Chapter 7 #2
Brayden’s mother, on the other hand, offers me the hand not holding her glass of white wine. “I’m Barb. It’s so lovely to meet you.” She ushers me into a hug, thin arms clinking with bracelets as she kisses the air by my cheek, leaving a waft of expensive perfume in her wake.
“I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into with Brayden,” she says as she draws back. She glances at the blank walls around her for good measure.
Next to me, Brayden’s hand is even tighter around his glass. Right, this is my job now, one I’ll be paid for in tuition, meds, and a roof over my head, even if that roof means sleeping in a bed thirty feet from Brayden’s.
I smile and lean against Brayden, who wraps a possessive arm around my waist. His palm fits in the generous curve of my hip.
Barb, for some reason, frowns.
“It’s so thoughtful of Bray to let me decorate,” I say.
His parents gave each other a look that indicates that Brayden and thoughtful don’t often appear in the same sentence. “Yes”—Barb tips her wine glass toward me as if in a toast—"I can always tell a woman with an appetite for a good shopping spree.”
Oh, so it’s like that. She doesn’t approve of her son’s new wife. Her son’s new fat wife. All right, Barb, game on.
My smile hardens. I don’t want her to think she’s gotten to me, but I don’t want her to think I’m too stupid to notice being insulted to my face. “My father always taught me to look for a good deal.” Which is true, even if his idea of a good deal has left me with a zeroed bank account.
“Well, I’m sure you know when you’ve found one.” Barb scans her son above the rim of her wineglass. “What line of work is your father in?”
I straighten. Put on my best prep school smile. “He’s a businessman.” Which is true—an identity I don’t think he’ll ever lose, even after he lost his business.
“And you take after him?” Barb asks. Tell me, are you as much of a gold digger as we assume you are?
“In some respects.” I lean a little more against Brayden. Make a show of reaching for his glass and take the tiniest sip, leaving a ring of lipstick on the rim like a claim.
“Sav is taking classes at Morningside,” Brayden says. “On, uh…” He trails off like he’s forgotten that particular detail. Or wasn’t listening in the first place.
“Bioinformatics,” I fill in, hoping that sounded suitably impressive.
“I’ve always said that a man’s success begins with support at home.” Barb’s voice is candy sweet. So is antifreeze, and it’s toxic.
“Of course, looking after Bray during the season is my top priority.” I peer up at him with what I hope is affection, even if I can’t keep the aggravation out of my eyes. Fortunately, Brayden is making the same face—his eyes widened comically, a vein pulsing in his forehead.
Don’t laugh. If I look at him any longer, I’m going to crack up. The edge of his mouth ticks up like he’s thinking the same thing. This is a mess, but at least we’re in it together.
“Look at them, Brad,” Barb says to her husband. “Isn’t it so wonderful to see Brayden settled?”
“Didn’t take you for the settling type, son.” Brad aims his comment over my head. He hadn’t said anything to me, and I’m beginning to feel the exact shape of his disapproval. Barb might throw veiled insults, but Brad withholds his attention until you earn it.
“Settling down, you mean?” Brayden snaps back.
Barb’s gaze goes icy. “We were so surprised when he told us about the wedding. Of course, Brayden has always liked his little secrets.”
I can see why he keeps them. “We just couldn’t wait any longer.” Mostly because I didn’t want to be without health insurance for any longer than I needed to be. “I’m sure you understand.”
Barb smiles as if she doesn’t understand at all. Brad turns to me—I resist the urge to take a defensive step back. “So you think you have the skillset to keep my son in line?” he asks.
Absolutely not. I barely have the skillset for this conversation.
My tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Some part of me misses Brayden’s hand around my waist. It didn’t mean anything, and yet, it felt better than its absence.
So I think of all those women in the airport rideshare line, smiling big despite the heat.
Maybe I’ll try that. After all, you can drown flies in enough honey.
“Isn’t that one of the best parts of marriage?
” I say, overly cheerful. “Really getting to know one another?”
