by Lucy Lambert
The evening went on, and as it did, Gwen's nerves calmed down. The food really was five-star quality, and the wine Aiden picked from the menu really did pair well with it. Though maybe it was the wine that did most of the aforementioned nerve-soothing.
Gradually, Gwen smiled and laughed and let herself fall back into the moment rather than staying entangled in her own anxieties.
So what if they were being watched? So what if her dad kept flirting with Elsa every time she came back to the table to check on them, topping up their wine or bringing aperitifs between courses? Though if you asked Gwen, Elsa kept coming back to the table a little too often.
Whoever Judith had spying on them would see that they weren't weird sociopaths, but a family that could be happy for one-another. Even if their high society dining etiquette was a bit lacking.
"This is actually pretty nice," Gwen said, leaning over to whisper to Aiden.
He nodded, his hand finding hers again. "I think so. The music, the food. I'm actually considering sending Judith a thank-you note for suggesting it!"
"This could actually work..." Gwen said, more to herself than to him.
"You know what? I think you may be right," Aiden replied.
"Don't sound so shocked about it or anything."
The music emanating from the quartet chose that moment to swell. Gwen felt the warmth of Aiden's hand surrounding hers, the pleasant heat of the wine in her stomach. She and Aiden shared a sweet kiss and the warmth of his lips touching hers joined in with the rest of the heat. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.
"Why couldn't you have been more like that with me?" Barb said as Gwen and Aiden finished their public display of affection.
Her mother ran the tip of her finger around the rim of her empty wine glass. She used her other hand to prop up her chin, her elbow resting on the white table cloth.
Gwen tried to remember just how much Barb had to drink so far. She did remember Elsa coming over fairly often with a bottle of wine.
The happy warmth in Gwen's stomach cooled when she noticed the flush in her mother's face.
"Like what?" David said.
The waitress in question currently stood beside David's chair, smiling as she refilled David's wine glass. "Thank you, dear," David said, accepting the wine glass back. Gwen noticed the way his fingers overlapped Elsa's for a moment too long.
David's face also had a similar drunken flush to it. The cooling sensation in Gwen's stomach turned icy.
Gwen tried to lean in and convey all this to Aiden so that she could enlist his help, but Barb broke in before she could.
"More for me, too, Eliza," Barb said, holding up her glass as Elsa rounded the table.
"It's Elsa, Barb," David corrected.
"Of course," Barb continued, "And I mean why couldn't you have been more like Aiden is with Gwenny?"
"I'm sure he was, mom," Gwen rushed in, "You're probably just not remembering it. You guys did get married a long time ago..." Even as she said the words, she knew they were the wrong ones. Her mother's snort confirmed that hypothesis.
"No, he was never like that. Were you, David? Not a romantic bone in your whole body."
David glowered at Barb over his wine glass with a long-suffering stare.
"Oh, please, Dave. Don't give me that look. You need to save all your energy for ogling that French girl..."
"She's Swiss. They speak French and German in Switzerland," David said, beginning to swirl the wine in his glass.
Barb tsked him. Maybe it was the wine getting to Gwen's head, too, but for the moment all she could do was watch the train wreck unfold in front of her.
"Like you care. She's young and pretty and that's all you care about anymore. Control yourself for once. You know, I'm glad I left you..."
"And I'm sorry it didn't happen sooner," David finished. Then he put the glass to his lips and tilted it back, making sure to maintain eye contact with Barb while he drained every last drop, his Adam's apple bobbing with each swallow. Barb huffed and shook her head in a long-suffering manner.
"How much have you had to drink, dad?" Gwen said, trying to get his attention.
"Not enough yet, I think," David replied.
"More than enough, you lush," Barb added.
"I think maybe we've all had a little more than we think," Aiden said, "Excuse me, we're going to need our check now." He flagged down a waiter.
"I can have as much as I want! Elsa, dear, I seem to be empty again," David said, lifting his glass into the air and giving it a little shake.
