Maeve
A knock on the door of my tiny bungalow brings me back from the memories of the day. I was about to take a warm bath and fall asleep for the next ten years and possibly miss the wedding. We haven’t set the date yet, so I have hope left that it still might not happen at all. Maybe my parents will find some decency and let me off the hook. Maybe even Ezra finds some and stops threatening me with jail.
When I open the door, I find my sister with arms still crossed over her chest and a hip popped to the side. I step aside, letting her in. She walks in, fumes coming out of her ears.
“Hello, Bea,” I probe carefully, trying to figure out the level of her anger.
“You can’t go through with this wedding,” she starts off the bat, turning toward me.
“Why?”
“Because he was mine first.” Her chin goes up.
“He wasn’t yours, Bea.” My voice is careful. Considerate. Suddenly, I don’t like her calling him hers. “You’ve never even met him. Plus, you don’t really want him.”
“But we were announced as a couple. He was going to go through with it until Dad opened his big mouth,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I walk to the couch and sit. “You don’t want him, Bea,” I repeat. “He’s not that much different than Mom and Dad are.”
“And you are suddenly okay with that?” She laughs. “You agreed pretty fast for someone who doesn’t want to be tied to anyone.”
I chew on my lower lip, contemplating if I should tell her the truth. I don’t know this person after all. Beatrice has changed a lot since I’ve seen her last. So have I. But seeing her worried eyes and anxious foot tapping on the floor makes me believe that we both will benefit from me opening up to her.
“We knew each other from before all of this,” I start quietly.
“Oh,” she exhales surprisingly. “From New York?”
“Yes,” I confirm. “I was working in the building he worked at. Well, he owned. Still owns I think. And I might have accidentally started the fire there.” I wince at the end, remembering how that night went down. “And then I might have escaped the hospital when he came to press charges against me.”
“Ohmigod!” she exclaims, jumping to my side and taking a seat next to me. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Sincere concern in her voice makes my chest ache.
“I fell asleep next to the electric oven. And I guess it went up in flames. I woke up when it had already caught fire.”
Her eyes squint. “And the asshole wanted to press charges for that?”
“I mean…” I’m looking for the right words without it seeming like I’m trying to save him in her eyes. Because that would be totally ridiculous. “The city shut down the whole building. Indefinitely, I assume. So yeah.” I shrug. “I guess he has it out for me.”
Her mouth forms anobefore she turns her worried face to me. “So he wants to marry you to make your life miserable?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I shrug again. “I don’t know much about him.”
“Besides the size of his dick apparently,” she mumbles under her breath. Just loud enough to ensure I could hear her.
I clear my throat before speaking. “I didn’t know he was engaged. You know me.”
“Do I?” She looks at me, tilting her head to the side. “It’s been five years, Maeve. A lot of things have changed. Plus, I didn’t think you would escape in the middle of the night like you did. So I guess I’ve never really known you.”
My heart squeezes in my chest. “That’s not fair. You know what they did.”
“Yeah, I know.” She smiles sadly. “You know why? Because when you left, they kept doing that to me. They treated me like furniture they had to show and marry off to the best candidate.”
“And you think Ezra is the best candidate?”
“He’s under thirty and doesn’t have a saggy butt,” she explains, rolling her eyes. “Trust me, better than the last ten dates Mom sent me on. He was supposed to be my ticket out, you know. I thought I could be rid of them.”
“But you’d be in a loveless marriage.”
