CHAPTER 103
On a farm, things happened. Hospitals were not close by, and Tallahassee was too far away if there was a problem. So we had things. Ipecac syrup was one of those things. If a kid, or a stupid adult, or an animal ate something they shouldn’t, Ipecac caused a violent vomiting spell that got out all of the nasty. And Ipecac was what I reached for in The Plan.
It was easy to set up. The restaurant was serving crème brulee for dessert, topped with a medley of berries. I put the syrup in a flask, in a thigh holster. After the first round of toasts, I excused myself, walking right past the bathrooms and into the kitchen. I hugged Rita, the chef, and held up the flask. “Mind if I give the head table some extra flavor?” That was all it took. We were a dry county, liquor scant except in our private homes. She smiled. “Just pretend I didn’t see you. The platters are numbered, your table is number one.”
I’d like to say that I hesitated, my fingers twisting at the flask’s silver neck, but that’d be a lie. Two days of pent up anger, an hour of polite dinner conversation with false friends… it all pushed my actions, and I left the kitchen a minute later with all twelve of my table’s desserts tainted.
After that, there was nothing left to do but sit, sip my champagne, and watch.
When Ipecac hit, it was sudden. Explosive. If you gave someone too much, you could hurt them. I didn’t give my victims too much; there was about a half cup in each dessert. Scott was, brilliantly enough, the first victim. I saw him take his first bite, and I stood up, moving a few steps back and leaning against the wall, my champagne glass hanging from my recently manicured (professionally!) fingertips. Bridget saw me move and shot me a strange look, her elbow moving, out of sheer habit, to notify Corrine. Corrine glanced over, shrugged, and took her first bite of dessert. I stared point-blank at Bridget until she looked away, focusing on her dessert as if it was the most important thing in her life. Which, right then, it would be. Our table was up front, a long piece that cut the room in half, three couples on each side, Scott and I crammed on the end because weddings have this obsession with putting the bride and groom front and center, damn their need for elbow room to cut a steak.
My shoulders against the rose wallpapered wall, I watched the clock, a big silver piece that looked like it’d been around since the Civil War. Four minutes after Scott stuck that first bite into his deceitful mouth, it happened. He was speaking to Bobbie Jo at the moment, her sitting to his left, and there was no warning, no clutch of his stomach, holding of his mouth, no running to the bathroom. He just opened his mouth and vomit spewed out, soaking her lavender cardigan, unbuttoned low over those ridiculous breasts, her scream loud enough to make every head in the room turn. I giggled, watching Bobbie Jo’s date, her cousin Frank, as he tried to move away, his hands frantic in their push against the table, but Scott wasn’t done, his second attack came while trying to stand. Scott got his chair pushed back, got his feet under him, his hands on the table, and then it came again. We’d had fried green tomatoes with dinner. A piece of poorly chewed tomato caught the ear of Scott’s Best Man, Bubba, and hung there for a moment, the big guy flailing at the piece, then he was the next victim, and Tara and Scott got coated by his wretch.
It was a horrific unfolding, the medicine hitting everyone within the same three minutes, every head in the room turned, mouths opened, and murmurs gaining volume as it kept getting worse. Stacey was the first to hit the floor, vomit already covering her lips and chin, her hand over her face, her heels loud on the floor as she ran down our table’s side, then hit a pool of stench and slipped. I heard the splat as her dress, a Calvin Klein she had bragged over, hit the puddle. She screamed, her cry joining the sea, and tried to stand, her skinny legs flailing, slipped, tried again, and failed. It was hard to stand up when you wouldn’t put your hands on the floor. It was hard to put your hands on the floor when the floor was covered in stomach contents.
One bystander had told Variety Magazine that it had been ‘almost like a circus, with so many things happening you didn’t know where to look.’ I agreed with that statement. The week after the disaster, the cinematographer had asked, her voice tight with disdain, if I wanted the video from the event. I had already paid for it, after all. I had taken the video and sat on my living room floor, popped it in the DVD player, and watched it. That was the first time I felt guilt. I felt sick. I saw in high definition the moment that the poor sweet boyfriend of Tara’s bent over. I saw my first grade teacher, old Mrs. Maddox, trying to hobble for the exit among the masses, clean guests infected by screaming, puking bridesmaids, innocent victims caught along the way in the bottleneck that was the sole exit.
“It was evil,” I said quietly. “Doing it there. In front of everyone. Especially in a town where appearances and decorum are so important.” It was hard to respect someone when you’d seen them vomit all over their grandmother, then run for the exit. That had been Corrine. Her ninety-two year old Grammie had chosen that unfortunate moment to come over and say hello, her frail hands gripping Corrine’s chair for support when disaster hit.
“Isn’t that why you did it there? To punish them?”
“Yeah but… I went too far.” I didn’t feel bad about the wedding party. It was all of the others whose night had been ruined. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. I cringe at their faces, so much of their money wasted, their perfect son’s perfect night destroyed…
Everyone had known it was me from the beginning. Maybe it was my manic laughter as I stood at the front of the room and watched the stampede. It was certainly confirmed by Rita, who pointed a flour-covered finger straight in my direction. I had shrugged, accepted the blame. It wasn’t like I’d ever thought about discretion. I’d wanted them to know. I’d wanted them to realize what they had caused, what Bobbie Jo and Scott had caused. I wanted them to know that you didn’t screw with Summer Jenkins and get away with it.
