5. Chapter Five #3
I don’t want him to go. I need him here to make my plan, or lack of a plan, work. I need him to chase Billie away and stop Mama from interfering in my dating life.
Also, younger me would be so proud that I finally got the guy of my teenage dreams. So, why does this feel so wrong? I can’t dwell on that thought. I need this to work.
A still, small voice tugs at me, and a thought pops into my mind, standing out against my own issues: You don’t need fake love. I love you. You are enough. I am enough for you.
“No,” I say, shaking my head slightly, to answer George and the thought that is trying to distract me from my plan. Then, louder for everyone else to hear, I say, “George stays. He’s my guest tonight.”
The doorbell rings. No one moves.
Mama stands. She says, “That will be the guest we expected tonight.”
“We were expecting a guest?” Papa asks, and I know then that she didn’t tell him about Billie.
“Yeah, Mama, who else is coming?” Mary asks, looking around the table. “Everyone is here.”
“Unless Nic and Jane are coming over?” Kitty asks, looking at me expectantly. She thinks I probably invited my friends over for dinner since I have done that from time to time.
“Nope,” I say, shaking my head at my sister. “They aren’t coming tonight.” The doorbell rings again.
Lydia slips away from the table to look out the dining room window facing the front yard. She exclaims, “I know who it is!”
I shoot her a look when she locks eyes with me. Mouth agape, she snaps it shut when I glare at her. She reluctantly goes back to her seat and says nothing else, which is hard for her since she loves to talk.
Then, she leans over and whispers something to Mary. Mary gasps and then leans over to whisper to Kitty, who also gasps and leans over to Janet. Janet looks over at me as if she has just been slapped in the face.
“No,” she says, daring me to say she’s wrong in assuming who’s at the door. “Please tell me you are not going back down that road again, Lizzie. He put you through so much.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I ask. “It’s not like I invited him over. That is something Mama did. Not me. I would never.”
“Who are we talking about here?” asks Kitty’s boyfriend.
“Yeah, I’m kind of lost,” says Mary’s boyfriend.
Those poor, clueless boys don’t even understand the crazy family they want to be a part of. My pretty sisters have lured them into this circus.
And then, the most clueless of them all, Lydia’s boyfriend, whose name I also don’t remember, says, “I think there’s someone at the door.”
“Yeah, thanks. I think we got that, Sherlock,” I say, not biting my tongue.
“Liz!” Lydia hisses at me. “Don’t be mean just because your ex-fiancé is here.”
“Ex-fiancé?” George asks, bringing my attention back to him. “As in, Billie Collins?”
“Does everyone know my business?” I ask, standing up. “Yes, it’s Billie. And yes, he’s my ex-fiancé which is why Mama should never have invited him over for dinner.”
“Sit down, Elizabeth Bennet,” says Mama, threatening me.
“Really, Mama?” I ask, not budging. “I can’t even answer the door to let Billie in? You don’t trust me? Do you think I will chase him away like I did the first time?”
“I’ll get the door because you are getting on my nerves! You know how stress makes me irritable. You are not helping.” Mama scolds me in front of everyone.
I stand there feeling like a little kid who just got into trouble.
But being an adult must have given me some courage or some stupidity that leads me to say, “You are absolutely the most irritating person I know. And yet, I still came over for dinner knowing that you were just going to let me come tonight without telling me that Billie was here. He stopped by the cafe earlier and told me, which was a terrible surprise. And now this. Mama, you are not helping me, and you know it.”
The dinner table goes silent. No one moves. No one eats or drinks.
“Lizzie,” Papa says, intervening a moment too late. “You took it too far, darling.”
“Too far?” I ask, my voice raised an octave. “Mama started it, and I’m tired of trying to explain to her to stop meddling. This is not okay.”
“None of this is okay,” says Janet, standing up. “I’ll go and answer the door. Everyone, just take a breather, and we can try to enjoy dinner.”
I don’t sit down. Mama doesn’t either. We have a silent standoff. But we let Janet go, and she answers the door.
When Janet returns with Billie in tow, the awkward silence in the room gets worse. His smile fades as he looks around the table, seeing all of us looking conflicted. He locks eyes with me.
He holds flowers in his hand, a mix of pretty pastel flowers in a large bouquet. I can’t help but notice that they are beautiful. But like the flowers George bought me, they aren’t my favorite.
Then, I randomly think about how Will remembered what my favorite flowers are. I don’t know why I am thinking about that now. Will isn’t here. Billie is. George is. And so am I.
