Three.
Julie
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whisper-hiss to myself in the mirror as I apply a second layer of mascara.
Why did I tell Clayton I had a date tonight after he has asked me out every time I’ve seen him, without fail, for the last few months and I always turn him down? The shocked, yet hurt look on his face from yesterday has been burned into my brain over the last twenty-four hours.
I feel awful. Enough that I lost sleep last night thinking about him and how badly I want to apologize a hundred times for even bringing it up.
In truth, Clayton Montgomery is a good man.
There’s nothing wrong with him unless you consider his inability to accept no as an answer.
But he’s never pushed me too hard or made me feel uncomfortable around him.
He’s always been sweet, shrugging off my passes as if the next time will be a different answer.
And I can admit, he’s attractive. With his strong jaw usually lined in a five o’clock shadow, his short chocolate brown hair always mussed.
Of course, yesterday he decided to take his shirt off…
again. Distracting me with his wide, muscular build, chest-hair-peppered pecs, and sultry smile.
He's a Golden Retriever of a man, and here I am, the biting Chihuahua who doesn’t want to be held.
But I do want to be held.
Just not by someone my father decides to choose on a whim—but by someone I love and who loves me in return. Someone I can look at and feel…something more than distaste for.
You mean like Clayton?
I should’ve taken him up on his offer and gotten out of this mess that’s happening in eighteen minutes—or less, if I’m that unlucky.
I take a deep breath, in through my nose, and out through my mouth. “It’s fine. Everything is fine.” This date is a one-time thing to appease my father and get him off my back for at least the rest of the year. Which isn’t saying much since it’s late September already.
My mother knocks on my bedroom door and opens it at the same time she says, “Can I come in?”
What’s the point of knocking and asking to come in when you’re actively opening the door?
I turn to her, smoothing a hand over my churning stomach and down the tight bodice of the short-sleeved, navy-blue dress with a pop of cleavage that she helped pick out for me a week ago. “How do I look?”
Mom smiles. “Stunning as always, dear.”
I sigh, turning to the vanity to put my things away. “Thanks, Mama.”
The squeak from my bedframe tells me she’s decided to perch herself on the edge for one of her tiring mother-daughter talks. “I’m sorry I couldn’t change Daddy’s mind on this. He’s very adamant you…”
“Get on with my life,” I grumble in my best William Ball voice.
My mother’s laughter is forced as she settles it on a heavy sigh. I turn to her, her hands clasped together on her lap, the picture of a poised Southern woman. I instinctively brace for what she intends to say next. “You need to give Shawn a chance, dear.”
Dumbfounded by her words, I stare at her.
That is…not what I thought she was going to say.
What changed? “I thought we were on the same page. Shawn is not the one for me,” I nearly shout, frustration overwhelming me.
They’re lucky I’m agreeing to go on this date at all.
At her heated glare, I pitifully add, “He’s not, Mama. ”
“Shawn stands to inherit his family’s fortune under the stipulation he’s married within the next year,” she tells me. “If it’s not you, it’ll be someone else.”
Is that what this is about? Money? “Then let it be someone else.” I don’t understand how this changes anything. He’s not my present or my future. “Why does it have to be me?”
“If you don’t do this…” She stands, steeling her spine to her full height and looking down her pointed nose at me as she says, “If you don’t do this, we’ll be forced to ask you to leave.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, dear.”
Tears sting my eyes. “No, I don’t think I did.” This can’t be happening. They wouldn’t put me out…would they? “You’d kick me out with nowhere to go? How would you and Daddy sustain yourselves without my income?”
Who would refill my father’s prescriptions or drive my mother to the store several times a week because she refuses to learn how to drive a stick shift?
My mother doesn’t know anything about Daddy’s meds or pain tolerance with his back problems—that’s the whole reason they asked me to move back home.
Let alone how she’s one more high-sodium-based meal away from giving herself a heart attack at fifty-three.
Her glare becomes furious. “If it wasn’t for you and your desperate need to get an education, we wouldn’t need your support, young lady.
You drained us dry when we sent you to that useless university, and look at you—you haven’t found a potential husband to speak of.
The only reason we were willing to pay your tuition was in the hopes you’d finally start your life the way God intended. ”
I scoff openly, shocked and hurt by my mother’s outburst. She’s never spoken so…
hatefully about my desire to get an education and become independent.
I thought she was proud of me. Proud of her daughter, the nurse, able to support her family and care for her community.
At least, that’s what she tells her book club every Thursday.
Not once have I complained about helping my parents financially.
I’m living here, too, after all. I don’t mind paying the land taxes or utilities.
When my father went on an early retirement after years of neglecting an old back injury, I was more than happy to slowly pay them back for the money well spent on my schooling.
My much older sister, Sarah, lives happily with her husband and their two kids down in northern Georgia—way too far to help out as far as I’m concerned.
I thought I was doing the right thing.
Now, I’m not so sure.
“How dare you bring my job into this. This is about you and Daddy’s ridiculous need to see me wed off to some—some idiot!”
“Julie Anne Ball—”
“Oh, please, save the speech, Mother.” I snatch my lighter-knit cream sweater and purse, storming for the door. The tears fall despite my anger as I hurry down the hallway toward the stairs, my mind swimming between truth and lies.
Is that how she truly feels?
Do my parents resent me for getting my nursing degree?
Why else would she say those hurtful things?
When I reach the top of the stairs, I sniffle, blinking rapidly to clear my blurry vision to avoid a missed step or tumble.
As I grip the railing with one hand, holding my things in the other—I gasp at the sight waiting for me at the bottom.
Standing by the open front door is not one, but two men beside my father.
Shawn Lewis and…Clayton Montgomery.