Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Harry
“I want everything to be perfect,” Victoria said, her voice strained as she stood over our dining room again, studying every inch of the tablescape she’d created.
Yeah. Tablescape. It wasn’t just setting the damn table anymore.
My fiancée looked panicked, her entire vibe rippling with anxiety, and my instincts warred.
I knew I should reach for her and soothe her, but something new lived in me now.
Something that wanted to cheat on her again. To go back to that place and suck on a different woman’s tits. Ever since that night, through the weeks of trying to get over it, over Rosa, I’d managed to take not a single step forward.
It wasn’t just the physical cheating now, it was emotional too. But apart from the one time I stood outside The Bone Yard club where Rosa worked until the rain had me soaked through, I’d resisted going back. Making another appointment and confessing my feelings for her and her glorious tits…
“It is,” I muttered, the good fiancé in me winning out again, trying to pull Victoria into me for a little affection.
She shooed me away with a bat of her hand and not even a glance in my direction, and marched to the other side of the table, straightening out a fork instead of sinking into my hold.
Yeah, it hurt.
“You don’t know how high-maintenance my family is,” she said, still distant, eyes scanning the cutlery rather than the fiancé she was losing in tiny increments every day. “There’s a reason my sister left for so long.”
“But she’s coming today, yeah?” I asked of the mysterious sister, running a hand through my hair, trying to forget about Rosa, about what we’d done. It’d been well over a month and I was still obsessed. “And she won’t give a shit about this kind of thing.”
Victoria snorted. “No, she won’t. She lives in a hovel and has a questionable job.
” She said the last words in mockery of her mother, her voice stiff and high.
Then she rolled her eyes and shook her head.
She hated talking about her sister; it took her being a few drinks in to share any information.
I looked at her, waiting for an answer, and she waited a beat before she gave it. “Stripper.”
“Nice.”
“Harry.”
“Sorry.”
Victoria kept me at a distance from her family, knowing they wanted better for her. They already had one fuck-up of a daughter, and didn’t want another. I was by no means a crook, but by their money-making standards, I may as well have been a cockroach.
“The fact is,” Victoria started, walking past me, grabbing my wrist and pulling me along with her.
I moved with her, curious to see what she was doing.
I loved it when she took charge, a rare event.
It was one of the few times sex for us really popped off, when she was in the mood and ready to take.
There was a growing divide forming between us.
I knew that, but I didn’t know if she did.
Maybe this was what she wanted; maybe this sex life and this home life did it for her.
She wasn’t affectionate anymore, had been closing off from me for months.
“Mom and Dad are pricks. They have high standards and impossible expectations, and I want them to focus on me, not her.”
Victoria hadn’t seen her younger sister for a few years either, after she had a huge argument with her parents and ran to the city.
It was before Victoria and I had met, and I was curious to see what a different version of Victoria would look like.
Her sister sounded cool, loud, unlike the stuffiness I’d come to expect from Victoria’s family.
Victoria was beautiful, her light brown hair tugged up into a soft bun, her gentle features turned strained from the stress.
I loved her, I think, but I wasn’t 100% convinced she loved me back.
Not anymore. She wanted me, desired me, but it might not have been true love.
We moved through the motions of our relationship together, happy enough, but not alive with it.
I didn’t realize a relationship, that sex, could feel like that until I met Rosa. A few hours with her and everything else was ruined for good. But was it worth throwing it all away for a fantasy?
Still. I was too much of a sap to ask Victoria for the truth. To confront it. So instead, I patted the cushions one last time like she asked and jumped half out of my damn skin when the door buzzed. They were here. Her parents. I just fucking sensed the impending hell that was her mother’s arrival.
Victoria opened the door with a final bracing shimmy of her shoulders, and her parents swanned in with their noses turned up and their eyes cold, looking over every little speck of our home like it was a literal shithole and not a clean and tidy apartment with plenty of space for two and fucking wallpapered walls.
They desired the best for their daughter, they’d said, and this wasn’t it. I wasn’t it.
A teacher didn’t measure up for them. Not even a science teacher at the local high school who’d never craved moving up the ranks…
yeah, I could see it. They wanted her with a lawyer, a high-flying doctor or a businessman pulling in millions.
