Page 43 of The Bad Brother

Her altruistic mask hardens and starts to crack.

She thought publicly humiliating me was going to be fun.

Something to laugh about with her friends after I slunk away with my tail tucked between my legs.

Why would she think any different? In the nearly two years I dated and was engaged to her son, I’ve never been anything but meek and deferring.

Never stood up for myself. Never showed my backbone or put my foot down.

I just let her walk right over me. I even let her wipe her feet because I wanted her to like me.

Because it was just plain easier than putting up a fight.

From the look on her face, she’s starting to understand that nothing about this conversation is going to be fun.

Not for her, anyway.

“And why is that, dear?” she asks, her hand curling around the stem of her martini glass like she’s getting ready to throw what’s left of it in my face.

I hope she does. It’ll be worth it.

“Because, a very skilled someone very recently showed me,” I say, leaning into her table on an exaggerated whisper. “Your son couldn’t fuck his way out of a paper bag. A lifetime of bad sex is definitely not something I signed up for.”

The shocked, collective gasp that ripples around the table like a wave while Ethan’s mother stares up at me, filler-plumped mouth hanging open in an exaggerated O, is priceless.

Miraculously still dry and not covered in watered down martini, I decide to end things here before she snaps out of it and starts screeching.

On impulse, I reach into the pocket of my dress and pull out the handful of sour candy I stuffed into it before I left the loft.

I don’t need them.

Not anymore.

“Enjoy the rest of your lunch.” I toss the individually wrapped candies onto the table with another sugary smile before walking away without a backward glance, gaze zeroed in on my mother who is now standing beside her chair, anxiously watching the exchange between me and Ethan’s mother from across the room.

“Do I want to know what just happened?” my mother asks me as soon as I’m within earshot.

“Probably not,” I tell her while I wait for the waiter who’s hovering around our table to pull out my chair.

I’ve seen him before. He’s at the Mill, most Saturday nights, when I get off work.

From the barely suppressed smile on his face, I’d guess he lives in Barrett.

“But I’m going to tell you anyway.” Seated at the table, I pull my tented napkin from the silver-plated charger in front of me and snap it open.

“That drunk, bleach-blonde fossil thought it would be fun to try to make me cry over her worthless excuse for a son, so I set her straight.”

“Oh, Sloane…” Collapsing into her chair on an exaggerated sigh. “How are we going to fix this if you just insist on making the situation worse?”

“Ethan sent me a video of Amy sucking his dick at our engagement party, Mom,” I say, not even bothering to keep my voice down. If these bitches want to talk about me, I’ll give them something to talk about. “I fail to see how this is a situation worth fixing.”

Looking around with an alarmed expression on her face, my mother lets out another exaggerated sigh before reaching across the table for my hand.

“All men stray.” She gives my fingers a brief, commiserating squeeze before she lets them go and sits back, looking up with an expectant expression at the waiter hovering near our table.

“We’ll have a bottle of 2013 Perrier-Joulet Rosé and the tomato water salad with marinated salmon. ”

“Excellent choice, Mrs. Barclay,” he says in a tone that tells me my mother could have ordered a shit sandwich, smothered in pig vomit and he would approved her choice, just the same. Turning to look at me, he gives me a nod. “And what will the young miss be having?”

Opening my mouth to tell him the doctor will be having the filet, medium rare, with potatoes Delphine, I’m cut off before I can speak.

“She’ll be having the same.”

When my mother says it, something akin to sympathy flits over the waiter’s face before he gives me a nod. “Very well.”

As soon as he’s gone, my mother reaches for her water glass and picks up where she left off. “To be honest, you’re lucky this happened early on,” she says to me before taking a sip. “Better to learn that particular lesson now, rather than later.”

There’s that word again.

Lesson .

“Cheating isn’t normal, Mom,” I tell her, watching while she fusses with her napkin. “It isn’t a lesson either—not the kind you think it is.”

