This chapter has not been edited. Please excuse the mistakes:D And it's dedicated to @Madcass for the gorgeous cover on the side:)
Chapter Fourteen
Luke Archer
Dinner with my parents had always been intense, to the very least. I don’t recall ever having a perfectly civil meal with my parents. Ever since I was little, they had sadistically taken joy out of abasing their own children and draining every single ounce of self-esteem out of Sienna and me at the dinner table. I remember wishing that my sister and I were adopted when I was younger, wishing that one day our birth parents would come collect us.
I had no idea why my mother invited Jamie to stay for dinner. It wasn’t out of the goodness of her heart, that was for sure. Poor girl; she had no idea what she was in for. And what was it that Jamie said a while ago? That my parents “seemed nice?” Obviously, she didn’t know Clarisse Preston and Nathaniel Archer at all, for they were anything but nice. Dad, perhaps, wasn’t that bad in front of guests but Mom? She didn’t have a friendly bone in her body. In fact, the only people she expressed amiability to were the ones richer than us, more powerful than us, or the ones she needed favors from. They rest she just tolerated.
“It’s not too late to bolt,” I murmured to Jamie when my parents started grilling Sienna about her wedding which wasn’t for at least another two months. With the wedding approaching, Sienna had been getting calls from my mother daily and it had been driving her insane. From my room, I would hear her screaming into the pillow every time they got off the phone and I knew better than to talk to her afterwards unless her room was on fire or the house was crumbling or something.“I’ll help you fake a sickness.”
Jamie looked amused by my discomfort. “Luke, I’m fine. Quit worrying.”
Your funeral, I thought. I just hoped that my parents would stay on Sienna’s case all night so they wouldn’t have time to move on to me or worse, to Jamie.
Mom grunted something about Sienna's choice of bridesmaids and I could tell it was pissing the hell out of my sister. I didn't understand why they had to talk about it now when there were people like me who couldn't care less about the wedding present. Dad didn't seem all that interested either since he kept chucking down the food on his plate and checking his phone.
“Mom,” Sienna spoke though clenched her teeth. “I’ve told you my bridesmaids are fine. Leave them alone.”
“I’m just saying I saw Regina Walsh at a gallery opening last week. She looked,” My mother twirled her index finger as she struggled for the right word to say. “Plump.”
Sienna dropped her salad fork on her plate and Jamie choked on the water she was drinking with her eyes widened.
“What do you want me to do, huh? Call her and say, ‘Hey, Regina! You’re banned from my wedding because you freaking gained a couple of pounds?’”
Sienna looked as if she were about to explode when my mom said, “She can still attend the wedding as a guest. Now, as for who can fill in for her, I have just the most wonderful idea. Do you remember Annabelle Marshalls, daughter of Sebastian Marshalls, the CEO of Kings Technology? She’s a lovely girl!”
“If I recall correctly, she wasn’t so lovely when the stock price of her father’s company fell last year,” Sienna countered sarcastically.
My mother glowered at her. “Nathaniel, say something.”
“You should listen to your mother, Sienna.” My dad swallowed the last piece of bread on his plate and waved a hand dismissively. “We’re closing a business deal with Sebastian soon. This would help strengthen our partnership. Besides, I’m sure Reyna or whatever her name is would understand.”
“Jesus! Is this my wedding or your wedding?” Sienna threw the napkin on her lap hard on the table and looked so furious that I thought her blood vessels would burst. “It’s bad enough that most of the guests are your friends and now you want to have a say in my bridesmaids, too? Forget it!”
“Sienna!”
“Sir, Madam, shall I bring out the steak?” Nia asked tentatively in her heavy Spanish accent from the entryway, coming to Sienna’s rescue.
“Yes, yes. Bring it out,” My mother snapped, like it was Nia’s fault Sienna had an opinion of her own. That was pretty much the last wedding conversation for tonight, which, unfortunately, meant my mother was moving on to another target. Correction: another victim.
“I’m sorry I missed your game, darling,” she said to me, folding her hands together with a regretful expression upon her face. “I wanted to be there. It was the first game of the season, wasn’t it?”
