He finally made eye contact with me. “Margot, what the hell are you doing?”
I wound up and launched another. “Three years!” I exploded as it beaned him on the forehead. Finally! I tried again, but that one curved toward Amber, who ducked out of the way. “Three years I put up with your boring golf stories and your pants with the little whales on them and your tiny clueless dick!”
A titter went through the crowd. Tripp was stunned motionless, and I took the opportunity to pelt his chest with another scone.
“Ouch!” he said, which I found hilarious. “Stop throwing things! And my dick isn’t tiny! Or clueless!”
“Yes, it is!” I flung another one at him, but he was moving now, so I missed him completely and it bounced off the wall. “You don’t know the first thing about a woman’s orgasm! I used to have to get myself off after you took me home, asshole!”
I heard muffled laughter as I threw the next scone, which tipped over a skinny pillar candle that, unfortunately, happened to be lit. It burned a hole in the white tablecloth before someone nearby blew it out.
“Margot, have you lost your fucking mind?” Tripp yelled from across the table, hands in front of his face like I was throwing grenades, not scones.
“Maybe,” I seethed, reaching for another one but feeling nothing but an empty tray. “Maybe I have, because I was going to tell you tonight that I’d decided to think about your shitty proposal.”
Tripp’s face went white.
“What proposal?” Amber asked, looking from him to me.
I opened my mouth. Watched him squirm. It felt fantastic.
“Margot, please. Don’t do this.” His eyes begged me for mercy. “You’ll embarrass us both. Let’s talk in private. I have a good reason for everything.”
I had no desire to talk to him in private ever again, and I already knew about his fucked-up “good reason”. But he was right—if I told the truth about last night, I’d be embarrassed too. I’d just announced that I’d come here willing to consider his proposal, which had been a sham anyway.
Glancing down, I spied the cherry pie, slipped my palm beneath it, and briefly considered one final, humiliating heave. Someone in the crowd gasped.
But I looked at Tripp again and felt a surge of power, which prompted a return of my self-control. My dignity. My manners.
I was Margot fucking Thurber Lewiston, and I had class. No one could take that away from me.
Gathering my tipsy wits, I assumed a cool expression and stood tall. “Actually, I never want to talk to you again. Enjoy your evening, everyone. Lewiston for Senate.”
As I walked out, I heard him say. “Jesus. Crazy bitch.”
I know what you’re thinking.
I should have fucking thrown the pie.
Three
Jack
I couldn’t sleep.
Not like it was a surprise. I didn’t sleep well in general, but August was always the worst. I was lucky to get a couple hours a night.
“It’s the heat,” my sister-in-law Georgia had said last week. “Why don’t you come sleep at our place for a few nights?”
“Better yet, put air conditioning in that old cabin,” my younger brother Pete had put in. “Wouldn’t cost much to get a window unit.”
It wasn’t the heat.
“Maybe it’s the light,” Georgia had said last year. “Maybe if you tried going to sleep with the light off, you’d relax more.”
But I needed the light. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t even breathe until the sun came up.
I tried not to get mad when my family members told me what to do or tried to solve my problems with simple solutions when the real issue was something so complicated, they’d never understand. But I wasn’t always good at thinking before speaking or controlling my temper.
Just yesterday I’d let loose on Pete for sneaking up on me from behind while I was repairing a fence along the property line in the woods. In hindsight, throwing him to the ground while screaming at him for being a “cocksucking motherfucking asshole with shit for brains” was probably a little out of line, but damn it—he knows better than to tap me on the shoulder when I don’t know he’s there. The whole reason I don’t listen to music while I work is so that I can stay aware of my surroundings. I don’t like to be taken by surprise.
The only person who ever understood that about me was Steph. A few years ago, my family planned a surprise party for my thirtieth birthday, probably because they knew I’d say fuck no to any kind of social event that required talking to people, and Steph made sure to tell me every detail ahead of time. She’d tried and tried to convince my brothers and parents it was a terrible idea, but they’d insisted that “getting out of the house” and “celebrating my life” would be good for me.
I only went because Steph begged me to. At first, I’d been furious and refused to consider it, but then she told me how my mother and aunt had flown up from Florida, and my sister-in-law had made cassata cake, and my niece Olivia had learned how to play “Happy Birthday” on the piano just for me. It was hard to resist Steph when she really had her heart set on something, plus she’d given me this really amazing blowjob in bed that morning.
She knew all my weaknesses.
Lying there in the dark, I twisted my wedding ring around my finger.
Three years.
It seemed impossible it had been that long. Her glasses were still on her nightstand, her clothes still in the closet, and I still expected her to be there when I rolled over in our squeaky-springed old bed wanting to tuck her little frame against mine.