Page 294 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
“When does that ever stop you from talking?”
“Okay. I know some stuff, but that’s on him to tell you,” she adds more frosting to the space between her lips and proves my point. “Has he told you everything?”
“Like what?”
“Like, your little crush is reciprocated, and how I found out about it?”
“No, obviously. I didn’t know until now that you knew.” I pull out a seat, and it grinds across the floor and all over my nerves. I keep my sprig in hand, extended over the table towardmy mother, who stares down at the first layer of my cake. “I’m making him a birthday cake.”
I feel Mom’s eyes on me, but mine stay on her throat, the gash angry and bleeding, caused by me.
“I feel terrible.”
A sad smile appears on Mom’s face, and her hands direct me there when she hides her throat.
Annabelle twists in her seat. “Momma bear still here?”
“I don’t get it. How do you or Ambrose not see them, yet Shane can?”
“What?” Annabelle’s wide eyes fly to me. “Shane doesn’t see this, any of it.” She flaps her arms like some wild goose. “If he says he does, he’s lying.”
“Why would he lie?” Before she can answer, realization hits. For control. Because it would bring him close to me. “Oh, because it comes naturally to him. He lied about Ambrose, too, you know? He sent that letter.”
“The letter? The reason you feared Ambrose?”
My head nods.
“Dollie, it really is time to fuck Shane off. He is not good for you. These kinds of lies prove how controlling he is. He is dangerous. You are sleeping with the enemy.”
“He isn’t good for me, but many would say neither is sleeping with my brother.”
“Well, you didn’t have sex. It was just a kiss, right?” The next words come out through gritted teeth. “For now.”
“We didn’t have sex.”
“But you would, though, right?”
My eyes move around the room. There is no sign of my mother right now, whom I’m hunting down before I say anything that would have definitely gotten me grounded ten years ago.
“We did other stuff. I shouldn’t have kissed him. He shouldn’t have kissed me, but then one thing led to another, and our hands were in each other’s clothes.”
“Just in the clothes? Or inside?—”
“Annabelle!”
“That’s not a no.”
“We’re best friends, we shouldn’t lie to each other.”
“Okay then, bestie, give me the scoop.”
“You’ve had enough scoops.” I eye the frosting on her lips, and feeling my eyes there, she licks them clean.
“So, it was bad?”
“No. It was amazing—he was amazing. And things were great, and I didn’t care about what people thought, and it didn’t feel like he did either. It was just us in that moment, and it was perfect.”
I shift from the cake quickly to cough, my chest still feeling kind of raw. Standing, I run the sage under some water before placing it in the trash and returning to my seat.
