I just resented this place, him. I came around to her. “Nothing good can come out of talking to him.”
The doorbell rang, and both our gazes flashed up.
“Christ in heaven,” Mom said, rarely cursing which let me know the tone of the conversation had been heated. She looked at me. “I invited a colleague over for dinner with us, an old friend. She’s new to town and doesn’t know anyone yet.”
And what a perfect time for a stranger to come in.
“Please set an extra place setting on the table,” she said, completely avoiding the rest of our conversation and going into Mom mode. She pressed down her blouse. “You’re going to act like the son I raised and not make us look entirely and completely dysfunctional.”
I smiled. “So only partially or…”
She shoved me, like actually shoved me like a linebacker, and she would have gotten me under her arm if I didn’t have her on the height. Instead, she slapped at my head, and I dodged.
“Just get the table together,” she said, rolling her eyes before scurrying away. She pointed at me from the door. “And put on a different shirt. Something nice since we have company?”
I gazed down to my band tee, my eyes lifting. I didn’t mind walking around in suits and dress pants all day for the office, but when I came over for weekly dinner, I thought I was safe to, I don’t know, be myself.
I still did have a few things here to wear, so after getting the table set up in the dining room, I took the grand staircase two by two up to my old bedroom. I heard voices drifting from somewhere in the house as I did, and I assumed Mom was showing whoever her friend was around the house. She’d be doing that for a while since the place was so big, so I took my time to find a decent shirt before coming back downstairs.
I had cuffed my teal dress shirt at my forearms, but I didn’t tuck it into my jeans like a nerdy asshole. Mom just wanted me to look presentable, so I did that coming back downstairs. Since Mom was entertaining tonight, I was surprised she’d asked the staff to leave for the evening. She’d cut down on people since the divorce but usually asked them to be around if she was having people over to help serve and everything. I suppose, with our weekly more intimate dinners, she never did that, though.
I followed my mom’s voice and another female’s into the dining room to find them both already sitting there. Her friend had her back turned, facing in my mother’s direction, but the long flow of inky silk waves struck me as familiar.
And that raspy voice.
No. Fucking. Way.
But then, I circulated the room to find the woman’s face. Brielle’s head tossed back with smoky laughter. She had her hands pressed together, lightly chuckling at something my mother had said to her, her dress equally black and exposing her honeyed arms. She hugged them with her perfect manicured hands, her lips always that hard shade of red. If I didn’t know any better, this woman was an assassin in another life, a femme fatale who never failed to slay and lasso me.
Jersey girl, what the hell?
But then thoughts of my mother being the dean of the history department surfaced, and I totally got it. I got it, but that didn’t mean this all made sense.
“Oh, there’s my son.”
Oh, fuck.
“Ramses, honey.” A wave in my direction, my mom clearly not aware of the colossal shit show she was about to display in high definition right in the middle of her dining room.
But I did. I watched those curtains draw back and the screen illuminate as a goddess in raven black tossed those chocolate brown eyes in my direction. Watched them twitch wide as her mouth parted and her friend, i.e. my mother, introduced me back into her life. All of which Brielle was forced to sit back and endure.
Brielle’s lashes fanned in quick succession, my mother waving me in like a plane coming in for a goddamn landing. I came, of course. What the fuck else could I do?
“Sweetheart, this is Bri,” Mom said, smiling through this shit. I mean, she had no idea, so why not smile, right? “She’s teaching at the university. Just moved here.”
She sure had, hadn’t she? The pair of us well acquainted.
I swallowed with a dry mouth. Shit was about to hit the fan. I had no idea how my mother would react to the news that I’d screwed one of her colleagues, but considering she said Brielle was her friend, probably not great.
Oh, shit was Ma the friend? The one who’d gotten Brielle the job at Pembroke?
The stars friggin’ aligned right in front of me, all this shit really making sense now. Mom had been the reason she’d been at Royal and December’s wedding, Ma had been the reason Bri was in town and now had the job at my university. Mom had, of course, been invited to the Prinze wedding—everyone who’s who in town had—but Mom also was head of the history department and worked a lot. Especially surrounding the weeks getting closer to a new semester. I was lucky to get her on the phone at all right before term started.
Fucking fuck.
This really did all make sense now and maybe for Bri as well, the way she looked at me. Her lips pursed, and I thought maybe she’d be the one to come clean first.
“Nice to meet you, Ramses.” But then she said that, put out her hand, and once again, pretended nothing had gone down between us. She swallowed a little. “I’m Brielle, Bri.”
So this is the game we’re going to play?
Not surprising, considering this was her and had been her MO since I’d met her. Mom thought I was good at avoiding shit, but something told me my professor here could teach me more than a few things.
I simply stared at her, the hand between us. Bri urged me with her eyes to take it, and lucky for her, I had no desire to bring any more disappointment to my mother. I’d given her a boat load in the past few months.
I clasped Brielle’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Ramses.”
We shook on it, a slow shake with a bucketful of crap in it and unsaid words. What I wouldn’t give to high dive head first into Jersey girl’s mind right now.
At the present, I was forced to ease away from those thoughts, the shake over and both our hands returned. Between us, Mom sat like the friendly hostess she was, all this unbeknownst to her and lucky for it. Mom laced her fingers. “Bri teaches history at the university, honey.”
“Does she now,” I stated, gripping the back of my mom’s chair. “What do you teach, Brielle?”
Obviously, I was poking her, seeing what I could get out of her when she choked on the contents of her water glass. She just so happened to be taking a drink then, one that clearly came back up in her throat with the slight cough she allowed to escape.
She pressed a napkin to her lips, passing the whole thing off with her sultry smile. Or maybe, it was only sultry to me, this woman’s wiles not lost on me. She straightened. “Early western civilizations and ancient European,” she stated, manicured finger easing the neck of her dress away from her throat a little. “To name a couple.”
“Nice.”
“Aren’t you in a history class this semester, Ramses?” Mom worked around in her chair. She faced Brielle. “Ramses is a senior at Pembroke. His final semester.”
Brielle took that with another shot of water, but something told me we’d both need something a little stronger by the night’s end.