I brushed off her meaningless apology, knowing perfectly well that she didn’t care a rat’s ass about my football games. Football was more my dad’s area of destruction. “Don’t sweat it.”
“I heard the Raptors only won by twelve points.” Dad grimaced and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Not a good way to start a season, son. Your coach is clearly not working the team hard enough. I’ll give him a call tomorrow morning.”
My father, ladies and gentlemen. It wasn’t enough to just win; we had to crush the opposing team to satisfy him.
“We won the freaking game,” I retorted with a scowl. “That’s what matters.”
“Are you listening to yourself, son?” He gawked at me with his eyes narrowed, incredulous. “That, right there, is slacker talk. You still have a whole season ahead of you. Do I need to remind you this is your last year of high school? This is your last shot to impress the scouts. If you don’t, the last three years would have been for nothing. ”
“I understand that,” I hissed in annoyance. Jesus. Dad hadn’t even been home for half an hour yet he was already berating me for my win.
He chortled humorlessly. “Do you? Because it seems to me that you’re willing to your entire future away.”
Right. I was throwing my entire future away and my life was officially over because I won a football game by twelve points. What the hell was in my dad’s brain?
“Thanks so much for the concern, Dad,” I sneered, keeping my mouth occupied by stuffing steak into my mouth so I wouldn’t call him all the names that were currently flashing across my mind.
Jamie probably thought that was the end of it because she looked down to her plate and resumed eating. Of course, she was highly mistaken because once my dad started talking about football, he would not rest until he made sure he had completely pummeled and ravaged my self-worth.
“You know, son, if you’d listened to me more last year,” he shook his head gravely, “Who knows? Maybe you wouldn’t have lost the state championship.”
My grip on my knife and fork tightened. What an asshole. He knew the state championship was a sore subject for me yet he just had to rub it in my face every time.
“Dad,” Sienna cut him off warningly. “Don’t go there.”
“You mean like how you lost the state championship all those years ago, Dad?” I retaliated curtly and had the pleasure of seeing his cheeks turn pink. “Losing must run in the family, huh?”
Sienna coughed to hide her laugh but her eyes were dancing with joy. Jamie, on the other hand, just looked shocked. I bet she didn’t have this much going on at her dinner table back home.
“That’s not talk about football,” Mom smiled frostily, turning her gaze to Jamie. I had a really, really bad vibe about this. “We’re being rude to our guest.”
“It’s fine, Mrs. Archer,” Jamie responded graciously.
“Jamie, what is it that your parents do, if you don’t mind me asking?” Dad asked with a raise of his eyebrow.
“My dad’s an English professor and my mom owns a café downtown,” Jamie responded bashfully, evidently uncomfortable with all four pairs of eyes in the room glued to her.
“English professor. How very impressive,” Mom commended half-heartedly. “Does he teach at the University in Charlotte?”
“No,” Jamie smiled modestly. “He teaches at Roseville Community College.”
Silence fell upon us and I felt ill at ease. What the hell was I thinking, not putting a stop to her when my mother invited Jamie to stay? I should have seen this coming.
“Community college,” my mother repeated with a haughty smirk, and I clenched my fist when I caught her exchanging an unimpressed look with Dad. “How… interesting.”
I shot her a glare in warning.
“And this café of your mother’s,” Dad started, sounding genuinely curious with appall plain visible on his face. “How’s it holding up?”
“It’s doing great,” Jamie answered without missing a beat, unfazed. “Business is steady.”
I wanted to tape my parents’ mouths to shut them up. Why couldn’t they be nice and kind-hearted like all the other parents? Instead they had to be so utterly rude and embarrassing in front of my friends.
Dad’s phone rang and he excused himself from the table after glancing at the screen. I internally thanked whoever it was on the other end of line that pulled him away, saving Jamie from further inquisition on her family.
A prickly silence fell over us and it wasn’t necessarily a bad one considering I preferred having mute dinners rather than keeping a conversation going with my parents around. But my mother, who apparently couldn’t be content unless she had at least one of her kids squirming at the dinner table, opened her mouth and broke the silence.
“Luke, you will never guess who I ran into at the airport today,” she piped up, sounding more cheerful than she had all night.
