The server beams with faux happiness for us. “Yes, sir. I’ll have the sommelier bring it right away. I’ll be back for your orders momentarily if you’re ready.”
Chadwick leans toward me with a gleam in his eye to whisper in my ear. “I’m starving. Gonna need my energy for tonight.”
Eww. Gross.
I jerk back in my chair and pretend to cough, but Chadwick doesn’t even notice because he’s already telling my father something about the menu. I can’t find it in me to be anything but relieved that he’s oblivious to how his presence is affecting me.
If my reactions to Chadwick today aren’t a giant red flag that I need to break it off, I don’t know what is. He’s not going to take it well, and I can’t have that discussion—or rather, argument—in front of my father, so it won’t happen tonight. I’ll just have to soldier through and talk to him alone tomorrow.
Thankfully, the men don’t need me to participate in their conversation. They keep right on talking like I’m not even here.
I glance around the restaurant and get caught up staring at a family passing plates around the table so they can taste each other’s dishes. They’re laughing and smiling, and as much as I love seeing that, it sends a stab of envy through me.
We’re not that family. We never will be that family. A corner of my heart cracks at the thought of what will never be.
The champagne comes, and then our food and another round of drinks, followed by dessert. Through it all, my mouth is as dry as sawdust, and the delicious meal is completely tasteless because of the chaos in my brain.
How is it possible that my friends see Chadwick for what he is, but my father only cares about adding a son to the family tree? What is our breakup going to do to my relationship with my father? How the hell am I supposed to handle this gracefully? Why can’t there be an easy way out?
I wish I were one of those people who could just say, “I think we should end it,” but I’m terrified. I know Chadwick’s going to fight dirty to try to get me to stay. Or at least, I think he will. He might be a douchebag, but he’s not stupid and never has been. I’ve always known, in the back of my mind, that if I weren’t who I am, he wouldn’t be with me. But, then again, I also knew that if he weren’t a VP in my father’s company, I wouldn’t be with him either. I would have already ended things.
In a way, we’re both guilty of using the other for our own reasons.
I take a long look at my father and wish we could have a normal relationship where he gave a shit about me on a regular basis, and not just when he was reminded by one of his employees that I’m alive.
Is my father just broken? Or is it me?
My mom said she’d fallen madly in love with Lawrence Priest from the very beginning, but their relationship was tumultuous. They fought and loved passionately in equal measure, until in the end, it burned them both out.
“Don’t look for the raging inferno of love, Scar,” my mother once told me. “Look for the steady heat of a banked flame. It’ll last much longer and won’t leave so many scars on your heart.”
I thought I was following my mother’s advice with Chadwick. There was never a raging inferno, only a low simmer of interest and mutual respect, but that seems to have disappeared.
There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ve reached the end of the line. I just have no idea how to cut things off without a big blowup.
“You remember that, don’t you, Scarlett?”
My father’s question pulls me out of my thoughts.
“Sorry, what?”
“That family vacation we took to the Alps where you learned to ski. I was saying it’d make a great getaway for a family Christmas for all of us.”
And there my father goes, throwing out the lure of something I’d kill for—a family Christmas. My heart practically aches at the thought, because it won’t happen.
For the past few years, he’s been out of the country for Christmas with his most recent wife and occasionally some of her children. I wasn’t invited because she said I looked too much like my mother and she couldn’t handle it.
But after they divorced this spring ... Dad’s a free agent who apparently has time for his daughter again.
“I love to ski, so you know I’m down for it. We could do New Year’s there too. Make a week of it,” Chadwick says.
For a moment, I contemplate if I could stomach being with him a few more months in order to have that one week with my father.Think of the memories, Scarlett.
I picture myself in the middle of a snow globe, laughing with my parents and tossing snowballs like we did in the Alps. My mom’s golden-blond hair shone in the sun as she dodged out of the way in her black spandex ski pants and puffy pink jacket. It’s a memory I’ve savored for years. There isn’t much I wouldn’t give to have another one just like it. I could wrap it up in my heart and hold on to it long after my father forgets I exist again.
“That sounds great, Dad.” It breaks my heart to think the trip won’t even get booked if I break up with Chadwick. My father will find some reason not to go if it’s just the two of us. Like he’s uncomfortable being around his only daughter alone. The disappointment shreds me.
What do I do?