People around them started to quiet down and stare. They whispered to each other, Gwen catching little snatches of French or German and a few other foreign tongues on top of those. She didn't understand the words, but she certainly grasped the meaning beneath them.
Loud Americans. Noisy tourists. Did they really get drunk during supper? They shouldn't be here. They don't belong here.
Gwen imagined Judith getting the report. She could picture the old witch grinning with glee. It had all been a trap. A way for Judith to hammer the point home.
Elsa came up again, her sloshing bottle of wine at the ready. Before she could pour any, Aiden reached across the table and took David's glass away. "I think you've had enough."
"He's looking at enough in the rear view mirror," Barb said.
"You, too," Aiden said, collecting her glass while he was at it.
Gwen tried to shrink into her chair. She could feel all those eyes staring over at the table. At her fiancé treating her parents like a pair of unruly children. Aiden meant well, she knew. But he made it worse when he tried to fix it.
She had to suppress her own urge to yell at the bunch of them, to scream at them and tell them that they were doing just what Judith expected them to do. That, too, would just make it all worse.
Because that would play into the expectations of all the people watching them. Yes, the noisy Americans would try to fix their problems by becoming even noisier.
"Please get me the bill," Aiden said, "Now."
Elsa did as he asked, returning with the little leather-bound booklet, the long, glossy receipt flopping out of the top. Aiden took out a black charge card and put it down, scribbling his name across the receipt once Elsa processed it.
Gwen just wanted to get out of there. She felt ready to burst. Ready to scream. She couldn't wait to get back to the big bed in their suite so that she could bury her face in a pillow and do just that.
Aiden pulled her chair out as she stood, and she thanked him.
"Come on, Barb," David said, moving to emulate Aiden.
"I can stand up by myself. Go away!" Barb said.
David either didn't hear her or didn't care. He kept going. Except he tried pulling Barb's chair back before she'd moved all her weight off it.
All the blood drained out of Gwen's face. She watched the whole thing in slow motion. Her mother yelped as she lost her balance. Without the chair there to catch her, she fell down, grabbing at the table for support. Her fingers snagged in the table cloth and yanked it.
The expensive crystal wine glasses tumbled over, shattering, and the bottle of water in the middle tipped and began dumping its contents.
Even the quartet stopped playing when they heard the racket.
"Look at this! Look at this!" Barb yelled. Aiden rushed in quickly, helping her to her feet.
In the meantime, David had scribbled something down on a napkin and handed it to Elsa.
The maître d' with his thin mustache came over, his lips pressed into a tight line. "I'm going to have to ask your party to exit the premises, please."
"Gladly," Aiden said. His face was tight, his lips bloodless. And Barb kept clinging to his arm. Gwen followed them out to the car, glad to be out of sight of all those judging eyes.
Round one to Judith, she thought as the driver closed the door.
Chapter 11
Gwen did not envy the bell hops who so quickly agreed to take her parents back up to the respective rooms.
David and Barb took separate elevators, and Gwen and Aiden loitered in the marble-clad lobby to wait their turn.
Gwen couldn't sit. She wanted to, but she couldn't. Her anxiety and her anger kept coursing through her, giving her little jolts of adrenaline every time she started to slow. But the weight of everything exhausted her. It was a constant battle.
One she fought by pacing back and forth behind the overstuffed leather couch on which Aiden sat.
Neither of them appeared ready to speak yet, both lost in their own worries and worlds.
With no one there talking her worries down, Gwen could feel herself spiraling out of control.
What if Judith uses this as an excuse to end the whole thing right now? What if she takes Aiden away from me? What am I supposed to do? If this was the first, and presumably easiest, test, what's coming next? Can I take it?
The image of the old woman's wicked face kept appearing in her mind's eye, grinning at her.
"I think they've left," Aiden said, peering over towards the elevators. "Let's get upstairs."
A quick burst of panic shot through her when she realized that they'd be up there all alone in a few minutes. All alone with each other, no protective cocoon of bystanders around them to prevent the fight she could sense coming.
