Page 110 of Damnation
“Say it, Ness,” he begs.
“This isn’t the time to talk about it. My mother is in there waiting for me, and if she saw you like this, she’d have a meltdown—”
He kisses me.
Instinctively, I try to push him away with my hands against his chest, nauseated by the taste of alcohol that pervades his mouth, but it’s useless. “I need to hear you say it,” he says against my lips in a deep rumble. “Because the idea that you might not be any more is fucking with my head.” He grabs my hips with both hands and pushes me flat against the gazebo. It’s demanding and desperate, this kiss of his. And when his tongue finds its way into my mouth, it becomes harder to resist it. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.” He pulls back, resting his forehead against mine again. “I forced myself to stay away from you because that’s what you asked me to do, but I need to know that you’re still with me, that I haven’t lost you for good.” The anguish that I can hear in his voice disarms me.
“You know that I’m with you,” I reassure him. “I just want some time to think about it, about how to better deal with this whole situation. For both of our sakes.”
“Think about it…” he echoes in low tones. “I knew we’d get here someday. To the point when you’d smack into harsh reality and then you’d leave.”
Remembering the things Thomas said to me that night when he opened up completely for me, I feel sorrow tightening my throat until it’s hard to breathe.“You’d never look at me the same again. You’d see me for what I am. And what I am, Ness? You wouldn’t like it at all.”
And I promised him that wouldn’t happen. I promised him that I would stay. I let out a miserable sigh and hold his face in my hands, but before I can tell him anything, a voice interrupts us.
“Vanessa, darling, where have you been? You didn’t even take the car keys…”
Oh, no.
No, no, no, no.
“Shit,” Thomas whispers, squeezing his eyes shut.
“M-Mom.” I emerge from behind the gazebo and watch her expression shift when she realizes that Thomas is there with me.
“Oh. You’re here,” she says, with no enthusiasm but, strangely enough, without too much hostility either.
“Actually, he was just leaving,” I say quickly, rubbing my hands on my skirt.
“He’s leaving? Did he come all this way just to leave? Don’t be silly, Vanessa. Come on, let’s go inside. The plates have arrived, and the three of us have things to discuss.” A wave of panic washes over me, but then, suddenly, the noise of a car horn rings out in the plaza. We all turn to look at the BMW, which is producing the noise, and Vince gestures for Thomas to come with him.Thank you, Vince, for jumping in at the right moment.
“Something came up unexpectedly and I can’t stay any longer,” Thomas explains to my mother.
“I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“No, nothing serious,” he answers immediately, running a hand through his hair and tilting his face downward.
She frowns and, looking almost worried, asks, “You look awful; are you feeling all right?”
“Um, yeah,” Thomas says, trying to disguise his slurring voice as much as possible. “Just a little nausea. I get carsick.”
I hold my breath, hoping with every fiber of my being that my mother believes this and lets him go as quickly as possible. But, from the way she’s eyeing him, I can tell that she isn’t even kind of buying Thomas’s lie.
My mother advances upon us with an eerie calm. The closer she gets, the more furiously her eyes burn and the faster my heart beats. She examines Thomas from top to bottom before saying, disgust clear in her voice, “Since when does motion sickness smell like liquor?”
“Mom!”
But she shuts me up with the point of a finger. “Quiet!” she hisses venomously. “I asked you a question, boy,” she continues, positioningherself just a few inches from his face. The dizzying stilettos she wears allow her to almost match Thomas’s height.
He doesn’t answer; he just stares icily back at her.
“I can’t believe this!” my mother explodes, turning purple. “I was right about you from the start. You’re just a pathetic delinquent!” Her voice is sharp, each syllable a cruel strike.
“Now you’re going overboard!” I move in front of Thomas, facing my mother firmly. “You have no right to talk to him like that!” I realize that finding her daughter’s boyfriend—whom she already hated on sight—drunk isn’t great. But I’m not going to let her disrespect him right in front of me.
“Enough, Ness,” Thomas scolds me sharply while my mother looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Are you defending him? I’m so disappointed in you, Vanessa. This”—she looks him up and down in repudiation—“this societal reject that you insist upon associating with has completely brainwashed you! It seems like you can’t even tell right from wrong anymore. Travis never would have acted like this! He would never, ever embarrass you like—”
