“Well, one week in, I had fucked up an order, and this old member was on my ass. Your brother told him to relax, and he actually made it okay.” I want to roll my eyes, but she beats me to it.
“I should have known something was up.” She shakes her head, taking another sip. “I should have known, but you know me. He started coming into the club every day and being nice to me, so I thought he had changed.”
“A leopard doesn’t change his spots,” I say, and she laughs bitterly.
“Isn’t that the truth?” she says, finishing the whiskey and then pouring more in her glass. “He was there one night when I got off my shift, and he walked me to my car. He did that every night for a month.” She takes a sip. “Each night, we would spend more time talking by my car, and by the second week, we just ended up sitting on the grass talking.” I bite my tongue to keep from adding he lied, but she beat me to it. “He lied. He told me he loved me. It was the first time anyone had ever told me they loved me or held my hand or even hugged me. He was the first one to tell me that I was beautiful.” Her eyes fill with tears.
She has to know how beautiful she is and how loved she is. She has to know I would do anything for her.
“He was probably just playing me from day one.”
“He’s my brother, and the only thing I’m sure of is that you were just a pawn in some game he was playing.”
“Well, it figures I would lose my virginity to a man who would turn out to be the biggest waste of time. You were right about some things.” She looks at the glass in her hands and then looks at me with a broken stare. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She repeats the words, and my stomach burns.
“Don’t say that,” I snap, and she looks at me. “Don’t say that. You are nothing like your mother.” I try to be as respectful as I can toward her mother, but the bottom line is, that woman is a bitch. She literally kicked her daughter out of her house when she was sixteen. Well, she didn’t kick Savannah out, but she decided she was going to move, leaving Savannah to find somewhere to live. Who does that?
“Needless to say, the joke was on me when two days later he walks into the country club with this blonde debutant on his arm.” Her voice trails off, and she takes another sip. “Yup, his girlfriend was visiting.” She shakes her head. “A girlfriend he never mentioned, and I knew nothing about. If I’d known …” She looks me in the eyes. “If I’d known, I would have never ever gone there with him.”
“I know,” I reassure her.
“He sat in my section with her.” She wipes away the tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “It was so hard not to throw the glass of water in his face. It also made me feel like I was cheap … God, he …” She takes a gulp. “He got down on one knee in front of me and proposed to her. There in the middle of the country club, he proposed to her.”
“Son of a bitch,” I hiss while she refills her glass. This time, she takes the whole gulp. She must be getting used to it because she swallows without wincing. I wait to hear the rest of the story.
“I found out I was pregnant right away,” she continues. “I don’t know if you want to hear the rest.”
“I want to hear it all,” I say, then lean forward, folding my hands together. My stomach suddenly feels sick because I have a feeling I haven’t even heard the bad parts yet.
“When I found out, I tried to reach out to your brother. I called, but he wouldn’t answer. And then one day, I was stupid enough to seek him out.” I can feel the worst part of the story coming. “I thought he would be at your father’s office since he came home to be an intern.”
She avoids my eyes when she says the next part. “I walked into the house, and your father was just coming into the hallway when he saw me. He looked at me like I was …” She wipes the tears away. “He told me to follow him into the office, and then he closed the door behind me. At that point, I knew I should have left. I knew that nothing good would come from me being in that room. He walked behind the desk and sat down and asked me what I wanted. I stumbled with my words, before saying I was looking for Liam. It was like he knew. He told me that Liam was gone for the weekend with his fiancée, and that I should find someone else to hang around with.” My hands form into fists when I think of what a bastard my father could be. Cold and calculating, he would knock down his own mother to get ahead.