“You’re being childish, Sloane.” The quiet admonishment in her tone makes me want to scream. “Every marriage has its trials. Every man?—”

“No, Mom.” I stop her cold with a small head shake. “Not all men are my father and not all men are Mark. Not every man cheats and whatever trials a marriage goes through, they should be met together . Fighting through it alone isn’t a trial. It’s torture.”

My mother blinks at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about and suddenly, I can’t take another second of it.

Standing up, I retrieve my purse.

“Where are you going?” she hisses at me before taking a discrete look around the room to make sure we aren’t causing a scene. She shouldn’t have bothered. We are most definitely causing a scene. “Sit back down. We’ll have a nice?—”

“No.” I’m done with being told what to do and how to feel.

How much I should take and how to react.

“I don’t want to sit down. I want to go to work, where I’m needed and I can do something with my life besides sit in some fancy cage with a bunch of fancy birds who secretly hate each other.

” I say it loud. Loud enough to draw looks and elicit more than a few insulted gasps.

Looking down at my mother, I can see exactly where her mind is going. Exactly what she plans on doing, the second I turn my back to leave. Leaning down, I get in her face.

“Dr. Ragnar has made it clear that if you call her one more time , she’ll fire me.

” I whisper it. This part of the conversation is just between us.

“You might think that’s what you want Mom, but it isn’t because I’m good at what I do.

So good that I receive job offers from all over the world , almost daily.

I love my hospital but if you get me fired, I won’t fight for my position there.

I’ll just accept another surgical position—one as far away from you as I can possibly get.

I’ll disappear and you will never, never see me again. ”

My mother stares at me like I just spit in her face while all the fancy birds stare at us over their anemic salads and chilled martinis and wish they could hear what I’m saying. “You don’t mean that, Sloane. You’d never just up?—”

“Try me.” My tone snaps her jaw shut for a moment but it doesn’t last long.

“What’s gotten into you?” She whispers back like whatever it is, it’s a disease. One she’s afraid of catching.

“The Grilled Cheese Guy,” I tell her before I straighten myself, laughing at my own joke.

“I know this is a difficult concept for you to grasp, but I didn’t lose Ethan .

” This part I say out loud, while looking around the room because I want them all to know that I haven’t shed a single tear over Ethan Pryce and I never will.

“He lost me and all he has to show for it is someone desperate enough to suck his dick on camera, just so he can hurt me .”

Like saying his name conjures him into being, I see him.

I see them .

Ethan and Amy, sitting at a table, not far from where his mother ambushed me. They must’ve come in while I was being browbeaten into ordering a salad. He’s looking at me with barely controlled rage while Amy glares at me like I took her favorite toy and kicked her out of the sandbox.

She can have the toy and the sandbox too.

I don’t want to play anymore.

Tucking my clutch under my arm, I lean down again to press a soft, quick kiss to my mother’s cheek. “I’ll call you next week, on my day off. We’ll meet for coffee somewhere that isn’t here.”

Turning away from her before she has a chance to answer me, I weave my way through the silent restaurant, aiming myself for the door. Almost there, I stop on impulse. Snagging a waiter by the sleeve of his jacket, the same waiter I’ve seen at the Mill, I pull him close.

“Do you see that couple in the middle of the room?” I ask quietly while he scans the gawking crowd. “He’s wearing a douchey pastel polo shirt and she’s wearing the YSL sundress she stole from me?”

Even though my description of Amy’s sundress makes no sense to him at all, the waiter nods his head. “Yes.”

“Are they staring at me?”

The waiter nods. “Yes.”

“Do they look pissed?”

Another nod. This one accompanied by the slightest of smirks. “Yes.”

“Good.” Resisting the urge to turn around and look for myself, I open my clutch and pull out one of my precious fifty-dollar bills.

“I’d like to order them the bananas foster,” I tell him while pressing the single bill into his hand.

“And when they ask you what the hell is going on, tell them it’s with compliments from Jensen and Sloane. ”

“It would be my pleasure, ma’am,” the waiters says while discretely pocketing the cash. The look on his face tells me he would have happily participated in my rebellion, free of charge.

“Thank you.”

Final fuck you delivered, I walk out the door without a backward glance.