Mai Tai’d Up (Cocktail #4)(6)
Author: Alice Clayton

And they weren’t even light beers. I seemed determined to ingest every calorie in California in one twenty-four-hour period.

Sounded pretty fudging great to me.

Chapter two

As a general rule, my family avoids conflict. I’m not talking about squabbling over the remote every night when our family unit was still intact but about the big stuff. The giant problems, the huge glaring mistakes human beings make, the actual issues behind the remote control—we avoid those conversations like the plague. If we ignore them, or if we only talk quietly about the “incident in question” for the shortest amount of time possible, maybe we can avoid anything unpleasant.

So when I saw my mother barreling up the driveway, I knew she was prepared to go to a very civilized war.

Having thrown my phone into the ocean, I was incommunicado. So my father’s phones were ringing off the hook like command central. When he finally unplugged the house phone and turned off the ringer on his cell phone, it was only a matter of time. My mother pulled into the driveway just as I finished my second beer.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she whisper-yelled, ever aware of the neighbors.

“I am just beginning to understand what I’ve done, Mother. How about you?” I replied, reaching down to the cooler at my feet. “Beer?” I offered, holding up a dripping bottle.

My father coughed. My mother? Quietly burned.

She looked around the yard, making sure our dysfunctional family unit was in fact alone, then lowered herself to the patio steps. Arranging herself in an elegantly casual way, she sat with her legs crossed at the ankle, hands nestled in her lap. She looked like she was sitting for a portrait at Olan Mills. I chanced a look at my father, who was struggling to contain his amusement.

“Okay, let’s talk this out, since rational thought has clearly left the building,” she began, making sure to glance in my father’s direction when speaking of the lack of rational thought.

“I feel pretty rational,” I explained, my nightgown perhaps giving away a small slice of credibility. “But I agree, we should talk about what’s happened.” Her face lit up in triumph, and I held up my hand. “But I’m not marrying Charles Preston Sappington. Not today. Not any—”

“Oh, would you stop saying that!” she snapped, finally showing some emotion. “You mind telling me why exactly you’re feeling so dramatic about all of this?”

I unscrewed the cap on my third beer and took a long swallow. “I don’t have the foggiest idea why I walked out on my wedding. Maybe I’ll know why tomorrow. But today? I don’t have any answers. Except what I’ve been saying all day. Do you really want me to say it again?”

“Well, I’d like to hear it.”

Charles was here. Standing in the driveway. Cool, calm, collected, handsome.

My beer shattered as I threw it to the ground, then I stood up quickly and headed for the house.

“Chloe. Baby. Let’s talk this out, shall we?” I heard over my shoulder as I struggled to get the sliding door open. My hands were slippery from the cold beer, and I couldn’t get purchase on the handle. As I fumbled, I could hear my mother speaking to Charles under her breath, prompting him. Oh for fudge’s sake, this door!

“Marjorie, I told you not to bring him over here. She obviously needs some space today. Don’t you think that—”

“You stay out of this, Thomas. Is it any coincidence that she came here, of all places? She knew you’d coddle her. She knew you’d—”

“Coddle her? She knew I’d listen, for Christ’s sake! When all you can do is—”

“Oh, please, like you’ll know how to get her back on track after this? She doesn’t know what she’s doing, and your helping her isn’t going to—”

Charles’s voice broke through the fray. “Chloe, baby, come on. Let’s go talk this out, okay? We can still make this happen today—you know you want to, don’t you? You know it’s the right thing—”

All of these conversations were happening at the same time while I was pawing at the glass door like a cat trying to get out of a window. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, why won’t this door open!”

Silence. Total silence. Even the birds had stopped chirping. My mother and father were frozen in their all-too-familiar antagonistic pose, while Charles stood in the driveway with his hands raised, looking like Jesus at the Last Supper.

The latch finally clicked, and the door slid open.

“I’m going inside. No one is following me. I’ll talk about this tomorrow.” I started to go in, when I caught Charles’s eye. And saw his expression. Frustration, yes. Irritation, the beginnings of it, yes. Deep, profound anguish that the love of his life had just told him she wasn’t marrying him? Not even the slightest hint. Still . . .

“I really am very sorry,” I said, to him and only to him. And then I went inside.

And threw up donuts and beer.

I thought there was no way I’d sleep that night, but I slept like a baby. And when I woke up and saw a note from my father on the nightstand that he’d gone on a bagel run, I smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep. And when I heard my dad whistling as he made coffee a half hour later, I got up and went downstairs with a smile on my face.

Which fell as soon as I saw a brand-new iPhone sitting at my place at the table. “What’s this?” I asked, slumping into my chair.

“What does it look like?” he promptly replied from behind his newspaper.

“Dad. Come on, seriously.”

“I stopped by the store this morning, got you a new phone. Is that what you’re referring to?” The newspaper rustled.

I looked down at the phone, thinking hard. “But I threw my old one in—”

“—the ocean, I know. Try not to do that again, would you, kiddo? You have any idea how expensive these phones are?”

I pushed the phone, and my place mat, away. But then tugged it back to get to the orange juice. The newspaper rustled.

“I didn’t want to talk to anybody . . .” I mumbled, and my father finally appeared from behind the paper.

“I realize that, but you made a decision yesterday that affects a lot of people. And you need to explain it, specifically to some of those people.”

“But I thought you understood . . .” I began, my eyes filling with tears for the first time since I’d bolted yesterday.

“I understood that you didn’t want to get married, and no way was I going to force you into that. But I don’t understand why, and neither does your mother,” he said, laying down his paper and looking at me over the top of his glasses. “And neither does Charles.”