I ignored her and finished what was left on my plate. Of course I won’t. What am I, a psychic? As if reading my thought, Sienna rolled her eyes.
“I ran into Alicia Merrick,” Mom announced merrily, like it was any of my concern that she ran into my ex-girlfriend’s mother.
If anyone was supportive of my relationship with Summer, it was certainly my mother. Summer was one of the few people in Roseville- and I do mean few- whose social status and family background she found acceptable. Apparently having a mother who was a distant relative of the royal family in Denmark and a dad who was a distinguished heart surgeon in Charlotte and an old school friend of my father’s made Summer worth enduring
Mom was extremely upset when she learned about my breakup with Summer. Oh, she didn’t care that her son got cheated on by his skank ass girlfriend; that part was never her concern. She was only displeased about the breakup because Alicia Merrick was in the middle of helping her put together a charity gala in New York City and she was afraid the breakup between her daughter and me would dampen her enthusiasm to promote the social event to her European friends.
“Cool,” I quipped mockingly to humor her, lowering my voice theatrically. “Did she just get from another nose job?”
Sienna burst out laughing and beside her Jamie was suppressing a snicker.
“Luke,” my mother chastised, her glare frigid. “That was rude.”
“I’m sorry,” I shrugged innocently. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”
An unsettling feeling coursed through me when my mother tore her surly gaze from my face to Jamie’s. I felt so uncomfortable with the way she was scrutinizing Jamie that I all but leaped on the table to put myself between the two of them.
“Do you ride, Jamie?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Horseback riding.” My mother sounded amused but not surprised that Jamie didn’t catch what she was asking.
Jamie’s cheeks turned scarlet and I gave her a small smile to let her know it was okay.
“I’ve never tried it before.”
“Really!” Mom drawled with an amplified gasp. “That’s a pity. You know, Summer is an excellent rider. She really has a way with horses.”
“Oh, Summer has a way, alright,” Sienna agreed with a sneer. “She threatens to turn them into her handbags if they ever let her fall off.”
Mom ignored Sienna’s scornful remark as though she wasn’t even in the room, continuing her impertinent conversation with Jamie. “If you don’t ride,” she pressed on, her eyebrows drawn together as she pondered, “then perhaps you golf? Or you ski?”
“I’ve golfed once in summer camp when I was little,” Jamie frowned, “but I’ve never skied before.”
Mom blinked at her in dismay. “Well. Isn’t that something.”
Sienna rolled her eyes and smiled at Jamie, wanting to comfort her, I suppose, since she looked severely on edge. “You weren’t missing out much. I would rather confine myself in a library than do any of those things.”
My mother was relentless. “Alicia told me Summer won a gymnastics competition over the break. Did she tell you, Luke?”
I let out a long sigh in annoyance and shifted in my seat without bothering to answer her. What part of “we broke up” did she not understand? Then as though a thought just occurred to her, Mom whipped her head to Jamie with her eyebrow raised and asked, “Are you a cheerleader at school? If you are then I’m sure you must be close friends with Summer.”
“I’m not,” Jamie replied feebly. If I were her, I would have been riled up a long time ago by all the questions. “Cheerleading’s not really my thing.”
"That's a shame, dear. I always thought it would be great for girls your age to get into cheerleading. But I'm sure between helping your mother out at that little cafe of hers and school, you barely have any time for extracurricular activities. Besides, cheerleading's quite costly, if I remember correctly. The fees for all of those competitions and camps... they're not something every family could afford."
I couldn’t take another minute of this. Feeling my anger rising, the pent-up aggravation broke loose when my mother gawked at Jamie in contemplation, like she was wondering what made Jamie good enough to set foot in this house. It was one thing to bulldoze over me and Sienna because we, unfortunately, were related to her and used to her abrasive behavior. But Jamie wasn’t, and she certainly wasn’t obliged to sit there and get put down by my mom.
"Summer-"
“Why do you keep talking about Summer?” I cut my mother off, questioning her testily even though I already knew the answer. She was trying to evoke humiliation out of Jamie by comparing her to Summer. “Did she pay you to talk about her or something? Is she really that desperately in need of attention? ”
“Son, you better watch your attitude,” Dad had conveniently gotten off his phone and returned to the table.
