Chapter 22 Sad Birds Still Sing #3
“So,” Paisley says and places the champagne in front of Amanda. “Here you are.” Her voice sounds sweet. Like sugar. Or honey. Or brown sugar-cinnamon Pop-Tarts.
Brown sugar-cinnamon Pop-Tarts? Oh, man. Now things are taking off. I’m becoming one of those tools who compares people with sweets. For a second I wonder what kind I’d be. Something unspectacular, something that overestimates its effect on others. A cough drop or something.
Amanda doesn’t thank her. She sips from her flute and makes such a face that it’s impossible for anyone else at the table to miss.
Mr. Spiky Hair turns to his daughter in concern. “Everything okay?”
I roll my eyes. Unfortunately, Joe notices, but I don’t care.
“No.” She blinks her eyes so forcefully, it’s as if she’d drunk the water of canned mushrooms. “I wasn’t drinking Dom Perignon, but Ruinart Rosé.”
Amanda wouldn’t be any kind of candy. She’d be a jar of mustard.
“Oh.” Paisley’s face turns red. “I’m sorry. Let me take care of that.”
Maybe it’s because of the booze in my system, maybe it’s because of too much testosterone. In any event, I’m about to totally lose my shit when I notice how uncomfortable Paisley is. I am so angry at Amanda that I would gladly pour her Dom Perignon over her far-too-short dress.
“Don’t worry about it, Paisley. Stay here.” I give Amanda an icy stare. “Drinking Dom Perignon won’t kill her.”
The atmosphere around the table is horrible.
There is a heavy silence, not a trace of cheerfulness.
You can see that Joe Dubois is close to losing his cool.
Big Po reaches for his linen napkin to wipe sweat off his forehead.
Yoda is staring holes into the air and now and again plucks imaginary bits of fuzz off his suit pants.
My father is chalk white, and Paisley is uneasily shifting her weight from one leg to the other.
“I’ll drink whatever I want,” Amanda hisses. “And whatever I want, I get.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Apparently not.”
She gives a high-pitched laugh. “Oh, sweetheart, are you talking about me or you?”
Before I can respond, her father clears his throat. He loosens his bow tie and sits up straight. “Enough childishness.” He looks at me. “What’s the problem, Knox? The girl will get a new glass of champagne, and that’s that.”
“She’s got a name. It’s Paisley. And not the girl.”
“Knox,” Paisley says, narrowing her eyes. “It’s no problem at all. I’ll bring her the Ruinart and—Oh my God! Shit! I am so sorry, I…”
At first I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
And then I can and laugh out loud while all the others emit a collective gasp: Paisley has knocked over the glass and spilled the Dom Perignon all over Amanda’s white dress.
She just sits there, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, while Paisley vehemently rubs the wet fabric with a napkin.
In itself a good approach, it’s just that—what a shame—just a second ago Mr. Spiky Hair used it to wipe a smashed raspberry off the table.
And now, said smashed raspberry is all over Amanda’s dress. Oops.
I am still laughing, and everyone is looking at me like I just announced that I was quitting my sports career to become William’s stable boy.
But it stops abruptly when Amanda springs up and pushes Paisley away.
Paisley is so unsteady on her heels, though, that she loses her balance, stumbles, and bangs against the table.
“Stop touching me!”
Paisley collects herself more quickly than I expected. She folds the napkin and gives Amanda a poisonous stare. “I only wanted to help. But with someone like you, any help would be too late.”
Yep. Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you, Paisley gorgeous Harris.
Amanda gasps. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I do whatever I want,” Paisley repeats Amanda’s words.
I am so proud of her, I can hardly express myself in words.
At this point, I’m in the mood to lean back and say something cool like “that’s my girl!
” until I realize that, actually, she’s not my girl at all—and all of a sudden I notice my bronchitis again.
To my right, my father buries his head in his hands, to my left Big Po lets out a breath of air, causing his button to shoot off and land on the floor. I knew it.
“You’re nothing but a silly chalet girl,” Amanda says.
She sounds like a poisonous snake, but her words don’t have all that much power, what with the giant raspberry stain on her chest. Her delicate features are distorted into an ugly grimace while she looks condescendingly at Paisley—my beautiful Paisley.
“You haven’t earned that dress. You’re not one of the women Valentino is made for, sweetheart. ”
A sharp sting pierces my heart, which is suddenly pounding against my chest so hard, it’s as if it wanted to break it.
A millisecond later it becomes clear to me that it doesn’t have to do with what she said, but with Paisley.
Her face collapses, and a hurt expression causes her eyes to shimmer.
I can’t help but think of what my father said when he asked me to buy her a dress: “I noticed that she showed up with a single jute bag. The poor girl.”
She must have been so happy about that dress.
Before dinner she probably looked at herself in the mirror and felt beautiful for the first time in a long time, I mean, who knows what kind of shit she’s left behind.
And now that moment’s been ruined, that happy feeling simply destroyed by a woman who has no idea what her dirty words can make such a fragile person feel.
God, I hate it when people think they’re better than others.
I hate it when they talk without thinking.
