Page 111 of The Invitation
He swallows. “Reid Brewer, unfortunately.”
“Really?” She turns back around. “Really, Georgia? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Hurt colors her face, and that punishes my heart. I don’t want to hurt her, but I don’t want her choices to hurt me, either.
“Ma’am,” Ripley says. “I?—”
“Don’tma’amme,” Mom sneers. “I have no idea how you weaseled your way into my daughter’s life, but you can see yourself right out.”
“Mother!”
“I know what kind of people you are, and I don’t want you anywhere close to my child. Do you hear me?” she asks.
Ripley’s jaw tenses and I know he’s pissed. He’s ready to fight. But it’s the way the blues in his eyes change to a dark, almost gray color that tells me that her words are hurting him, too.
He’s no more his father than I am my mother.
“That’s not fair, Mom,” I say, tears filling my eyes. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me, especially when you know what a rotten week this has been for me! I’ve lost my friends. Now I’ve lost you.”
“Ms. Hayes?—”
“No.” She glares at him, shaking the wine bottle in his direction.
I’ve never seen her like this. I’ve never seen her this unhinged.Never this close to losing it.
I don’t know what to do.Do I calm my mother down and try to be rational? Do I take Ripley’s side and tell Mom to stop it?I don’t know.
“Just leave,” Mom shouts, her voice cracking. “Get in your car and go. You’re just another boy in her life that will be forgotten in a week. Just because your last name is Brewer doesn’t mean you’re special! Someone like you would never be good enough for my daughter!”
Ripley pales. I know she just hit a direct wound, and he has to be reeling from it right now. My heart shatters for him, but I need to show him I’m on his side.
That I believe in him.
That she’s fucking wrong.
“You don’t have the right to say terrible things to him,” I say, yelling back. “You can’t talk to him this way. You don’t even know him.”
“And I apparently don’t know my own daughter, either. You’re betraying me just like your father.Just like his father!Just like my friends.”
“Get over yourself! I’m not betraying you!”
“The hell you aren’t.”
“And don’t you dare compare him to his father,” I say, my voice shaking with fury.
My neighbor to the right sticks his head out of the door before ducking back inside.
Great. We’re the neighborhood Maury Povich show now.
Tears flow down my cheeks. Ripley reaches for me, but my mother jumps between us.
“If you see my daughter again, you’ll be taking her away from her mother,” Mom says, crying, too. “Because I won’t stick around to watch you hurt her. I won’t watch you take her away from me.”
Ripley looks to me. He doesn’t look like the confident, slightly arrogant, self-assured man I know. He’s sad, frustrated, and slightly broken … just like me.
“Can I call you later?” I ask him softly.