Aiden pushed himself off the couch and started over, pausing when he noticed that she didn't follow. "Coming?"
Stop being such a baby, Gwen thought. Sure, you can sit down here a little longer. But that's just procrastinating. In the end, you still have to go through with whatever it was you didn't want to do.
She so badly wanted to just plunk down on the couch and see how long she could put things off. But it wasn't the right thing, the mature, adult thing, to do.
"Coming," she replied.
The elevator came right away, for once. It turned out to be the fastest the two of them got where they were going, much to her chagrin.
Aiden popped the keycard into the lock and then put his shoulder to the door. Inside, he immediately tugged at one end of his bow tie and then pulled the length of silk out of his collar.
Shrugging off of his jacket and an unbuttoning of the top two buttons of his shirt followed quickly, and he finished the whole sequence by lowering himself onto the couch and blowing out his cheeks.
Gwen couldn't take it any longer. She tapped her foot, her arms squeezed tightly around her ribs. "Are you going to tell me I told you so? Because if you could, I'd like it sooner rather than later."
Aiden leaned back while also rubbing at the corners of his eyes. "Do I need to?"
"I don't know, do you?"
He sighed again and shrugged. "Fine. I did tell you that even with the contract, we're still playing by Judith's rules. She gets to decide all the games that we play for her. She is the referee or the judge in every case, and she ultimately decides who wins. Which will always be her, by the way."
"Sound a little more fatalistic about it, please. I don't quite feel like our fates are sealed yet."
"What were you expecting?" Aiden said testily.
Part of Gwen knew that bickering about this was just what Judith wanted, but she couldn't stop herself. All that frustration and anger had to come out somewhere. And Aiden was the only target available.
"I'm not sure. I can tell you what I wasn't expecting, though. I wasn't expecting your grandmother to set us all up on a dinner date and then do her best to try and get my parents sent to whatever the Swiss equivalent of a drunk tank is."
"Which is an oversight you won't be making again."
"Thanks, tips," Gwen said, turning away, not wanting to look at him anymore.
"Wait," Aiden said. She heard the rustle of cushions as he stood up, "There's more to this. I can tell. You're upset with me. Why are you upset with me? I did my best out there..." his footsteps drew closer and she knew he wanted to enfold her in one of those comforting back hugs of his in order to disarm her fuse.
Well, she wasn't going to let him. She turned around and pointed an accusatory finger at him. "You! Doing your best to what? Make my parents look like giant babies? You scolded them like children, taking their wine glasses away like they were toys or something! Didn't you notice the way everyone stared at us when you did that?"
Aiden's eyes iced over. Gwen almost flinched. Almost. She met his coldness with a fiery glare of her own. They stared so long that her eyes began itching and burning, but she refused to blink.
"Actually, I was less concerned with what other people think and more interested in addressing the problem at hand. Maybe you should try it sometime."
Gwen's mouth dropped open. "I can't believe you just said that!"
"Then maybe you should stop believing in stupid things and start seeing what's right in front of your face," Aiden snarled, tensing up. "Maybe I did treat your parents like children. But only because they were acting like them. Just like you're acting like one now. Things didn't go your way so you're throwing a tantrum."
The iciness of his eyes and the naked anger in his words smashed into her. Pressure built up behind her eyes as she tried to think of some retort and found nothing.
Seeing this, Aiden's eyes softened. His shoulders relaxed, and he took a deep breath. "Good, now that that's over, can we just forget about tonight and maybe get to bed? I know it's still really early, but I feel wrung out..."
"How can you say something like that?" Gwen said, unwilling and unable to just let go of it like that. She felt hurt and defenseless and cornered, and Aiden wanted to forget about it.
"Please don't start again," he said, still trying to defuse her.
"I'm not starting it because it hasn't ended yet. I know you didn't believe in this right from the start. Tell me, are you trying to help Judith win? Because it sure seems like it!"
