Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
XAVI
I haven’t seen Enfield in five days. Not since Sparrow punched him in the face. I know he’s still here. Every time I walk up or down the stairs, I peek out the first landing window to see if his vehicle is still there. It is.
I’m guessing he’s still here for the same reasons I haven’t called this whole thing off. Spoiled rich boys want to remain spoiled and rich. That might not be specifically what his reasons are, but I’m sure they’re not far off.
It’s so frustrating. I want to scream and scream and scream.
I wander downstairs, knowing I’ll find Sparrow in the kitchen.
He’s always been an early riser. Which means he’ll be cooking something delicious.
I pause on the landing, and sure enough, Enfield’s SUV is parked in front of the garage.
Just as I turn to walk away, another vehicle pulls into the driveway.
A sour feeling fills my stomach. I’ve seen that damn car enough times by now that I know exactly who it is. Enfield’s mother.
I turn and continue down the stairs. Sure enough, as soon as my feet hit the landing, the doorbell fills the halls. I scowl at it.
Not once has Enfield come down to answer his damn mother, leaving me to deal with her. The least he could do was park his damn vehicle in the garage, so there’s reasonable doubt that he’s here.
I ignore it, knowing that she’ll get tired of this after ten or so minutes and leave. Sparrow is just stepping out of the kitchen as I approach.
“You’re not going to answer that?” he asks, eyebrow raised.
“It’s Enfield’s mother, so… no.” I push by him. “She’ll go away after a few minutes.”
A few minutes turn into twelve. I’m about ready to drag Enfield downstairs by his damn balls and force him to deal with her when the doorbell stops. I sigh in relief.
“That’s annoying,” Sparrow says as he sets a plate in front of me. Eggs Benedict. There’s even green garnish and a fancy cut orange on the side for decoration. It’s been like living in a diner.
“It is.”
He joins me a minute later with his own plate. “Call your parents.”
I roll my eyes. “Why bother?”
“Because I know my answer.”
He pushes my phone toward me. I narrow my eyes, wondering where the hell he got my phone from to begin with and what he’s doing with it. “Call her,” he says with a smirk, probably knowing what I’m thinking.
Rolling my eyes, I turn my phone on. It’s fully charged, so at least he didn’t drain the battery doing who the hell knows what on my phone.
I open the call log. Nope. He didn’t make a call.
I do as he wants me to, though I don’t feel any hope at all that this is going to result in something positive.
With the phone on speaker and ringing, I take a bite of my breakfast. I prefer it warm. Hollandaise is best warm.
“Hey, baby,” Mom says.
She hasn’t been over since the day I kind of yelled at her in the kitchen, but we’ve talked on the phone a few times. Not about what’s happening here. Never about Enfield or this contract. I don’t think she knows what to say, and I don’t have anything new to add.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What’s up, sweetie? It’s early; are you okay?”
“Sparrow made me breakfast.”
“Ah. I can almost smell it. Delicious.”
Sparrow smirks.
“Mom, I want out.” I hold my breath as a beat passes.
“Out?” Mom repeats.
“This contract, Mom. I want out of this one and try again.”
Mom sighs. “I can’t, darling,” she says, voice quiet. Sad. “I’ve been trying. I’d never talk badly about my future in-laws, but Enfield’s parents are tiresome, haughty, and pretending like nothing is wrong. They insist everyone signed it without challenge.”
“That’s not fair!” I insist. “They lied to him.”
“I agree; something I’ve brought up several times.
I also brought up that they lied to me by omission by letting me believe I was arranging a willing husband for my gay son.
Though they’re insistent that Enfield will eventually stop fighting and settle down with you—completely ignoring the sexuality aspect of this conversation, mind you—they’re pretty tight-lipped otherwise.
I’ve done some digging, asked around to some friends in the Napa Valley area, and it sounds to me that Enfield has been fighting this tooth and nail since he was a young teenager.
This isn’t something that he suddenly decided that he didn’t want and is forced into.
He’s never wanted it, and his parents have never been willing to compromise with him. ”
“They sound miserable,” Sparrow says.
