CHAPTER ELEVEN: MADNESS RAIN
1859 Words
LIORAÉ
Soren doesn't look up from his table when I murmur a good night at the door. This was the man I was warned about yet it still rubbed me in a different way since he had been so attentive all day only to recluse at the end of it.
“Your mom invited me over.” Evan seemed to be waiting for me at the reception and I rolled my eyes when I saw him.
“She did,” I sighed and continued walking, trying to hasten my steps so he couldn’t keep up. “I have no hand in whatever that is so focus all of your attention on her,” i added and his smugness almost disappeared but he seemed to recover too fast.
“By the end of the night, I’d make sure you stop saying that.” His confidence made me want to slap him across the face but maybe it was too early in the night for that.
I walked till I got to the bus stop; he dragged behind me, not ready to leave me just to prove whatever stupid point he had to.
“Are you planning to walk all the way home?”
“Nope,” I replied, feeling the breeze of the evening lift my hair gently. “I’m taking the bus,” I added, pointing to the bus stop at the top of the hill.
“The bus?” he asked in horror.
He was acting like he had grown all privileged, and I was the crazy one for wanting to take the bus when in reality he was supposed to be taking the bus as well to save up.
“Couldn’t we have booked a ride home?”
I stopped and turned to my blinking rapidly with a head tilt. “I didnt stop you.”
His face fell when he realized I was not going to fall for whatever trick he was about to use. In terms of wealth, he didn't have as much as Soren, so why was he so proud? Why was I thinking of Soren now?
“Take a ride and I’ll meet you at home,” I added when his response was silence. I acted as if I was clarifying the terms for him. He cleared his throat and turned his face in the other direction as if I had asked something too great of him.
“Since we are here already, why don’t we take the bus so I can…” I walked off faster, leaving his words in the wind.
Soon enough, we walked in through the door. Camille was at home cutting some vegetables while Mom was fussing around the kitchen like they had some important guests coming over.
Evan stopped to watch the game with my father, who barely looked up at me, even though I greeted him. He had not said it yet, but I was sure to get an earful from him tonight on all the ways I had ruined my chances of getting richer.
It was all the things they said in the face of Evan that made him think he was some kind of superstar. That made him walk all over my family without remorse.
“Good, Lioraé, come help me chop these.” Camille let out a sigh of relief as soon as our eyes met. I shook my head.
“I have had a long day at work.” I wanted to let them know slowly that the reality of what I wanted to say was that I would never waste my time cooking for Evan.
My mom turned to me as if I were being ridiculous. “So did Camille, but she is still helping out,” she snapped and walked over to me, taking my bag from my hand and putting it onto the only clean spot in the kitchen she could find.
“Make yourself useful.”
“I won’t be cooking for Evan,” I replied, and she stopped in her tracks on the way to the stove. Both women looked at me as if I had gone mad. “Not now, not ever.”
“When you get married, who is going to be doing the cooking?” "Camille?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She seemed a bit surprised that I was going to refuse my mother so outrightly.
“I have mentioned it a few times, but none of you seems to get it: I am not getting married to Evan.”
“Lioraé, I have had enough of that stupid talk; it is…”
“I am here tonight to make sure everyone gets it,” I add, picking up my bag and turning on my heels.
“Oh, that foolish girl,” my mom cried, like I was some kind of actual foolish girl.
“We can persuade her,” Camille added.
After she got married and then divorced, they had all been adamant about making sure I was well-married off. To a rich man who would save my family from ruin, even if he was going to treat them all like second-class citizens.
“Evan is a good guy, the best of the best that could come.” I can’t even recall if I had ever truly loved Evan or if it was my family’s pressure to love him. I had grown to tolerate him and spend time with him regardless.
This was not how this was supposed to end, at least not to my family, but this was about me, and I was not going to let anyone push me into this marriage.
“Lioraé,” Evan called in a meek voice first when we sat at the table. I looked up at him, and the nervous face of my mother beside me told me all I needed to know. He was about to spit out a half-assed apology and find a way to make that about him.
“I wouldn't accept your apology even in a million years.”
“You are being unreasonable,” my mother cried.
“Was that the first time you cheated on me?” I already knew the answer, but I hoped that my family would find out that to Evan I was not a wife, just a charity case.
“Men cheat,” my father said as if that was a verdict I had to live with for the rest of my life. “And I am sure with a decent man like Evan, he only had to get that out of his system the first time; it won't happen again.”
I get up gently and shake my head. “If you want money so bad, then maybe you…” I pointed at my father, and he looked taken aback. “...Should have not spent your youth gambling away all you had and you…” I pointed at my mother’s face. “...Should not have spent everything on trying to look rich.”
I pressed my hand into a prayer position and showed it around the table. “I am not your get-out-of-poverty ticket.”
“Lioraé, what the hell are you saying?” Camille asked, trying to pull me back down, but I had had enough.
“I only agreed to this dinner so we are all on the same page. I won't marry Evan no matter what anyone says, and if you don't stop bugging me, then I have no choice but to leave the house.”
“Where are you going to get the money for an apartment?” My father sneered. “You think money grows on trees?”
“Lioraé,” Evan called again. “We can talk this out.”
“I only want to talk with reasonable people who would understand, but you would never understand, and honestly, I don’t blame you.”
I pushed the chair back and stormed in the direction of my room with my family screaming my name as I walked rapidly. Knowing them, this was not the end; my mom was going to try more to bring us together, and Father was going to continue taunting me, while Camille would try to reason with me.
“Lioraé, you need to move out ASAP.”
My phone ringing was the response to my thought. Soren Vale flashed across the screen.
“Hello, sir?”
“Soren, it’s past working hours.”
“How can I help you?”
“There is an event tomorrow, so instead of coming straight to the office tomorrow, come to the address I sent you.”
“Okay, sir…” “Soren,” I coerced myself. For all the matter, I was going to choose peace.
“See you then.” He cut off the call, and I wondered if I had missed a chapter. This was what a normal boss-staff relationship was supposed to feel like, yet why did it feel strange to me?
I lie in bed with my door locked so I don't get disturbed, at least for the entire night. Madness could reign in the morning, but this night I was resting.
The next morning, I hurried to the shop that Soren had asked me to come to, and he wasn’t there. I woke up at the crack of dawn before any of them could and slipped out of the house, walking all the way just to spend time.
“I am here to see Mr. Vale?”
“You are?” The attendant looked at me like I was not supposed to be there, and I couldn't really name her. My heels were worn out, and I knew they deserved a change, but I just couldn't afford it right now.
“Yes.”
“This way,” she ushered them to a private changing room. “He said to try all the dresses and pick the one that fits.” She looked at my feet and sighed. “I guess you’d be needing shoes as well.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I will go get those,” she added and left them alone. Before I began to slip out of my work clothes and into dinner dresses, I had to confirm what madness that was.
“Hello, Mr. Vale,” I hummed, and I knew what his response was going to be, so I chimed. “It’s working hours already.”
“Are you at the store?”
“Yes, but you aren’t, and I am supposed to try on clothes?”
“For the event tonight, it’s a gala.”
“Why would I need a dress?”
“Consider it a business expense and get a beautiful one and every other thing you might need,” he said, ready to hang up. Something about him still felt off, but I pushed the thought out of my mind. “Bonus point if the dress is sexy.”
Even as I tried on the dresses, his words rang in my head. Did I want a sexy dress, or was I letting his words decide for me?
- Writer
