Chapter 36 Dinner For Shmucks #2
“Ah, I’m so sorry to hear that. Cheaters are the worst. They’re disgusting people, aren’t they?”
The Thanksgiving food that I had swallowed shifted in my stomach, informing it had the potential to come right back up if this conversation went in the direction Stella was steering it. Gulping down the rise of stomach bile that crept up my throat, I nodded along.
“Mhm.”
“Do they really think anyone could ever forgive them for their actions? Honestly.” Then, she lent her attention to my sister and my heart slammed on its breaks and came to a full stop. “Monica, could you ever forgive a cheater?”
Monica shifted in her chair, obviously as thrown off by this topic as everyone else at the table was.
“No?” She offered an awkward chuckle. “But thankfully I don’t have to worry about that with this one here. He knows I’d poison his coffee if he ever cheated on me.”
Her hand reached across the table to grab Ethan’s and he obliged, opening his hand up for hers to settle in.
Their hand in one another’s, I followed a wink that Monica sent Ethan’s way and saw as it reached him and fell flat against his lowered eyes.
He wasn’t looking at her or at anyone. His hardened gaze was trained on their interlocked hands, his patience a lit wire fizzling down to the explosive end.
What was his mom doing? She knew Ethan. She should have known better than to push him like this.
Even if her intention was a scare tactic designed for me, she had to know that it would affect her son since he was the other half of this unfaithful equation.
If she outed me at this dinner table right now, she’d be taking him down too.
“My Ethan doesn’t have it in him to be unfaithful,” Stella continued to stoke the fire. “He’s got a good heart, just like his father.”
“Can someone pass the cranberries?” Mary interjected. Her high-pitched tone and raised eyebrows said that she was trying to change the subject because she too saw where her mother’s prodding was leading.
“He knows better than to ever put anyone through that kind of misery and embarrassment.”
Mary tried once more to save the dinner from exploding. “Mom, how about we change the subject?”
“Why? It’s a terrible thing that happened to Alice and I’m sure she would agree—” Stella turned her attention back to me, raising her dagger of carefully chosen words and aiming right at my heart.
“ All cheaters deserve to go to hell.”
“That’s enough! ”
The room and everyone in it stopped.
Ethan’s voice was an electrified shock, zapping through us all and freezing us still.
Stella had done it. She’d pushed him too far, pushed him to the end of his rope that had now caught flames.
Ethan’s chair scraped against the hardwood floor as he stood, his heavy footfall consuming the silence as he came to stand next to his mother.
Already a tall and intimidating man in his anger, it took very little effort on his part to command every ounce of authority in the room.
He had all of our attention as he turned his lethal stare down to his mother’s.
“We need to talk. Privately.”
Stella politely excused herself from the table, a heck of a lot more composed than I would have been, and she and Ethan walked back into another room, the door shutting with two slow clicks to follow.
Then—silence. Complete and utter silence so consuming, the tension within it arrested everyone’s mouths shut for the next several minutes. No one ate. No one spoke. We all waited for what was to come next with anxious, eavesdropping ears.
At first, Stella and Ethan’s voices were muffled behind the layers of walls and doors, but soon enough, their voices rose and with it, so did their clarity.
“If you would just listen to me, Ethan!”
“ No , Mom,” Ethan’s voice boomed back. “I’m done listening to what you want. This is what I want.”
“But it is the wrong choice!”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because she is nothing.”
Next to me, Monica’s body tensed as if she’d been delivered a mild shock. She thought Stella’s words were about her, and I hated that I had to let her keep thinking that.
More incoherent words flew between Ethan and his mother, most of them impossible to catch but a few. ‘Marriage’ and ‘wedding’ being the two words to stand out the most.
“Wow,” Monica breathed a laugh. “I thought she liked me.”
Mary reached a hand out to cover my sisters. “She does. She’s just—”
“A bitch?” My mother finished for Mary.
“Mom!” Both Monica and I scolded my mother at the same time, horror rushing blood to fill my cheeks.
“No, she’s right.” Mary waved us off, shaking her head. “My mom’s never been the same since my dad passed away. Both Ethan and I tried to help her, but she never wanted to move past it.”