“Why can’t I talk about Summer?” Mom countered acidly, her eyes gleaming with anger at my tone. “It’s a free country and I can say whatever I want. And remember, you’re living under my roof, Luke, not the other way around. Besides, Summer is a lovely girl.”
I had a lot of adjectives to describe Summer but lovely was definitely not one of them.
“Yeah, a lovely girl that cheated on your son,” Sienna retorted sarcastically when it was apparent that I was too furious to speak, the words laced and tangled in my mouth. “God, Mother. Listen to yourself! You should be siding with Luke, your son, instead of pushing him to get back together with that awful girl.”
“Summer made a mistake but that doesn’t mean she and Luke can’t work it out,” my mother responded stiffly, raising her chin. “Her mother told me she regrets it deeply."
I threw my fork violently on the table. “Mom, get this in your head: I am never, ever, getting back together with that conceited skank.” As soon as the words left my lips, I felt a bit foolish. It sounded as if I were quoting from lyrics to a pop song. “Even if she hadn’t cheated on me with Paul, we still would have broken up because I don’t have feelings for her. So stop with all that Summer talk, okay? I’m getting real sick of it.”
“I just want the best for you-”
“No, mother, you want the best for yourself!” Sienna cut her off lividly. “Everything you’ve done, it has always been about you. Luke and I are just pawns in your petty games. You only want Luke and Summer together right now because you need her parents. When they are of no use to you, you wouldn’t give a damn about her or her family. In fact, you’d probably encourage Luke to dump her!”
I stared at her in bewilderment, startled by her sudden outburst.
“Sienna Archer!” my dad bellowed, throwing his napkin down on the table. “Apologize right now, young lady!”
“I’m not going to apologize for being right,” she said with her eyes fixedly on my parents. “You know what? It’s bad enough that you did this to me when I was Luke’s age, but I’m not going to sit back and watch you take control of my brother’s life. Because you’ll ruin it, the way you ruined everything else you’ve touched.”
Tears brimmed in Sienna’s eyes. If I hadn’t been sitting next to her, I wouldn’t have been able to see them since she blinked them back almost instantly. While I appreciated my sister always looking out for me- she was the only person in my family who truly had my best interest at heart- I had a feeling this wasn’t just about me and Summer. Something bad had happened and I hated myself for knowing what it was. I was her brother. I was supposed to protect her.
Sienna had always been brave and opinioned but she was also the kind of person that kept her emotions to herself because she saw displaying her emotions in front of my parents as a weakness. She wasn’t afraid to stand up to them but she always did it with a straight face and a detached voice and I admired that about her since it annoyed my parents to no end. They wanted to see that they had gotten under our skin.
So the fact that she was acting like this at the dinner table in front of our parents and in front of Jamie- whose presence seemed to have been forgotten by everyone other than me- was a huge deal.
I hadn’t seen Sienna like this since five summers ago, the year she graduated from high school. To be honest, I still have no idea what happened that summer. At the beginning, she was always so blissful and happy that her cheerfulness irritated the hell out of me and I couldn’t stand being around her, which worked out just fine because I left for football camp shortly after the summer break began. Then when the summer came to an end, her emotions did a complete one-eighty. She refused to come out of her bedroom and she cried on her bed for three days. It was the only time that I had ever seen my sister vulnerable.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Mom was so pissed that a tiny vein on her forehead popped out. Even her makeup wasn’t thick enough to cover that up.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Sienna snapped, reverting back to her usual fierce self as she shot up from her seat. “I’m full. Excuse me.”
***
Needless to say, dinner had been a complete disaster. Sienna stormed out of the house after her outburst and drove off in her BMW Convertible, leaving me confused and full of questions . My mother, irate and embarrassed, flounced out of the room without so much as a word and my dad quickly followed her after shooting a dirty look in my direction, like I was somehow to blame for all the drama tonight. It wasn’t my fault that he was scared stiff of his wife’s fury even when it wasn’t even directed at him.
“I’m so, so sorry for tonight,” I said to Jamie as I walked her over to her truck, hanging my head. The way my standoffish parents treated her tonight was humiliating. “I’m sorry you had to witness how dysfunctional my family is.”
