Chapter 11
Dillon
“Where’s Charlie?”
It’s the first thing my grandmother says as she opens the door, peering past me, searching for her like she might be hiding in the rose bushes that sit on either side of the paved path.
When Gran looks at me expectantly, I ask, “Didn’t Mom tell you?” I didn’t expect to have to rehash everything today, and my voice is choked, rough—like it doesn’t quite belong to me.
Gran gives me an impatient look. “She told me,” she says easily, but I can tell there’s more coming. “But she’s a liar, so I wasn’t sure if I should believe her.”
There it is.
“Mom is not a liar,” I protest. “She just likes to…exaggerate.”
Gran makes a hmph noise before standing to the side and letting me in, the smell of lavender and patchouli assaulting my nose.
“Well, you’re just in time, even if it’s just you.
We were about to put the kettle on and have some tea.
It might help with the dour look on your face, and you can tell us what you did wrong. ”
I grimace, because tea was only going to make the dour look worse, but there was no telling Gran that. Instead, I follow her to the kitchen. “How do you know I did something wrong?”
She stops in her tracks, turning to look at me over the frames of her glasses. “You’re kidding, right?” she demands, humor coating each word. “Have you met your parents?”
“Mother, leave my son alone,” a voice demands, and then my mom is there, her smile small.
“Hello, baby.” She comes over to me and presses a kiss to my cheek, leading me to the table, pressing me down into a seat.
“Dad couldn’t make it. Some friend asked him to go watch a football game, and you know how he is.
” Mom shoots a pointed glance at Gran, who just scoffs as she pours the tea.
“We do know how he is,” Gran tells us. “A weak, spineless lizard.”
My mother sucks in a breath, looking pained. “Mom, please. This is why he doesn’t like to come here. You just keep needling him until he…”
Gran looks over at that, white eyebrows high on her brow. “He what, Liz? Don’t stop there. Finish the sentence.” Mom opens and shuts her mouth a couple of times before she looks away with a huff, and Gran puts her nose in the air like that proves her point. “You want sugar in your tea, Dillon?”
I press the heel of my palm to my left eye, right where I can feel a vicious headache brewing. “Yeah, please,” I say quietly, thinking sugar might actually make the drink palatable, and won’t end with me dry-retching all over the table.
Mom’s busying herself pulling out the cookie tin, setting it on the table. “Here, baby. Gran made you some shortbread. I know it’s your favorite.”
I pick one out silently, nibbling at the edges of the buttery treat as Gran sets my mug in front of me, both she and Mom taking their seats.
“Now,” Gran says. “Tell us what happened.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, the shortbread turning to ash in my mouth as dread fills me. I don’t particularly want to have this conversation, but I’m grateful my dad isn’t here to add his two cents.
In fact, he would probably just say something along the same lines as Jack did that night—that Charlie isn’t good enough to be with me anyway—and then Mom would get all quiet and sad, while Gran would start using her words like she was holding a stick and beating him with it.
“Dillon?” Mom asks, drawing me out of my thoughts.
I moisten my lips, stomach lurching as I stare into the murky brown depths of my tea.
“I fucked up,” I mutter. “My friends. They…I let them say really horrible things about Charlie, and she overheard it. And then when she confronted me, I—” My voice cracks at the memory of calling her nothing and acting like it was true.
There is only one person who is nothing between us, and it isn’t fucking Charlie.
“You pulled a Gavin, didn’t you?” Gran says perceptively. “You got your head stuck up your ass and spewed out a pile of shit.”
Mom gasps, looking a little green around the gills. “Mother! Jesus. I’m not arguing with Gav about him coming round anymore if this is how you’re going to behave.”
Gran narrows her eyes at Mom. “And when will you ask your husband to behave, Elizabeth? When are you going to tell him it’s not okay to speak to you the way he does?
Because look at what he’s done now!” She waves a hand in my direction, not even looking at me.
“Your son is clearly ruined because of that slimeball you married. Why else would he think it is okay to talk to sweet Charlie the way he did?”
“Now, hold on,” Mom argues. “We don’t even know what he said, or what his friends did. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Charlie’s a sensitive girl. Maybe she’s just…you know…overreacting.”
Gran leans in close, her gaze intense and fiery. “Charlie’s not overreacting or underreacting, my girl. She’s just reacting—something you wouldn’t know anything about.”
Mom’s mouth trembles, just slightly, and then she whips her head toward me, demanding, “What did you say to her?”
