Fake Dark Vows

3

Rose

“Okay, this is beyond a joke.” I toss my dinner plate into the frothy water in the sink and wipe bubbles from my cheek with the back of my arm.

I know where the instruction came from without waiting for my dad to elaborate.

Mr. Weiss.

The man in the gray silk suit.

The man who was horrified by a few fingerprints on his goddamned perfectly pressed pants. I’d bet his kids only get to speak to him from a safe distance. I can picture him standing in the doorway of their bedrooms and wishing them goodnight with a relieved smile at surviving another day without getting his hands dirty.

“He looked at Izzie like she was something I’d dragged in off the sidewalk,” I grumble over my shoulder. Something smelly. Something that he would no doubt have his assistant remove from the soles of his shoes to save him from getting his fingers soiled.

No, scratch all the above—Mr. Weiss isn’t the paternal type. I’d bet he never ate watermelon without a fork either.

I’m angry at myself for wasting any emotion on the guy, but seriously, who does he think he is? He could’ve asked me politely to take Izzie outside, but instead, he gets his assistant to suggest that Dad use the café across the street the next time he forgets his lunch.

“Hey, Rosie, it’s okay,” Dad says. “Mr. Weiss has an image to maintain. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t be so forgetful in the mornings.”

“Don’t apologize for him, Dad.”

I inhale deeply and plunge my hands into the hot water. I don’t like it when my dad bows down to his bosses like this. Running a corporation is one thing, and sure, the guy is probably under a lot of stress, but it doesn’t give him the prerogative to treat people unkindly.

“He can’t dictate what you eat, Dad,” I say, swallowing my initial response. “Izzie wasn’t even being noisy. Thirty seconds later, and we’d have been out of there, and Mr. Weiss would’ve been none the wiser.”

“Bad timing, Rosie. That’s all it was. You can’t diss the man for doing his job.” Dad cleans ketchup from Izzie’s face with a baby wipe and gets her down from the table.

Maybe Dad’s right. The guy probably didn’t give the incident a second thought while he sat through his dull afternoon meetings, and scrolled through his emails, and added his illegible signature to a ream of classified documents. He probably doesn’t even remember the call he asked his assistant to make.

Maybe this anger bubbling inside my chest isn’t even about him.

The doorbell rings. I grab a towel to dry my hands and take it with me to the front door, Izzie almost tripping me up along the way.

It’s Jess, Izzie’s mom. “Sorry I’m so late,” she says. She bends down, scoops her little girl into her arms, and smothers her face in kisses while Izzie squirms and tries to push her away. “Have you been a good girl for Auntie Rose?”

“Yes, Mommy.” She wraps her arms around her mom’s neck and rests her cheek on Jess’s.

Jess and I have been friends since middle school.

As eleven-year-olds we became inseparable over our shared love of Fleetwood Mac songs, flared jeans and disco boots, Scooby Doo and Ghostbusters. As we grew older, Jess became more athletic and captained the high school basketball team, while I grew a pair of breasts the size of melons and realized that winning the 200-meter sprint was never going to happen.

We didn’t hang around with the popular kids, but neither were we relegated to the bottom of the school hierarchy, floating along somewhere in the middle with our quirky obsessions and silly sense of humor. I always thought that we were tolerated by the jocks and the trendy girls because of Jess’s love of sports, while she put it down to my breasts.

Whatever the reason, our friendship survived high school, relationships with boys, college, and everything else that life has thrown our way since.

“She’s been an angel as always.” I hold the door open wide to let her in.

“Hmm.” Jess wrinkles her nose. “Will someone please explain to me why you get the angel and I get the demon?”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, tickling Izzie’s waist and making her giggle. The child will break hearts when she’s older.

“Okay.” Jess sets her daughter down and eyes me suspiciously. “What’s happened? And before you say ‘nothing’, I can feel the heat of your wrath from here.”

Dad pokes his head around the kitchen doorway and calls out, “Come on in, Jess. I’ll make coffee.”

We go through to the kitchen where Dad already has the coffee brewing.

“Hi, Mr. Carter,” Jess says. “I can’t stay long. I need to get this little one into bed. Dave’s on babysitting duties tonight, and I’m going out for a couple of drinks with my cousin.”

“You should go with them, Rose.” Dad’s shameless when it comes to forcing my company onto others. “It’ll do you good to get out.”

Jess’s gaze hops between the two of us. “Yes, come, Rose. You can tell me all about what’s got you so rattled.” Her eyebrows dance independently. “My guess is it’s man related.”

Dad chuckles, and I shoot him a glare that goes unnoticed. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, sweetie, you tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.”

“Okay, I take it all back. Sounds like this guy wears his boxers too tight.” Jess downs her glass of wine and asks the bartender for a refill after I recount the incident in the lobby of Weiss Tower.

The bar is busy, but not so noisy that we have to shout to hear ourselves speak; it’s buzzing, and the urge to run home and hide behind a book in my pajamas is real.

“I just wish Dad would speak up for himself,” I say, rubbing my thumb over the condensation on my glass.

She shakes her head. “Rose, your dad is a grown man. He has worked hard all his life, raised a quite spectacular daughter, and he doesn’t need you to hold his hand.”

I sip my drink, swallow, and feel the familiar sting behind my eyes. Dad meant well, suggesting that I get dressed up in something other than a T-shirt and faded jeans and spend some time with my best friend, but alcohol always produces the same result.

Jess’s warm hand covers mine.