The Dinner; Part 2

Happy 4th of July Everyone! Hope you have a happy and safe weekend full of fun, food, and fireworks!!

What's your favorite 4th of July tradition?  I like to watch one of my very favorite movies of all time: JAWS! 

 

"Panic on your hands on the Fourth of July!" 

ANYWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY........

This installment is back to one of my favorite characters, Avalon Delaney. (two different links for her there.)

I really hope you enjoy! 

************

Avalon tried to reason out why it was, precisely, that she didn’t want to go to this dinner.  She was being unreasonable, she decided at length.  Because there was no rational explanation for why the idea of this little family dinner was making her so blindingly infuriated. 

Ben had noticed right away.  “Whoa, what’s up?”  He’d asked when she climbed into his car outside of the campus library.  She may have slammed the door just a little.

“Nothing.”

Ben stared at her.  “Av?”

She sighed out in exasperation.  He wouldn’t leave her alone until she told him, she knew him well enough to know that. 

“I don’t know.”  She said, which felt mostly true. 

He raised an eyebrow.  “You look good.”  He said after a moment. 

Avalon watched a group of college freshmen walk by the car, chattering and laughing too loudly and felt  irritated by them as well.  This was going to be a long evening.

She looked at Ben.  “Thank you.”  She said coolly.  “Now we should get going.”  She focused her gaze in front of her, trying to signal that the conversation was at an end.  “You look good too.”  She added as an afterthought.

There was a long minute of quiet before Ben put the car in gear and eased out into the campus’ main road.  He was polite enough not to note that she’d barely spared him a glance, thus her compliment was clearly a courtesy at best.  If it had happened the other way around Avalon knew she would have made a big thing about it.  She looked over at his profile.  He really was very good-looking.  And he was wearing one of her favorite shirts—a tiffany blue button down she’d given him for his birthday the previous year, and dark chocolate trousers.  This was a great outfit for his coloring; had he done it on purpose?  She doubted it.  “You really do look nice.”  She said, a shade apologetically. 

He kept his eyes on the road but smiled.  “Thank you.  I wore the shirt.”  He said, a little proud of himself.  He wore it open at the collar with clean white cotton tee underneath.

She gave half a laugh.  “It makes you look like a dreamboat.”  She said with a growing smile.

He chuckled.  “A dreamboat?”  He asked, amused by the ‘granny’ word.

“Mmmhmm.”  She answered and slid her fingers up his arm to the base of his collar and scratched the base of his scalp playfully.  She loved his sandy blonde hair.  He even sported what she and her friends liked to call “Prince Hair”; a haircut that was clean and classic and reminiscent of fairy tale princes from the movies and story books of their youth.   Ben was sort of like Cedar Falls’ answer to Prince Charming. 

He was Cedar Falls’ golden boy.  Tall, but not lanky; Athletic but not bulky; Handsome, but not too pretty; He had a great smile but he didn’t smile to excess.  He was perfect.  All the men in his family, on both sides, were good-looking men.  And Avalon believed he was the best of all of them.  “You’re a catch.”  She teased coyly and she ran her fingers over his shoulders.  The tiffany blue made her feel tickle-y and giddy.  He’d made a wise choice of wardrobe this evening.

He grinned and threw a glance her way for a brief moment.  The delight in his warm brown eyes made her breath hitch in her throat and she smiled back.  He looked back toward the road and she trailed her fingers down his side and then onto his firm thigh.  He sat up a little straighter and glanced in the rearview mirror.  They had probably fifteen minutes remaining of the twenty minute car ride to her parents’ house.  She slipped her hand toward his inner thigh and purred.

“As much as I love what you’re about to do—“  He said, sounding almost as if he were kicking himself for saying anything,  “I think you should tell me what’s up.”

She boldly cupped his crotch and massaged expertly.  “You, I hope.”  She answered friskily.

He laughed.  “Me, yes, definitely if you keep doing that.”  He said, a little husky.

She leaned way over and nipped his earlobe, continuing to stroke and massage over his pants.  He was quickly rising to her touch and straining against the fabric of his trousers.  When she moved to release him from the too-confining space, started to pull downward on the small zipper he gently captured her wrist.

“Avalon.”  He said gently.  “Please honey.”

For a moment she didn’t know what she felt. Then she snatched her hand away and sat rigidly in her seat with her arms crossed in front of her.  Cold and aloof.  She was furious.

He sighed and adjusted himself as best he could before reaching over and pulling her left arm out of its pout and taking her hand in his.  She let him take her hand but looked determinedly out her passenger side window with a scowl.

“I love you.”  He said.

She huffed.  “I love you too.”  She said grudgingly.

“What’s the matter?”