“It’s okay.” Jamie gave a soft laugh. “When you told me you didn’t get along with your parents, I never imaged…”
“That we’d jump at each others’ throats like back-alley dogs?” I finished her sentence bitterly.
“Yeah,” she admitted with a frown of concern. “I hope Sienna’s okay. She seemed really upset.”
I was worried about my sister, too. It wasn’t like her to flip out like this and where the hell could she go at eight-thirty at night? This was freaking Roseville, for Pete’s sake. Most people here were in bed by nine o’clock and most stores here barely made it past eight.
I closed the door of Jamie’s ancient truck behind her after she climbed into the driver’s seat. “Wait by the gate,” I told her. “I’m going to go get my car,”
“Are you going somewhere?”
On my way home today I’d noticed that some of the streetlights were out and they hadn’t been working since the storm earlier this week. You would think the maintenance people would have fixed them already since it had already been five days. Normally I wouldn’t care; I knew all the roads that led to my house so well that I could have driven my car flawlessly even wearing a blindfold. But Jamie was a whole other story. With her driving skill- or lack of anyway- she shouldn’t be behind the wheels at all, let alone driving under such circumstances.
“It’s kind of dark so I’m following you.”
“You don’t need to do that!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be fine. I’ve been here three times already. I know my way back.”
“Have you seen the roads? Some of the lights are out,” I reasoned. “I don’t want you to hit a tree or hit another guy while you’re out there. The blood would be on my hands.”
“But-”
I put a hand on her shoulder to cut her off, suppressing smile when I saw her face turn as red as a tomato. Strange how she wasn’t afraid to give me a piece of her mind seconds ago yet when it came down to something as simply as a rub on her shoulder, she’d grow utterly self-conscious. Jamie Vandeviere was so full of contradictions.
“We both know you’re not exactly the best driver of the year so why don’t you just save us both the argument and do as I say?” I teased. Calling her out on her driving had easy become one of my favorite things to do since I could always count on her reaction to be entertaining. “Besides, I can go look for Sienna while I’m out.”
It wasn’t like I was in a hurry to get back to the house anyway, with my parents in there and all. The less I saw of them the better.
The part about Sienna seemed to have Jamie convinced, even though it was kind of a lie. There was no way I was going to go looking for my sister when she clearly needed her space. I knew her well enough to know when she didn’t want to be found, and today was definitely one of those days.
Jamie gave in with a sigh, muttering a reluctant “okay” and I jogged to the garage, pleased with myself for coming up with an excuse that she couldn’t refuse me for. Besides, with her parents out of town, I’d feel more comfortable knowing she had gotten home safely. At least just to make sure there weren’t any creeps hanging around her house, though that was highly unlikely with Roseville’s low crime rate.
I wasn’t kidding when I said most people here in Roseville were in bed by nine. By the time we pulled up in front Jamie’s house, the whole block was dark and silent, like it was already deep in the night. I waited until Jamie stepped out of her truck and rolled down my window when she walked towards me after pressing the automatic lock button.
“Thanks for having zero faith in my ability as a driver.”
I smirked at her. “No problem. And Jamie? I’m really sorry if my parents’ questions made you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay. I don’t think,” she trailed off, chagrined. “I don’t think your parents like me very much. Your mom, especially.”
I didn’t want to laugh because Jamie looked completely serious and mortified.
“I’m glad they don’t. They’re snobs and I can’t stand them anymore than I can stand Summer. If they had liked you, I would have ended our friendship," I joked.
Jamie’s green eyes lit up at my words and I grinned when a wide smile grew upon her lips. This is going to sound really cheesy but I really think Jamie’s smile is her best feature. It is… infectious.
“Thanks, Luke,” she said, looking more content than she had been all night. “And I know there’s nothing much I can do for Sienna but if she ever needs anything, or if you ever need anything, just let me know, okay?”
“I will,” I said, surprised by the intensity in her eyes and how much her words meant to me. “Goodnight, Jamie.”
“’Night, Luke,” she whispered before running across her lawn.
