Page 74 of The Bad Brother
I’m handling it just fine until I find myself, face-to-face with Ethan’s mother.
“Sloane, darling,” she says when she sees me weaving my way through the crowded restaurant toward my mother’s table. “I’m so relieved to see you.” Her tone lilts just enough to tell me, and the clutch of social climbing gossips she’s lunching with, thatrelievedisn’t at all what she’s feeling. “I’m so sorry things ended the way they did, dear,” she simpers up at me while reaching out to pat my hand with one of her manicured claws. “Hopefully, once things are settled, you’ll find the lesson in your heartbreak.”
Ah, yes—the lesson.
Because the fact that her son recorded himself coming in my best friend’s mouth while my mother toasted our engagement and thensent the video to mewhile I was busy saving lives is the sort of lesson I should learn from. Because what Ethan did to me is somehow my fault.
Myfault.
Myresponsibility.
Fuck that.
“No need to be sorry, Monica,” I say, pulling my hand out from under hers with a sugary sweet smile. “I’m not heartbroken, in the slightest.” Aiming that same sweet smile around the table in equal measure, I shake my head. “As a matter of fact, I’m the one who’srelieved.”
Her altruistic mask hardens and starts to crack. She thought publicly humiliating me was going to be fun.Something to laugh about with her friends after I slunk away with my tail tucked between my legs. Why would she think any different? In the nearly two years I dated and was engaged to her son, I’ve never been anything but meek and deferring. Never stood up for myself. Never showed my backbone or put my foot down. I just let her walk right over me. I even let her wipe her feet because I wanted her to like me. Because it was just plain easier than putting up a fight. From the look on her face, she’s starting to understand that nothing about this conversation is going to be fun.
Not for her, anyway.
“And why is that, dear?” she asks, her hand curling around the stem of her martini glass like she’s getting ready to throw what’s left of it in my face.
I hope she does. It’ll be worth it.
“Because, averyskilled someoneveryrecently showed me,” I say, leaning into her table on an exaggerated whisper. “Your son couldn’t fuck his way out of a paper bag. A lifetime of bad sex is definitely not something I signed up for.”
The shocked, collective gasp that ripples around the table like a wave while Ethan’s mother stares up at me, filler-plumped mouth hanging open in an exaggerated O, is priceless. Miraculously still dry and not covered in watered down martini, I decide to end things here before she snaps out of it and starts screeching. On impulse, I reach into the pocket of my dress and pull out the handful of sour candy I stuffed into it before I left the loft.
I don’t need them.
Not anymore.
“Enjoy the rest of your lunch.” I toss the individuallywrapped candies onto the table with another sugary smile before walking away without a backward glance, gaze zeroed in on my mother who is now standing beside her chair, anxiously watching the exchange between me and Ethan’s mother from across the room.
“Do I want to know what just happened?” my mother asks me as soon as I’m within earshot.
“Probably not,” I tell her while I wait for the waiter who’s hovering around our table to pull out my chair. I’ve seen him before. He’s at the Mill, most Saturday nights, when I get off work. From the barely suppressed smile on his face, I’d guess he lives in Barrett. “But I’m going to tell you anyway.” Seated at the table, I pull my tented napkin from the silver-plated charger in front of me and snap it open. “That drunk, bleach-blonde fossil thought it would be fun to try to make me cry over her worthless excuse for a son, so I set her straight.”
“Oh, Sloane…” Collapsing into her chair on an exaggerated sigh. “How are we going to fix this if you just insist on making the situation worse?”
“Ethan sent me a video of Amy sucking his dick at our engagement party, Mom,” I say, not even bothering to keep my voice down. If these bitches want to talk about me, I’ll give them something to talk about. “I fail to see how this is a situation worth fixing.”
Looking around with an alarmed expression on her face, my mother lets out another exaggerated sigh before reaching across the table for my hand. “All men stray.” She gives my fingers a brief, commiserating squeeze before she lets them go and sits back, looking up with an expectant expression at the waiter hovering near our table. “We’llhave a bottle of 2013 Perrier-Joulet Rosé and the tomato water salad with marinated salmon.”
“Excellent choice, Mrs. Barclay,” he says in a tone that tells me my mother could have ordered a shit sandwich, smothered in pig vomit and he would approved her choice, just the same. Turning to look at me, he gives me a nod. “And what will the young miss be having?”
Opening my mouth to tell him thedoctorwill be having the filet, medium rare, with potatoes Delphine, I’m cut off before I can speak.
“She’ll be having the same.”
When my mother says it, something akin to sympathy flits over the waiter’s face before he gives me a nod. “Very well.”
As soon as he’s gone, my mother reaches for her water glass and picks up where she left off. “To be honest, you’re lucky this happened early on,” she says to me before taking a sip. “Better to learn that particular lesson now, rather than later.”
There’s that word again.
Lesson.
“Cheating isn’t normal, Mom,” I tell her, watching while she fusses with her napkin. “It isn’t a lesson either—not the kind you think it is.”