The problem was she didn’t know how to articulate just what the matter was, not to him, not even to herself.  She felt frustrated and irritable and sour and the more she tried to uncover the root of these unsettling feeling the worse they became.  Everytime he pressed for her explanation it felt as if he were unwisely poking at a hornet’s nest. 

She swallowed.  She didn’t want to fight with him.  Not tonight.  Not right before they had to walk in there and be chipper and pleasant and lovely.  She didn’t want to fight with him, she wanted him as her ally in there.  She didn’t want to fight with him, but she felt it coming.

“Av, I’m not going to stop asking until you tell me.”  He said quietly.

She licked the inside of her teeth and set her jaw.  “I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.”  She said in monosyllables.

He pulled his hand out of hers, to make a wide turn, but when he didn’t gather her hand up once again she knew he was angry.  They had promised one another that they’d never do that, never pull the old ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ routine.  They had made a promise to always communicate, always be open, always let the other in-on what was going on.  For Avalon it was much easier said than done.  She had to work at it.  A lot. 

Because sometimes?  Sometimes she really did not want to talk about it.  She drummed her now orphaned fingers on her leg tetchily.  “I don’t want to go to this!”  She exploded after about five minutes of silence.  She felt panicky and wild and had the strongest urge to just rip the car door open and throw herself out of the moving vehicle onto the pavement.

If he was startled by her outburst he didn’t show it.  “How come?”  He asked mildly.

His calm enflamed her.  “Because I don’t.”  She barked.

He kept driving placidly.  She waited for him to speak.  When he did not, she shrieked: “Pull over. Pull over pull over pull over!”

“No.”  He said very clearly, glancing at her just long enough to ascertain that there was no medical emergency or anything.

“Ben, pull this car over right now.  I don’t want to be in this car right now. Pull the car over now.”  She felt herself spiraling out of control and she was furious with him for being so goddamned calm and unperturbed.  He kept his hands fixed to the steering wheel, made no move to push on the blinker, no move toward pulling over.

“Avalon you need to calm down.”  He said firmly.

She felt like her head was exploding.  Her blood boiled in her ears, her chest, her face and she could have screamed.  Instead she forced the iciest, most deliberate voice she had.  “Pull this car the Fuck over right now or I swear to God I will make sure you crash it.”

He slowed-up a little but only braced himself for whatever she was thinking of springing on him.  She’d said ‘fuck’.  They both knew this was likely to get fairly ugly.  He would have been wise to pull over.  But he was resolute.  He kept on in the direction of her parents’ house.

“I will stop this car when I get to your house and not a minute before.”  He stated.

She wanted to smash the windshield.  She imagined it splitting in a hundred directions and then collapsing into millions of little square pieces and showering in on them.  She wanted to kick her foot right through it.  Instead she pushed her feet hard into the floor of the car and yanked at the steering wheel.

“Jesus Christ!”  He hollered, pulling hard against her force.  The car swerved dangerously first toward her side of the road and then precariously toward oncoming traffic as he attempted to course-correct.  He peeled her iron grasp off the wheel as he struggled to keep the nose of the car within the traffic lines.

“Pull over.”  She demanded.

“Calm the fuck down!”  He countered, practically crushing her hand in his, trying to prevent her from trying the stunt a second time.  Now he’d said fuck.  Things were escalating satisfyingly.

“Let go of me!”  She shrieked and pulled wildly against his powerful grasp.

“Not until you calm down.”  He growled.  She could see a flash of something like fear in his eyes as he fought to maintain his driving and stave off her insanity simultaneously.

She hated him for being able to do both at once.  He made her feel like a child having a tantrum.  “Fuck you Ben.”  She hissed and with a growl tearing her throat she suddenly went limp in his grip.

He loosened his hold just slightly, warily.  “If I let go, can I trust you to get a hold of yourself?”  He asked, he didn’t mean it to sound condescending but it rankled and provoked her even further.

She laughed mirthlessly and he glanced over at her.  She hated the concern all over his features.  He made her feel insane when he looked at her like that.  She had the strangest urge to spit in his face.  She sucked in on her cheeks instead and scolded herself for behaving like a goddamn lunatic.

“Just pull the fuck over and I will be fine.”  She answered haughtily.

“Goddammit Avalon!”  He barked and she jumped at the brutal force of it.  “What the hell is your problem?”

“Shut the fuck up!”  She practically screamed and yanked her hand out of his loosened hold.  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that.”

His eyes widened and his jaw clenched.  He kept his right arm out between them, ready for her if she chose to attack him or go for the wheel again.  He was furious.

“Well?”  She demanded hotly when he hadn’t said anything after a long moment.  “Don’t you have anything to say?” 

He looked like he had a great deal to say, but he only shook his head and kept his eyes ahead of him.  She felt the fight bleeding out of her.  “Pull. Over. Please.”  She said wearily.

