Chapter 60: Dinner Hostage
ELIZABETH HERALD
I was the least liked in my family. That hadn’t always been the case. Before I was the oldest child at twenty-two. According to my loved ones (hahahaha—loved, my ass), I wasn’t as talented or as pretty as my younger half-sister, who was twenty-one. Blaire was the progeny of Dad and my stepmother (AKA mistress), Gardenia. (Yes, Blaire and Gardenia. Blech, right?)
In public, my stepmother played the martyr spouse, who bravely raised the troubled child of her husband and his first wife. Behind closed doors, she treated me like crap, and Dad wasn’t around much to defend me. Not that he would go against Gardenia. He still had a sense of self-preservation.
My father opted out of our home life because he was miserable. However, he was also the CEO of a 100-year-old multi-generational corporation, so he trotted out his family for dinners with other CEOs, gallery openings, charity auctions, political fundraisers, and blah, blah, blah. This evening, we were having dinner, along with other CEO families, at the Carters.
We were sitting in uncomfortable chairs eating things like pistachio-crusted salmon (decent, but not pizza), roasted oysters (pass, it wasn’t pizza), and foie gras (not. pizza.). There was also something spiky and green (spinach? kale? vomit?) that tasted like gasoline-soaked grass.
Gardenia (AKA The Evil One) often kept me from attending these types of social outings, but tonight, she had no choice but to include me. Dad insisted. Probably because it was my twenty-second birthday and he’d promised we’d have cake at Georgio’s after meeting our obligation with the Carters. Georgio’s was my favorite restaurant because the owner was friends with my grandfather, whom I adored. I hadn’t been there since Grandfather went into the assisted living facility more than a year ago.
If we’d been a normal family (ahahahahahahaha), we might’ve, I dunno, declined an evening of corporate elbow-rubbing to celebrate my birthday. But no. Schmoozing the Carters was more important (bitter, you asked? Uh ... yeah. I was.) This looooooong table was filled with guests. My stepmother had managed to seat me at the opposite end of the table, where I was basically sitting alone. She and her daughter and my father—he was on his fourth glass of wine—sat with our hosts, the Carters.
When I wasn’t on display as the problematic daughter of my long-suffering parents, Gardenia liked to pretend I didn’t exist. It wasn’t like my father would protest or like my sister would help. My sibling profited from my misery, and I couldn’t compete with Louis Vuitton and Prada when it came to her love.
The chairs around me were empty. Everyone else was busy talking amongst themselves, leaving me to poke at the weird vegetable (I mean, probably it was a veggie?) on my plate. It was okay. I was used to it. Actually, I preferred it. I wasn’t good at small talk and I hated these people, anyway.
"Is this seat taken?"
I looked up and saw a tall, gorgeous, dark-eyed, well-dressed man standing next to the empty chair. "All yours," I said.