Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,52

pounce.

Wendy Smith was pretty much the epitome of the rich housewife. Coiffed, hair-sprayed hair, not a strand out of place. Wrinkle-free face, puffed-up lips, expensive makeup applied tackily. Distressed jeans, expensive sneakers, designer purse, and a gaggle of clones dressed in a variation of the same style.

The queen bee of Black Mountain moms.

I was never strictly one of them. No matter how far I’d fallen into this lifestyle, I wasn’t about to lose my identity like that. I was always my own person, didn’t play their petty games. But I brunched with them, shopped with them, gossiped.

Until my breakdown of course.

I clenched my fists, took a breath, turned around, and put on a fake smile. “I’m not here with him in the way you’re implying. He caught a ride here since his daughter is here, and we’re neighbors.” I replied, voice tight. I wasn’t putting on that false voice—the smile was enough.

Each of the women looked at each other.

Wendy moved forward, and they did too. It was creepy. Like a cult or something.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because we wouldn’t blame you. He’s hot, even if he rides that motorcycle and has those tattoos.”

“I’ve got to get back—” I was planning on making my escape before I did anything I regretted, but of course Wendy wasn’t done.

“You know, people are talking,” she stage whispered, leaning forward.

“I’m sure they are,” I replied, my voice flat, expression hopefully unimpressed.

She was rattled, ever so slightly with my response, with my refusal to play along with this little act that I’d been so committed to up until a year ago.

“We understand how hard you must be taking it, with David gone and all,” she continued, recovering quickly. “And that’s why we’ve already forgiven you for your previous little ... outbursts. You were going through a lot.” She pursed her lips, leaned back, and looked to the women beside her, who nodded dutifully like the clones they were.

“Well, thank you so much, Wendy,” I said. “I’ve been holding my breath waiting for your forgiveness.”

She smiled tightly at the faux sweetness in my voice. “But we’re worried about you. Worried about the boys.”

It was then that I tensed, and my stomach dropped.

These women could say whatever the fuck they wanted about me. About my outfits. About my cursing, about the fact I only contributed store-bought pastries to the bake sales.

But mentioning my boys? In that superior fucking tone of hers?

It picked at every insecurity I had about my qualities as a mother. All my fears. Especially with these women staring at me, like the fucking upper middle-class mommy mob, waiting to hit me with bullets of their mother judgement.

“I assure you, you don’t need to worry about my boys,” I said, my voice icy.

Wendy raised her brow. “But honey, we do. We care about you. And seeing Ryder drive around in that new muscle car you bought him, with that Carson girl … I just worry about the influence she has.”

I gaped. “The influence?”

She nodded, looking around at her cohorts once again. “We know that she got Clark Daniels’ son in trouble. Affected his college prospects.”

“You do know that little shit tried to force himself on her, right?” I snapped back.

Wendy pursed her lips as if she’d sucked on a lemon. “Oh, really? We all know girls like that send the wrong signals.”

I stepped forward. “Girls like what?” I asked quietly.

“Oh, come on, Bridget,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that her criminal father—he’s a felon from what I hear—has enough dirty money to get her into Black Mountain. She’s trash.”

I didn’t think much after that. Couldn’t think around the thick haze of red that had entered my vision. All I knew was that I was no longer standing in front of Wendy. She was on the ground, and I was punching her.

Then I wasn’t. I was in someone’s arms. Large arms that smelled of leather and woodsy aftershave.

But not before the audience had seen it all.

Not before I’d cemented myself as a terrible person. A terrible mother.

12

“Ice,” he said, handing me a bundle wrapped in a kitchen towel.

I stared at it. At the extended arm. At him in my kitchen. He hadn’t been in here before. Not in the daylight.

I’d been careful to trick myself into thinking that this didn’t exist if it didn’t see the light. That what I was doing wasn’t as bad if I kept it to the darkness, where all the bad deeds were done.

But here he was, in my kitchen, handing