CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
“When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”
~Albert Einstein
PRESENT
I thought Dante would head back to the reception, but instead he headed the opposite way, casually grabbing my arm as he walked by, tugging me with him.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Scotch,” he answered.
It was a good answer.
He poured us both a full glass and we toasted to Gram.
“How do you like the flight attendant gig?” he asked me.
I fucking hated it. For so many years I’d been so determined to devote my life to being an actress, waiting tables and tending bars to pay the bills. Making a career move that monopolized a huge chunk of my potential auditioning time had felt so much like giving up on my dreams. It still did.
“I fucking hate it. It’s not where I saw myself at this stage of my life. I was so sure I’d have gotten my big break by now.”
“You’re only twenty-seven. You still have all the time in the world.”
I rolled my eyes. He didn’t get Hollywood. Every year that I slipped closer to the Botox phase of my life, the less likely it was that I could be the next ‘fresh’ face. And I wanted to be that. I wanted to be the beautiful young ingénue that all the guys wanted, and all of the girls wanted to be. I craved it more than anything. What better way to shove my success in the face of all of the people that’d ever wronged me?
“I do get a lot of lucrative offers to do porn,” I said lightly.
It was supposed to be a joke (though I had gotten some offers), but he definitely didn’t laugh. In fact, his expression became so black and he turned so quiet that I had to change the subject.
“You know what my biggest fantasy was when I was a kid?” I asked him.
“What?
“That Gram would adopt me. That she’d take care of me and let me live with her.”
“She tried to, you know.”
I was shocked. Deep down in my bones shocked. “What?”
“She wanted to. She tried to. Your grandma fought her tooth and nail. The only thing they could settle on was letting Gram buy you school clothes and a few other essentials, but if it’d been up to her she’d have taken you in.”
“I had no idea.”
“Yes. It’s still a hard pill to swallow, that your grandma wouldn’t let you go to Gram, but then she treated you like that. What the hell was that about?”
“I could tell you.” I understood how my grandma’s twisted mind worked, understood it too well.
“Please do.”
“It was pride. Pride is a terrible thing. She couldn’t let someone else take on one of her burdens. My grandma has a lot of awful qualities, but she can’t stand the thought that she’s not earning her keep.”
He let out a disgruntled breath. “How senseless. Making you miserable for all those years just for her pride?”
I didn’t comment. I couldn’t, really, without being a hypocrite. I’d done some terrible things myself for the sake of pride.
We’d been silently sipping our drinks for a stretch when he leaned in close to me, whispering conspiratorially, “Let’s ditch this thing and go check out our old swimming hole? Can you think of a more Gram thing to do?”
I was more distracted by the way he was leaning into me with that old, familiar twinkle in his eyes than his words. I was looking up at him, eyes devouring his face, some part of me so stuck in the past that I couldn’t even remember why I was supposed to hate him so wholeheartedly.
But then I remembered.
There was a great pit of despair inside of me, and I felt it flare open, given life by his nearness, fed by his proximity, growing every second I let him close enough to breathe my air.
Just then it felt big enough to lose myself in.
“Excuse me,” I told him tersely, and fled into the reception.
The place was packed. The good news about that was I didn’t even see a familiar face at first so I was free to move about, ignoring the strangers to my little anti-social heart’s content.
I heard noises coming from one of the large parlors and I knew instantly what it was.
The house was old, but they’d still done a halfway decent job converting one of the larger parlors into a makeshift theatre.
On the screen they were playing one of Gram’s old movies.
I’d been afraid to watch any of them since I’d heard the news, even though I loved them all. I’d thought it would make me too sad.
But as I saw her beautiful face on screen, so young then, I felt only comfort.
She was immortalized.
And this role in particular suited her. She was playing what she would have called a wicked, wicked woman, and she threw out one sassy line after another in grand Gram style.
It was everything. I took an empty seat toward the back of the room and ate it up.
I don’t know how long I sat there before a man sat down in the chair beside me.
I shot him a glance and found him studying me.
“Have we met before?” he asked me.
I gave him a second look. He was an older man with a kindly face. “I don’t think so. Were you a friend of Gram’s, I mean Vivian’s?”
Something slipped into his eyes, some bit of dawning recognition that was odd to me. It hit me in a strange and troubling way.
“Oh,” he said very quietly. “I recall now. I treated you once. I’m a doctor.”
My brow furrowed. “I don’t believe so.”
“I-I’m terribly sorry. You’re right. Please forget that I ever brought it up.”
And with that he stood up and left the room, looking harried and I don’t even know what.
As he walked out, Dante walked in. The men saw each other, each briefly pausing, steps faltering before they both nodded and continued on their way.
“Who was that?” I asked Dante when he, predictably, sat down beside me.
His whole face closed off. “Some old friend of Gram’s, why?”
“He said he was a doctor and that he’d treated me once,” my voice trailed off and I looked away as realization struck. “Never mind,” I muttered.
Dante squeezed my hand, and for a second, I let him before pulling away.
I nodded at the screen. “This is my favorite part,” I said weakly.
“Mine too.”
“I could stay in here all day.”
“Let’s,” he replied.
