“You ready?” He asks, kissing the top of my head.
No.
I don’t think that there’s anything that can prepare me for what is going to happen tonight.
But I lie. “Yes.”
He watches me in the mirror for a few more seconds before choosing to pull me away from the room and the house before I can change my mind, and cancel the plans that we’ve made.
My leg bounces the entire drive anxiously, and there are a few moments where I almost ask him to stop so I can lose what little is in my stomach.
“You sure you’re ok? You look like you’re going to be sick,” he says, giving my thigh a little squeeze.
“Mhmm.” I nod and slowly open my door so that I don’t make him take us home.
We walk into the restaurant and tell the hostess our names, and she leads us to the back of the restaurant.
“Briar, Chanel, I’d like for you to meet my girlfriend, Sloane.”
Briar stares at me, and for once in his life, he’s speechless.
Beckett pulls out my chair for me, I sit down, he sits next to me, and I’m honestly not sure what to say, and my brain kinda stops working.
“Hi,” I say with a small smile. This is a horrible fucking idea. I don’t know why I let him convince me to do this. Basically, this is just Beckett’sfuck youto Briar for being horrible to me in my whole life. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m literally shitting myself right now.
“What the fuck is going on right now?”
“We’re having a double date like you requested,” Beckett says, picking up the menu and browsing through it like this isn’t the most awkward thing to ever happen in the existence of any person at this table’s life.
“Yeah, why is mydaughtersitting across from me?”
He’s doing a rather good job at keeping his voice low, despite the fact that his hands are clenched tight enough around his champagne glass that it could break.
“Because she’s mygirlfriend,” Beckett says, the word sounding so good coming from his mouth.
I think that this is the first time I’ve ever heard him use the word out loud. I like it a lot more than I should.
“Shouldn’t you be back in Athens for your next semester of school?” Briar asks, addressing me directly for the first time since we walked in.
“I’m going to finish my degree online and move back here permanently,” I say, lifting the glass of water with a slightly shaky hand.
“So what’s happening exactly? You guys just decided to what? Move in together, fuck, and that’s that, the rest of us are just supposed to be ok with it? She’s twenty-one, Beckett.”
“Briar,” Chanel hisses, looking around with a fake smile as Briar’s voice gets progressively louder.
“No, this is fucking crazy. How long has this been going on for? Were there…Did you…” He can’t even find his words, and I knew that doing this in public was a horrible idea.
Beckett suggested it because maybe it would force Briar to behave since people would be watching, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“It happened just this summer. And before you go off half-cocked, accusing me of something horrendous, let me stop you. Not once have I ever sought her out until this summer, and not once did I look at her in any way that was inappropriate before just a few months ago,” Beckett says, with a surprising amount of calm.
“You expect me to just believe you. You’ve had ample chances to tell me that something was happening, and you lied to me every time I saw you.”
“I never lied, I just withheld information. You know, kinda like how you’ve just forgot to mention that she isn’t even your fucking kid.” Beckett points out, and that earns him a sharp glare.
I gasp, and so does Chanel. I had no idea we were airing out all the fucking laundry today. I blink hard, once, then twice. My heart feels like it’s going to explode, and I don’t know what to do.
“Get up, we’re leaving.”
