Spoiler Alert

by Olivia Dade

  TopMeAeneas: OH MY SWEET JESUS!!!

  LavineasOTP: Holy shit

  LavineasOTP: Hooooooly shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

  Mrs. Pius Aeneas: This is the day foretold by our elders. The day a Lavineas fan got to touch MCR’s jawline and find out if it will, in fact, cut your fingers with its sharpness!

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: No stitches yet. No promises for the future, however.

  TopMeAeneas: THIS IS WHY AENEAS IN YOUR FICS IS WADE’S AENEAS NOW

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Yeah. I didn’t want to write a man with my boyfriend’s face and body getting it on with another woman. Even Lavinia. I’m selfish like that. :-)

  LaviniaIsMyGoddessAndSavior: YOU HAVE TO TELL US

  LaviniaIsMyGoddessAndSavior: DOES HE REALLY SMELL LIKE MUSK AND CLEAN SWEAT AND MAN

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Kind of? Especially after he works out?

  TopMeAeneas: [legs-spread, crotch-up gif]

  23

  THE NIGHT BEFORE SHE VISITED HER PARENTS FOR THE first time in a year, April had lain sprawled and wakeful next to Marcus, determined to reach some sort of verdict.

  Sometime after two in the morning, clarity had arrived.

  When it came to her mother, the land beneath her feet was contaminated. She could either continue living with a soil cap, a thin veneer of pleasantness over profound damage, or dig out the problem.

  The process wouldn’t be easy. It would cost her, maybe more than she realized.

  Then again, she’d never been much interested in surfaces.

  It was time to dig and dispose.

  Luckily, she’d thought before finally, gratefully falling asleep, I’ll have Marcus by my side. Holding my hand. Reminding me, when I forget, that I’m not the contaminant. Even if my parents wouldn’t agree.

  Only she’d been wrong. Completely, humiliatingly, gut-churningly wrong.

  Marcus wasn’t by her side, not even for a minute. He wasn’t holding her hand.

  Instead, he was chatting with her father at the opposite side of the open-plan first floor. Laughing. Sharing workout and nutrition tips, some of which Brent repeated to the house at large, his tone genial enough that outsiders wouldn’t understand just how pointed his commentary was, and whose flesh those verbal arrows were intended to pierce.

  Marcus’s support and affection had never faltered before, and she’d counted on both as a bolster today. More than that, she’d relied on them as proof, to her parents and herself, that everything they believed, everything she’d been told for eighteen years, was wrong.

  Marcus’s fingers intertwined with hers, the way he beamed at her, would announce her triumph more clearly and loudly than words.

  I’m fat, and he wants me.

  I’m fat, and he doesn’t need me to change.

  I’m fat, and he’s proud of me.

  Now she was just another big girl the hot dude didn’t want near him, at least not in public. Which was precisely what her parents expected, and what her mother had warned her to expect too, in all those concerned phone calls April had stopped answering.

  Honestly, she didn’t give much of a fuck about what her father thought or believed, not anymore. But when she’d pictured this conversation with her mother, she’d imagined Marcus nearby, his proximity a silent reminder that she was desired and appreciated, that her happiness was worth painful conversations and setting hard boundaries.

  Instead, she was doing it alone, because of course she was.

  Of course.

  As the two women had set the table, her mother had already whispered of her unease, brows puckered over warm brown eyes. “Are you certain this isn’t a publicity stunt, sweetheart? It just seems so . . . unlikely.”

  That anxiety was real. So was the love in that familiar gaze.

  They only made her words sting more. When April had defended the genuineness of her relationship with Marcus, her mother’s unstated but clear disbelief stung too.

  Now, as they put the final touches on their celebratory gourmet spa lunch, as her mother called it, the two of them were treading yet more of that same contaminated ground.

  “I saw a few pictures in the tabloids.” JoAnn checked the doneness of the pan-roasted salmon, then transferred the fillets to a platter. “I’ll send you some links for foundation garments. They’ll smooth things out a bit, so you’ll feel more comfortable when the paparazzi take candid shots.”

