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Katherine looks utterly dejected at the fact that part of his daily routine is to be a fucking douche. Nora reaches across the table to squeeze her hand.
Someone cuts in before I can throw a dinner plate and commit an act I’d later regret. Low, steady, and mildly amused. “Now, now,” Gerry says evenly. “You all know I’m not opposed to hard conversations, but this one won’t end anywhere good. Not when the wine’s this strong and the company’s this proud.”
It’s the sort of line that’s part scold, part plea, and somehow both disarming and absolutely final. Even Thomas startles, caught off-guard by the man’s gentle authority. Evelyn’s eyes drift to Gerry and there’s a tiny tilt of approval.
Gerry looks at Thomas, polite but unyielding. “Thomas, you’ve always had a talent for carving meat. Shame it doesn’t extend to knowing when to stop cutting people down. If this is your idea of a daily routine, I think the rest of us could use a vacation from it.”
Thomas opens his mouth and, astonishingly, closes it again. He grunts something that’s half concession, half wounded pride, then sets his fork down more carefully than before. The temperature in the room drops a degree, the performance of outrage deflating like bad soufflé.
Theo leans in, his lips nearly touching my ear. “Are all their family dinners like this from the get go?”
Emily leans across me. “Usually worse. Gerry’s the only one who can talk them down before someone flips the table.”
Gerry makes a low, satisfied sound.
The rest of the evening passes uneventfully, or as uneventfully as a dinner with this family can be. The food is insanely good. A perfectly plated meal that could make a person forget they’re sitting in the middle of an abhorrently maladjusted household. I eye the risotto wistfully and skip it in favor of not dying via dairy.
Thomas, mercifully, keeps his mouth shut for the most part, only chiming in occasionally with some smart-assed remark about Nora’s preference to drive an electric car or the fact that she isn’t eating any meat.
Evelyn, however, more than makes up for his silence. She asks us a million questions about our jobs, how we met, how long we’ve been together, if we think we’ll get married (Theo chokes on his drink at that one), if we think we want kids (I nearly choke on mine), and whether Theo has ever considered trimming his hair shorter (he has not).
Gerry listens to every word with open, good-natured interest. His politeness feels genuine. He doesn’t interrupt, just observes with tacit curiosity, eyes crinkling whenever Evelyn presses too far, as if he’s fondly cataloging the trouble she stirs up.
Theo is surprisingly good at feeding her full of charming bullshit. It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain my composure when he does things like wrap his arm around my shoulder, twist my hair around his finger, or place a well-timed kiss on my temple.
This kind of attention from him is unexpected, even given the circumstances.
And overwhelming.
There are moments in which I experience abnormal brain function due to oxygen deprivation, namely when he places his big hand on my thigh under the table again, this time further up, for a split second when he leans across to refill my glass.
Meanwhile, Emily quietly annihilates an entire bottle of wine.
It starts slow—a casual sip here, a refill there. But as Evelyn’s questions get increasingly more invasive, I think Emily must feel less like everyone’s eyes are on her, because her drinking gets increasingly more reckless.
By the time dessert is served, she’s eyeing the wine in her glass like it personally victimized her.
At some point, Theo’s gaze flicks to mine. Subtle, questioning.
Yes, I notice.
Yes, I’m mildly concerned.
No, I don’t know what to do about it.
So I just keep my focus on Evelyn, nodding along as she launches into a highly specific rant about the decline of proper handwritten letters, while Emily nonchalantly self-destructs beside me.
She’s quiet until she isn’t anymore.
Quiet until I see her out of the corner of my eye, her glazed-over eyes fixed on the spot where the back of Theo’s fingers move lazily back and forth across my shoulder.
I turn to look at her.
She sighs loudly, with a hint of longing. Drunkenly. Twirls the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, eyes glassy, lips curled over her teeth like she’s considering saying something she shouldn’t.
She shouldn’t.
Whatever it is, I know she shouldn’t.
