Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Zora
Well, fucking shit fuck me.
This was unexpected.
And all of a sudden, just like that, seeing my judgmental prick parents for the first time in two years wasn’t the worst thing to happen tonight. No. Not by a long shot. Because… Harry. She called him Harry. He hadn’t even given me a fake name.
Victoria hurried me into her apartment and introduced me to her fiancé better, then yammered on about his job, his hobbies and how they’d met, how he had proposed.
She was nervous, always got chatty like this whenever something was bothering her.
But I let her speak a mile a minute as my heart shattered for her.
He’d cheated. Big time cheated. And it was a million times worse because it was with her younger sister.
God damn.
“He’s handsome, isn’t he?” Victoria whispered to me like it was some cheeky little secret after he scurried off to hide from his shame.
Her fiancé, who was going around paying for sex. Kinky sex, too. Yes, he was handsome.
He looked at me with imploring eyes from across the room, his gaze wide and begging, pleading for me not to tell.
To keep my mouth shut. And I would. For now.
Because my brain couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening here.
I never thought I would see him again. I needed… I needed time to process.
And I had bigger fish to fry.
So I nodded at Victoria’s girlish giggles and gave her another hug.
“How are you?” Vicky said, her head close to mine.
She was aware of my news, had helped me prepare how to tell the parents.
She’d arranged this entire night for me, to make it easier.
Gave me the buffer of the fiancé they didn’t like, she said.
We’d get through this together, she assured. If only she fucking knew.
Would she even want to be around me after this?
I resisted the urge to pat my stomach, protective of what was growing in there. “I’m okay,” I told the truth. “Over the worst of it now, I think.”
She gave me a warm smile and another hug, then, with her eyes steady on mine, took a deep breath in and out. Here we go. All of a sudden, that familiar wave of nausea heated my neck, made me green at the gills. I shut it down, swallowed, and braced myself.
“Zora,” my mother said, choosing not to rise from her seat as we approached the beautifully decorated table.
Dad did stand, giving me a quick, silent pat on the back, before settling in front of his salad.
Everything was so neat and pretty, intricate.
Victoria always had a way with decorating, a good eye for detail.
I was much more gung-ho. Chucking things together because I liked them and nothing more.
Victoria nipped away and returned with three more plates balanced in her hands.
I took two and handed them out before sitting.
Right in front of Harry. Shit. I was about as far from my parents as was possible, thankfully, but he was right there.
I still couldn’t believe it, had to fight the urge to gawk.
My sister’s cheating asshole of a fiancé winced when our eyes caught. I had to tell her. Instead, I stared at the flowers running through the center of the table until everyone was settled and picking up forks.
“Mother,” I responded, though way too much time had passed now, so it was uncomfortable.
I frowned and looked down at my food. Colorful vegetables waved up at me, placed in an intricate pattern around the plate.
My stomach rumbled, so I picked up my fork as Vicky sat next to me, giving me a little pat on the knee to tell me everything would be okay.
Worst sister ever. I deserved whatever was coming to me. I still struggled to get over it, Harry right there. It felt incongruous, wrong, like two worlds had collided and they weren’t meshing like they should. A massive glitch in the system my mind failed to comprehend.
It was Harry. The man who’d—
“How have you been?” Mom asked, looking me up and down as she ignored her food, sipped her wine. Harry and Vicky both began working on their food, the scraping of cutlery on plates breaking through the silence. I daren’t look at him again in case my heart gave out.
“Music,” Vicky muttered then, through the awkward. “We need some music…” She moved to jump up but Harry hushed her, pulling out his phone and fiddling, his brow furrowed.
“Uh,” I said, chewing a thin slice of cucumber. “I’ve been good.”
“Still working that disgusting job?”
“Mother!” Vicky admonished. But it didn’t bother me.
They didn’t even know the half of what I did.
Well, someone in this room was privy to it.
To my entire fucking body. To them, I danced and took my clothes off, and that was bad enough.
If they found out what I was really paid for no doubt I would be disowned.
