We must have sat down, I guess. I can’t really remember the ceremony, all the words about true love and commitment, about sickness and health and death do us part didn’t reach me. My head was spinning. My fists were clenched, knuckles white. Anger pounded hard in my ears. He’d probably told her all about me. They probably swapped stories, tit for tat. They probably whispered about it after they fucked, naked and sweating and limbs entangled, No, we shouldn’t laugh, poor pathetic Ava, so glad I’m not her, so glad I’m not with her.
Then Cass and her new husband were kissing and people were clapping and standing again. I stared at the back of Evan’s neck. The press of his flesh against his collar. And my anger threatened to turn to tears, but no, I wouldn’t let it.
The happy couple sat down at the table and began looking through the paperwork, and the bow-tied men began filling the empty champagne glasses. I pushed past the woman and her dumb ugly husband and went toward them.
“To cheer the newlyweds,” the waiter instructed.
“Sure.” I downed the glass, the tiny bubbles itching my esophagus, put it back and took a fresh one.
I went to stand outside. The sun was low and glary. It bounced off the bleached white tablecloths, right into my eyes. I looked at the dirt instead.
A chorus of voices sounded from inside, “To the bride and groom!”
I took a gulp myself, to the bride and groom. I couldn’t forget why I was here. I would focus, do this, get this done, then I’d be free. It would be over, once and for all. Mel would always win—I knew that. Theodore, Saanvi and now Cass. That was enough. That could be the end of it. I could leave, go anywhere. Go where I would never see any of them, Evan included, ever again. I just had to get through tonight.
I could imagine Mel here now. Laughing at me. What? You wanted to show them all how hot and rich you are now? As if anyone even cares enough to notice you. You’re nothing, remember? It’s pathetic.
Two scuffed male dress shoes stepped in front of me.
“Ava?” And there he was, standing too close, touching my elbow, looking into my eyes.
“Hi,” I said, showing him all my teeth as I smiled. “We met at the bar the other day, right? Nice to see you again.”
“Don’t.”
“You should get back to your date. So nice that things are working out for you. Don’t let her get too close when Cass throws the bouquet—you two might be next.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
I knocked his shoulder only lightly as I passed him.
* * *
For the next hour, people mingled. They sipped their drinks and stood in circles and said, Didn’t she look beautiful? or, It’s such a perfect day, or, How early do you think I can get away with leaving?
I mingled with Steve, the guy I mistook for a waiter, and eyed-off the mechanics of the stereo. Turned out, he was Cass’s half brother on her dad’s side. He was almost the exact same age as Cass, which I didn’t ask questions about. He was also in charge of the music. Steve leaned on the bar and chatted to me about bands he liked and how you had to be tacky but still tasteful for a wedding—his job was all about finding the balance.
I could have done it then. I could have leaned forward and grinned at him and said I had a secret special song to play for Cass and was it at all possible to put it on. He would have agreed. But with the clatters from the kitchen and the rumble of conversation, it wouldn’t have had a great effect. Most people probably would only barely have heard it.
I know what you will be thinking: Cass doesn’t deserve this. She didn’t smear shit on my face, true. And yes, she did apologize, I know. But do you think that is really enough? I don’t. I believe that standing by and letting something happen makes you guilty. If you have the power to stop something, to change the course of what’s going on so that someone doesn’t bleed or cry or whatever it is, but you don’t, then you are complicit. Just because you are too spineless to do anything, or it’s too hard, or you are too comfortable, doesn’t make you innocent. You might not agree with me, but that’s what I believe. A drunken whoops sorry almost a decade later won’t change that.
The candles on each table were lit now. The fairy lights in the oak tree glittered against the gray sky. Steve was going on about how the new Justin Bieber album was actually really good and that no one really understood Sia, when I noticed that people were hesitating before taking their seats. In front of each place was a rectangular white card with a name written with computerized calligraphy. I pushed away from the bar and approached my table. I didn’t have to wander from place to place; I just knew that I’d be at the table where Evan and Saanvi were taking their seats. It would be just the sort of misguided thing Cass would do, to think I would be most happy with someone I knew, like we could just wash the past away.
I slid out my chair.
“Hi, Ava.” Saanvi’s smile was forced and polite. There was nothing about the way she looked at me that hinted at resentment or anger. I couldn’t help but let my eyes slide over to meet Evan’s. He hadn’t told her anything, that was clear.
“Hi.” I took my seat.
“You look really pretty,” she said.
“Didn’t anyone tell you you’re not meant to wear black at weddings?” Evan said. “It’s bad luck.”
“Evan!” Saanvi turned to him, truly annoyed. “That’s so fucking rude.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” I said.
The woman sitting next to me turned and smiled. I’d barely noticed her when I’d approached. She was about my age, wearing a bright blue silk top and cigarette pants. I returned her smile stiffly.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.
“No.” There was no point pretending. Although she did look sort of familiar.
“Fair enough, we weren’t friends. Veronica Britson. I think we might have had one class together, maybe PE.”
I nodded, I vaguely remembered that she’d been sort of ditzy but Cass said she did economics now.
“It’s like a proper high school reunion at this table,” I said.
