Till We Pretend

Chapter Six

"Ella Grace Nichols, what is going on?" She pierced me with a look like dared me to try and bullshit my way out of this. Given that lies weren't my speciality and I wasn't very creative with them I chose to tell her the truth. By the time I finished, an awkward silence descended upon the room and Mom hadn't reacted. She stared at me like she had no idea who I was and perhaps that was worse than having her yell at me.

Someone cleared their throat and broke the staring match.

"Mrs. Nichols..." Kyler began and I winced because he opened his mouth with a big fat mistake.

"It's Ms. Nichols." She pierced him with a glare that would've brought a lesser man to his knees. "I would be Mrs. Keaton but my husband is a lying, cheating asshole and my daughter and I prefer not to have his name permanently attached to ours."

Oh My God.

I moved closer and sniffed and sure enough she'd been drinking. It was early enough in the day for it to be unusual and I wasn't sure when she had started but in the time before Kyler had arrived and now, she'd had the opportunity to down what seemed like a couple of glasses of her favourite wine and it had left her stinking of alcohol which was obviously wonderful.

"Mom" I gently touched her arm and avoided looking at our audience especially Kyler whose eyes it felt like were always on me. "Why don't you lie down for a bit? You look a little exhausted."

She spun her neck towards me so fast that I flinched at the pain she must have experience. "No, no, no Ella. There is no way I'm leaving you alone with these people who seem to be making crazy accusations against my daughter." She pointed at Harrison who looked a little scared. "Never trust a man who wears expensive shoes, never." She waved her finger in front of me and I wanted to crawl into a whole in the ground. Not only did Kyler know part of my tragic life story, he was witnessing it first hand. It was bad enough that I'd been the idiot who'd fallen all over him the other night when he'd been clearly entertained by my cluelessness but this was whole other level of humiliation.

"They're just leaving," I glared at Kyler. "there's nothing to worry about." She didn't look convinced and walked right up to Harrison who seemed to be squirming in his chair. "If you hurt my daughter," She jabbed a finger in his beefy chest, "or make her sad, there will be consequences. Understand?"

The three of them nodded in unison and it was almost comical how a woman who was five foot nothing and wore ridiculously oversized glasses in order to see what was right in front of her could intimidate anyone.

"And I might be drunk," she confessed, "but even I know that she's a minor so you're not going to make her sign anything without my permission." She looked my way, " Ells,don't sign anything they give you. I don't like the look of that woman." Julie scowled at this and Kyler looked like he was barely suppressing a laugh.

My head ached and I wondered when this bizarre nightmare would end but sadly it continued. "And you," She now confront Kyler directly. "I don't know who you and what you want from my daughter but let me tell you something about Ella."

Oh God, no please let this end before she became emotional and started sobbing because that was definitely the stage she progressed to before passing out. I hurried to stop her but she had something to say to Kyler and wouldn't be stopped before she was done.

"My Ella is the sweetest, kindest,the most big-hearted person you'll ever meet." Her eyes were already watering and I detected a hiccup. "Mom, stop." I tried to intervene but she went on. "She'd give someone the clothes off of her own back if they needed them and she goes out of her way, every single day to make someone to lighten up someone's day." She hiccuped, "I could go on but there aren't enough hours in the day to tell you everything about how wonderful she is. So before you do anything at all to hurt her, you better know the kind of person you're messing around with. She's forgiving and she'll let go of a lot of things but you'll have it on your conscience forever, you got that?" She shook her finger at him and Kyler actually nodded, as though he'd taken every word of her drunken spiel seriously. In fact it looked like he'd been shaken to the core by her words if the look on his face was anything to go by. His eyes immediately flew to mine and I saw something in them that had deceived me earlier. He looked like he cared and that he wanted to protect me from everything that could possibly hurt me but that itself was pretty ironic.