Page 28 of Honey Pot
I held my breath as she looked up at me.
“Pick a different chair,” I said in a more polite tone as more eyes drifted to our end of the table. “Any chair but that one.”
Her head lolled to the side as she inspected me, but she made to rise and move.
“Cael.” Dad’s voice floated over the table, and I already knew he was standing in her defense. “Mary, you stay put,” he said to her in a gentler tone.
“Father,” I clipped, turning my head to look at him.
“It’s just a chair.”
Arlo groaned loudly from behind me as I straightened my posture. He knew better than anyone that the switch had been flipped, that behaving had gone out the window like a hurled brick.
“To you,” I said.
I could hear Arlo stopping Ella from rising to get between us. The legs of her chair slid against the wood flooring, but the whispers were louder than they should be, and everyone was staring.
“Tous.” I looked around at the table full of sad-faced players. “That’sherchair.”
I didn’t have to say Mama because his face tightened, and he knew exactly who I was talking about.
“It’s just a chair, Cael.” He ground his teeth together after he reiterated. “She’s not here. That’s not her. Sit down and have dinner.”
“You never came to a single one of those dinners. You were always too busy in your office.”
“Cael,” Arlo tried then, as the entire team watched us reach a tipping point.
“Watch your mouth,” Dad warned.
“Now you wanna play house forher?” I pointed to Clementine without looking away from him. If I looked at her, if I gave her that moment, it would make her real and my heart couldn’t take it. I wanted the anger, knowing sympathy was the only thing I’d find in her eyes. “Why?”
“Ms. Matthews is a guest of the University.” His hands flexed on the table, turning his knuckles white. The angrier he got, the further a piece of his dirty, graying-blond hair fell into his face.
“Ms. Matthews?” I mocked. I stood silent momentarily, mulling over his words until I inhaled and shook my head at him. “You andMs. Matthews,” I hissed at him, “can enjoy your lasagna. It’s Mama’s recipe.”
I stormed from the house, emotions high and tangled together, creating a monster of anger and grief as I slammed the front door behind me and sunk down onto the front steps of the Nest.
Pretty shades of dark purples and pinks danced through the streaky fall clouds, casting a blush hue over the entire world. I chipped away at the peeling paint on the steps, letting the paint slivers slide under my nails just to feel the stinging rather than the sadness eating me alive.
My body tightened when the door creaked open and her footfalls came across the deck. I knew those footsteps. They echoed in my dreams anytime there was a threat of forgetting her.
“Go back inside,” I snapped. “I don’t have the energy to be nice to you.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Clementine paused on the porch. The sound of her inhaling filled the air.
“I’ve never been mean to you a day in our lives, Clementine.” I tugged at the strings of the bracelet on my wrist, the tangled shades of teal and lavender easily falling apart.
She scoffed and then got quiet.
“Alright, maybe just now, but…” I chewed on the inside of my mouth. “That was her spot at the table. She never used any other place, and it was a lot to see you sitting there. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” she said, settling down on the step beside me, wrapping her arms around herself in the cold breeze that had fallen over the house on the hill. “I didn’t know.”
I couldn't bring myself to look at the sunset, it would hurt me too much. Clementine could outshine the sun,and cool its heat, so the sunset didn't stand a chance against her beauty and I wasn't ready to be that sad. Not yet.
“You didn’t know what? That it was her chair, or that my Dad had turned into a raging asshole? A lot happened while you weren’t around, Plum.”
She flinched away from the use of her nickname. “You say that like I was the one to leave.”
