Chapter 2 #2
Kelly understood it too. I saw the exact second it registered. Saw her spine stiffen. Saw her mouth go flat around the edge of her tea glass. Saw, very clearly, the awful position my mother had managed to create in less than five seconds.
Kelly on one side of the moment.
Some faceless “lovely” woman on the other.
And my mother, in the middle, effectively reminding the whole table that Kelly was still the unattached friend while I was still the unattached and that the symmetry kept failing to solve itself.
I hated it instantly. I felt irritation move through me, hot.
Kelly laughed then. She lowered her glass and said something light about next weekend and dessert and probably dying from overfeeding before she got there. It was good. Fast. Skillful.
My mother was still looking at me.
I could have told Maman no again and let the thing die there.
Instead I heard myself say, in a voice so calm it might as well have belonged to someone else, “Kelly’s with me.”
The room stopped.
Everyone at the table knew what those words meant.
Across from me, Kelly froze.
My mother blinked once.
My father sat back and said nothing, which meant he was about to let me hang myself with expensive rope.
And Kelly.
Jesus. Her eyes locked on mine, wide and furious and startled enough that if I’d had even half a second to reconsider, I probably would have.
“Is she?” she asked.
Softly. Pleasantly. Like she was giving me a chance to either save myself or commit.
I committed. “Yes.”
I didn’t look away from Kelly when I said it.
I had started this. I knew enough to finish the sentence.
“We were going to tell you,” I added, “when it stopped being everyone’s entertainment.”
Charlie made a strangled noise.
Hope put a hand over her mouth.
Miley muttered, “Oh my God.”
Britney’s stare could have cut steel.
My mother’s hand slid off Kelly’s shoulder.
Very slowly, Kelly set her tea glass down.
Then she smiled. It was a beautiful smile. It meant I was one breath away from death.
“Well,” she said lightly, and if I hadn’t been looking straight at her, I might have believed she wasn’t furious. “That is one way to announce things.”
I kept my face still.
Charlie looked between us like this was the best thing that had ever happened to him. “Since when?”
“Charlie,” my mother snapped, though not with nearly enough force for my liking.
“What?” he asked. “I’m happy. I love romance.”
“You love chaos,” Jeff said.
“Same difference.”
My mother took her seat again, eyes bright now.
“Why keep it quiet?” she asked.
“Because,” I said, before Kelly could be made to answer that in public, “not everything requires a family meeting.”
Michael’s mouth twitched.
Britney didn’t soften.
Kelly still hadn’t blinked.
I could practically feel the heat coming off her from across the table.
My father finally spoke. “How long?”
There was no point looking at Kelly for help now. That would read as what it was.
I gave him the first answer that felt plausible. “A few weeks.”
“A few weeks,” Charlie repeated. “And you said nothing?”
I looked at him. “You say many things. We all endure them.”
Hope laughed helplessly.
Roman took a sip of tea and said, “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
My mother looked entirely too pleased. “Kelly joon?”
Kelly’s smile stayed in place. Barely.
Maman.
Not a denial.
That one word shifted the whole room.
My mother lit up.
“You should have told me,” she said.
Kelly lifted one shoulder. “I was busy being kept a secret.”
The knife under the silk.
Charlie barked out a laugh. Michael coughed to hide his own. Even my father’s mouth threatened.
I almost smiled.
Instead I leaned back in my chair and said, “You weren’t a secret. I dislike spectators.”
Her eyes flashed. “That must be difficult for a man who looks like a tailored sin fantasy.”
The table went dead silent again.
Then Charlie made a choking sound into his napkin.
My mother pressed her fingers to her lips, scandalized and delighted.
Britney closed her eyes briefly like she was asking God for stamina.
Heat hit hard in my body before I could stop it.
Kelly saw.
That was the worst part.
She saw what that line had done and looked angrier for it.
Good. We were at least both suffering.
Dinner staggered on after that, because families, even mine, had a remarkable ability to absorb social detonation and keep passing food.
My mother shifted into overbright hosting mode.
Charlie needled everyone. Hope started smiling at Kelly like she had insider information from the universe.
Miley watched like a cross-examination was inevitable.
Isabel looked entertained enough to frame it.
Avril, sweet thing, looked happy for us. Almost.
Britney never stopped looking at me like she knew precisely what kind of man I was and found my presence near her friend deeply suspicious.