I’d been young, rebellious, and self-centered. And the town had, as a result, made me pay. My hour of glory had been the last moment in the Quincy sun. After that, the chill from Quincy’s elite had been solid and unyielding, a layer of impermeable frost.
“You don’t need them.” Cole pulled my hand up and kissed it.
I turned to him. “I know that. I just wanted you to know. The—” type of person I am. That was what I wanted to say. I wanted him to stop this thing he’d been doing all night, looking at me like I was made of fairy dust. I didn’t finish the sentence. Probably because I liked the way he had been looking at me. And I didn’t want it to all break apart. I had told him what I had done. The magazine had gotten it pretty much right, even if it had been horrible to read. But I’d wanted to fill him in on my motivations. He could make his own decisions from that point on.
“I just won’t ever cheat on you.” He turned to me and patted his leg. “Come here.”
I didn’t question him, just crawled over, ’til my butt was on his thigh, my legs stretched over his lap, one of his hands holding me in place, the other tucking a bit of my hair behind my ear. “No man in his right mind would cheat on you.”
If you had asked me, before that moment, if I’d had any self-doubt due to Scott’s affair, I’d have said no. I’d have said that he was an idiot, and Bobbie Jo was a ho, and that it had nothing to do with me. But his simple sentence, stated with such resolution… it opened a crack in me that I hadn’t known existed, a deep fissure that ran all the way to my bones.
He opened that crack, and a dark black tidal wave of insecurity and sadness rushed out.
Pretending that I didn’t care if Quincy loved me.
Pretending that I didn’t want the picket fence and the kid on my hip and the Thompson that followed my name.
Pretending that those girls were all bitches and I’d had real friends, but they’d just grown up and moved away or gotten lives, and that was fine because I had my books and my mama and lazy summer afternoons in the sunshine.
A pile of pretends and ignores and feelings that had been stuffed inside the dark marrow of my bones, and Cole Masten pulled them all out with just that sentence and that look and the pull on my neck and his kiss, soft and sweet, on my mouth.
No man in his right mind would cheat on you.
But a man in his right mind had cheated on me and it stung.
“You are incredible, Summer. I think you scared him with your beauty and your strength and that fucking incredible mouth. I think he felt insecure about it and found a woman who he felt superior to.” He kissed me again, harder this time, and I pulled at his hair, clutched at his arm, and felt a part of me, a part of that crack, close, all of the yuck leaked out. I wanted to ask if he meant it, if that was a line of Hollywood bullshit or his real thoughts, but when I pulled back to ask, when I came off his lips and saw the look on his face, I knew. I knew that he wasn’t full of it. And I realized, in that moment, in that look, that every feeling I had bottled up… my inner conflict of self-preservation—the push of hatred, the pull of attraction? He had it too. In his eyes searching mine, the emotion on his face, I saw more. More than just fairy dust attraction. Something deeper and fuller and more real.
I moved on his lap, repositioning myself to face him, straddling him, and I crossed my bare ankles behind him, on the porch floor, our faces close, his eyes closing when I trailed a finger across his lips. “I see you,” I whispered, and those green eyes reemerged, looking at me, his brow furrowing, and I traced the lines of it as well. “God, you put up a lot of layers of asshole to keep people out.”
“It’s not asshole,” he breathed, his mouth moving forward, burrowing into my neck, nuzzling at the skin, and he took a gentle bite, his hands cupping my ass and pulling me tighter to him. “It’s me.”
“No.” I shook my head slightly and lifted his face with my hands, pulling him in for one kiss and then pushing him away. “This is you. And you are perfect. I love this you.”
His breath stopped against my mouth, and he didn’t move, didn’t pull back. He thought that I was incredible and beautiful and strong but probably didn’t want this, and it took every bit of my strength to keep talking. “And I love your asshole self too. I think I’m addicted.”
“You?” he responded, his words coming out in a rush of air. “I haven’t stopped thinking about this.” He moved one hand lower on my butt and ran his fingers across the silk barrier of my panties, between my spread legs. That was what I got for straddling this man with a dress on. He did it again, his fingers pushing at the silk, pulling it against me, and he stared at me, his eyes hungry. “I haven’t stopped thinking about that, or this…” He pressed his lips to mine, his mouth eager and rough. “Or these…” His hands pulled my dress down and came back up my bare front, lifting my breasts, the image of them, in his strong hands, enough to make me grind a little against him, and he was hard, and I could feel it, and I wanted it but it wasn’t enough. “But most of all I am addicted to you.” He said the words softly and stared down at my breasts in his hands, my legs wrapped around his waist, my dress bunched at my hips. “I can’t stop. I don’t think I can ever stop.”
It wasn’t I love you. But when he wrapped his hands around my back and lifted me up, his butt pushing off the porch and onto the grass, his hands gentle when they lowered me to the ground… when he pulled down his shorts and lifted my dress, his body settling over me, his lips on my skin, his name a gasp from my lips when he pushed himself inside… it was, in that moment, enough. Having Cole Masten addicted to me was enough. Having him tell me that Scott was wrong and I wasn’t broken… that was more than enough.