  “Foundation garments have literally never made me feel more comfortable,” April replied, trying to keep her tone wry rather than bitter. “Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.”

  Her mother laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  Oh, April did know. Physical comfort meant nothing, if discomfort would help deter the censure of loved ones and strangers alike. JoAnn had learned that the hard way.

  During her first year of marriage, she’d gained fifty pounds. Then promptly lost it again, once she realized that above a certain weight, her husband wouldn’t invite her to socialize with his colleagues, wouldn’t dance with her in public, wouldn’t touch her in private.

  It was a one-time mistake, never repeated. Brent still bragged about how his wife lost all her baby weight within a month of giving birth. And since JoAnn hadn’t wanted to risk failure a second time, April had remained an only child.

  She’d been born small and remained slim—until puberty. Then the number on the scale started creeping upward, week by week. Until, finally, her mother pulled her aside to share the story of that first wedded year and the lessons to be drawn from it.

  “Boys care about these things more than we girls think, and I don’t want you to be blindsided like I was.” JoAnn’s hand was soft and cool and tender against April’s flushed, wet cheek. “Sweetheart, I’m only saying this because I love you, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  That was the common refrain, always.

  I love you, and I don’t want you to get hurt.

  It was far, far too late to avoid hurt. But at least that story had confirmed what April already suspected. Already feared.

  Her father had stopped bringing her to the firm’s family events. The only photos of her around the house dated from before puberty. At her older cousin’s wedding, when her maternal grandmother urged him to dance with his daughter, he’d simply pretended not to hear.

  He was ashamed to be seen with her.

  Yes, it hurt. Badly. Yes, she’d eventually seen a therapist about it.

  But honestly, the man was a dick in so many ways, it was relatively easy to cut ties with him. They didn’t talk. They barely saw one another outside afternoons like this, and even then, her mother remained a constant buffer and mediator. Spending time in his disapproving presence still made her nervous, but it didn’t devastate her.

  Her mom, though, was sweetness inextricably swirled with a toxin JoAnn didn’t and would never recognize as harmful.

  In ridding herself of the taint, April would most likely lose the sweetness too.

  Still, she’d told Marcus he had the right to set parental boundaries for the sake of his happiness, and she needed to follow her own advice. JoAnn’s love for April didn’t justify the harm she’d done, and April’s love for JoAnn couldn’t save their relationship.

  Not unless things changed. Not unless April spoke and her mother actually listened.

  Today, she was speaking. The rest was up to her mother.

  Spoonful by spoonful, JoAnn was dolloping low-fat yogurt-dill sauce onto the plates. Still talking. Still worried and loving and hurtful.

  “Have you considered surgery, for your . . . problem?” Her mother always stumbled over the word, as if fatness were an obscenity. “It might make things easier, especially with a man like Marcus. And you know how concerned I am for your health.”

  April could hardly forget, given the frequency of her mother’s reminders.

  “I could come and help you recover afterward, if you wanted.” When her daughter didn’t respond, JoAnn tried a diffe
rent tack. “But I know that’s a big step. If you’re not ready, maybe you could try his diet and exercise routine instead. It could be something you have in common, like it is for your father and me.”

  Growing up, April had wondered what kept her parents together. JoAnn, fluttery and well-intentioned and cheerful. Brent, confident and self-absorbed and dickish. Married almost forty years now, yet still strangers in a very real way. A couple that never seemed more distant than when they stood beside one another.

  Well, now she knew: burpees and lean protein had saved their marriage.

  It would be kind of hilarious, if only her mother didn’t always look so afraid every morning when she stepped on the scale, and every evening when she stepped on the scale, and all those other times during the day she stepped on the scale too.

  After leaving for college, it had taken April three years to stop weighing herself after every meal. Another decade to throw away the scale entirely.

  Her mother was twisting lemon slices to garnish each plate, which meant lunch was almost ready. They were running out of time, and April was running out of courage.

