Chapter 15 #2
Across from me both women wear matching smug faces as I wait for the ground to open up and swallow me. I didn’t want to be here for a reason. I don’t come back here because despite the blood we share, these people are not my family. I don’t have a family, all I have is myself.
A heavy hand comes down on my thigh, causing me to jump. My head snaps to Nolan, and with the smallest movement possible, I shake my head and push his hand off.
“What’s wrong, Harper, can’t take a joke,” Hallie mocks before faking a pout.
This is where a braver version of myself would stand up and tell her no, she just wasn’t funny.
The bolder version of me would get up and leave this house and never look back.
But those versions of me don’t exist yet, they’re still trapped somewhere under all the optimism that lives inside of me, hoping for the day these people open their eyes and realize they aren’t supposed to treat others this way.
“I’m sorry, I seem to have missed the joke,” Nolan answers for me, practically stealing the words from my mouth. “All I heard was a snide story that’s not funny.”
Nolan’s hand is back on me, gripping my thigh, the fabric of my skirt bunching in his hand while he challenges Sadie.
Internal whiplash is taking over as I look from the devil twins across from me trying to force me out of this house and the man next to me lighting my skin on fire with a single touch.
With a flip, Sadie turns the mean girl persona off and turns on, what I think she thinks is a seductress, and points it toward Nolan. “Oh, we’re just playing,” she croons, and even throws in a wink for good measure.
I might vomit if I have to stay here any longer.
“Yeah, it’s just a game, Harper knows she’s not like us, it’s fine,” says Hallie
“Not like who?” Nolan pushes back clearly, not grasping onto what she’s implying. What she always loves to remind me. That I don’t belong.
“No, I’m sorry, you are going to have to spell it out for me because there’s no way you're saying what I think you’re saying, out loud and in front of people, to your sister.”
“Nolan, please stop,” I whisper.
When this man who I only have a sexual relationship with, who’s shown me more kindness in sixty seconds than my family has shown me all year, looks at me again, I want to tell him it’s no use, that she’s always been like this. But I can’t get the words out.
The room is dead silent, all eyes on the four of us.
Sadie looks to Hallie for help, clearly no plan for what to say next if someone were to speak up. Hallie answers for her. “I just mean, look around, and you tell me what’s different about Harper.”
I’m done waiting for the hole to swallow me up.
My chair topples over from how fast I push back from the table.
“Excuse me,” I rush to say, avoiding all eyes that are glued to me as I make my exit.
I race toward the front door, yanking my purse off the coat rack and barreling out into the cold night air, gasping for my next breath.
My hands press against my car door, dropping my head between my arms waiting for the shaking to stop. I don’t even hear Nolan come up behind me only moments later.
“Hey, so that was in-fucking-sane,” Nolan’s voice comes from behind me.
Quickly, I brush the stray tears from my cheeks. “That was a normal Monday for them,” I answer with a watery voice.
He looks confused and I’m sure it’s because this beautiful, rich, successful man has never had someone look at him and think he's somehow less than a person all because of his size. Nolan’s the type of large women fawn over and men spend hours in the gym trying to achieve.
“There’s a reason I don’t come to dinners, a reason why I don’t get invited in the first place.
” My words are harsher than they needed to be.
“My family has always made it clear that I am different from them, my sister is just much less subtle about it, and Sadie, I don’t even know where the fuck she came from or why she’s friends with Hallie, but it doesn’t surprise me that she feels the same way. ”
“I don’t get it,” he says softly, moving softly toward me but something inside of me snaps.
“And you never will because you look like that,” I say, waving my free hand down his body.
“You look like a Greek statue sprung to life in a museum and walked out. For God’s sake, they call you Eros at Midnights, so you tell me, what could you possibly know about having everyone in your life look down on you because the number on a scale is higher for me than them?
” By the end of the sentence, I’m yelling, and I’m not sure who I’m pissed off at more.
My parents, for setting the standard that I can be treated differently, or my siblings, for blindly following in their footsteps.
Maybe even Sadie, who seems to have walked into my life with the sole purpose of reminding me that no one sees me. That I will never have men look at me the way they gawk at her.
Maybe I’m even mad at Nolan, although I have no right to be.
Sure, he stood up to Sadie and Hallie, and I didn’t expect him to announce to the table that we’re sleeping together, but something about the whole interaction felt off.
He could touch me below the table but not in front of them.
He can stand up for me, not because he thinks I’m beautiful, but because what they were saying was nasty.
He can do all of that and then come after me only to say he didn’t get it.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot we were nothing to each other. Nothing but a ticking countdown. There was nothing more between us. I wasn’t his girlfriend, I wasn’t even his friend. I was some girl he picked up at a sex club, who he likes to fuck in private and ignore in public.
“I get that I’m nothing to you outside the bedroom,” I say, “but you just sat there while they berated me. How do you think that makes me feel?” I question him, not really wanting to know the answer because if he says what I think he will, then everything between us will end.
He looks as if I struck him across the face, the way his head rears back and his eyes dance with a painful look. “Harper, I…”
That’s all he said. Anything that might have followed died in the wind between us.
In my heart, I knew we were always going to reach a point where one of us got our fill of the other and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one on the chopping block first.
This was never going to last—even if for a moment I thought we had something bigger than all the lessons, there was no way anything between us could ever work.
The deal we struck was reaching its time limit and maybe it would be best if I ran down the clock until we slowly drift apart and back to what we were before the lessons, before the connection and the desire that burns between us.
“I’ll see you at work.”
I’m turning away from him and in my car within seconds and my heart aches that he did nothing to try and stop me.