He did not.  The steady hum of the car’s engine was simultaneously maddening and soothing and Avalon didn’t know what she wanted anymore.  She watched the street signs as they passed and knew, with a dread feeling in her gut, that they were getting close.

“I don’t want to go.”  She said weakly.

“Well neither do I, now.”  He said rather sharply.

She leaned the side of her forehead against the cool glass of her window and shivered all over.  “Then don’t.”  She said bitterly.  “You don’t have to be there.”

He was quiet and she wanted to look at him, to read his face, but she kept her forehead on the window and closed her eyes instead.

“Is that what you want?”  He asked carefully, a leaden quality to his words.

She shrugged.

The car slowed to a stop and she heard him put it in park but he left the car running.  Slowly she opened her eyes.  They were on her street but not yet pulled up to the house.  She looked at him, confusion written in her expression and he stared at her.

“Avalon, I’m only going to ask this one more time and I need you to think carefully before you answer me.”  She bristled at his tone.  She felt her nostrils flare and her eyes grew hot and her fingers curled into fists.  “Because if you tell me I don’t need to be at a family event right now then I will take that to mean that you no longer consider us a family.”  She furrowed her brows and scowled.  Ben could be sensitive about things like that.  “I want to be by your side in there tonight.”  He said, softening his tone.  “Now, do you want me there?”

He was missing the point.  She raged inwardly.  She didn’t want to go!  It had nothing to do with him.

“Yes.”  She forced.

“Ok.”  He said.  “I love you Av.”  He added quietly.

She blinked and looked away.  “I love you too.” She replied, compulsory.

“What’s going on?”  He tried again gently.

“I don’t know.”  She admitted desperately.  “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I just know I don’t want to be there tonight.”

Ben sighed and reached over to take her hand.  “Well, as much as you don’t want to be there, multiply that by a hundred and that’s how much I don’t want to be there.”  He told her. 

She looked at him.  “Why not?”  Ben was normally a perennial optimist, the one who always saw the bright side of things and gave Avalon pep-talks in order to get her to attend events and social gatherings she would rather avoid.

“Ugh.”  He responded.  “Because the last time I was at your house things got pretty weird.”

Avalon’s brow crinkled.  She was trying to remember.  “When?”

“Poker night.”  He answered.  “While you were upstate.”

“It got weird?”  She asked skeptically.  He’d mentioned the poker night when she’d spoken to him on the phone the next day but he hadn’t indicated that anything had been out of the ordinary, jut that he’d hated going over without her there.  This was the first time since that the subject had resurfaced.

With his left hand Ben massaged his brow.  “Yeah.”  He sighed.  “Your Dad was very, um, odd, all night; and your sister was—I don’t know, I just don’t really look forward to seeing them right now.”

“Tell me.”  She said, feeling both intrigued and concerned.

“Ok, I have no idea what was up with your Dad,” he said dismissively, “But he was weird.  Like, distracted and jumpy and spacey.  But then your sister?  Christ.”

“What was my sister doing hanging around with you guys?”  Avalon asked, feeling an irritation mounting.  If she wasn’t allowed to hang out with the guys on poker nights then there was no way Viola should get to.  Her Dad always gave Viola whatever the hell Viola wanted.

“She wasn’t, not really.”  Ben saw Avalon’s obvious confusion and hurried to explain.  “I mean, she asked if she could play, your Dad said ‘no’.  She came back to try again later; she whined about it and even got your uncle Caleb on her side but your Dad was like: ‘Don’t tell me how to parent my child’—“

“Whaaaaat?”  Avalon had never heard her father speak like that to anyone, let alone his youngest brother whom he adored.

“Yeah, I told you: he was weird.  So then Viola stomps upstairs all upset and we continue to play poker.”

Avalon nodded.  She looked at their hands and was suddenly very glad he hadn’t pulled over before.  That she’d stayed in the car.  She squeezed his hand a little, a mute thanks.  He took it as his cue to continue the story.

“And it was just rough being there without you in the house anyway, and then my uncles and your uncles bring up the wedding stuff and it’s like they’re trying to embarrass me infront of your Dad, which would be bad enough on a normal night but when he’s already acting so bizarre?”  He leveled an expression on her that told her it had been hell.  She smiled indulgently.  “They brought up the bachelor party.”  He lamented with a half-shudder.

She bit her lip.  He really was adorable.  “And is that all?”

“Oh, no, no, no, no.”  Ben said shaking his head.  “Your sister comes back down a third time but this time she’s um, she’s—“  He let some air out in a ‘whoosh’ before drawing another breath and continuing.  “She’s wearing what she’s calling her ‘pajamas’, but Av?  You could see everything. Like.  Everything.”

Avalon opened her mouth to speak but had no words.

“I mean, it was really, really inappropriate.”  Ben added, blushing faintly.  “And it got real awkward real fast.”  He told her.

“What did my father do?”  She asked breathlessly.

