“And don’t worry, Fancy. I picked up your dress,” my mom chimed in.
All of the anger and frustration I’d ever felt in my life bubbled to the surface as I stared at two of the most self-involved, self-serving, delusional people to ever exist. I shook my head as I crossed my arms so I didn’t start swinging them. The last fight I’d gotten into was when I’d socked Kenny Riser in the second grade for tripping my friend Carly. I was furious then, but I was seething now. You could take the girl out of the South but you couldn’t take the South out of the girl.
“I’m only going to say this one more time, so I need you both to really listen to me.” My eyes bounced between my mom and Blaine before stopping on him. “I am not going to marry you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
“Reagan,” Blaine reached out to me.
I twisted so he couldn’t touch me. “And how did you even know where I was?”
It would be one thing if they’d shown up at the boarding house, but they’d gone to Billy’s.
“Blaine was so worried about you that he hired a private eye to come check on you.” My mom sighed like it was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard.
“Tina.” Blaine snapped, obviously knowing I would view his behavior as less romantic and more stalker.
“You had someone following me?” All the times I’d thought I felt someone watching me, I’d been right.
“He was worried about you.”
“He wasn’t worried about me, Mom! He wanted to keep tabs on me.” My arms dropped to my sides, then flew up as I shifted toward Blaine. “That’s insane. You do realize that, don’t you? We are not together. We will never be together.”
“You’re just being emotional. I know I made a mistake, but—”
“It’s not about your mistake!”
“Fancy, sweetie, just listen—”
“Mom. You need to go.” I opened the door, I could only deal with one crazy at a time. “Go take a walk or something. I need to talk to Blaine alone.”
She looked between us. Blaine nodded and she left. It was good to see, once again, where her loyalties lay.
I shut the door harder than I meant to behind her and paused for a moment to take a deep breath and collect my thoughts. I obviously needed to take a new approach. I needed to step back and stop letting my emotions take the wheel. I decided to do what I did best. Litigate. As calmly, and unaffected as I could possibly be, I began the way I would any opening argument, by stating a fact that was the foundation of my defense. “Blaine, you don’t want to marry me.”
“Yes, I do.” He argued. “I still love you. I don’t care if you had a fling. I forgive you.”
You forgive me?!
Anger flared up in me but I quickly extinguished it. I needed to remain detached if I was going to win this case. The “case” being me getting my sanity back, and getting this egocentric sociopath out of my life. Okay, he wasn’t really a sociopath, but he was definitely an egomaniac, and at the moment, that was causing me just as much grief.
“Even still, this isn’t going to work because, you don’t love me,” I calmly stated.
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s impossible. You can’t love me because you don’t know me.”
“I know you. We’ve been together for eight years. We’ve lived together for four.”
“Okay, fine. What’s my favorite color?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Your favorite color? I don’t know. Why does that matter?”
“Because it does. What is my favorite color?”
“Pink,” he guessed.
“What time do I wake up every morning?”
“Six, when the alarm goes off,” he said confidently.
“You mean when your alarm goes off.” I corrected. “What am I most scared of?”
“Spiders. You don’t like spiders.”
“Have I ever asked you to kill a spider for me?”
“No, but no one likes spiders.”
“What was the worst day of my life?”
“The day you walked into my office and saw me…”
He didn’t finish his sentence but I knew what he was referring to.
“No. You didn’t get one of those right. And you know what? It’s not your fault. I didn’t let you see me, not the real me. And you know what else? If you asked me the same things about you, I wouldn’t know the answers either. We don’t love each other because we don’t know each other. Not really.”
“So what? My parents don’t love each other and they’ve been together for forty