Asshole.
I’m pretty sure the amusement I detect is at my expense. And Jesus take the brakes because if he persists I may bring down a decade’s worth of resentment on his head all at once.
“Sorry ’bout that, Tim. Got tied up at work.”
It takes a monumental amount of energy to summon a carefully crafted appearance of bored indifference, but I manage it. I manage it because I am no longer that pathetic girl that followed him around everywhere. I am a thirty-year-old woman with a large measure of success in her career and a backbone to match.
In the periphery of my vision, the Antichrist moves to stand behind the chair next to mine. I play it cool. I’m fine. I’m good. I can handle this.
“Maren,” he says, as if it hasn’t been a decade since we’ve exchanged a single word. After which, a cold, sweaty film instantly covers my entire body. This is why I don’t come home.
“What did I miss, Tim?”
“I was informing Miss Murphy of the stipulations in the will.”
I’m trying to be good, I really am. I ignore him, stare straight ahead as long as I can. Until I can’t do it anymore. Because I am desperate to see what I’m dealing with.
Let’s face it, every jilted woman wishes fifty pounds, a sweet set of man tits, and copious amounts of hair loss on her ex (among other things you can find on a Google search with grotesque pictures attached). And right now I am putting all those wishes in a basket with a bow and sending them up to the wish fairy and that bitch better be home because she owes me big-time.
I nonchalantly turn my head, just a fraction, enough to satisfy my curiosity, which, by the way, has no regard whatsoever for my pride, and my eyes come in contact with someone I don’t recognize.
He has changed. Unfortunately for me however, only for the better. This is so demoralizing I want to cry. On the inside. Never on the outside. Never again will he own another one of my outside tears. I’ve shed enough of those over him in the past to rival the Dead Sea.
The body that was once lanky and lean is now filled out with powerful muscles. The lines of his jaw and cheekbones are now sharp. A neat short beard covers a face that was once smooth and round. His hair…this one earns a lazy eyeroll. It’s one of those hipster haircuts. Longer on top, shorter on the sides. Even the skin above the collar of his starched white dress shirt is different. What was once uniformly tan is now decorated with colorful tattoos.
The man standing next to me is a stranger. A stranger who’s wearing a suit? That’s new, too. I’ve only seen Noah wear a suit once in his life. At his parents’ funeral. And I can assure you it looked nothing like this. Back then he looked like a boy playing dress up in his father’s clothes.
This is no boy. This is a man and the fine charcoal-gray suit he’s wearing looks expensive, hugging his body like it’s custom made, a perfect fit. I hate him.
Our eyes lock. His are cool and detached, and as foreign as the rest of him. Mine say, “Drop dead, please.” Because I’m a nice person. With manners.
“We were just getting to the good part,” Walters continues.
I scoff and Walters gives me a disapproving frown.
Unbuttoning his suit jacket, Noah takes the seat next to me. It dawns on me then. While he looks like he stepped out of the pages of GQ, I look like I stepped out of a Port-O-Potty left all day in the sun at Coachella. Awesome.
It’s hotter than a shirtless Hemsworth outside and I am one hundred percent certain my hair looks like overcooked spaghetti while my face resembles a BP oil spill. I could not have written a more humiliating script for this reunion if I tried.
“Did you tell her?” he casually queries.
And the top of my head explodes off. “Great. That’s just great. So he knows already. He knew before I did.” The glare I level at Walters can’t be interpreted as anything other than an accusation of malfeasance.
“He’s your grandfather’s business partner,” Mr. Walters says, slowly, as if speaking to a child. “He was there when Rowdy drew up the new will.”
“But…he’s not family. Does my father know?”
I’m grasping at thin air. I know I am. For reasons I still can’t fathom, Noah was closer to my grandfather than my father was. But I’m drained from the emotional gymnastics, my wrist aches like a bitch––not to mention the itch––and I suspect I reek of stale airplane and whatnot. All in all, I’m not having a good day.
“He knows everything,” the man I’m desperately trying to ignore answers.