Page 41 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

“I can’t believe that was our first impression!”

“She must hate us…”

“No, she must hate Yvette. Could you blame her?”

My mother came at me and picked up my arm. Her fingers tightened. “A word,” she said in a very pleasant tone, one that would’ve fooled anyone except me. She escorted me into the kitchen, where the staff was working to clean up behind the scenes. They gave us space, no doubt reading the room my mother created. “You did that, didn’t you? I’ll never stop being amazed at the lengths you go to, behaving like a spoiled brat, you know that? Ruining her suit, Margot Massey?”

“I would’ve done it even if it hadn’t been an expensive suit,” I said, as if it made my actions remotely better. The truth was I was just as horrified as my mother was, appalled I could’ve done such a thing. If I’d been wearing the suit Vivienne had on, I would’ve lost my mind if someone spilled something on it. The security would’ve been haulingmeout—for murdering the person who’d tripped.

“You knew it was. You knew, and you did it anyway.” My mother raised her hand as if to smack me, but when I didn’t flinch, she let out a sharp,harsh breath instead. “You try to ruin everything, don’t you? I don’t know where I went so wrong to have a daughter like you. I truly don’t.”

She was a master swordsman, my mother, because she knew just the right words to say to make sure they cut deep.

It was then that she seemed to notice there were other eyes in the kitchen. My mother straightened, smoothing a hand down her sundress. Her tone was a tad bit more controlled. “I hope you can keep a closer eye on her.”

It took me until a new voice answered in reply before I realized she wasn’t speaking to me. “It won’t happen again,” Sumner said in a low voice, directly behind me.

“It had better not.” With the statement hanging in the air, my mother stalked off back toward the event hall.

I stared at the spot in the kitchen where my mother stood long after she left. The staff continued cleaning around me as if I were a fixed pillar. I squeezed my hands into fists until my fingers bit into my palm, forcing my breathing to stay even.

I had grown used to the thinly veiled comments, the indirect insults, so to have it laid out in such a blatant way slammed into me like a blow. Maybe it was because it was coming so quickly off of Yvette’s harsh comments yesterday, or because it was my own mother saying it, or perhaps it was because even I knew I was in the wrong—whatever the reason, it stung to the point that my eyes threatened to fill like a child’s.I don’t know where I went so wrong to have a daughter like you.

And another thing that made it worse: Sumnerwitnessed it. “Margot,” he began tentatively, laying his hand on my shoulder.

I slapped it off before I could think about it, the gentle pressure enough to make me snap. “Would you stop touching me?” I demanded, smacking at my shoulder again even though his hand had already fallen. “I’m not some little kid you have to comfort. I don’t like to be touched; don’t touch me.”

Sumner raised his palms level with his shoulders, pressing his lips together. He wasn’t fighting a smile; I didn’t know what the expression was. I didn’t look closely. Like every other staff in the kitchen, he became faceless, just like the day I’d first met him.

I was a bad daughter? No one liked to talk to me? As if I cared. As if I didn’t actively seek to isolate myself. As if I eventriedto be a good daughter—my mother didn’t deserve one.

Drawing in a sudden breath, I turned on my heel and exited the kitchen through the door to the hallway, bypassing the people still clutching to the remains of Mimosa Morning, ignoring the staff who were lingering for any threads of gossip, and leaving Sumner and his puppy dog eyes behind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What did it mean to be an adult? Was it age? Independence? Did one magically turn into an adult at eighteen, or when something adultish happened to them? I often wondered. There were times I still felt like a teenager in an adult’s body, like I was still seventeen instead of twenty-two. There were times I felt passable as an adult, though. Moving in here. Graduating college.

Sitting in my hotel room all day Sunday and Monday, though, waiting for my mother or father to come charging in, had me feeling very much so like a child grounded to her room, slowly going insane.

Neither of them ever came.

I wanted to go see Nancy, but I didn’t feel up to batting back and forth with her yet. I wanted to go out for a drive, but didn’t want to call on Sumner in order to do so. Sumner, in general, was someone I tried not to think about. After spending time with someone nearly every day, it felt strange to not see him at all for two days straight, like something was missing.

The sound my hand made when it smacked his handoff my shoulder echoed in my head all weekend—probably because my hotel room was otherwise silent. I shouldn’t have done it.I’m not some little kid you have to comfort,I’d told him, but I’d been acting like one. And the humiliating fact of it was enough to keep me from emerging from my room.

To occupy my mind as the clock ticked down Monday night, I sketched in my art book. I’d begun keeping one in the later days of middle school, when fashion had just start piquing my interest, and had since filled so many pages with designs of suits and outfits. They weren’t anything spectacular, given that I was all self-taught, but the general idea could still be pulled off the paper. I was at least good enough to guide the clothiers at Gilfman.

Sometimes, in the quiet moments that I sketched a new piece, I wondered what life would’ve looked like if Ihadended up going to one of the fashion schools in New York. The truth I rarely faced was that I could’ve gone. I had been eighteen, a legal adult. My parents might’ve wanted me to get a degree in business, but nothing said Ihadto. They might not have paid my tuition for fashion school, but I was sure that if I’d asked Nancy to invest her money in the degree to send me to New York, she would’ve. I could’ve been like Destelle and taken the first-class ticket out of this town when it’d been offered to me.

I hadn’t done that, though. I’d been too much of a coward, too much of a child afraid to lose the remaining respect of her parents. I was doing the same thing now, agreeing to marry a man because I was afraid.

I knew that. And I did nothing about it.

With a sigh, I sat back in my chair and dropped mypencil. The sketch I worked on now looked far too much like my last one, and the one before that. It seemed I only knew how to create one silhouette, one pattern. I’d never learn how to advance, but remain stuck sketching the same suit over and over again.

Needing a new distraction, I picked up my phone and typed ‘Aaron Astor’ into the search, hoping to find the article Sumner had read the other day. I doubted there’d be any more information, but I had the urge to see it with my own eyes rather than letting Sumner read it aloud to me.

I scrolled and scrolled, changed the keywords and search terms, but never came across the article again. Figured.

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