Page 7 of The Ring
Around 5:30 p.m., once I finished getting ready, I went to look for my brother. Just as I had expected, I found him in his home office, dressed in a black tuxedo, ready for the evening ahead.
I knocked on the door, though it was more of a formality since the door was wide open. When he finally noticed me, I asked, “Are you ready to go?”
The gala didn’t start until 7:00 p.m., but Anthony is kind of a control freak who likes to inspect everything beforehand and loves punctuality.
He glanced up briefly, then returned to his computer. His yellow-green eyes, which can sometimes look deeply intimidating, were calm and focused.
“Yes, I’m just finishing a few things here,” he replied without looking away. “Can you do me a favour in the meantime?”
“What?” I asked.
He glanced at the tray on the table in the small living room of his office, and I immediately knew exactly what the favour was about. “No, no, andno,” I said, shaking my head.
“Please, I have to finish sending a few emails before we can head to the gala,” he pleaded, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Fine,” I conceded reluctantly. “But you owe me.”
He nodded without looking up from his screen.
“And I only accept payment in the form of a Chanel or a Hermès bag,” I added with a smirk.
“Not jewellery?” he wondered, running a hand through his brown hair, the same shade as mine.
“Jewellery too, but only if it’s over three thousand pounds.”
He chuckled, and I picked up the tray, heading off to do the job the maids used to handle. We stopped asking them to do it after two quit using the same phrase:“I don’t get paid enoughfor this.”I can’t blame them. I have several trust funds with millions of pounds in each, and I still don’t think that is enough for me to be doing this. The amount of hours and money I’ve spent in therapy after accidentally opening my mother’s bedroom door and finding everything from her having BDSM sex to her creating a sex painting is alarming—it’s probably what put my therapist’s entire family through university.
I reached my mother’s room door and glanced down at the tray, making sure everything was there. Two ibuprofen tablets, a glass of water, an atomiser with more water, a piece of toast, and that disgusting green juice she swears is the best hangover cure ever. I tried it once, took one sip, and ended up vomiting everything I’d eaten that day.
Most people would knock on the door to wake up their parents, but if by this time of the day my mother hasn’t woken up yet, you usually have to use an atomiser and spray water in her face to wake her. I’ll admit, I do enjoy that part.
I opened the door and found my mother lying in bed in just her underwear, the green-and-white duvet kicked to the floor, her fake blonde hair covering half of her face, and I immediately noticed she had company.Disgusting.Parents should stop having sex after they’ve finished having kids. That should be a law.
On the other side of the bed from where my mother was, a naked young man was sleeping. I tried hard not to look at him because who wants to see who is doing their mother? But as much as I hate to admit it, I’m a bit nosy, and temptation got the better of me. I looked.
And then my jaw dropped as I recognised the back of the naked body lying beside my mother. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to skip lunch, but then I recognised a tattoo with my name on his upper back, one I had spent plenty of nights tracing my fingers through. Atthat moment, I knew for certain—it was TJ’s back. My boyfriend’s back.
Actually, everything dropped—including the tray I had been holding. I looked down at the floor. The china plate shattered into a million tiny pieces, along with both of the glasses. The toast was soaked in green juice, and the water and pills had scattered across the floor. It was like a visual representation of how I was feeling.
I was so shocked by what my eyes were seeing that my brain didn’t register the sound the tray made as it fell. But it was loud… I think. It woke TJ and my mother, and my brother came running from his office.
“Cornelia. What happened?” Anthony exclaimed before looking down at the floor, then into the bedroom, quickly piecing together the answers for himself.
Finally, my mother and TJ realised they weren’t alone in the room. TJ looked at me, then at my mum, then back to me. My mum just looked like she was annoyed we had woken her up, or maybe that I had dropped the tray.
“This… this… it… it isn’t what it looks like,” TJ blurted out, sounding out of it. He scrambled to grab his clothes from the floor, his movements frantic as he pulled on his boxers.
I just stood there in shock, feeling like, in a few seconds, all the plans, hopes, and dreams I had for my future—forourfuture—had been thrown by him straight into the trash.
It felt unfair that the universe didn’t give you any sort of heads-up when it was about to flip your entire life upside down.
It should have.
It would have been nice to know.
I snapped out of it the moment he began to approach me. With every step he took towards me, I took one step back.
I realised then I didn’t know much, and the few things I thought I knew for certain were mostly wrong. Like… like how I once believed he loved me above everything, but Ididknow one thing for sure: I couldn’t be there with him.