  She couldn’t wait until after the meal, as she’d planned.

  They were doing this now.

  “Mom.” She placed a hand over her mother’s, stilling those skilled, perfect movements. “I need to talk to you for a minute. In private.”

  JoAnn’s forehead crinkled. “We’re about to eat, sweetheart. Can’t this wait?”

  “I don’t think so,” April said, and nudged her mother toward the privacy of the guest room.

  JoAnn’s birthday lunch wasn’t the right place for this, but it was a conversation that needed to occur face-to-face, and April wasn’t sure when she’d return to her childhood home. She wasn’t sure if she’d return. It all depended on what happened next.

  After living with a man like Brent for decades, her mother was exquisitely sensitive to the potential displeasure of loved ones. She was already twisting her hands anxiously, already half-ready to cry, which was part of the reason they’d never had this conversation before. Reducing Mom to this state made April feel like a monster. It made her feel like her father.

  “What . . .” Her mother started at the click of the door, even though April had closed it behind them as quietly as possible. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  Okay. She didn’t need Marcus.

  In the end, she was always going to have to do it on her own, anyway.

  “After today, I don’t want to see Dad again. Ever.” Any minute, Brent would wonder why his wife wasn’t serving him with sufficient speed, and this conversation would end. April didn’t have time to prevaricate. “Being around him brings me nothing but anxiety, and I’m not subjecting myself to that anymore.”

  Her mother gulped at that first, firm statement, eyes going glassy and terrified.

  For years, she’d lamented the estrangement between father and daughter, coaxing April in phone calls to visit for his birthday and send him Christmas gifts before whispering, her tone meaningful, that he’d asked how she was doing.

  April didn’t believe it. And even if he had, was that—a passing thought as to her general welfare—really enough to indicate his grief at her distance and his desire for greater closeness?

  Was that really enough to make him an actual father?

  No. No, it wasn’t.

  Now April was declaring her independence, cutting him out of her life entirely, and all her mother’s worst fears were coming true, and it was horrible, horrible, to be the person to inflict that necessary blow.

  “Sweetheart—” Her lips trembling, JoAnn reached toward April. When her daughter continued speaking, though, she dropped her hand and fell silent.

  “From now on, our relationship won’t include him.” Her mother would exploit any seeming uncertainty, so April didn’t offer any. “If you can’t visit me without him, I’ll understand. But I won’t see you either, then.”

  Late last night, April had formulated different versions of this conversation.

  He doesn’t love me, she’d tell her mother. Maybe I still love him a little, only because it’s hard not to love your father. I definitely don’t like him, though. I’m done.

  But that would have invited her mother to insist of course Dad loved her, men just showed it differently, and April simply needed to understand. Accept. Deny her anxiety, deny what she needed, even though her chest felt wrung dry, emptied, at the prospect of seeing a man who was supposed to love her no matter what, but didn’t.

  He didn’t.

  Her mother did. Which only made the rest of this conversation worse.

  “How our relationship will look after today is up to you.” Acid was climbing April’s throat. Bile. “Not just because I won’t see you when he’s present, but because things need to change between us. Even without his involvement.”

  JoAnn was openly crying now, her knees collapsing beneath her as she sank onto the edge of the bed, her spine bent as she huddled in on herself, and at one time, April would have cut out her own heart to prevent her mother from looking like this.

  In some ways, she had.

  That ended now, even if she felt monstrous and unclean.

  “I don’t want to talk about my body with you ever again.” No matter how her voice shook, she had to make her boundaries clear. Absolute and unmistakable, so their violation couldn’t be mistaken for confusion. “I won’t discuss what I eat or don’t eat. I won’t discuss how I exercise or don’t exercise. I won’t discuss how I look or don’t look. I won’t discuss test results or medications. My weight, my health, and my clothing are all off-limits.”

  JoAnn’s eyes were red-rimmed now, her lips parted, her head shaking in mute befuddlement or denial or some other emotion April couldn’t parse through her own grief.

