My father.
My ex-date.
Together.
It’s all I can do to keep from confronting them, but my glare is enough to make my father uncomfortable, and my mother, the master of aggressing Dominic Mathers, is so visibly disgusted that I think she might get up and choke her ex-husband.
“Fuck you,” she mutters, and looks away, past me, a flash of pain contouring her fair face. It’s not enough they’re still supposedly in love. My father’s tastes for younger women lives on even to this day, and my mother is getting a powerful reminder.
I take her hand beneath the table, and it seems to soothe her for now.
For now.
“Everyone, this is Stephanie.” My father, who is apparently the most oblivious man in the room, continues to smile while Stephanie pats him. “Stephanie, you already met Spencer here. This is my ex-wife Caroline, our son Ian, and his… well, I think it’s his girlfriend, Kathryn.”
His chuckle bounces off the walls to an emptier silence. The four of us are sitting here, each stewing in his or her own misery. My mother, slighted because the man she on-again off-again loves is gallivanting about with a young hot blonde. Spencer Alison, trying not to imagine me defiling his daughter every chance he gets. Kathryn, clearly uncomfortable in this situation. Me, irate that we’re here to begin with, and now flummoxed at the presence of Stephanie May with my father.
Father pulls out a chair for Stephanie, right across from Kathryn. She sits down, grinning like she’s won the lottery. The look she serves Kathryn is laced in a phoniness that makes me even more uncomfortable, and I only thought that was possible if my mother busted out pap photos of Kathryn and me in compromising positions.
Stephanie smiles at me. It’s not polite.
Now that we’re all here, my father summons lunch, a three-course affair beginning with fruit salad and culminating with salmon steaks served on spiced rice pilaf. The chef who works here is the same one I grew up with, and the tastes of this familiar food should make me feel more at home. They don’t. I can’t take my eyes off my father and his supposed date.
Doesn’t he know? Is this some sort of gotcha? I have no idea what game my father is playing. Maybe the idea of his son having a serious girlfriend is making him feel old. Stephanie, though? How did they even meet?
Wait, I don’t want to know.
The food only keeps us silent for so long. Once stomachs start filling, the conversation has to start flowing. Except nobody knows what to talk about. I came here expecting the fifth degree regarding my relationship with Kathryn, but instead we’re all staring at the hot young starlet and the rich old man. All of us annoyed for different reasons.
Even the rich have the most agonizing family dinners.
“So was I the only one who didn’t know about this?”
Spencer’s voice shoots right into me, like a knife meant for my spleen, or kidney, or some other vital piece of my body meant to awaken my mortality. I know that voice. I’ve heard it a few times from other fathers over the years. Never thought I’d hear it from Spencer Alison, who can look like a beast when he’s put into father-bear mode.
I don’t dare look at him.
In fact, nobody is in a hurry to answer. Not even my mother, who caused this whole mess.
“I told you, Daddy,” Kathryn begins with a sweet tone I’ve never heard her use before. “There wasn’t anything to tell, yet. As Ian said, it’s not like that.”
He glares at Kathryn, then me. “Don’t ‘Daddy’ me. You’re implying something I never want to think about.”
Yeah, that glare is reserved for me. “You’re implying he’s fucking you with no repercussions. Now I have to kill him.” I’d count on my mother jumping in front of the line of fire, but I think she’s preoccupied with a different kind of anger.
“Now, Spencer,” my father says with a haughty laugh. “Let’s be realistic. They’re adults.”
His words have barely sunk into our ears when my mother makes every matter worse.
“Didn’t you two used to date?”
She’s got her elbow on the table, finger pointing between Stephanie and me. I drop my fork. Stephanie clears her throat.
“They did,” Kathryn says. I’m floored by her rebellion. “Pretty hot and heavy, wasn’t it?” She’s looking at me, chunks of salmon smacking between her teeth. “That’s gotta be weird.”
A blanket of embarrassment descends upon the table. I’m choking on it, wishing that I could excuse myself from this bullshit and drive far, far away.
“It’s only awkward because he was apparently dating you at the same time.”
Stephanie May, Hollywood’s biggest asshole.
“We weren’t…”
“That’s right.” Kathryn tosses her napkin onto the table and readjusts her seat. “Ian and I were seeing each other when I found you two together.”
Together?
Found?
What an interesting revision of history. If only this wasn’t happening in front of our fucking parents.
“See, Ian’s right, everyone. We’re not a serious couple. That would be preposterous. Everyone here knows what a playboy he is. Caroline talks about the papers all the time!”
I pinch her leg, but it has no effect. The last thing I want to do is look anyone in the eye. All I can do is try not to break in front of some of the most important people we know.
“All I am is another notch in the bedpost. Another woman in a string of blondes. Another pussy to be fucked.”
Teeth bare in my direction. Eyes of steel attempt to puncture my skin. Hands curl into fists, and it’s not Spencer Alison getting up to come pummel my face in.
Kathryn beats him to it. Getting up, that is. I’m spared a beating as she tosses a fork onto her plate and excuses herself from this farce.
The silence is so unbearable that I get up and go after her before Spencer decides to brave my parents and kick my ass.
Kathryn hasn’t been here before, as far as I know. So she has no idea where to go, where to hide, or where to get away from the likes of me, the man who is fucking another blonde. Shit, I don’t have time to be incensed. I have to track Katie down before she blows up and does something even brasher.
It doesn’t take long to find her. She’s holed up down the hall in a small sunroom full of plants and a canary chirping in its cage. When she lived here, this was my mother’s favorite room to read and talk on the phone in. Now it looks like my father hasn’t touched a damned thing since his ex-wife divorced him and took half his fortune.
I shouldn’t find Kathryn so entrancing in this moment. She’s standing by the window, her blond hair down and shining like a golden light among the green foliage. She sniffs, and I don’t know if she’s crying or reacting to the plants. I latch the door shut and approach her.
“Katie,” I say softly. “Are you all right?”
She sniffs again. “Do I look all right?”
“No.” My hand goes to her shoulder, and she stiffens, body jerking away from me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What’s there to talk about? Was anything I said a lie?”
I lower my arm. “You’re not just another blonde or pussy, Kathryn.”
“Aren’t I, though? You said so yourself that we’re not serious.”
“Not like that, no.”
“What does that mean?”
She has so much disdain in her visage that I want to both run away from her and embrace her, here and now. She needs someone to comfort her, and she’s not going to find any comfort out in that dining room.
“You know what it means, Katie.” I try so damned hard to be gentle in my reasoning. Clearly, she’s vulnerable. Last thing I want to do is insult her after all that embarrassment. “We’re casual. We’re doing things in private we may not do with others, but it’s not like it’s going to end….” Do I have to say it?