No one can ever really know how and to what degree someone is suffering.
We can be standing next to someone who’s wearing a huge smile while inside they’re completely wiped out, and no one has any goddamn idea. I’m the best example.
The fact that Amanda didn’t think about her words for even a single second puts me into a kind of aggressive frenzy.
I jump up, but my father gets in the way.
Fiery rage is burning in his eyes, but he’s got himself under control better than I do.
Always has. He knows I’m about to create another scandal for the press; he looks at me and almost imperceptibly shakes his head.
Then he looks at Amanda and Joe and says, “You all should be going now.”
Joe looks at a complete loss for words. After a moment of silence, he snorts loudly, pushes back his chair, and hisses, “I came all this way for this? What an ungrateful bunch. There’s an epilog to all this, Jack.”
My dad narrows his eyes. “That would turn out poorly for only one of us. And we both know who that would be, Joe.”
They engage in a silent duel of looks until Joe snorts again and with a wave of his hand lets his daughter know it’s time to follow him.
But even once the door’s closed, the mood doesn’t improve at all. It is so quiet, you can hear every breath.
Big-Po-Without-a-Button ahems. “Well, maybe it’s time for me to…
” With his thumb and a strange twitch of his face—as if he couldn’t decide between an apologetic smile and a resigned gesture—he points toward the door, while standing up.
“Thanks for the invitation, Jack.” Yoda, too, takes advantage of the favorable moment to escape.
Within a few seconds, we’re all alone. Just Dad, Paisley, and me.
“Wow,” I say into the silence. “That went quick. It’s like Billie Eilish was giving a concert out front.”
My father flares his nostrils and doesn’t engage my attempt to lighten things up.
The vein at his temple is pulsing at an uncontrollable rate.
Not a good sign. Shortly thereafter, he shoots me a glance that seems to suggest he’s honestly considering packing me up and leaving me behind in the cage of a ravenous black bear.
“Again and again and again.” My father, his eyes closed, is rubbing his nose up and down with his index finger.
“Every day I told you how important this meeting was, Knox. Not only in terms of increasing your sponsor money, but for me. There was supposed to be business talk, too. Possible investment plans discussed. But, like always,” he slams his palm down on the table, “you don’t give a shit! ”
I don’t know what to say. On the one hand, I want to disagree and ask him whether he understood what was going on there, on the other I think he’s right. If there hadn’t been anything between Amanda and me, the evening would’ve gone pretty differently.
“I… I’m going to clean up.” Paisley turns to my father. “I am very sorry that the evening went downhill because of me, Mr. Winterbottom.”
Dad gives her a mild smile, rubs the furrows in his forehead flat, and shakes his head. He looks tired. “It’s not your fault, Paisley.” I can hear between the lines. It’s mine. The glance my dad gives me confirms my suspicion.
“Dad,” I begin.
But my father lifts his hand. “Don’t, Knox. I’ve had enough.” He dabs at his mouth with the napkin, tosses it onto his plate, and gets up. “I’m going to bed. Excuse me.”
His footsteps fade away. In the dim light, I see Paisley swallow. She bends over the table and begins to gather everything onto her tray.
“Paisley,” I say slowly. “I’m sorry about what Amanda said to you. It’s not true. I mean, the thing about the dress. It’s made for you.”
She smiles. “It’s all good, Knox.”
“No, it’s not.” I stand up and wobble a bit after having sat for so long. Then, wanting her to look at me, I take the tray out of her hand and put it back on the table. “I don’t want you to believe what she said because you—in every conceivable way—are absolutely beautiful.”
Paisley grins. “Impressive.”
“What’s impressive?”
“That a word like ‘conceivable’ even occurs to you in your state.”
“I’m not that drunk. That’d be worrying.”
She laughs. “Oh, man, Knox. Go to bed.”
“Your ears are beautiful.”
“You’re not all there.”
“True. I have never seen such beautiful ears. I like how they stick out. Somehow, that seems ethereal…or…uhm…aesthetic.”
Paisley blinks. “Okay. What can I do to make you go to bed?”
“Bring me to bed.”
“Exactly.” She rolls her eyes. “And I almost found you charming.”
“How could you have?”
She sighs. “Right, I’ll bring you to bed. But I’m not staying.”
“God forbid! What kind of indecent ideas are going through your head, Paisley?”
“My goodness, are you stressful.” She pushes my shoulder and nods toward the stairs. “Get going.”
Paisley does indeed follow and is still there when we reach my room. She crosses her arms over her chest as if uncomfortable with being here and looks around curiously. “Pretty respectable.”
“Always this undertone of surprise.” I slip out of my clothes until I’m just in my boxers, but Paisley pointedly looks in the other direction and acts as if she’s interested in the signed puck on my dresser. She only turns back around once I’m under the sheets.
“Great. Can I leave you alone now?”
“Yeah,” I murmur and notice how sleep is already tugging at my eyes. “Paisley?”
She’s almost out the door. “Yeah?”
“I really do think your ears are beautiful.”
My eyes are already closed but I can hear the smile in her voice.
“Maybe you are actually charming.”
Yeah. Maybe.