Chapter 42 #3
“Leave him, Mom. He clearly has better places to be than here.” I place the last platter down on the table and pull out my chair to start digging in.
“What if he’s hurt?”
I scoff. “A girl can dream.” Mom’s head whips toward me. I raise my hands in surrender but I don’t apologize. I never do. I mean what I say when it comes to that man.
Just as I’ve piled my plate high with turkey and all the southern fixins, the door swings open.
In he waltzes, the devil himself. Reeking of whiskey and bad intentions.
“Where’s my plate, Lara.” It’s not a question. It’s a demand. It’s a scolding. How dare she not have his plate ready for him at the table?
Kevin sits at the head of the table, to the right of my seat. My mom rushes to prepare him a plate with everything on it. She puts it down in front of him and then sits at his side, across from me.
“My drink?” He demands again and Mom hurries to pour him a whiskey from the bar cart. She places it at the corner of his plate and then sits.
Mom picks up her fork, Dad bites into his bread, and I grab his whiskey.
Two pairs of eyes jolt to me immediately. One is full of worry and the other, disdain.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks me.
Maintaining eye contact with the brute, I take a generous slug of the beverage, enjoying the burn of it down my throat.
Then I take another. I drink the entire whiskey until it’s gone and then I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, placing the empty cup on the table and picking up my fork to enjoy my Thanksgiving meal.
My parents are baffled.
“That’s what they’re teaching you at that fucking school I pay for? How to drink?”
I refuse to look at him or acknowledge him at all. Instead, I look only at my mother who is looking directly at her plate.
“What? You don’t talk anymore? College took away your brain cells?” He pulls at my chin and I’ve had it.
“I don’t go to college. I go to medical school, you fucking asshole. And no. I don’t talk anymore. Not to you anyway. The only reason I’m here right now is to see her.” I use my knife to gesture toward Mom and then dig back into my food.
“You ungrateful bitch.”
“Only because you raised me that way.”
Mom chokes on her water and I know I’ve gone too far. He’s not going to take this out on me. He’s going to punish her for my disrespect. And she doesn’t deserve that.
“Let’s just enjoy this meal that Lara cooked and then move on. No need for the dramatics.”
My mother is already up pouring her husband another drink and this time she places it out of my reach on the table. I wasn’t going to drink it anyway, I definitely don’t need any more alcohol tonight, but the gesture wasn’t lost on me. She’s afraid of him. Afraid of his reactions.
With a grunt but no retaliation, Kevin continues eating and I watch my mother visibly relax.
We eat in silence for a good maybe three minutes before she says something, never one to let a quiet moment rest.
“How was your flight this morning, Danika?”
“Fine,” I mutter, chewing through a particularly gamey piece of turkey thigh.
“Did you make a stop along the way home? I expected you sooner.”
Once again, her need to make small talk is going to send us into a spiral.
My father has never cared much about my friendship with Margot but he absolutely hates Arden.
Probably because he’s a man equal in stature but much broader in muscle and strength.
A man who could easily overpower him in an altercation.
I should just leave it alone. I should lie and tell them I got stuck in traffic or that there was a lot of drama getting off the plane. I should tell them anything but the truth. And yet, that whiskey gave me a little bit too much courage because what I end up saying is…
“I stopped at the Davis house to see Arden.”
Not Margot.
Not Memaw.
Arden.
A vein in my father’s forehead threatens to burst but it’s my mother who speaks first.
“Arden? Why him?”
Then I look at her. “Because I’m dating him.” At least I hope so. “And living with him.”
“The hell you are. What the fuck, Lara?”
Kevin turns his anger toward my mother, which is the absolute last thing I want to happen. “Don’t accuse her of anything. Look at her face, she knows nothing about this.”
My mother’s mouth is open in shock but she closes it, trying to bring a semblance of decorum to the table.
“We can talk about this later,” she says, a hint of hurt in her voice. She’s upset that I’ve kept this from her but I had a good reason. There was no way she’d be able to not tell my father and then all hell would break loose, quite like right now.
“The hell we can,” Kevin polishes off his whiskey before turning his beady, glassy eyes toward me. “You’re not living with that prick. Move out.”
“No.”
“No? You’re going to sit there like a little whore and take my money—money that’s meant for your education—and you’re going to use it to shack up with the—”
“Did you just call your own daughter a whore?”
“Enough,” my mother tries to interject but it’s no use. Even she knows there’s no stopping the two of us when it gets this way. One thing I got from my father is my headstrong personality. Unfortunately.
“If she’s acting like a whore, I’m going to call it like I see it.”
“Who said I’m acting like a whore?”
“Living with a man out of wedlock is hardly saintly.”
“And since when are you qualified to give advice about being saintly?”
Kevin’s hand balls into a fist and I look at my mother whose eyes are full of tears. I need to take myself out of this situation before something happens that we all regret.
Getting up from the table, I wordlessly take my half finished plate to the kitchen and then head upstairs to sit in my childhood bed until I leave in two days.
In hindsight, I don’t know how I’m supposed to last the rest of this time.
I was hoping Arden and Margot would be here with me but they aren't. And it doesn’t seem like I’ll get any kind of reprieve until I get back to campus.
I should just leave. I should book a flight and go back to campus. I’d rather be there than here. Even if I was alone there. I wish I could go to Connecticut and see the whole gang but I’m not exactly welcome there at the minute.
And the real truth is, no matter how terrible this situation is here with my parents, the overwhelming feeling I have right now is that I miss Arden. I miss him so fucking much and I just want to talk to him.
I fall asleep—suddenly bone tired from the events of the day and the alcohol I drank—and I dream of veins, tissues and deep green eyes.