Page 129 of Burning Deceptions
All eyes swung to me, but I couldn’t care. When had my family turned to such villainy? How were these guests not appalled, affronted, disgusted to have their dinner interrupted by such talk?
Only the faces surrounding this table with one uncomfortable expression or another plastered to them weren’t for my father’s racism or my mother’s homophobia, but for me. I’d spoken out of turn. I’d raised my voice.Ihad disrupted the meal.
“Vera had no idea,” Mrs. Barnett-Thompson added, smoothing over my outburst and redirecting the attention. “She’d had her heart set on a huge wedding for Dalton. You know he’s the only male child in that entire generation of Wickmans. Now they have no heirs.”
“He can adopt,” I said, trying again but, admittedly, with much less fervor. Mary grabbed my elbow and shook her head for me to stop. And truly, it was pointless.
“I heard the Carlsons recently canceled a dinner they had planned with the Wickmans.” Mother tsked. “So it begins. By the end of the year, I bet they’ll be looking to move towns.”
The mayor harrumphed. “No.”
“I’ve seen it happen before. The social circles will push them out until there will be no reason to stay in the region.”
Georgina’s mother, whom I’d wrongly assumed was a silent mouse like her daughter, nodded along with Mother as if they smelled blood in the water.
I dropped my gaze, fighting the bile threatening to choke me. These people would never accept the real me. They would never accept Asher. It was sickening how they tore apart someone’s happy moment and feigned compassion for the woman, the mother, who, in their eyes, had been slighted.
Heat burned behind my eyes. Not for tears, but from staring so hard at the gold-trimmed plate in front of me. A symbol of the wealth I’d taken for granted. The privilege I’d wasted instead of trying harder to make a difference. I fisted my hands to keep from launching the fucking thing at the wall in protest.
Wealth didn’t buy intelligence or sincerity. I wasn’t an idiot. It didn’t buy manners, sympathy, or humanity. Wealth like my family’s had only bought them a lifestyle steeped in prejudice and bias. They were untouchable as long as they let no outsiders in. And I was one of them. Complicit in their ways with my lack of standing against them.
“Excuse me,” I muttered and scooted away from the table.
A small powder room was down the hall, but I raced to the second floor, well out of earshot of everyone, and purged my stomach into the toilet.
These people were revolting. Shameless monsters.
I splashed cold water on my face just as my phone vibrated in my pocket.
Ash
They saved me with pizza!
He’d included a picture of him, Percy, and who I assumed to be Dorian holding oily slices and grinning so hard into the camera. Life could be that simple. I wanted a life that simple.
I snickered, smiled, and then pocketed my phone without a reply.
Amidst this detestable dinner party, among these walls filled with hate, Asher was still able to make me smile, make me laugh, make me wish I were anywhere else as long as it was with him. He deserved more than me. He deserved a man who would stand up for him, respect him in a room full of strangers or a room full of family. He deserved a man who would march into that dining room and tell his parents to go to hell.
What he didn’t deserve was a man who cowered behind him. A man who had ever agreed to dress him as a woman just to save face, to ease his own anxiety and shame.
What he didn’t deserve was me. The man who slowly made his way back to that table and sat with his family and their friends. The man who tightened the mask he’d never know how to live without.
Sleepeludedme.Itwasn’t found at the end of the path I paced. It wasn’t found at the bottom of my bourbon glass. It wasn’t found in bed or on the sofa. Or perhaps it was in all of those places, but my mind refused to see it.
Instead, I thought. I dwelled. I spiraled. I dressed for work and went to my office out of pure muscle memory.
On paper, Asher and I didn’t work. I had no illusions.
He was young, and this might very well be a phase, a whim. For me, this had been growing more permanent for some time now. Despite the differences, Asher acted as if he saw this as a long-term relationship as well. With the glaring evidence from my experiences that one shouldn’t play into stereotypes and norms, I found myself doing it anyway out of fear, out of self-preservation.
Asher was too young and would break up with me once the novelty of an older man wore off. Where would I be then? He couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let him.
“We still on for the gym?” William asked as he poked his head through my office doorway, startling me out of the daze I’d beenin.
The hours between dinner and now didn’t make sense. My eyes burned. My shoulders ached. I hadn’t slept a single moment, and my body as well as my mind made sure I remembered that fact and little else.
“Uh, yeah, yeah.”
