I SEE CHEATERS! So Yeah, My Fiancé's Wedding Went Up In Flames! novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Ask Me

"Ask him," I said.

Kelsey's face changed. "I'm asking you."

"I know. And I'm not doing it."

"You did it at the bachelorette. You did it to your own father in front of a line."

"I did it for me." I put my useless key back in my pocket.

"I'm not your lie detector, Kels. He already had one, and look what you two did with it."

"So there is someone."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't say no!"

"You're marrying him in July," I said. "If you can't ask him, that's your answer. Not mine."

I walked out of my own house and left the door open behind me.

Behind me, I heard her start to cry. I kept walking.

The old man in the lawn chair said, "Rough one," as I passed.

"Yeah," I said.

On Sunday night, my mother cooked.

She did it once a month, after the Bellamy's restaurant closed, in the hotel kitchen with the radio on and her sleeves rolled up.

Tonight it was pot roast in a pan big enough to bathe in.

The mashed potatoes had more butter in them than my bakery used in a day.

The four of us ate at the steel prep table on stools. Mom, me, Sinead and Cal.

Sinead's boyfriend had a roofing job in Jersey. Sinead said she didn't miss him, and checked her phone nine times.

"So," Mom said, pointing her fork at me. "The roommates."

"Gone," I said. "Thursday night. His mother took them in. They're in the pool house."

"Did they take anything?"

"The shower curtain," Sinead said. "Who takes a shower curtain?"

"A woman with a pool house," Mom said.

I'd changed the locks back on Friday. I hadn't slept there yet.

I didn't want to. Not with his name still on the deed.

Cal reached over and took a potato off my plate, and I let him.

Mom watched that. She didn't say anything about it, which was how I knew she'd noticed.

She poured herself more wine and looked at me over her reading glasses.

"Okay. I'm going to ask you, and then I'm never going to ask you again."

I put my fork down.

"The strings," she said. "Is it real?"

Sinead stopped chewing. Cal didn't move.

I'd never said it to my mother. Eleven years of holidays, and I'd never once said it.

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