This was… an insurmountable coincidence. Shocking of fate to do something as rude as this. As twisted. Soft music started playing in the background as I braced myself once more. Just needed to get through this. Then I could go cry into a pillow and reassess my life choices once again.
“I’m still working my disgusting job, yeah, still living with my disgusting roommate. And I don’t want to hear anything about them. About any of it.” I paused. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Mom muttered under her breath, and Dad just appeared uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. Vicky looked like the world was trying to swallow her up and she wouldn’t let it, desperate to maintain composure. If I were her, I’d welcome the earth. Especially knowing what was coming.
“I’ve made veal for the main course. I know that’s your fav—” she tried to say, but Mom interrupted.
Her face reddened with each passing moment. “It’s despicable, really,” she raved. “Putting your body on show like that, living in a hellscape of an apartment with a…”
“With a what?” I asked, ready to stand up and leave if she for one second thought she could talk shit about Bellamy. Not again. Not ever. My mother was nothing if not a consistent bigot, a judgmental cow of a woman.
Instead of answering, she just seethed.
She seethed through the appetizer, and then through the main course.
Muttering and cursing the very ground I walked on as I just tried to get through it and Vicky did everything to keep things from exploding.
With each moment I spent in my parents’ presence, I grew more certain I wouldn’t get what I came here for.
And I wished I hadn’t bothered; at least then I’d have carried on in ignorance.
On the plus side, she was acting as a good distraction to the looming shitshow that was my homewrecking revelation.
Harry controlled the music, trying to find something that fit the tone. It was a funny moment, one where I burst out laughing, when he accidentally played Who Let The Dogs Out by The Baha Men. Other than that. Just painful.
But I needed my parents’ help.
Fuck, I hated that I needed their help. But I was moneyless, or would be soon. I couldn’t keep working now that—
“Dessert!” Vicky shrieked, and I jumped up, needing a breather.
“I’ll help!” I said, rushing after her into the small kitchen. I hadn’t forgotten about Harry. About what we’d done, what we’d caused, but Vic was already so worked up I couldn’t tell her. Not yet. Not with them here.
Instead, without speaking much, we plopped cream onto the chocolate cheesecake slices she’d made, and carried them out to the table.
Breather over.
The time was coming.
Plan was, tell them, ask for what I needed, and dip out. Check in after a day or so when they’d calmed down.
It’s not as if I were a teenager. This would be fine.
When we returned to the room laden with the bowls, Harry was glancing between us with such panic. I gave him a little head shake. I’d said nothing. Like the awful, selfish person I was, I said nothing.
“This is delicious,” Harry said once we’d all settled back in for the last course, looking at the woman he’d vowed to marry, while sitting opposite her sister he’d fucked not a few months ago. They were for sure together then, I remember Vicky telling me he’d proposed.
“What?” Victoria asked, and I assumed she was talking to him, but then I saw her eyes were on me. “You were scowling.”
“Oh.” I rearranged my face. “Sorry.”
“So what is with this return to the family?” Mom asked, not touching her cheesecake. Dad finished his and reached for hers, but she slapped his hand away. Her eyes were hard on me, like she was scanning me trying to figure it out. Why was she such a fucking bitch all the damn time?
I bet she’d guess right. It was so fucking typical.
“I actually have news,” I said with a gulp, gussying up. Tighten those ovaries, Zora, you’ve got this.
Mom rolled her eyes. “Of course she wants money. Taking your clothes off not paying the bills anymore?”
“It was paying just fine.” Oh, I so wanted to not do this, to kick off, curse her out and swan away with my head held high.
But… I touched my stomach and sighed. “I was hoping for my college fund,” I said.
I’d never gone to college, never spent a penny of it.
But I knew it existed, they’d handed Victoria hers full of lots of lovely pride because she was going Ivy.
“What?” Mom said, voice flat.
“My college fund,” I repeated. “Can I… can I have it?” Ah, so fucking awkward. “I have a whole plan I wanted to show you, to get your… approval, I don’t know. But… I can’t— I need funding. My college fund will work. It’s what it’s there for, after all.”