  “I know you worry about me, I know you want to help, but that doesn’t change what I’m telling you.” Salt was stinging her eyes, blurring her vision, and she slapped away the tears and kept standing, kept talking. “Please believe me: The next time you bring up my body, I will end our conversation. I’ll walk out the door or hang up the phone. The next time you send me links to articles about weight loss or exercise, I’ll block your messages.”

  For once, she was glad of her mother’s timidity before the assurance of others. It meant April could get out this next part before the weight of her own love dragged her under and drowned the words that needed, at long last, to be said.

  “If that’s not enough, if you can’t stop, I’ll cut off all contact with you.” Despite her mother’s gasp, despite her own crying, April maintained eye contact as best she could. “B-because you hurt me, Mom. You’re hurting me.”

  Her mother sobbed out loud then, hands fisted at her sides. “I love you.”

  At that, April had to bow her head. After swallowing back more acid, though, she raised her chin once more.

  Maybe her words cracked, but they were certain. They were honest. “You l-love me, but you still hurt me. When I talk to you, when I see you, I end up half-convinced that who I am, what I am, is wrong and abhorrent and needs to be fixed.”

  “You’re not abhorrent,” JoAnn whispered, face crumpled and lined. “I never, ever thought that.”

  The raw truth in that declaration drove April to reach for her mother’s hand. JoAnn’s fingers were slender and cold and unsteady. So fragile, April couldn’t squeeze too hard for fear of breaking them.

  Still, her mother needed to realize. “But that’s how you make me feel.”

  Everything she’d scripted in her head last night, she’d said. All but the last bit. And the voices of the two men were getting louder, closer, so she needed to say it now.

  “Dad will never, ever understand how he’s hurt us. Even if he did understand, he’d never acknowledge it.” April gave her mother’s hand a gentle shake. “But you’re not him. Please, Mom. Please think about whether you want to keep hurting me, now that you know you are.”

  Her mother’s te
ars were silent now, their trails glinting in the sunlight through the window, her pain etched in lines around her pale mouth.

  “I only wanted to help,” she whispered.

  April pressed a kiss to the back of her mother’s hand, the skin there more papery and thin than she’d recalled. Lightly freckled, despite sunscreen and spot-reducing hand creams.

  In her mind, her mother was still young and glamorous. Sheathed in slender, formfitting dresses, makeup perfect as she left on her husband’s arm for his firm’s holiday parties, calling out last instructions for the babysitter until Brent got impatient and yanked her out the door.

  But she wasn’t young anymore. Neither was April, really.

  They were running out of time to fix this. To fix them.

  The only way forward was honesty. “It doesn’t help, Mom. It only hurts.”

  Then the guest room door was opening, and the amiable, man-to-man chuckles of Marcus and her father stopped abruptly.

  Brent frowned but didn’t move closer to his wife. “JoAnn? What—”

  “I think we’d better go,” April said. Somehow, Marcus was right there beside her, his hand resting warm and strong on her shoulder. She instinctively stepped away from the contact. “I’m sorry to miss lunch, Mom. I left your present in the den.”

  In her peripheral vision, she could see Marcus staring down at her, brows drawn, hand frozen in midair, but he didn’t matter now. Her mother was still sitting on that bed. Still hunched, narrow shoulders shaking as she wept silently, so as not to embarrass anyone with her heartbreak.

  Bending down, April kissed the top of her mom’s head. Inhaled the powdery scent of flowers, maybe for the last time.

  “When you’ve had a chance to think, call me.” She was wetting her mother’s hair, so she lifted her face after one last inhalation. “I love you, Mom.”

  With her father blustering protests and demands, her mother crying, and Marcus trailing silently behind her, April gathered her purse and left her parents’ house.

  Her eyes might be blurry, but her back was straight.

  Good thing too. This hellacious day wasn’t over yet. Once they were five minutes down the road, she was having Marcus pull over.