Chapter 27 The Aftermath
I had three missed calls from Monica.
Over the last hour, I’d received and let three calls from Monica go to voicemail. Each call that came through turned my stomach over with guilt and by the end of the hour, I felt so nauseous I considered asking Patrick if I could go home early for the day.
Unfortunately, our afternoon shift was slammed and through the dizziness and headache, I had to stick it out.
Each patron I served seemed more difficult than the last, requiring special drinks or allergy specifications or took an extra five minutes to order a simple beer just so they could look down my shirt.
I barely registered any of them towards the end of the afternoon past a blurry face and a thankless cash-out.
My mind was elsewhere, dragging behind me every step of the way as I went through the day.
No matter how hard I tried to distract myself with drinks, orders, and cleaning, those three missed calls always managed to run me down.
What was she calling for? Did she know? Did Ethan tell her what we’d done?
Even the thought that Monica might know what conspired between her fiancé and her little sister made the bile in my stomach curdle.
Last night, I replayed that kiss over and over again and each play through the kiss got, the heavier the rocks in my stomach felt. Throughout the night I cried, I screamed, and I ate an unhealthy amount of ice cream but I never slept. Not even for a minute.
Ethan called me a few hours after he left yesterday, but I let it go to voicemail. And as misguided fate would have it, he did , in fact, leave a voicemail. One that did more damage than his kiss ever could have. The voicemail consisted of only three words and one nickname.
“This isn’t over, Slim.”
After listening to his message twenty times over again, I turned off my phone for the night and crawled onto the couch to soak the rest of my tears into the polyester.
Monica deserved so much better than either Ethan or I had given her last night.
I hated myself more with every second that passed, thinking about what I had done to her.
The secret I now had to keep from her. I could hope now that she wouldn’t find out my betrayal and hoping didn’t lend me much confidence.
Hope hadn’t gotten me anywhere lately, but right now, it was the only string I had left tethering my whole world together.
Then somewhere around 5pm, that string came loose and the pieces of my world started to fall away as Monica walked through the doors—
And she wasn’t alone.
Monica barrelled towards me, wide-eyed and anxious, and my heart punched through my stomach, the pain pushing tears to my eyes before she even spoke.
“Why haven’t you been picking up your phone? I tried calling you like ten times.”
Fear ripped across my chest, gashing my heart that felt like it was vibrating it was beating so fast. Monica leaned over the bar, whispering just out of earshot of the woman she’d come with.
“I’m so sorry. She insisted we come here for lunch. I tried to warn you!”
My brain trying to splice together realizations that Monica might not be here to tear me a new one, I barely managed to ask, “Who is she?”
“Ethan’s hard-ass mother.” Just before she whipped back around to the woman she’d brought, she slipped in, “So keep the alcohol flowing.”
The split second of relief I’d experienced at knowing Monica wasn’t here to confront me about what I had done with her fiancé yesterday was gone as fast as it came as I locked eyes with the middle-aged woman coming my way.
Her eyes were scrutinizing as she approached and the same shade of beauty as Ethan’s.
“Stella, this is my sister Alice,” Monica introduced. “Alice, this is Stella, Ethan’s mother.”
There were people in this world that could reduce you to particles with just one look and as I discovered, Ethan’s mother was one of those people. Barely three seconds of being in her presence and already, I felt smaller than the smallest fleck of dirt below my shoes.
“Nice to meet you.” I stuck out my hand to shake hers.
“Oh that’s all right. You’ve been working and I don’t want whatever is on your hands on mine next.”
“Oh.” Slowly, I retracted my hand back into myself, bustling with embarrassment. “Sorry.”
Ethan’s mom pressed her lips together, thinning them into a straight pink line as she hummed, and didn’t say a word more. Her mouth pruned together as she observed me, down and back up with growing scrutiny speckled in her stare.
Growing more self-conscious by the second, I turned my focus back to Monica.
“Uh, do you guys want to sit in a booth or a high top table for lunch?”
“We can just sit up here at the bar with you if that’s all right with you, Stella?”
“It’s not. I’d like a booth.”
Monica sucked down a deep breath, sparing me an irritated look. “Booth it is then.”
Just before the pair walked away, Monica got a phone call.
“Oh shit- shoot. I’ve gotta take this. I’ll be right back!”
Monica ran out of the bar’s double doors faster than I think I’d ever seen her move. I couldn’t blame her either. Less than a minute with Ethan’s mother and I already wanted to run out those doors right after Monica.
“My son tells me she does that a lot.”
My focus swiveled back to the faded-blonde haired woman in front of me. “Yeah, she’s always busy with calls and work. She’s just super successful like that.”
A socially polite laugh caught in my throat as Stella jumped on top of what I’d just said.
“She is, isn’t she? She’s a very successful, impressive woman.” Before I could part my lips to agree with her, she continued. “What about you, Alice? Is bartending your success in life?”
I felt my lips round to form the W shape as I nearly asked her what the heck her deal was. “No, this is just a part-time job to help with the bills. I’m a dancer and dance instructor. Or at least, I was in New York.”
Again, my attempt at an awkward laugh to break the tension failed as his mother searched for more of my buttons to press. “So then why’d you move here if you were so successful in New York?”