“That’s my understanding, and yet only in this one instance. Otherwise, they sound like perfectly kind and generous people. Curious that they’re dragging their son and mine through hell, and for what?” Mom says. I can practically see her shaking her head.
“So what now?” I ask. “I’m supposed to just be miserable for the rest of my life? That’s honestly everyone’s answer?” My voice sounds a little high.
Mom sighs. “I don’t know, Xavi. I haven’t given up; I talk to Betty and Ryan almost daily and try to convince them that this isn’t working. They don’t want to hear it and insist that Enfield needs to grow up.”
Sparrow scowls. I bet he’d like to punch them, too.
I’m so frustrated that I want to cry again. Not because I’m a crybaby, but when there’s literally nothing you can do to change your situation, sometimes crying is the only answer. I want to fucking sob! I want to throw a tantrum. I want to demand that someone change this.
“I’m sorry, Xavi. You were right. I should have done better research on Enfield.
I suppose I got complacent. Finding matches for your brothers had gone so smoothly, and I had no idea that this would be different.
There was no indication from Betty that she was fucking insane—excuse my language—and completely disregarded her son’s wants, needs, and happiness. ”
“Is she getting something out of this?” Sparrow asks. “Aside from her son’s misery?”
“I had our lawyer look into that specifically because I simply can’t fathom why she’d force her kid into this situation.
Not just the contract marriage in general, but this specific situation, when her son has made it clear he’s not gay.
Why is she so damn insistent that he go through with this?
He’s been looking for a week and hasn’t found an answer yet. ”
I sigh. “Thanks, Mom.”
“I’m sorry, Xavi. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do. Believe me, I would never want you to be miserable for the rest of your life. You have to believe that.”
“I do, Mom. I’m sorry I yelled at you the other morning. I was frustrated.”
“I know. As you should be. I’m keeping my lawyers digging, and I haven’t stopped trying to get Betty to renegotiate.”
“Thanks.”
“Sparrow, will you take my baby out today? Get him some fresh air and take his mind off this for a while?”
Sparrow grins. “Already on it, Mrs. A.”
I narrow my eyes at Sparrow, but he continues to grin as he cleans the rest of his meal from his plate.
“Good. I’ll talk to you in a bit, baby. I love you. I promise I’m going to keep trying.”
“Thank you, Mom. Love you, too.”
The call ends, and I look at Sparrow expectantly.
“Finish your breakfast,” he says, getting up from the bench with his plate.
I do what I’m told and don’t bother to ask him where we’re going. I’m not going to get an answer unless he wants to tell me. Apparently, he doesn’t want to.
I finish my breakfast as I watch him clean up the kitchen. By the time he’s done, I’ve taken my last bite, and he removes the plate from in front of me while I’m still chewing. So impatient.
He has me on my feet in the next minute and out of the kitchen, calling for Shapiro and asking if my cat wants to go on an adventure.
It’s rare that I hear the jingle around Shapiro’s neck.
He’s a stealthy bitch unless he doesn’t want to be.
Right now, he’s excited and wants us to know.
He comes racing down the stairs, jewelry around his neck jingling, and meowing loudly so we know he’s coming.
I don’t often take Shapiro further than the patio. Mostly because I don’t go far. I’m a homebody on the best of days. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have all the walking gear, including a stroller and a backpack carrier with a window and breathing holes in it.
Sparrow buckles my cat into his adventure harness and leash before instructing me to grab the cat backpack. I grab a bottle of water from the shelf, too, so he has something to drink. Then we’re out the door, though I still have no idea where we’re going.
I love Glensdale. Everything about it. It’s bright and cheery and filled with happy people.
It’s a young professional community, which is to be expected since it’s a college town.
It’s also a world in and of itself. I’d like to say the outside world is getting better about acceptance and minding its own damn business, but I suppose I don’t know if that’s true or not.
What I know is that Glensdale and the surrounding small towns are a queer normative environment because of Rainbow Dorset University. I hate the idea of leaving this place.
Sparrow brings me to the farmer’s market. Three days a week, there’s a market with locally grown vegetables, fruit, and other homemade goods. Of course, we get a lot of attention because of Shapiro. A cat on a leash is always going to turn heads.
“I want to run something by you,” Sparrow says after handing me a sundae.
