Trevor takes my elbow, moving me across the room, creating more space between me and the other women, and while I debate pulling away, I don’t know how to do it without causing a scene. He’s creeping me out, but I’m not alone with him. If I screamed, the other two would help.
Wouldn’t they?
“Now, I can tell you must have a special spark for Archie to be so enamored with you. I’ll be honest, I never guessed my brother would go for someone with such a sweet disposition.”
I smile as sweetly as he implied I could. “You, of all people, should know that appearances aren’t everything.”
His face twists into a mockery of disappointment. “Now, what has that heathen of a brother been saying about me? I promise, I’m quite the prize.”
“Olivia must be so lucky,” I chirp back, not liking the direction the conversation is turning.
“Olivia is young. And at college. Both of which can be a good thing. But other times, just the illusion of youth is enough, don’t you think?”
I’m saved from that confusing comment by Mattie popping up next to me and taking my other arm. “I’m stealing her,” she announces before dragging me to yet another corner of the room. The feeling of Trevor’s fingers on my arm lingers long after he lets me go.
“Ugh. Why can’t I just be a normal teenager with a normal family?” she groans, pouring us both a glass of ice water from a carafe on a side table.
“What’s going on?”
She leans against the table, plucking one sleeve of her turquoise sweatshirt. “My dad won’t let me out past eight. It’s like I’m a pumpkin, or seven years old. I’m in high school. Who has an eight o’clock curfew in high school? And my mom won’t fight him on it, even though she knows it’s ridiculous. I’m practically a prisoner here.”
“At least it’s a pretty prison?” I try.
She scoffs. “An illusion. As I’m sure you know by now. Anyway. My mom wants to talk to you but apparently can’t approach you. So, I’m her unwilling accomplice.”
I get tugged across the room again to where her mother waits, perched on a sofa chair in the corner. This dining room is like the set of a Jane Austen movie, with more pointless chairs and heavy wood tables than I could ever imagine surrounding myself with.
“Here you are, Mom. I’ve made my delivery. But as payment, you can’t force me to leave.”
“Matilda Evangeline, it doesn’t work like that. I’d like a word with Clara, alone.”
“I can’t hang out with my friends, I can’t hang out with you, I can’t hang out with Archie’s fiancée,just who am I supposed to hang out with, mom? My imaginary friends? I haven’t had one of those since I was six.”
“Please, Mattie. This is important. I don’t have long before your father’s back.”
This piques my interest, and I give the strawberry blonde woman beside me my attention.
She waits on Mattie, who after a moment sighs and stomps to the table, folding herself into a chair and whipping out her phone, likely to tell her friends that whatever fun thing they were planning isn’t going to happen.
“So, you and Archie,” the woman begins, patting the seat beside her.
I flop down onto it, not trying for good manners. I’m already exhausted and I’ve only been here fifteen minutes.
The ice water in the glass slowly numbs my fingers, and I shiver, remembered cold sinking into my skin. “Yes. Me and Trips,” I reply, not able, or maybe not willing, to switch to the name he uses here.
“I need to tell you something you won’t want to hear about this family. But I need you to hear me out.” She looks scared, her face close to mine, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
“I’m listening,” I whisper back, curious what she could tell me that Trips hasn’t already shared.
A hearty laugh interrupts our tête-à-tête, Trips’ father leading a dejected Trips into the room. “Alright, who’s ready for dinner?”
Trip’s stepmom closes her eyes, just for a second, then plasters on a smile of her own, and if I hadn’t just watched her pull it on, I would never have guessed it was a mask. She directs me to my seat next to Trips, and the strange and unnerving night continues.
Trips’ father and brother spend most of the dinner talking about his upcoming political campaign. Politics have never been a huge part of my life. I know what I believe: I want a world where things are fairer than they are now, where the circumstances of your birth don’t dictate the rest of your life, where who you love or what you look like are just part of a person, not something that requires judgment and stricture.
Basically, I want the exact opposite of the world Trips was born into. Which means any plans those two men are making will piss me off if I listen too closely, and Trips was adamant we not make waves today. I’m not sure what he’d think about his family’s strange game of tug-of-war over me. Making waves wasn’t my intention, but I seem to be a pebble dropped into still water—my presence ripples to everyone else at this table.
Trips stays silent throughout the dinner, his lips twisting whenever he uses his unwrapped and swollen right hand, his demeanor colder than it was on the drive over. Whatever his Hail Mary move was, it’s clear it failed. And his hand isn’t getting better. I know he went to the doctor, but no one told me what the outcome of that was, and I didn’t ask.
