“Are you…” I can’t go on. Emerson squeezes my arm, and the encouraging touch from someone I trust drives me on. My face burns as I gear up to try again and spit out, “Are you kidding me?”
The man in the tuxedo breaks the kiss, wrenching away from the woman in his arms.
My mother.
Bile rises in my throat once more. How could she? How could she actually do this?
I pinch the bridge of my nose, shake my head, but the reality doesn’t change. “I cannot believe you,” I say to the woman who gave birth to me. Emerson grips my arm tighter, helping me to get through this horror.
I am livid and devastated.
Ashamed and enraged.
Shocked and disgusted.
I never thought it possible to contain all these awful emotions at once. But then, I never imagined I’d find my fiancé making out with my about-to-be-officially-and-finally-estranged mother.
Fight-or-flight indecision holds me frozen. I need to get the hell out of here, but one thought echoes in my head and won’t let me leave.
Say something before you take off.
My mouth feels like glue. The woman who raised me just kissed the man I was going to marry.
I dig down deep, searching for the right words, in the right order, but come up empty.
My mother reaches for my arm. “Darling, I tried to tell you it was a bad idea,” she says, getting the first word in, beating me to it.
“Don’t, Tracy,” Emerson hisses at my mother. “Don’t you dare.”
Like I’ve inhaled secondhand strength from my friend, I seethe.
My mother gets my fiancé and the last word?
My gaze drifts down to her fingers on my arm.
She is touching me.
She was kissing the groom.
No fucking way.
I recoil, jerking my arm away from her like she’s diseased.
“We’re in love,” my mom declares, gazing into the green eyes of the artist I was about to marry.
He shrugs in surrender, his crow’s feet crinkling, giving away the five years he has on me. “It happened so quickly. I didn’t even expect it. I barely had time to think of what to say.” Silvio meets my gaze. “But I wanted to tell you, love. Truly, I did.”
Love?
He’s calling me love, like he always has?
I snap out of my surreal, sluggish haze.
I laser in on the slithering tuxedoed snake of a man. “I’m sure it was difficult to find the time to say four whole words—I’m fucking your mother.But maybe in the ten minutes it took you to tie your bow tie, you could have called me and delivered the news.”
I inhale sharply, gearing up for another round of zing, and swing my gaze toher. She’s no garden-variety snake. She’s an anaconda. “By the way, wear the white ribbon. I bet it’ll look great on your wedding day.” I thrust the bouquet at her. “And feel free to use these sunflowers. I get why you wanted them so badly, and since they smell like crap, they’ll go great with your secondhand groom.”
I turn on my heel. Emerson wraps an arm tightly around me.“Let’s get out of here,” she whispers, and I’m so damn grateful for her because I don’t even know which direction to go.
