My Parents Begged for My Execution on Live TV novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: One Ravioli
At her boyfriend's Thanksgiving table Nina swallows one ravioli, and his family throws her out; her best friend hears the story and tells her she should not be alive.
My boyfriend's mother knocked her plate onto the floor the second I swallowed.
It was my first holiday dinner at his parents' house, and I had eaten exactly one ravioli.
She stood at the head of the table, breathing hard, and pointed at my face.
"What did my son ever do to deserve a woman like you?"
His father, his aunt and his grandmother all turned to look at me.
I looked at Dominic, because he would know what I had done.
Three minutes earlier he had been holding my hand under the tablecloth, telling me we would shop for a ring in the new year.
Now he let go.
"Nina Halvorsen, we're over."
He pulled the napkin off his lap and threw it on my plate.
I could still taste the butter. For a second his words did not mean anything.
"What?"
He did not answer. He stood up, took my arm and pulled me out of my chair.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know you had a rule about the food. Tell me what I did and I'll fix it."
Rosalie Ferrante had hugged me at the door that morning and called me sweetheart twice.
She had shown me her grandmother's pearl earrings and promised them to her future daughter-in-law.
Now she put the jewelry box in the sideboard drawer, shut it and turned the key.
"Nobody lets her touch anything else in this house."
Dominic's father took my wineglass and my fork and dropped them in the trash.
Dominic walked me to the front door. I caught the frame with my free hand and held on.
"Fine, break up with me. But tell me why."
We had been together three years.
I had stood by him through the year he couldn't find work. When his father had surgery, I turned down an internship and drove six hours to bring him home.
On the drive over he had told me his mother had been cooking since dawn. She had made two kinds of ravioli.
"She already thinks of you as family," he had said.
He looked down at me now, and his face was pure disgust.
"You know what you did."
"I ate one ravioli!"
He shut the door on my right hand.
White pain went up my arm. I pulled my fingers out with tears running down my face, and nobody inside asked if I was hurt.
The wreath on the door swung once and was still.
*****
On the train back to campus I held a bottle of ice water against my hand until I could breathe.
Three fingers had gone purple and swollen. Dominic's ring would not come off.
He used to turn the whole medicine cabinet out looking for a bandage when I got a paper cut.
Now he had broken my hand himself, and he hadn't even handed me the coat I left behind.
I video-called Maeve Keane.
She was my best friend. We met in first grade, and now she studied journalism three states away.
When we were nine, she ran after a ball into the road and I shoved her out of the way of a car. The car hit me instead, and I woke up in the hospital with a broken arm.
Her grandmother sat by my bed for a week, feeding me bread and milk from a wooden spoon.
Maeve had told me for years that she owed me her life.
Her face went white when she saw my hand. "Has he lost his mind? I'm calling him right now."
I tried to stop her, but I started crying first.
"I don't understand. We were talking about rings. Then I ate a cheese ravioli and the whole family turned on me."
Maeve went very still. "A ravioli?"
"Just a normal one. Is there some rule about eating at their table?"
"Tell me exactly what happened. Start when you picked up your fork. Don't leave anything out."
I made myself remember.
There were four ravioli on a white china plate, with a little bowl of green sauce beside them.
The fork was on my right. I took the nearest ravioli, blew on it and ate it in two bites.
The sauce tasted like oil to me. Since the accident I haven't been able to taste anything bitter.
Maeve said nothing.
"Did I use the wrong fork?"
"Who made them?"
"Rosalie. By hand, since dawn. Why does that matter?"
The screen went black.
A message came in.
Maeve: Don't ever contact me again.
I sent her a dozen messages before I understood she had blocked me.
Nobody was going to tell me what I had done. So I decided I would find out.
I borrowed the conductor's phone and called her.
"Fifteen years of friendship," I said, shaking. "You're really going to cut me off like this?"
The line was quiet for a long time.
Then Maeve's voice came back, flat and cold.
"Nina Halvorsen, why is someone like you still alive?"
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend