Chapter 19 #3
I hated him. I didn't know him, but I HATED him. And I was no longer enjoying my dessert, either.
I pulled away from Woodrow, setting the fork down, making it known I was done.
Woodrow's eyes lowered, his lashes doing that pretty flutter again.
“You missed a little cake,” he told me, as if I didn't know. His eyes on my plate, where a piece of cake peeped out beneath a mountain of ice-cream. I'd been digging through the ice-cream layers like I was hunting each piece of the sponge cake and had a warrant for their consumption.
But I no longer wanted to eat, and I proved that, pushing away the plate.
“Don't let a loser like him spoil your mood. . . or your dessert.” Woodrow lifted my fork. The sharp edges stabbed through the chunks of cake he could see, and he directed them to my tongue. “You've dealt with worse than him.”
A single tear slipped down my cheek, hanging off my jaw, and as if it called for a friend, another trailed it, both of them landing in the ruffles of my dress.
“No tears, Moonlight. He isn’t worth them.”
The cake moved closer to my lips, and with a little reluctance, I opened my mouth, and I enjoyed what I thought were the last chunks of cake, which prompted him to hunt for more, feeding me until there was nothing but melting ice-cream.
Then he swapped my fork for his spoon and shared it with me, stealing the first mouthful.
The innocent smile that played on his lips, brought one to mine. In that very second, I remembered every suppressed feeling of love. Of heartache.
His free hand reached across the small table, palm up in an offering to me. Fear shone in his pretty eyes. . . fear of the rejection I'd already given him so many times these past few days. But not today, as I took his hand.
Another comment came from the drunk man, followed by another verbal disciplinary from the same sober friend.
Tears, hundreds of them, fell from my eyes. I felt Woodrow’s whole body stiffen as if he was suffering from rigor mortis before he ripped his hand from mine.
“Woodrow,” I whispered, shaking my head, trying to encourage him not to do whatever he was about to.
I didn't want him strolling over there with anger inside him, attracting an unwanted guest. And I didn't want him to risk an injury to the throat that he'd been adjusting on and off all evening.
He didn't even look back at me to see my disquiet.
Four long strides took him to the table opposite.
“Evening,” he said, starting with a false pleasantry, his voice so different to all of theirs.
The drunk man didn’t answer. No one answered as they stared up at Woodrow’s cool expression of indifference.
But his patience was getting gnawed at.
He leaned across the table, fingertips flicking the drunk man to get his attention because the loser had also become enchanted by the same yellow dress I had.
But it wasn't the pretty print and charismatic color he liked, it was the short length rising up our servers legs as she stretched across a table to clean it.
“Oi,” the drunk moaned, irritated.
“Oh, did I interrupt you from perving on someone who is never going to give you the time of day? Too bad.”
“What do you want?” the man asked his question between sottish hiccups. The scent of vodka and nicotine told Woodrow what he'd been wasting his money on tonight, and that only elevated his annoyance—he hated the scent. Ville’s scent.
“Apologize to my wife.”
My back straightened, my heart beating faster at his words as I overheard the conversation.
He hadn't used that term before. . . Hell, yes... Woodrow, this was the first time. . . and it made me feel all kinds of things. Things, I wouldn’t have even admitted to yesterday, when I said hateful and cruel things through my own pain.
I looked to the “pisshead”—a term I'd heard one his friends resort to calling him earlier, in their fancy accent—in time to see his face scrunch, one eye suddenly looking much smaller than the other.
I didn't even think of a derogatory sneer over his appearance.
I'd already seen his ugliness, coming from inside him, and seeping through his pores with the aroma of his poor choices.
“For what?” he asked.
He was no longer attractive, not in his own way or any other, not while in such proximity to Woodrow, who'd been gifted by a God—whether it was his own, or one from someone else's beliefs—with his face.
“For hurting her feelings.”
“That's it?”
“That's more than enough.” Woodrow's southern drawl was heavier and his voice was colder, still his, somehow, but colder. “Apologize. I won’t ask again.”