I didn’t leave until I saw Jamie turn the light on in her bedroom, waving at me from her window before drawing the curtains. She’s safe now so drive off before she thinks you’re stalking her or something, I told myself when my arms and legs made no plans to move.
And now it was time to face the family drama. I loved my life.
***
On my way home I spotted Sienna’s car with its hood folded down by a park that I often played at when I was younger. I knew my sister wanted to be alone but what kind of a brother would I be if I just left her out there all by herself when she seemed to be the only person within the five-mile radius? So I took my chances and pulled up next to her car, climbing into the passenger’s seat beside her.
“Hey. Are you okay?” I asked tentatively when I saw her staring blankly ahead at the swings in front of us. It was kind of creepy, actually, since the light coming from the lamp post was flickering and the swings were swaying all on their own in the wind. A perfect setting for a horror movie.
Leave it to my sister to come to a place like this at a time like this.
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you look fine,” I muttered sarcastically and winced when she responded with a glare. Well. At least she still had her sense of humor. “Sorry. Wrong timing.”
“You think?” she snapped.
This is exactly why I never crossed Sienna’s path whenever she was upset. She was twice as grumpy.
“What the hell happened tonight, Sienna?” I asked quietly, my voice laced with uncertainly. I didn’t want her to feel like I was pushing her to talk. “If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine. I can shut up. If you do then I’m all ears.” Ever since I was a child, Sienna had always been the person that I turned to when I had a shitty day. She was always for me. This time, it was my turn to be there for her.
“I really lost it back there didn’t I?” she half-whispered, looking disappointed with herself. Then out of nowhere, she startled me by emitting a dry, bitter laugh. “Jamie must think I’m crazy.”
“She’s worried about you,” I said softly.
“She’s a good person, Luke,” said my sister. “That’s why I was so pissed when Mom and Dad started… well, you know.”
Yeah, I did. And I detested my parents for being so rude to one of the nicest people that I knew.
“Sienna?” I drew in a sharp breath, afraid that my question would anger her or worse, set her into tears. The fury I could deal with but tears? Hell no. “Does tonight have anything to do with what happened five years ago?”
Seeing the stunned look on her face, I knew I had hit the jackpot. “How did you know?”
“Just a hunch, I guess,” I murmured, shrugging. “And because I haven’t seen you this upset since that summer. What happened?”
When I came home from football camp that summer, the entire family was in turmoil. Sienna didn’t talk to my parents for a whole year when she went off to college. I’d asked her what was going on, of course, but back then she told me I was too young to understand.
And that answer pissed the hell out of me five years ago. I was at that awkward preteen stage, when I thought I was all grown up and should be considered an adult.
She swallowed and her eyebrows drew together as she spoke. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not today. I'm just so glad I'm heading back to New York tomorrow. I can't wait to get away from them.”
I nodded in disappointment, respecting her wishes. Though the part about her leaving sucked since that meant I would be left in the house alone with my parents.
“Luke? You like Jamie, don’t you?”
I whipped my head to my sister so fast that I almost sprained my neck. Talk about a rapid change of conversation.
“What makes you think that?” I asked, making a face.
Her eyes danced with a sarcastic light as she tilted her head to meet my stare. “You really want me to answer that?"
“She has a boyfriend,” I told Sienna, diverting my glance from her. A boyfriend who Jamie seemed to be crazy about.
“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you liked her, not if she’s available.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I smirked, knowing I was going to earn myself a smack on the back of the head for this later. “I’ll answer that question when you’re ready to talk about what happened five years ago.”
Now that shut my sister up.
A/N: Thank you all so much for the feedback and votes on the last chapter! From now on I will TRY updating every week or every other week:) Well, mostly every other week:P
Okay, back to the story. I'm sorry if this chapter was a little intense. It's the only chapter in the story that will focus on Luke's family but this won't be the last time that you hear from Clarisse and Nathaniel Archer. Oh, and Sienna is actually connected to one of the characters that was briefly mentioned in the previous chapter : )
So at least Luke didn't deny that he liked Jamie this time! That's a step forward, right? :) In the next chapter, a new character will be introduced and Summer comes back in the story.
Please vote and comment!