“Your college fund?” Mom was close to laughter.
“Mother, please,” Victoria muttered, her face ashen.
“Katerina, let’s hear her out,” Dad piped up, finally. He’d always been warmer, just docile. Well under her thumb and happy that way. Never did anything to stop her demanding ways, but never demanded anything himself.
Mom narrowed her eyes. “Tell me why this change of heart, and maybe I’ll consider it.”
I spluttered. God, did I really have to do this?
“Okay, fine,” I said, and my heart squeezed when Victoria grabbed my hand under the table, bracing with me. Harry looked between us, bewildered, confused. The tension in the room was close to breaking.
“Zora…?” he said, his voice croaking.
Looking at him, I couldn’t look anywhere else, I opened my mouth.
“I’m pregnant.” And it was out there. “I’m having a baby, and I want to give them the best start I can.
The best way I can. I have time to get an education, to get a head start.
And when they’re older, and I’m done, I can find a better job, a steady job… ”
And… chaos.
Harry’s head hit the table, out cold.
“You did it,” Vicky said to me, giving me a hug at the door. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Do you think they’ll go for it?” I asked, enjoying her warmth while I still could. She was such a good big sister, and I would tell her about Harry very soon. Like, tomorrow soon. But after he’d conked out and no one could move him into a more comfortable position, the night was all but done.
He couldn’t have guessed it was his baby. He knew what I did, must have assumed I slept with dozens of men all around the same time I did with him. But it was. It was his. Maybe it was the look in my eye when I said those words straight to his face.
My father, the doctor, checked the patient out and managed to get him awake and stumbling to bed while Vic and I cleared the table.
Mom took herself to the sofas and continued to scowl at everything while we worked, aghast at the drama Harry and I caused.
A pregnancy and a collapse. Too many dramatics.
Then she beckoned me over, told me to send her a pitch for what course I wanted to do and where, and dismissed me. She dismissed me like I was far beneath her, like how she treated staff and anyone that didn’t fit her ideal. Which I suppose I didn’t.
But I had to take it. If she’d hand over the college fund, I could study something practical, get to earning and creating a stable life for the bundle of mayhem cooking in my stomach.
Fuck, the baby was 100% Harry’s. Noah had told me I didn’t have to do anything I was uncomfortable with, but he handed over all the information he had about him before sending me on my way. I hadn’t looked at it yet.
Bailey and Noah both agreed that a pregnant woman couldn’t work on the floor. With the clientele. They had me in the office for now, or cleaning up, but I was superfluous. They were just being nice.
Hence, late night googling and frantic planning to get myself set up for life.
It would be a tough few years, but I wanted to do it.
Had the resources too, if my parents would stop being such dicks.
At twenty-seven, I was well above the age to go to college, but that didn’t matter.
When I was eighteen and decided a career waiting tables and bars sounded much more fun, I’d faced a lot of flack from them.
And at twenty-five, when I started working in the club and Mom had found out, she’d told me to quit.
Called me a whore and a waste of the family’s good name.
The one time she saw me after that, I bumped into her in the street with Bellamy at my side.
The text messages I received from her afterward ended any hope of reconciliation on my part.
“They’d be mad not to hand it over,” Victoria said, bringing me back to the present. Back to the place where I’d been paid to fuck her future husband and have him suck my tits dry.
Jesus fucking Christ, she was the woman he was pretending to cheat with. Not pretending at all. Holy shit. This was too much. I needed to go.
“You gonna make it home okay?” Victoria asked. “I can get Harry to drive you?”
“Harry who’s half unconscious in your bed?” I raised my eyebrow. “I’ll manage.”
Victoria winced and nodded, and we said our goodbyes.
As I climbed down the stairs, I contemplated what other ways this evening could have fucked up.
I think realizing the man who’d impregnated you was your sister’s beloved fiancé was a pretty safe bet for number one.
And I was coming back tomorrow to ruin her life.