Peroxide, meet open wound.
“My long-term boyfriend and I split up, so I moved in with Monica for a while just to get back on my feet.”
“Ah, yes. Monica did mention that you lived with them. Which is funny since Ethan never mentioned you once in any of our weekly phone calls.”
Her eyes seemed to glow as she laid out that slice of information, and I shuffled my feet behind the bar, becoming more uncomfortable by the minute.
Where the heck is Monica?
“Oh, I’m sure he had better things to talk about than me intruding in on their lives.” Cue another awkward chuckle.
Stella’s head ticked to the side just a hair. “Monica’s a very good sister to let you live with them for—how long was it?”
“About five weeks.”
Again, there was that unmistakable spark in her attentive gaze. “Yes. That’s a good chunk of time to intrude —to use your word. You and Monica must be very close for her to have let you do that to them.”
“We are.”
“My son and I are close, too. Ever since my husband passed away, Ethan’s taken very good care of me and we’ve become closer because of it.”
Then, her eyes expectant on mine, she added, “He’s an exceptional man, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Um—” My heart pounded. My mouth dried up. “Yeah.”
Stella’s expression read like she had an ace up her sleeve and she was biding her time and carefully choosing her words until the perfect moment arose to play her winning hand.
“He’s going to be the most perfect husband to your sister, won’t he?”
I swallowed past the newly formed lump in my throat and nodded.
“Yes.”
“He’s going to be just like his father. Dependable, strong, loyal…” Her eyes zeroed in on mine, her look as pointed as her next word. “ Faithful.”
Like a swift kick to the gut, her intentions for coming here today jammed into focus and every inch of my body erupted with guilty sweat.
She knew. Somehow she knew the only secret I ever considered keeping from my sister.
She knew, and from the cruel cut of her stare, I knew she was prepared to use that secret against me as ammo.
“And I will never get another call from him like I did last night or so help me God, I will come after everything you love, dear.”
Horror washed down my body from head to toe, dropping my face and my stomach in one go.
He told her what happened?
“Ma’am, I—” She barely let me fumble over my response before cutting me down yet another step.
“I don’t know how anyone could do that to another person, let alone their very own sister, but make no mistake, there will be a wedding and my Ethan will not throw it all away for some girl he met five weeks ago.
” Disdain plastered clear in her eyes as they narrowed.
“He’s a better man than that, even if you aren’t a better woman. ”
“Ma’am, I don’t know what Ethan told you, but we—”
“There is no we when it comes to you and my son, is that clear?”
Terrified and thoughtless, I nodded.
“Ethan made a promise to your sister and he is a man of his word, just like his father. He understands his duty now to her as I’ve reminded him.
He has explicit instructions to stay away from you, and if you so much as blink in his direction to try and change his mind again, I won’t hesitate to burn your world to the ground. ”
Daggers in her stare, her lips pulled back as she asked a question that was clearly not a question, but rather a promising threat.
“Am I understood, Alice?”
Meekly, I nodded.
Victory went off like an expected explosion in her stare, a tight smile on her coral lips. “Good.”
In a matter of minutes, this woman had reduced me speechless, and I got the feeling that she had regular practice doing just that with anyone she came in contact with.
I was unable to do anything but tremble in front of her as my walls wobbled with the weight of the excessive terror she set on my shoulders.
At any moment she pleased, she could out my deepest darkest secret and destroy the only thriving relationship with a member of my family I had left.
I got along with my parents, sure. But we weren’t close—not like Monica and I were.
Monica was my lifeline and now there lived a person walking around with the only scissors powerful enough to cut that connection dead.
Monica walked back into the bar a few seconds later and many, many seconds too late.
“Sorry about that. There’s a client in Washington who’s paying the firm a stupid amount of money, so whenever he calls, he knows I have to answer.”
“That sounds quite unpleasant,” Stella remarked so politely you never would have known she’d been threatening to ruin my life just seconds ago.
Monica’s eyes rolled. “That’s a mild way of putting it.”
“Oh!” Monica’s eyes jumped over to mine and I prayed that my face wasn’t as sickly pale as I imagined it to be. “Before I forget, Mom and Dad want me to confirm with you for Thanksgiving.”
“You’re going this year?”
“Yeah, the families both have to meet before the wedding, so Stella suggested a family Thanksgiving and Mom and Dad jumped at the chance to cook a giant family meal.”
“Oh,” I pushed out, my eyes enlarging in my head.
“Well, it sounds great but—” On the side of my face, Stella’s stare burned a hole just waiting for me to look her way as I tried to weasel my way out of this holiday dinner.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the time off of work.
Thanksgiving is a pretty busy time in a bar, I hear. ”
From behind me, Patrick passed by with a tray of glasses at the most inopportune time and threw a wrench into my only viable excuse.
“Nah, we’re pretty dead then. You can have the day off. You can have the next day off too if ya need.”
“Perfect!” Monica cheered in time with my face sinking in defeat.
An entire day with my parents, my sister, the man she was engaged to who I had kissed, and that man’s mother who wanted me as far removed from the picture as I could get.
What could possibly go wrong with that combination of people?
Answer? Absolutely everything.