Hearing Mary put it like that, I wanted to feel sorry for Stella. I really did. She wasn’t this way by choice but by a heartbreak she never got over, and that was something I could understand. Hell, I could even empathize with her if she gave me half a chance.
“I think I’m gonna get some air,” Monica said, rising from the table with a face paled by harsh words not meant for her. Mary rose, brushing my shoulder and telling me she had Monica taken care of, following out of the front door, leaving me and my parents behind.
We all sat still in the silence. It had all happened so fast; I don’t think any of us knew what to say or do.
We weren’t a dramatic family. We didn’t have blow out fights like that.
My eyes dropped to the food on my plate, knowing it had gone cold by now.
It didn’t matter though. My appetite had gone out the front door with Monica, and I wasn’t sure when either were coming back.
“So… I guess dinner is over?” Dad remarked, drumming his fingers against the arms of the chair.
“I guess so.”
Mom and Dad began cleaning up dinner, and my attention kept traveling to the back room as I helped.
The door down the hallway opened and I glimpsed a red-faced Ethan barging out and hiding away in the bathroom across the hall.
Soon enough, my traveling focus made its way to my feet as they went down the hallway, too.
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I was walking right into the lion’s den, but they were talking about me after all, right?
I walked until I reached the door of my father’s study, where the sounds of soft cries bled through.
The door opened with a gentle push of my fingers, and Stella lifted her head, her watery eyes narrowing into slits as she saw me.
“No. Not you. Get out.”
I moved slightly into the room. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
Incredulity speckled in around the color of her eyes, turning her expression even more hostile. “You know this whole innocent, na?ve act doesn’t really work anymore, right?”
“Ma’am,” I sighed, feeling my skin prickle with warmth across my body. “I’m really not trying to act any type of way. I heard you crying so I opened the door to check on you. That’s all.”
“No, you came in here to mock me.”
“Mock you?” My brows snapped together. “What would I have to even mock you for?”
The slashes of her eyes grew dark and pointed on mine.
“How about what just happened? How my son spoke to me as he’s never spoken to me before, because of you .”
Heat spread across my chest like fire intent on burning the woman before me to ashes. “Anything he said to you, he said because he wanted to.”
“Because you changed him,” she spat.
My eyes darted towards the open crack of the door, my heart beating anxious thumps as the idea that a passerby might hear us.
“I didn’t change him. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Ethan was already better than any dream I’d ever had.
“You did whether or not you want to admit it. The man I raised would never let some woman he barely knows ruin his whole future.” Her voice bounced off of the walls of my father’s study and smacked the next words right out of my hollow chest.
“I don’t want him to. I’ve begged him not to.”
“You really expect me to believe that? That my son changed overnight all on his own? That you don’t love that he’s just told me there won’t be a wedding between him and your sister?”
“I don’t!” I whispered. “I know you’ll never believe me but—”
“You’re right,” she cut me off. “I won’t ever believe you. I think you got exactly what you wanted. I think you wanted my Ethan all to yourself. You put the idea in his head to end the engagement and now you’ve won. Congratulations ,” she spoke, insincerity lathered through her tone.
A chill swept through my body, stealing every last breath and drop of warmth. My tongue tried to move, tried to touch my teeth to tell her that’s not what I wanted, but then the door next to us shot open, and all words were sucked back into a horrified gasp.
Eyes that raged like the ocean during a storm dominated my terror, calming it as Ethan came through the door and shut it behind him. He exhaled deeply, hollowing out the sides of his cheeks as he gnawed away at them.
Oh no. He was pissed .
“All right Mom, you’ve made your assumptions and thrown your blame. Are you ready for the truth?”
“Ethan, I—”
“I pursued her.” He shut her up with just three words.
Three explicit words of confession. “The first time we kissed, I went to her apartment. I wouldn’t leave when she told me to.
I pushed and I pushed because I was selfish and I wanted to.
I knew what was between her and I, and I wanted it.
So if you’re going to blame anyone, blame me. Not Alice.”
And then he brought his attention down to me.
“Why are you even back here?” He didn’t look mad that I was, but rather concerned that I’d put myself in a position to be insulted.
“I heard her crying.”
Ethan’s head tilted to the side, adoration blipping across his stare.
“You see, Mom?” He turned to her. “That’s the kind of person she is. She came to make sure you were all right even after you tore her to shreds at the table.”