Aiden shook his head like he couldn't believe the words coming out of her mouth. "Why would you even say that? Of course I'm on your side. I've always been on your side."
"Then stop acting like you aren't."
Aiden ran his fingers through his hair, ruining the careful combing he'd done to go out to dinner. Even angry at him like she was, Gwen couldn't help admitting how sexy it made him look. But it wasn't the time to think about that, so she struck it from her thoughts.
"No, Gwen. You're the one who has to stop acting. You have to stop acting like an entitled, selfish little girl. Now, I'm going to bed. Are you joining me?"
"No. You can sleep by yourself tonight. And every other night after that, for all I care. In fact, you can have your... stupid..." Gwen said, gritting her teeth while she tried pulling the engagement ring off, intent on throwing it in his face and storming out.
However, the ring refused to budge. She spun it around and pried at it, but it couldn't slide over her knuckle.
She hated the way it reduced her to sputtering and clawing, trying to get it off. It went on so long she might have laughed had it not been happening to her.
Aiden's anger broke, then, and he smiled at her. "It's not supposed to come off, you know. Not now or ever. Save your strength."
Gwen ignored him and pushed harder, the metal band biting into her skin. It still didn't come off.
"Screw it!" she said. His smile renewed her anger. "Yeah, laugh it up. We'll see who's laughing tonight."
She went to the door and wrenched it open, storming out into the hall. She didn't look back to see if Aiden followed her. Reaching the elevator, she jabbed the down button a half dozen times. When it didn't come promptly, she found the stairs and took them down to the lobby.
From there, she went outside, her shoes clicking against the concrete. The blanket of night had fallen on Switzerland since they had returned from their restaurant misadventure.
It was quite the fetching view, with the stars sparkling over the shadowy mountains. It didn't fetch Gwen, though. She didn't care about the stupid, beautiful vista.
She didn't care how all the heat seemed to have left with the sun. And she definitely didn't care about how cold it h
ad gotten. Or that, in her anger, she had neglected to grab so much as a windbreaker from the suite before her glorious and enraged exit.
"And I'm definitely not going back to get one," she muttered, clutching herself for warmth.
The few pedestrians she passed on the street, all clad for the weather, gave her funny looks.
She walked several blocks away from the hotel, trying to keep the heat of her anger up by thinking about what she wanted to do to Aiden's stupid, handsome face. The cold air won out over the hot anger, but not over her mulish stubbornness.
"I'm not going back," she muttered. He won't get that satisfaction.
Still, she also knew that she couldn't stay outside.
Then she heard the sound of salvation. Some sort of Euro (German, by the sound of it) rock music blasting from somewhere close by. And where there was rock playing loudly on the street, there was a bar.
She rounded the street corner and saw it. It was a pub, with a hanging sign of a foamy beer swaying in the wind. A man stumbled from the door, spilling light out onto the street and letting the sounds of merriment drift out. She watched him make his way around the empty tables and chairs of the patio and then bumble away down the street.
Warmth, Gwen thought, drawn to the pub. And alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
She went inside, the warm air prickling her cold skin, and sat on a stool by the bar. It wasn't the largest bar she'd seen. Pretty small, actually. Maybe a half dozen round tables with chairs scattered around them. Men and women laughed and drank, yelling at each other in German over the racket of the music.
It wasn't a place for tourists, either, it seemed.
The bartender approached her and asked her a question in German. Gwen shrugged, her stomach sinking. He blinked, then tried again in French. Gwen replied with another universal shrug.
She was beginning to get why so many people, especially Euros, looked down on Americans. "English?" Gwen tried.
The bartender knitted his thick eyebrows together. "No, no English," he said in a heavy accent.
Gwen looked for some way to breach the language barrier, her eyes settling on the beer taps. She didn't recognize the brand logos, but that didn't matter to her much at that moment. She reached down to grab her purse, ready to order a drink. Except her hands didn't find her purse.