“Fill me up with sweets before dropping a bomb. Smooth.”
He laughs. “Not quite. But… kinda. I think I’m going to go back to school.”
I look at him dubiously. Sparrow is many things, one of which is stupidly smart. Like, this kid graduated high school at fourteen. He tested out of many years’ worth of work and didn’t actually attend the local high school. He was tutored.
He had his first patent at nine-years-old. The damn military bought it, and he used that money to buy a boat. At freaking nine! Since then, he’s gotten an undergraduate degree, though I forget in what, has a master’s in Engineering, and countless patents that bring him royalties or whatever.
He’s taken the last year off, so I’m not in the least bit surprised he’s bored. He loves learning. It’s not the accumulation of degrees that he cares about. It’s learning.
And he hates boredom.
“What’re you going for this time?” I ask.
“Digital media. Digital art.”
I look at him with surprise. “Art? Really?”
“My brain is analytic. Factual. Scientific. I connect dots to build shit. So what’s the opposite of that?”
“Creativity?”
Sparrow nods. “Yep. A true challenge. Because of my degrees, I don’t need to attend the first two years.”
“The program at RDU is good?”
I can tell from Sparrow’s silence that I’m not going to like his answer. My pulse is already racing.
“Actually, I was accepted to Longwood U. It’s in southern Cali.”
My breath catches, and I determinedly look straight ahead as I attempt to focus on my sundae. He’s leaving. He’s leaving me, and I’m going to be stuck in that big house with my asshole of a husband all by myself.
Not that I thought Sparrow would live with us forever, but…
“Hey,” Sparrow says, and I force myself to look in his direction. “Come with me.”
My eyebrows knit together. “What?”
“Enfield doesn’t seem to give a fuck where you are, right? From what you’ve told me, he’s outright said as much several times. So come with me.”
I swallow. “You want me to come with you.”
He laughs. “Yeah, babycakes. I do. Longwood is a cool campus, and I think it’ll be a lot of fun. It’s not quite the same environment as RDU, but I took a tour recently, and it’s pretty great. So is the town. I won’t say it’s as queer-centric as Glensdale, but it’s right on its heels.”
I chew my lip as I think about it. “Are you asking me to come with you because you feel bad for me?”
“Yes and no. I hate the idea of being so far away from my best friend. I can’t just drop in whenever I want, and that sucks.
But also yes, though I wouldn’t use ‘feeling bad for you’ as the reason.
Enfield is a dick, and I don’t want you to be stuck in that situation.
You and Shapi move down to Longwood Crossing with me. ”
“And pretend I’m not married,” I murmur, eyes dropping to the ground.
“Like you, I don’t hold out a lot of hope that your mother is going to succeed in getting rid of this contract,” Sparrow says.
“So when we get back, let’s sit down and look at it factually.
Not implied meanings and whatever. We’ll make note of what it spells out, what circumstances need to be met, and then we’ll make a plan.
I’m willing to bet that it doesn’t say anything about you actually having to live together, verbatim. ”
“It designates a property as our primary residence,” I point out.
“Okay. So it’s your primary residence. Does it spell out the fact that you have to live there?”
“It says we have to live within California…” I pause as I try to remember the exact words. I’d already been contemplating how to get around it for extended travel dates. “Yeah, okay. We’ll have to read it.”
Sparrow grins. “Then is that a yes? You’ll come with me to Longwood Crossing?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, but… I don’t see why not. What do I have keeping me here?” Not a loving husband. Not the promise of a happy marriage.
I hate the way my stomach clenches. Not fair. Not fair. Not fair.
Sparrow wraps his arm around my waist, sliding it under my cat pack. Shapiro is still trotting along in front of us, leading the way and weaving between people who part for him and watch him go with big smiles.
For the first time in the last ten days, since Enfield showed up and my world exploded, I feel a smidgen of hope. Maybe my marriage is going to be practically non-existent, but that doesn’t mean I have to stay in that misery forever.
Enfield doesn’t want me. I don’t want to live with his assholery for the rest of my life.
This might not be how I imagined my life would be, but at least I’ll be where I’m wanted. I might have a chance at happiness, after all.