Page 57 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

I thought of the conversation with Vivienne earlier this morning, of my father’s hand at my back. I quickly tried to figure out how to navigate the situation. “I’ll pay for it.”

“You’ll pay for it?” he echoed, and now, the soft demeanor of his voice was gone. A harshness began seeping through. “With what money? With my money, you mean? Just like you buy all your clothes withmy money.”

I had to think of the right thing to say to appease him, but I came up with no rebuttal. Discreetly, I took a glance over my shoulder to make sure that the bedroom door was still closed. I was all too aware of Sumner in the next room. The door remained shut, and my father’s voice was still quiet, so perhaps Sumner couldn’t hear.

“I refuse to do this song and dance with you, Margot,” my father said. “My patience has reached its peak for your spitefulness. Youwillbehave, or it will be over.”

Horror and embarrassment were two separatethreads in a braid, weaving together in a noose around my neck. I fought the urge to swallow hard. “Ominous,” I said as lightly as I could. “You’ve been watching too many action movies.”

It was the wrong thing to say. My father, a man who rarely raised his voice, was a dangerous creature now with enough brandy in him to stink his breath. I should’ve thought of that. I should’ve calculated that, but I didn’t.

He picked up the empty wine glass and dashed it to the floor in front of my feet. It shattered apart with a scream, shards scraping across the exposed skin of my ankles, and, on instinct, my arms rose to cover my face.

“Everything is a joke to you,” he said through clenched teeth, crossing the room in brisk steps. Glass crunched underneath his Hefman & Italia dress shoes. I had my slippers on, but the bottoms were soft, thin; I was too afraid to take a step. I couldn’t help but check the distance that still stretched between us. “Will it be a joke when you have no place to go? No one in your life? Do you want to be alone?”

“I’ve been alone my entire life,” I returned with a steely gaze of my own, gritting my teeth. “And I will be alone, even if I do what you want and marry someone I don’t know. Don’t pretend you care when we both know you don’t.”

My father suddenly wrapped his hands around my upper arms and squeezed. Tightly. So tightly that I scrunched my shoulders against the grip, attempting to lessen the force. I tried to stay silent, but a gasp slipped through. “It isn’t just your dignity you’re throwing in the trash, you know. Mine, your mother’s, Aaron’s—you’rebringing down everyone who associates themselves with you.” His eyes were wide, glassy, and almost crazed. “That is why no one does. Why Destelle even left you behind. Kissing the waiter boy, spilling your drink on the most influential person Alderton-Du Ponte has had in its walls. You’re not just embarrassing yourself, Margot, but everyone around you. You’re right, I don’t care that you’re alone. You’ve done it to yourself.”

It was clear my father and my mother were both cut from the same cloth. My mother, who grabbed my chin thinking it’d get me to straighten up. My father, gripping my arms, thinking I’d bow into submission. They never learned that it didn’t work with me.

“You act as if you’ve ever said no to this marriage,” he ranted on. “As if you wouldn’t benefit at all from this marriage. Once you’re married, once we join hands with the Astors, we’ll have everything we could ever want.”

The pressure in my throat was almost too tight to speak around. “Sure, because it’s only my happiness that’s the sacrifice you’ll make.”

My father looked at me strangely, as if this was the first time he was being confronted with the plain and simple words.I don’t want to. He looked like such a stranger at that moment, and I wondered if he thought the same of me. He gripped me, but it was like neither of us knew each other. “Happiness,” he echoed. “It’s subjective. You won’t be happy marrying Aaron, but you won’t be happy being disowned either, would you?”

My father released me, and I swayed from the withdrawal almost as if a breeze in the room threatened to knock me over. He and my mother could grabme, hit me, bruise me, and none of it would hurt more than the way their words were expertly designed to cut. I stared up at him still, but my vision blurred, the specific features of his expression warping.

“I know you know the pros outweigh the cons,” my father said, almost softly now. The brandy on his breath choked me as he leaned in. “Think about what you want, Margot. Be a good girl about this.” He patted my head, and with that, he crunched over the glass to step away.

For a long moment, there was nothing. No ache in my arms, no thoughts in my head—nothing but the compressing numbness that seemed to grow tighter and tighter around my rib cage. The nothingness yawned like a black hole inside me, consuming everything, tugging it all into its depths.

Something small in me snapped, like a rubber band splitting. That was the feeling; a thousand rubber bands squeezing my insides, holding me together. Another snapped, bringing a flicker of pain through the blissful deadness.

When my hotel room door fell shut, that was when I heard my bedroom door creak open, the slight sound just enough to pull me back from the edge. I looked down at the floor, at the shards all around me, sparkling on the floor near my white slippers. Facing Sumner was the last thing I wanted to do. It was one thing to tell him not to pity me when I’d been able to keep everything at bay. Now, with my façade in ruins at my feet, there was no keeping it hidden.

I waited for Sumner’s touch, his hand on my shoulder, his fingersbrushing my palm,something—but it didn’t come. Instead, Sumner walked past me and moved to where the phone sat on the credenza by the sofa, picking up the receiver and pressing a button. I watched numbly, wondering, in a distant way, if he was about to call the police. “Hi,” he said into the phone, turning to look at me. His eyes were profoundly sad. “I’m calling from the penthouse suite. I know it’s a bit late, but can we have housekeeping come up, please?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

An emotion I didn’t feel very often was embarrassment. To be embarrassed, one had to care about the thoughts of others around them, and I rarely ever did. Second-hand embarrassment was one I knew often—God only knew how many times someone had made a fool of themselves at all the parties and fundraisers and galas over the years—but feeling it firsthand was a rarity. So much so that I truly had no knowledge of how to navigate it, aside from pretending absolutely nothing happened.

I sat on the edge of my bed, listening to Sumner chatter with the housekeeping staff in the main room. My door was closed, but their muffled voices still seeped through. Sumner explained how he’d tripped, dropped the glass. I wondered if he knew how much he implicated himself; this gossip would spread like wildfire by tomorrow morning.Sumner was in the Ice Queen’s hotel room late at night. They were even drinking together. What else did they do?

If he wasn’t outcast before, he would be now.

Part of me wished my bedroom door would neveropen. The other part wished Sumner would stop talking to the staff and come hold my hand.Comfort, he’d called it. I wanted it now.

And then, as if he heard my thoughts, Sumner opened my bedroom door and stepped inside. Only my bedside lamps were on, and it was clear from the way he hesitated on the threshold that it took him a moment to adjust. Sumner’s eyes were soft at first until they zeroed in on my feet. Then his gaze sharpened. “Margot, you’re bleeding.”

I looked down. A cut lanced into the skin of my shin, and blood trickled from it in a dark trail. A piece of glass must’ve nicked it. It’d been bleeding long enough that it dotted the top of my white slipper. “I didn’t notice.”

Sumner muttered a curse as he ducked into my bathroom, and a moment later, the faucet was running. I had no time to worry about the state of my bathroom—if there were any of my hairs on the sink or underwear on the ground—before Sumner was already coming back into my bedroom, kneeling before me at my feet.

In his hands, he held a white washcloth, and with the gentlest touch, he began dabbing the drying blood off my leg. The warm water he’d dampened it with felt good on my skin. “Housekeeping is going to vacuum up the glass,” he told me as he wiped. “They brought up extra cups if you wanted another drink.”

I didn’t, but I wished I’d drank more wine earlier, for no other reason but to numb the sheer humiliation of it all. Sumner wiped at where my skin was sliced, and with the blood cleaned, it was clear that the cut was no bigger than the size of my pinky nail. It’d just been bleeding for a while,unnoticed.

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