“Well first West practically rapes her with his eyes and I thought your Dad was going to kill him— I really did, you should have seen his face, you now?  His eyes?“  Avalon raised her eyebrows.  “Then your Dad sort of hustles Viola out of the room pretending everything is fine but they were gone for a while and when I saw her again—she was on her way to bed for the night—her eyes were puffy and she’d been crying.”

Good, though Avalon remorselessly.  Maybe her father had finally grown enough of a spine to properly discipline the little hellion.  “And how was dad after that?”  She asked.

“He got pretty drunk Av.”  Ben said apologetically.

Avalon laughed.  “My father doesn’t get drunk.”  She said, wondering now if the whole story had been some joke.

He didn’t join her laughter, he didn’t even smile.  “I know.”  He said quietly.  “But he did.”

She felt clammy and uncomfortable all over.  “What did he do?”  She asked, a strange alarm growing in her belly.  “What did he say?”

Ben’s eyebrows crinkled.  “Well he wasn’t the only one drinking a lot.”  Ben assuaged, “Your Uncle Caleb got shit-faced, West was pretty far gone and my uncles had more than they usually do.”  He was thoughtful.  “Maybe it was because there were no women at home.  Well, I don’t count Vi of course.”

Avalon thought about it.  Maybe.  Maybe men were different when the women were out of town.  “Did you get drunk?”  She asked, pretending to be casual but obviously baiting him. 

“I did not.”  He responded assertively.  “There was no way I wasn’t getting the hell out of there as soon as we’d finished.”  He said and she believed him.  “Plus I had to drive West home.”

“Did he…”  She almost didn’t want to know.  “Did he embarrass himself at all?”  She asked timidly, meaning her Father.

Ben raised his eyebrows.  “I don’t know.  Sort of?  It was embarrassing for me to see your Dad like that.”  He cleared his throat.  “I mean he didn’t, like, get fall-down drunk or anything, and he didn’t say anything too outrageous, I just…”  He searched for a way to articulate how he felt  “He just wasn’t himself and a couple times your Uncle Nolan had to, sort of, cover for him, I guess I’d say, sort of smooth over something he’d said or done and it was just uncomfortable.”  Ben finished and took a deep breath; he seemed relieved to have gotten all that off his chest.

Avalon felt vaguely distressed and fairly embarrassed too.  “I’m so sorry.”  She said, finding apologizing for her father to be peculiar and unpleasant.

“Hey, it’s ok, it’s fine, no big deal, I just, I want you to know you aren’t alone in not wanting to go tonight.”  He smiled at her encouragingly.  “We’ll be in it together.”  He said with a small laugh.

She wished she could return the laugh but all she managed was a wan smile.  “I’m just pissed about my brother getting married.”  She confessed, feeling small and petty for being jealous.

Ben’s smile deepened.  “He ain’t got nothin’ on us honey.”  He said like a moviestar and leaned in to place a warm, full kiss on her pouting lips.  She doubted Ben would understand her frustration.  She didn’t think he’d be able to empathize with her feeling that Grey always pulled stunts like this just to steal attention away from her.  He’d been doing it all her life and this felt like the absolute last straw.

Grey was always one-upping her, pulling focus from her big achievements by doing something wild or incredible and Avalon was always left as second banana, old news, or an ‘also ran’.  Of course a confirmed bachelor would choose a time like now to up and elope, naturally he’d wait until the whole Town was buzzing about her engagement and looking forward to what promised to be the wedding of the year—if not the decade—to up and scandalize the town with a surprise marriage. 

She hated Grey.  And by association she hated whatever little slut had been stupid enough to marry him and ruin Avalon’s moment in the spotlight.  And she hated her mother because she knew, she knew it deep down, that Velvet Delaney would not be able to rest until she’d thrown a big wedding party for Grey and his idiot bride, which would, of course, turn everyone’s attention even further from her wedding to Ben.

Ben pulled back a little from the kiss.  “You ready?”  He asked sweetly, squeezing her hand.

She loved him so much.  “I’m sorry about before.”  She said, looking deep into his rich brown eyes.

He shrugged a little.  “I understand.”  He said, and she thought that maybe he did, at least in part.  Maybe Ben understood her better than she did herself.

He put the car in gear and drove the rest of the way up her street until they came to rest outside the Delaney mansion.  With a weary sigh he put the car in park and turned it off.

“What did you think?”  She asked, keeping her tone light.

“What?”

“Of my sister?”

“I think she needs therapy.”  He answered without hesitation.

“I mean, did she look good?”  She asked silkily, non-chalant.

“She looked like a half-naked fifteen year old.”  Ben answered sourly.

“And?”

“And she’s my sister and it was disgusting and I’d rather not be thinking about it when we walk in that house.”  He said firmly.

She smiled a little.  He was perfect.