Kelly played along because she had no choice and too much pride to let herself be exposed. She answered questions when necessary. Deflected when possible. Smiled when the room demanded it. But under the conversation, her anger was clear, like weather.
At one point my mother said, “You must sit together next weekend, of course.”
Kelly reached for her glass. It was enough.
Her breath caught so slightly I almost missed it. Her gaze snapped to mine. For one second the whole room fell away.
I let go first.
She took the glass and drank half of it like she wanted to drown me.
The rest of dinner moved in fragments after that.
Dessert appeared. More tea. More conversation.
More forced calm. I answered what I needed to and no more.
Kelly did the same. My mother looked near transcendently happy.
My father looked amused in the contained, sharp way that meant he would speak to me later.
I wasn’t worried about him.
Kelly was the problem. She walked out of the room with enough purpose that only an idiot wouldn’t have known he was meant to follow.
I was many things. An idiot was not one of them.
I waited long enough not to be obvious, then set down my napkin and pushed back from the table.
“Where are you going?” Charlie asked.
“With your girlfriend?” he asked, grinning.
I searched him long to remove his will to keep talking.
Hope smacked his arm. “Stop.”
I crossed the foyer, passed the open doors, and stepped out onto the ocean-facing terrace.
Kelly stood with both hands braced on the terrace railing, her back to me.
Barefoot. Shoulders tense. Every line of her body said violence.
I stopped a few feet behind her. “You left before your mother-in-law could serve coffee.”
She whirled. Her eyes were bright with fury. Her mouth was pink from wine and tea and that she’d been biting it for most of dinner.
“Don’t.” She pointed at me. “Do not joke.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“Following you.”
“That’s worse.”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.”
I slid my hands into my pockets. “You seem upset.”
Her laugh was so sharp it almost cut. “That’s it? I seem upset?”
“Mm.”
She took two fast steps toward me. “What was that in there?”
“A solution.”
Her mouth fell open. “No. No not. You do not get to say insane things in front of your entire family and then call them solutions.”
“It solved the problem.”
“I know your mother.”
“So do I, and that is exactly why I know you made this worse.”
“You somehow saw my pain and took pity on me which means you knew I was vulnerable tonight.”
The wind pushed her hair back from her face. She shoved it away impatiently and glared at me like she was imagining multiple possible murder weapons and ranking them.
I should have been trying to calm her down.
Instead I found myself studying her mouth.
“You’re never vulnerable.” I dragged my eyes back up. “Would you have preferred I let her parade some poor woman from London in front of me while the whole table looked at you like-”
“Like what?” she snapped.
I stopped.
She folded her arms. Waited.
The ocean broke below us again.
I exhaled slowly. “Like you were someone that had to be explained.”
Her expression changed. Not softly. Not enough to make anything easier.
Enough that I knew I’d hit the right thing.
“That,” she said, “does not mean you get to use me.”
“It wasn’t using you.”
“It was exactly using me.”
“It stopped them.”
“It humiliated me.”
The words came out hard and honest.
The flush in her skin. The anger holding her up. The humiliation under it. that she’d saved both of us in there without ever once making this easier on me.
Then I saw another truth. If she’d contradicted me at the table, the whole thing would’ve become a spectacle. A joke. A public correction. Kelly laughing it off while the room realized she was not, in fact, with me. That I had either lied or presumed or wanted something not returned.
She would have taken the larger hit. I lowered my voice. “You could have denied it.”
Her stare turned lethal. “And what? Become the woman a billionaire publicly didn’t want after all? That would’ve gone beautifully.”
The practical stake.
The thing she’d understood the second I said it and I had too, even while saying it.
I’d trapped her.
“I see that now,” I said.
She blinked once, as if I’d slightly surprised her by admitting it.
Then she got angrier.
“Do you?” She stepped closer again. “Do you know what it feels like to stand in a room where every woman I’m closest to is in love, folded into your family, settled, wanted and then have your mother practically pat me on the head while talking about some lovely woman from London for you?”
I didn’t answer.
Didn’t need to.
Kelly laughed again, but there was no humor in it now. “God. Of course you don’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?” She shook her head. “You sit there in your black shirt and your impossible face and your whole don’t-touch-me-unless-you-come-with-terms energy, and you have no idea what it’s like to be the only one left.”
Something in my chest tightened.