“Look, he was out of line. He's drunk and meant no offense.” The guy's friend was too good a friend, trying again to step in. “You know your wife is a beautiful woman. They are just scars; they don’t take away from her. He’s an idiot. He really is. He didn’t mean to offend her.”
“But he did offend her, and he hurt her, and I can't sit back and watch her cry over some unfortunate-looking fucking loser who isn't worth a fraction of what she is.” Woodrow regained a little composure, straightening himself and the jacket he wore, when he asked, “Does she not look like she’s been hurt enough?”
“See, even you see her as damaged.” The drunk man laughed out another hiccup. This one, scented of ice-cream and swallowed down vomit. “I get it. . . she's your wife. I get it. You have to love her, but really, you're thinking, if she looked like that when you met, you wouldn't have married her.”
I stopped breathing for what felt like the longest minute of my life. I hated those words because I knew even Hell struggled with my scars. Surely, Woodrow would, too.
“I love every scar, every story of survival, every tiny thing that people like you would never appreciate. Because she's here. . . with me. Still with me. She had them when I married her, and she looked the most beautiful thing in her dress.”
Woodrow didn't see me on the day of our wedding, Hell did, but he saw me now, sitting on the plastic seat in an overly colorful dessert parlor, and he knew I'd understand the hidden meaning of his words.
I was in that same dress. Looking like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“She is always the most special thing. . . but she doesn't realize that. She lets people like you get into her head because she's still learning to love herself. I never stopped loving her, not at any point, but I'm not gonna force her to see the error of her ways. My lesson is for you.”
I jumped from my seat, but my feet were glued to the floor as Woodrow grabbed the man by the hair and smashed his face down into his dessert. The ice-cream barely softened the blow as the plate beneath smashed on impact.
Three flavors of ice-cream dripped off the wooden table, pooling on the floor with a drizzle of blood.
The man jolted back the second Woodrow let him go, reaching for his bulbous nose, which broke in the collision. I looked around, both servers were silent, looking on and feeling my unease and their own.
All shouting in panic, the man's friends jumped up, but shock stopped them from reacting further. Woodrow stared with perfect calm. A trait he’d have learned from Hell, no doubt. Hell, who was probably still lingering in Woodrow’s psych somewhere, whispering encouragement and praise into his ears.
“Let's see how you feel about yourself now that your face is as fucking ugly as your soul.” Woodrow stepped back, showing no fear of consequence.
I watched from our table as the drunk guy's blood ran through his smooshed ice-cream like raspberry sauce. My eyes flicked to Woodrow, his already on me when he held out his hand and said, “Come on, Moonlight, we have a busy day tomorrow.”
We were almost back at the hotel. We'd walked half the journey, a bus accommodating us for the other half. Stepping through the automatic doors and down onto the curb, Woodrow steadied me as my heels wobbled. Even now, I was still crying. . . my eyes not knowing how to stop.
My mouth was dry, like it had to give up its moisture to my eyes.
I licked at my lips like a wounded animal, feeling sorry for itself. It wasn't just that some intoxicated idiot had upset me; he had, but I had tears for more than that. . . he was just the final thing put into my sadness cup, causing it to overfill.
It had been a long time coming because I’d had a fucking hard life.
I'd lost both of my parents, been in captivity for years, and hurt so badly this week, in ways I didn't understand, that even name-calling and cruel jibes—things I was very used to—had set me off, opening the floodgates.
Woodrow wiped away my tears. His fingers on my mottled skin, my hands around his wrists. My mask was peeping through his pocket, his own stuffed in there, too. I wanted to steal them both and hide as much of myself as possible.
“I don't want you to wear it. I'll tell you why when we get inside.”
His eyes loomed to the tower on the other side of the road—our hotel, overlooking the pretty fountains, the water once again dancing high while music played.
He didn't speak another word while we waited at another set of traffic lights, the bright red light blinding me as I glared at it, counting down the seconds until it changed.