I hesitate, my gaze bouncing between the two of them until Gran swings that narrow-eyed stare on me. “Well, don’t waffle now when you clearly didn’t hold back on a woman you told us you loved.”
It feels like I’m swallowing down a mouthful of gravel, but I force the words past my lips, not leaving anything out—even when Gran’s eyes go impossibly wide, and Mom pales so much, I’m worried she might actually fall out of her chair.
A stark silence follows my words, all of us frozen and staring at each other.
Gran shakes her head, getting up and shuffling over the oven, going up on her tiptoes to reach into the cabinet overhead.
I watch as she blindly digs through it, pulling out a bottle of brandy with a flourish. “This feels necessary.”
At the table, Gran tips the bottle over each of our mugs for a decent helping before sitting back down.
Mom stirs her tea before picking it up and sipping delicately, as if it hasn’t been liberally laced with alcohol, but Gran’s actions aren’t that surprising.
Spiking drinks with spirits has always been her go-to in difficult situations—otherwise known as whenever my dad visits.
Once we’ve all had several sips, Gran pins me with a steel-filled gaze. “Why did you accuse Charlie of cheating on you? Do you actually think she was?”
I shrug, shake my head, and then shrug again. “No. Charlie doesn’t have a disloyal bone in her body. And Barrett is—” I look away, shame coloring my cheeks. “He’s more family than her actual family.”
“Why would you accuse her of that, then?” Mom asks gently, her brow furrowed.
“I…”
When I trail off, she leans forward, her head cocked. “Is it because you were projecting?” I jerk back, my chair scraping against the tiled floor as I gape at her. “What?”
“Hm,” Gran murmurs thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad theory, Liz. I mean, it’s the first line of defense, isn’t it? Accuse the other person about the thing you’re doing or thinking of doing. And Marisa—”
“I don’t have feelings for Marisa!” I shout, my heart racing under the sudden injection of fury in my system. “I never cheated on Charlie, and I didn’t want to.”
Gran blinks. “Well, okay. All you had to do was say that. You didn’t need to shout.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I yank it out with stilted movements, feeling frayed in a unique way that only my family ever does to me.
Jack:
You coming to the housewarming party tonight?
I frown down at the message, taking a second to work through my memory until I figure out what he’s talking about.
Geoff played ball with Jack in college, so he’s always been on the fringes of our friend group.
He and his wife moved into a new place out in the suburbs a couple of weeks ago, and I completely spaced on it.
Dillon:
Not in the mood to party, man.
It isn’t a lie, especially knowing that everybody will be there, including Bliss. With the high pressure that comes with being a corporate lawyer—her words—she likes to de-stress with alcohol and sex, so any kind of party is the perfect scene for her.
The last thing I want to do is be in her vicinity in general, or put myself in another situation where shit is going to go wrong.
“Who’s that?” Gran asks nosily.
I eye her, debating ignoring the old bat, but she always finds a way to get even, and her methods are borderline insane—like when she put my dad’s number on Craigslist five years ago with a picture of a busty blonde, asking for a good time.
He still bitches about it to this day, moaning about how he had to change his number after being bombarded with unsolicited dick pics.
“Jack,” I tell her. “There’s a party tonight. A mutual friend is throwing a housewarming.” Gran eyes me like I’m stupid, and the protest spills out before I can even stop them. “I’m not going! Jesus.”
“Dillon,” Mom cuts in, reaching out to grab my hand. I look over at her, hating the pain in her eyes. “The things you said to Charlie about…” Her voice breaks a little bit, and my chest suddenly feels too tight for my organs. “About being nothing. Was that you being honest in your anger, or—”
“No. I was just spewing hate, so angry I couldn’t stop it all from spilling out.
Charlie is everything, and I never…I shouldn’t have—” I tug my hand out of hers, rubbing my sternum.
“I knew what those words would do to her, but at that moment, I couldn’t control myself.
I was freaking out and hurting, and Barrett was there, and he’s her person.
More than I’ve ever been. And she was so calm, laying everything out, and I was the one who felt like nothing. And I just—”
“Lashed out like a wounded dog,” Gran muses, cutting off my rambling. “And you struck her right where it’d hurt the most.”
My throat moves on a swallow. “Right.” I bounce my eyes between the two of them. Mom’s chewing on her cheek, looking away from me. I hate the disappointment weighing her shoulders down, because I know she’s seeing me as her worst fear come to life.