“Need. Air.” I struggle to say beneath her embrace and she grips me tightly one more time before letting me go. I pull away before she can do that “let me get a look at you. You’ve grown so much” thing. Because that’s absolutely something she would do even though I’ve only been away four months and I’m twenty-two years old.
She ushers me into the kitchen, leaving me to sit at the island while she puts together whatever snack tray she’s prepared from my arrival.
“Your father’s—”
“Don’t care,” I say, grabbing a stick of celery from the tray and chomping on it.
“Danika, I’m not doing this with you all weekend.”
“Fine,” I say as I take more and more bites of my celery. I chew none to gently and talk through my garbled food. “As long as he doesn’t interact with me, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
My mom rests her palms on the counter across from me. “What do you expect me to do here, Danika? He is your father. You need to show him some respect.”
“The same respect he shows you? No problem. I’ve had insults filed away for years. I’m happy to break them out.”
She sighs deeply and I know I should give it a rest. It’s not very fair to her that she gets the brunt of my anger toward him. But it’s also not fair to me to watch him take bits of her spirit from her every chance he gets.
“I will sit at the table with him for Thanksgiving. But I will not smile and nod along with his brutality. Not like you do.”
My mom’s eyes meet mine and she knows how hard this compromise is for me. She doesn’t push it. Instead, we share a brief moment of coming together.
We spend the next few hours cooking our Thanksgiving meal, putzing around the kitchen, drinking wine and gossiping about neighbors in town. My mom fills me in on the people she sees from my high school that are still around and I tell her about Nico and how much he’s been bothering me in medical school.
I very conveniently leave Arden out of every conversation. My mom doesn’t know that we’re living together and she definitely doesn’t know that we’ve beenpretenddating, if we even are anymore. I’d say our pretend dating has very much turned into real dating without either one of us even realizing.
For all my mother knows, I’m still living with Margot and Sydney, that’s how out of touch she is with my real life.
I wish I could tell her about Arden. I want to be able to share these things with her. My life at school and living with him. The relationship we’ve been not so slowly tumbling toward these months. I want to be able to confide in her about it all but I know that she wouldn’t understand. Or worse, she’d tell my father and then I can kiss my school’s funding goodbye. I can practically hear him now. “My daughter is not shacking up with some asshole to attend the college that I pay for.”
I roll my eyes and cut another slice of turkey off the bone and onto the plate. It’s almost time for dinner but Kevin is nowhere to be found.
Thank fucking god. Maybe I’ll actually be able to enjoy my Thanksgiving at home for once.
My mom is fretting over her phone, calling my dad and being met with voicemail but I couldn’t be happier.
“Leave him, Mom. He clearly has better places to be than here.” I place the last platter down on the table and pull out my chair to start digging in.
“What if he’s hurt?”
I scoff. “A girl can dream.” Mom’s head whips toward me. I raise my hands in surrender but I don’t apologize. I never do. I mean what I say when it comes to that man.
Just as I’ve piled my plate high with turkey and all the southern fixins, the door swings open.
In he waltzes, the devil himself. Reeking of whiskey and bad intentions.
“Where’s my plate, Lara.” It’s not a question. It’s a demand. It’s a scolding. How dare she not have his plate ready for him at the table?
Kevin sits at the head of the table, to the right of my seat. My mom rushes to prepare him a plate with everything on it. She puts it down in front of him and then sits at his side, across from me.
“My drink?” He demands again and Mom hurries to pour him a whiskey from the bar cart. She places it at the corner of his plate and then sits.
Mom picks up her fork, Dad bites into his bread, and I grab his whiskey.
Two pairs of eyes jolt to me immediately. One is full of worry and the other, disdain.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks me.
Maintaining eye contact with the brute, I take a generous slug of the beverage, enjoying the burn of it down my throat. Then I take another. I drink the entire whiskey until it’s gone and then I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, placing the empty cup on the table and picking up my fork to enjoy my Thanksgiving meal.