, that was everything. From the moment we’d left home it had been one fight after the other, and it was tearing me apart.
I got in the car, and slammed the door, feeling my body flinch at the metallic clank, and then vibrate with the rest of the car. I let out a frustrated cry when no one could hear me. I sounded so different when I was paying attention to myself. I turned the car around, almost taking out a small tree, and sped down the drive way, much to fast already, but the need to get away was like a hand against my back, forcing me on. I got onto the main road and turned, and pushed my foot down harder on the pedal. The speed felt good. The anger and hurt stayed behind, unable to keep up.
Chapter Five - Andrew
I stood in the Riverview bar, waiting for Gavin to finish up. I was itching to get out of here, I really needed something, anything, to distract me now. I was fuming, I could feel the blood boil under my skin and my breathing came out in short bursts. I tried hard to calm myself but I was struggling.
I hated it when she brought up my dad. She’d forced me to fight with her about her family, so she would forget about mine. She had everything she wanted in a family, everything she needed. Both her parents were still there, and she had it good, and somehow that still wasn’t good enough for her. She knew that I didn’t want to talk about my father, and she still had to bring it up. The nerve of that woman, sometimes I just wanted to… to… ugh. And then she had the nerve to insist that I talk to her sister. I couldn’t stand her sister. She was like Claire on a bad day, all the time.
I stomped my feet, and fought to push the thought away that had started nagging at my conscious. She thought I would stay out of bars because of my dad. Did she really think that made sense, that I would avoi
d something so normal because one person couldn’t deal with life properly? It made me want to break something, punch someone, do something drastic so that this suffocating feeling would just go. For God’s sake, I had only been fourteen.
I came home after the sun had set. The dim afterthought of the sun still lit up the streets enough for me to see, and I jogged the last two miles home, so that my mom wouldn’t have to be alone after sunset. I knew she hated being alone in the dark house. Our area wasn’t the best, and my dad, well he would be in some dive bar, drinking. That’s all he ever did now. At first I had been angry about it, even shouted at him for it, and I should have been glad he wasn’t the aggressive type. There were so many kids whose dads did more than just sit there and ignored it.
But it didn’t help, either way, because he just started going out more and more. He’d lost his job, and some twisted logic in his mind told him that if you didn’t earn money to support your family you had to drink up the little money your wife made with sewing. I never understood how his head worked, but either way I managed to get an after-school job at one of my friend’s dad’s car shop. He fixed them up and let me help out, and he paid me under the table so I could earn at my age. I think he understood what was going on, even though no one ever spoke about it while my mom and I were around.
When I got home, my dad’s faded blue truck was in the drive. It was strange for him to be home at this hour. It was happy hour in nearly every bar. But I felt a small kick of excitement to know that he would spend the night with us for a change, that my mom wouldn’t have to worry about him getting beat up after he was drunk and wonder how much money he’d spent on cheap beer to get to that stage.
When I ran into the small front room my mom was sitting on the couch crying. This wasn’t right. Just then, my dad came in with a suitcase, some of the clothes still sticking out where he’s closed the lid over it all without tucking it in properly. It took me two seconds to figure out what was going on.
“You can’t leave us,” I cried out, my hands balled into fists as I watched him walk towards the door.
“I know I’m doing wrong, son,” he said, “and I won’t do this to you anymore.”
My mom just cried harder.
“You just need to stay. Just stay with us,” I pleaded, “that’s all we need.”
But he shook his head, and left. It was the last I’d seen of him.
After that it was up to me; and my mom and I did okay with my dad not taking money for booze anymore. But sometimes I heard my friends talking about going to the movies or dancing, and I felt like it was unfair I could never join them. When was I supposed to be a kid when I had to take care of my mom? At least I still had her, I told myself, and she was the best thing I could ever have. We could make it, her and me. We could do it. I could be that guy that looked after her and provided. I didn’t need my dad.
“You ready?” Gavin called behind me, and I spun around, relieved he pulled me away from my thoughts. I hadn’t wanted to think about any of that. I hadn’t wanted to remember.
“You bet.”
Chapter Six - Claire
I’d driven pretty far before I finally calmed down. The ribbons of fury drifted listlessly behind me now. I looked around, seeing nothing but trees and the river. I was in a void all over again. It didn’t matter what I did, where I went. I couldn’t escape it. I turned the car around. There was nowhere for me to go. I was pathetic. I kept running back to the one person that drove me insane. Why did I have to love him so much?
I drove much slower this time, trying to bring back the calm and collected Claire I knew I had to be if I wanted to get through the wedding at all. He wasn’t going to be there for me for to lean on, he’d made that quite clear. I might not like my sister, but I had to do this. A bitter taste settled at the back of my mouth and I clenched my front teeth on each other, scrunched my nose. Andrew had never had a bad relationship with his family. His mom was all he had, and they’d always been so close it was nauseating. I couldn’t help that I didn’t get along with my family. It still wasn’t fair for him to be so hard on me for it. I was doing the best I could.
I slowed down when I got to the drive way that led to the hotel and the sight of it pulled me down. I wasn’t ready to go back to that room yet, and I didn’t have the energy for Olivia. I drove on past it, and it wasn’t a mile further that a spotted a run-down building hidden in the trees. There were a couple of cars parked in front of it and a sign with a name that I couldn’t make out.