“The good part, right.” Brad snorts like he’s not sure there’s a good part of marriage.
Next to him, Barb is examining the depths of her wine glass. For the briefest minute, I feel sorry for her—hitched to this angry, disapproving man.
Then she flicks her wrist. The diamonds on her tennis bracelets catch the light. Right. She’s not a captive. She made her bed, and it’s with him.
“It was so wonderful of you to come over.” I give an exaggerated yawn.
“Traveling has just taken a lot out of me.” A polite dismissal—when what I really want to say is get the fuck out of our house.
A place that, in the last few minutes, has transformed from being Brayden’s to somewhere I’d defend against these people.
My dismissal isn’t subtle enough. Barb scowls. Brad knocks back his drink. Brayden looks like he might pour himself another from the bar.
For a minute, I worry we might be dragged out to have an awful dinner with them. I smile, faking politeness, as my head gives a very real throb. “If you don’t mind letting us get settled in…” I add.
“Well, maybe not too settled,” Barb said.
I clench a grin. “What’s that mean?”
“You know the life of a sports wife. So much is temporary. People come and go.” She casts a glance at me, as if I’m a person who could go. “But of course, we have to celebrate when we can.”
Celebrate your ass back to the car. “Of course.”
“So we’ve been planning a little wedding soiree for you.” Though Barb is smiling at me in a way I don’t trust.
“How thoughtful of you,” I manage.
“Wonderful! I’ll be over tomorrow to plan.
I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of inviting a few people to the party.
I don’t know how they do things out in California”—she says it like she might mean Babylon—“but in the South we like to hold our family close. The ones who are here anyway.”
I can see why Blake left. I mentally count down the hundreds of days until I can do the same. Two years. In two years, I will never have to see any of these people again. So I smile, big, making sure to bare my teeth. “I can’t wait.”
After we show them the door, Brayden waits all of five seconds before saying, “I’m going out.”
“I’m kinda tired from—” I exaggerate a yawn.
He raises an eyebrow. Oh. He wasn’t inviting me. He was telling me. “My Uber’s here.” And he’s out the door before I have time to react.
Which leaves me in the house alone. The walls all feel like they’re looking at me.
I kick off my heels, carry them with me down the hallway to the kitchen, headache worsening with each step.
I was already getting nauseated. I need to eat something, quick, too fast to get a delivery service to bring it to the house.
Hopefully, Brayden has…some kind of food. Inside the fridge is a neat stack of pre-made meals in individual portions: gray chicken, beige quinoa. High protein and low flavor, no doubt. Clearly what Brayden eats when he’s not at the ballpark, portioned out for his week.
I search through the cabinets. Besides those meals, the only other food is giant tubs of protein powder and supplements that claim to build muscle mass.
I open another cupboard, hoping to find at least a bag of chips or something.
Instead, it’s crowded with whiskey bottles, some unopened, but most half-drunk, stacked four rows deep. None of which are what I want.
Finally, I find a loaf of sliced, high-protein, high-fiber bread sitting on the unused toaster oven. The loaf looks reasonably fresh. There’s no butter or jam or even peanut butter. So I toast a few slices and eat them standing over the sink.
Some first-night meal.
I check Instagram. The first picture it shows me is of Brayden, taken a few minutes ago.
A blurry photo from inside a bar. His sleeves are rolled up.
The top two buttons of his shirt are undone.
Only the slight glassiness of his eyes makes him look like anything other than what he is: a handsome, rich, successful athlete.
One who left his wife home to eat dry toast.
I thumb through to the Peaches official Insta account. The Atlanta Peaches welcome Asher Adler to the team…
In the picture, Asher’s wearing a Peaches hat that’s clearly new, going by the unbroken-in brim, and smiling like he’s in on a secret.
Are you out partying too? It’s possible he is.
It’s possible he’s forgotten about meeting me entirely.
I don’t know him any better than I know Brayden—or anyone else in this city.
For the first time in my life, there’s only one person who I can depend on to take care of me—and that’s myself.