We didn’t do that, but it was tempting.
One of Dante’s old football buddies came in shortly, sat down next to him, and started catching up.
I didn’t even look at the guy. I hadn’t been friends with any of the jock douchebags in high school, and I saw no reason why I should have to waste my time on one now.
Also, just thinking about football put my mind in a dark place.
I got up without a word and left.
I couldn’t move without tripping over a server, but I went back through the kitchen and served myself another scotch.
It was starting to do its job and take the edge off. Numbness felt just around the corner.
I lingered at my moment of peace. It was just too pleasant to take a minute alone when the last thing I wanted was company, especially the company that could be found in this house at present.
“Of course you drink scotch,” a soft voice said behind me. “That’s so you. Always the guys’ girl.”
I turned to face Tiffany, tipping my glass back to pointedly finish off my drink.
Once again, I eyed her dress. It was perfect, damn her. Flawlessly tailored and obviously designer.
I wore cheap, trendy clothing, and I despised all the people there that knew the difference. She was certainly one of them.
One consolation was that my shoes were up to snuff today, at least as nice as hers, though I still had a mad shoe crush on her lavender stilletos.
We just stared at each other for a pregnant moment, and I, for one, had no clue what was going through her head.
It seemed to me that some bond should be made between two women when they’ve both had their hearts broken by the same man.
But there was no bond here. There was no person on earth I felt less of a kinship with.
It was like we didn’t even speak the same language. She was fluent in passive aggressive fake niceties. Darling is what she said as she plunged a knife into your gut.
I’d never understood it, could never relate. Passive aggressive women were beyond me. Or the passive part of it, at least.
Straight up aggression, that I understood.
I was fluent in liberal doses of painful honesty, well, at least when the subject didn’t delve too deeply into how I felt about a certain manipulative bastard.
“No guests in the kitchen,” I finally broke the silence with. Rudely.
I was feeling three-scotches-in honest, could not even try to play her fake nice game.
“Actually, I’m staying at the house.” She dropped the words on me pleasantly as she moved to the old bar I was leaning against, carelessly tossing her drop-dead gorgeous black and white clutch on it. Damn her and her amazing bag choices. “That grants me the precious kitchen access even according to Gram’s rules, right?”
I was floored. Why the hell was she staying here? Unless . . . My mind wanted to draw the worst conclusion, which was likely the truth. Of course she was doing it to get close to Dante. The only question was: How did he feel about it? Did he know? Care? Was he playing the same games with us both, drawing us in, messing with our heads?
“Why wouldn’t you stay at your parents’ house?” I asked her bluntly.
She started making herself a drink. She didn’t answer me until she’d taken a drink that made her nose scrunch up in distaste. “Renovations. Two thirds of the place is under construction. You know how my mother is.”
I didn’t. I only knew her as Adelaide’s evil counterpart. I’d never been to their house and I had no clue about her decorating choices.
“Isn’t it like a mansion? They don’t have one spare room you can use? A sofa?”
She shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t mind staying here. I love this house. Reminds me of the good old days, spending time with Dante here when we were teenagers.”
She could have punched me in the stomach and it wouldn’t have knocked more of the wind out of me.
She’s a manipulative bitch, I told myself. She hides it better, but she’s just like his mother. She’s either lying or exaggerating.
“Did you spend a lot of time here when you were a teenager?” I asked, trying for a bland tone, having no idea if I succeeded.
I knew she’d spent some, I’d been there for most of it, back in the early days of my hatred of her. But the way she said it was the way I thought it, like it had meant more to her than the simple short trips when she’d come to visit.
She eyed me and, seeing something, changed the subject.
Either she couldn’t back up what she’d said or she wanted me to think that she was sparing my feelings.
It wasn’t hard for me to pick one, and I felt instantly better when I did.
“Did you see that Whitney Holloway is here?”
Well, she was certainly a good subject changer. That got my attention. “I did not,” I said succinctly, taking a long drink.
Whitney was another privileged trust fund baby. She was rich from birth, but for fun she modeled in her spare time. Barf. She also happened to be the woman Dante had started seeing immediately after he and Tiffany had called off their engagement.
Her tinkling laugh rang out hollowly. “We should start a Dante’s ex club. There are certainly enough of us floating around, right?”
That passive aggressive jab was meant to bring home the fact that we’d both had a relationship with him, and that mine was no more significant than any of his others.
“Oh look, speak of the devil,” she said with a smile.
I turned to watch as Dante approached us, looking ill at ease.
Tiffany met him halfway, throwing her arms around his neck as she rose up to say something in his ear.
Images of her wrapped around him assaulted me. Of them, together, naked and writhing. They were graphic, and I’d never get them out of my head.
Seeing him with her gave me that feeling again. My skin humming, bile rising in my throat.
But then—he recoiled from her, moving around her without so much as a hello.
Well, whatever he was doing with her for this twisted little trip, he was not playing the same games as he was with me. If I had thrown myself at him like that, I’d have been over his shoulder and carried to the nearest bed in about three seconds flat.
It was something, some sad sop to my ego. I made a vengeful note to use that against Tiffany the first chance I got.