Someone with a bigger drive than being content teaching snarky teens about the periodic table.
Not me, with the small amount I had to offer her.
Sometimes I thought I saw that resentment in her eyes, in those moments we discussed our future.
I enjoyed my job, helping form those young minds into something to marvel at, laughing with the kids, seeing the spark of imagination or discovery.
But the pay was shit. And Victoria had known that when we met.
“Hello, Harry,” Katerina, Victoria’s mother, said, not making any moves to come closer. Only standing stiff at the door like she might dart away any moment in disgust at having to socialize with a lowly teacher.
“Uh, hey, Mrs Mason,” I said, rubbing my hands on my thighs as I strode across to her, aware that the living room, dining-room and front door were all in the same space. The kitchen was a small addition through an archway, but still… all together. All visible from the spot she was in.
I moved over to them, and Mrs Mason all but scowled at me as we made simple chit chat, Mr Mason joining in too, sizing me up as Victoria flittered back to the kitchen to finish the food.
They asked me loaded questions, hinting at working my way up in the school even though I’d told them I was happy teaching science about five thousand times before.
A principal or superintendent was acceptable to them, apparently.
I almost couldn’t wait for the mystery sister to arrive, the bigger fuck-up who might redirect some of the attention away from me and my poor life choices. Like being in love with their daughter wasn’t enough.
“How are… the children at your school?” Mrs Mason asked after I once again rejected her fishing for a hint of something more in line with her lifestyle, her voice full of contempt.
We’d moved to the artfully arranged tablescape, where she had, without comment, pushed some of the flowers out of her way to sink into the seat at the head of the table.
“Good,” I said with a smile, reaching for my glass of wine. “Really good. We’re just picking back up for the year. They’re getting into the swing of things. Experiments and such…”
“Right.” Mr Mason sank down next to me, breaking the awkward. He was returning from the bathroom, and looked neat as a pin as he filled the space between me and his wife. “When’s Zora arriving?”
“She’s late,” Mrs Mason noted, with that familiar pinch on her face.
Victoria chose that moment to return from the kitchen, two plates in hand. She’d slaved over this meal, creating beautiful salads for us to start while I just made a nuisance of myself trying to help. “Zora’ll be here,” Victoria said with a sniff. “She promised.”
“That’ll be the day she keeps a promise—” Mrs Mason started, but was interrupted by the door buzzer resonating through the apartment.
Whoever was out there held it down for a beat too long, making me wince when it continued bouncing around my head.
Maybe the fuck-up sister, already irritating everyone.
Save me, sister.
“I’ll get it!” I said, jumping up, needing a breather from how fucking awkward this whole thing was. Who did they think they were? I worked hard, loved their daughter; surely that was enough to appease their high standards. Trying to temper my anger like I always managed, I strode to the door.
The buzzer sounded again, louder, more insistent this time, and feeling irritated, I yanked open the door, ready to berate the person on the other side. Or at least scowl at them. Sister or not.
It took my brain a few seconds to catch up with what I was seeing. I blinked. A mirage, must be. Or I’d fallen and hit my head and was in a fucking fantasy land…
“What the fuck?” I blurted, taking in the woman before me. Her face was a picture of shock and disgust too, a slow-forming panic and surprise as she calculated what the fuck we were about to walk into.
Because she wasn’t a stranger. Well, not really. We’d met.
“Harry?” Rosa said, looking at me aghast. “What are you doing here?”
I opened my mouth to ask her the same, to zap her out of existence or some shit, because she couldn’t be here. These worlds couldn’t collide. What the fuck was happening? My heart pounded in my chest, and my ears went distant, like the world was leaving me.
We stared at each other, both clearly too shocked to move beyond the moment. To reconcile and figure out what the fuck was happening. Because there was only one proper explanation.
“Zora!” Victoria said with a cheerful smile, barging past me and wrapping her arms around the woman who’d… the woman I’d…
Zora, not Rosa.
“Harry,” Victoria said, turning around with her younger sister wrapped up in her arms. “This is Zora.”
Oh, shit the bed.