I pulled in and parked the car.
I felt overdressed when I stepped through the door. I was wearing a narrow skirt and matching blazer. Office wear. I had chosen the outfit that morning because I didn’t know if I could keep it together, and clothes like this always made me feel like I was in control of something.
It was a grimy place, the kind where lower class locals hung out. The dark-wood bar looked like it could use a new layer of varnish, and the faded green carpet that stretched from wall to wall was stained and riddled with cigarette burns. People were scattered over the tables against the walls, barely illuminated by the dim light that hesitantly peeked through the windows.
Faces started turning towards me when I didn’t move from the door, and It made me feel like I had to do something, so I walked to the bar. The bartender nodded at me, and handed me a sticky menu that was equally stained. I breathed deeply, trying to pretend like I was reading. I would just glance over it, pretend there was nothing I was interested in, and leave.
“You should try the buffalo wings,” a voice said from a little down the bar, and I looked up. I thought it was the man with the dark hair, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Sorry?”
“The buffalo wings,” it was definitely him. He moved closer and pointed to the menu, “it’s their specialty. Haven’t lived ‘til you’ve had some of those.”
“Oh… thank you. I don’t think I’ll have anything, there’s nothing—”
“Ah come on, you look like you need to let down your hair. Here, let me buy you a drink. Barman—”
“I really don’t drink,.” It felt like this man was cornering me. I just wanted to get out of there.
“—an orange juice for the lady,” he finished with a grin. It was too late, I would have to stay now.
“Thank you,” I said and perched myself on the edge of the stool closest to me with my knees squeezed tightly against each other and my shoes on the rung. The bartender placed a huge glass in front of me and I was wondering how I would finish all of it.
The stranger lifted his beer in a salute.
“What’s a pretty lady like you doing in a dump like this?”
Really? He was going to use that line on me?
“I was just… I needed to get away for a bit.”
“Tough day, huh?”
I sighed, “tough life.”
He let out a howl, and grinned again.
“Can’t be saying things like that, ma’am. Sure it’ll look better by tomorrow.”
I wished it would.
“I just have a lot on my plate. My sister is getting married and my hu—well… I just don’t get along with all of the guests.”
“Tough one. And you’re planning on washing that away with alcohol-less beverages?”
He chuckled again and I looked up at him, feeling ridiculous. His brown eyes were soft and serious despite the smile on his face, and they settled on me with a comfort that was strange to me. It made me feel better, looking into them, but I looked down anyway, testing the orange juice.
“You’re drinking beer in the middle of the day?” I asked, and regretted the judgment in my voice right away. It had become such a habit, with Andrew, I didn’t think about it anymore.
“I was supposed to meet a lady friend here for lunch. A date, if you will. But I don’t think she’s gonna show. It’s been…” he looked at his watch, “over an hour.”
“You got stood up?”
“Seems to be the case.”
>
“I’m sorry.”
“No worries. Wouldn’t have had the company of a lady such as yourself if she’d shown up. You have a lot more class, so I reckon’ I’m better off.”
A smile crept onto my face even though I had decided not to enjoy the bar and I turned my eyes away shyly.
“I’m Claire. ”
“Peter. Peter Argentero.” He moved closer.
He turned to his beer and took a sip, letting me look at him without being rude. His skin was tan, colored by hours in the sun, and his face was framed with a nest of wind-blown hair that sat where it wanted. It had a red-ish tint to it, and ran into darker stubble down his sideburns and across a square jaw. He was good-looking in a rugged kind of way. Not polished, clean and taken care of like Andrew. More like he didn’t care, but looked good anyway.
He looked at me again and I decided I like his eyes the best. They were warm and crinkled when he smiled at me, and I felt a tug at my stomach that I hadn’t felt in years when a man looked at me, and then a tug at my heart because I shouldn’t have been feeling that way if that man wasn’t Andrew.
Chapter Seven - Andrew
The car finally pulled into the parking space and the door opened. I was standing at the window at the end of the corridor, looking out over the driveway. I had been waiting for the last hour or so, and felt the nerves tighten in my stomach as the yellow disk slid behind the horizon and there was still no sign of her.
A slender leg extended out of the door and hovered in mid-air. She would be leaning over to the passenger foot-well to reach for her bag before her low heel would touch the ground and she would emerge from the car. I couldn’t see her, but I knew she would do it. She was a woman of habit.
She stood on the bricks and looked around her into the dusk, absently straightening her jacket and skirt. She looked different in the dimming light, almost like someone I didn’t know. A beautiful stranger, neat and collected, bullet proof. Her face was serene, so different from the strained expression she’d been wearing the last two days. I felt an annoyance creeping up on me, and did nothing to stop it. She hadn’t told me where she’d gone off to, no note or anything in the room and her cell had been off. And that damn business suit. I felt a vague itch in my chest. I never understood why she insisted on being so immaculately dressed on holiday. It was almost as if she was trying to be superior to me.
DECEPTION HOTEL: A Wedding, an Affair, and Murder for Hire Page 3