Billie walks into the room, still wearing his suit from earlier. Am I supposed to feel something for him? To be happy or sad? Am I allowed to be angry?
I don’t know, but I do know that I don’t want him here. I don’t want to try to enjoy dinner anymore. I take a deep breath, knowing that I have to deal with this even though I don’t want to.
“Mama invited me,” Billie says, nodding in Mama’s direction, and I hate it when he says ‘Mama’ like she’s his mother too.
She’s always had a soft spot for him. He could call her “Mama” when we were together because he was basically part of the family, but it’s not my fault he chose not to be anymore.
“We need to talk, Billie,” I say, fed up with this delusional world in which he thought he could just march back into my life and we could pick up where we left off. To my family and our guests, I say, “Go on, say grace and enjoy dinner. I’ll walk him out.”
“Now, Lizzie, stop this. He was invited over to have dinner. Let him eat.” Mama is delusional too, I realize. I look over at her, tired of her games.
“No, you invited him over and I don’t want him here, so I’m walking him out.”
“This is my house,” Mama says, applying pressure.
“And he was almost my husband, so I think I win this one.” I walk over to Billie and brush past him, gesturing for him to follow me as I head out of the dining room, through the hallway and out the front door. Once we’re outside on the front porch, I say, “You shouldn’t have come, Billie.”
“I came to see you,” he says, holding out the flowers to me. “And I bought these for you. You always liked these kinds of flowers.”
I wrap my hands around my chest; the warm breeze from earlier isn’t so warm anymore. My strapless pink sundress seems cute only in theory as goosebumps appear on my arms.
Thunder rumbles in the distance. A storm is coming.
By the looks of how my chaotic evening is going, a storm may already be here.
I tuck my hands under my arms, not taking the flowers from him. I don’t even comment on the fact that he got it wrong about the flowers.
Bitterly, I say, “I don’t want to see you and I don’t want flowers from you.”
“Come on, Liz,” he says, but I cut him off.
“No. Don’t tell me to come on. Don’t call me Liz. Don’t call my mother ‘mama.’ Don’t show up at my cafe, bothering me at work. Don’t do anything near me or for me ever again. You need to leave.”
“But I came back for you,” he says, eyebrows furrowed together. Is he confused about why I don’t want to see him?
“Is there something wrong with you, Billie?” I ask, beyond fed up.
He looks taken aback. “What? No.”
“Are you sure? Because the last time I checked, you left me like six years ago and broke up with me via text, as if I were some random girl you met once and didn’t want to see again. And now you’re back like nothing happened.”
“I’m back because I want to be with you. And I want to know why you’re bringing some other guy to dinner when you knew I was coming? I assume Wickham is here with you? What happened to that other guy from the cafe?”
“You don’t get to ask me questions, Billie. You proposed to me and then left me. You lost your privileges.”
“I left because I was scared.”
“You must be scared and stupid to think that running away from a committed relationship with no warning and then showing up again is okay.”
He takes a step toward me. “I missed you, Liz.”
“Oh, well, that takes care of everything,” I say, exasperated, turning my back to him. “You haven’t changed, have you?”
He steps around me, so I’m facing him again. He touches my chin with his finger, lifting my head up. “I’ve changed, just give me a chance to prove it to you.”
I jerk away from his touch and take a step back. Looking him up and down, I can see he hasn’t changed a bit. I didn’t see it then, I ignored how self-involved he was.
I used to think it was so nice how he put so much effort into his image. He may look nice, but he spent more time on making sure the outside looked good, that the inside didn’t matter as much. He used to do and say things that I ignored.
The red flags were waving at me and I just pretended not to see them because he would plan these elaborate dates, shower me with gifts and tell me sweet nothings. And on top of all that, he went to church every Sunday and my Mama loved him.
He was perfect for me, so I thought. He was the one who made me feel better after George low-key broke my heart when I saw him making out with that girl towards the end of junior year. Billie was the one who pursued me like it was his main goal senior year of high school.
And I was so willing and weak then. I fell fast and hard for him. I thought he fell for me too. Why else would you date someone for years and then propose to them?
“Why did you leave me, really?” I ask. I hate how vulnerable I sound.
“I was scared to make a lifelong commitment, Liz. I was twenty-one. Just a kid.”
“Then, why were you grown enough to pick out a ring and get down on one knee and ask me to marry you if you weren’t ready to make a commitment, Billie?”