“Yeah—” she shot me a wry smile “—hope they keep the booze flowing.”
“The flowers are beautiful, aren’t they?” Saanvi offered.
“The most brilliant flowers I’ve ever had the luxury of viewing,” Evan replied. Saanvi shook her head at him.
Veronica grinned at Saanvi. “Is he new?”
“Very,” Saanvi responded.
“You guys make a cute couple,” I said. “Is it serious?”
Saanvi looked at me, at a loss for words. “We’ve only gone out once.”
“I guess you’ll have to wait and see. Although if you guys both did architecture you must have heaps in common.”
I looked at Evan, but he wasn’t biting. “We do.”
“Hey, guys! How are you going?” Cass came up to the table. “Sorry I haven’t even spoken to most of you yet. This day has been insane.”
Up close, you could see that her makeup was caked on. It made her skin look heavy and thick.
“It’s fine.” Veronica smiled. “You look fucking amazing. Have you been having fun?”
“Yeah, it’s been perfect. Really fantastic. Everything has been going perfectly.”
“That’s great,” Saanvi said.
“Perfect,” I said.
“Ava!” Cass said. “I’m so glad you could come. Honestly, having you here makes me feel so good.”
That did it. I stood up.
“Thanks so much for inviting me—it means a lot.”
I put my arms out, and she leaned in to hug me.
“Hope you are feeling alright about Oliver,” I whispered into her ear.
She pulled away slowly. Her face was now white underneath her makeup. It made her look like she was wearing a flesh-colored mask on top
of her real face.
“What?” she breathed.
“There you are.” Cass’s mother came to stand next to us. “Now I’m going to have to steal you away, Cassie. Auntie Julie says she hasn’t even had a hello from you all day. Come on.”
Cass let herself be led away.
“Are you alright?” I heard her mother say.
Back at the table, the night stretched on. Veronica’s partner came to sit down and began a passionate conversation with Saanvi and Evan. Eventually the food arrived, showy and tepid, and I attempted to eat.
Cass was at her table now, sitting next to her husband and not talking to anyone. I caught her eye and grinned at her, giving her a little wave.
“There’s no way,” Evan was saying. “It just won’t happen.”
“That’s what they said about Brexit,” Veronica said.
“I’m with Evan,” Saanvi interjected, sure she was right as always. “I didn’t think he would get this far, but there’s no way he’ll win. He was on reality television for God’s sake. He’s like a clichéd villain in a superhero movie. I mean, who votes for someone like him?”
“A lot of people,” Veronica’s partner, Jen, said. “We can’t really understand, being so far away.”
“I’m still allowed an opinion.”
Cass caught my eye again. Next to her, her husband stood and dinged his spoon against his champagne glass. The microphone squeaked as he turned it on.
“Hi, everyone.” His brow was shiny. “Cass and I just wanted to give a big thank-you to you all for coming today. I’m going to keep this short, then my best man, Shaun, is going to say a few words.”
“Shauno! Shauno!” chanted men with beer cans.
“He swore nothing embarrassing, right, Shauno?”
“Yeah, mate, promise I won’t mention that time in Thailand with the lady boy.”
A mild laugh rippled around me.
I slid my chair back. This could be the time. Right now, while the groom was vowing love and singing Cass’s praise. Veronica noticed my movement.
“Just running to the loo,” I whispered.
I kept my head down as I walked back toward the building. No one noticed me; all eyes were on the groom.
“Cass is the ray of sunshine in my life,” he was saying.
It was almost empty inside now. Just two of the men in bow ties stacking up the chairs and clearing them out of the room. I guess the dance floor was going to be in here later. There was no one behind the bar. No one near the stereo.
“I’d be so lost without her.” He was starting to get choked up. I had to be quick.
I went around the bar. The stereo was right there, with a black cord attached to the iPod. I slipped my phone out of my handbag, unlocked it.
“What are you doing?”
I looked up. Evan was on the other side of the room, walking toward me.
“Nothing.”
I found the track. Unplugging the iPod, I clicked the black cable into my phone instead.
“I know you’ve got some plan here.” Evan leaned against the bar and stared at me. “I’m not going to stop you.”
“Good.”
“But I want you to just think, just for a second, if this is really what you want. Do you really think that whatever you’re about to do, whatever your plan is to ruin this wedding, is it really going to make you feel any better?”
So I thought about it. Really thought hard.
“Yes,” I said, and pressed Play.
Nothing happened. I turned the volume up. Nothing.
“Saanvi told me.”
“What?” I looked up at him.
“She told me what happened to you back in high school. About the bullying, and what she and the others did to you at that party. I had to get her drunk, but she told me everything.”
He knew. He knew it all. I stared at the stereo, turned some knobs, tried to work out why I wasn’t hearing Oliver’s voice come through the speakers.
“I’ve figured it out. I know that that guy with the roofies was Theodore. I know you’ve been stalking these people, that you’ve been trying to get payback.”
My hands started shaking, fumbling on the knobs that I’d already tried but was trying again. I’d never thought of it like that before. That word. Stalking. It sounded so nasty.
“Ava,” he said, “look at me.”
I couldn’t. Instead, I looked up at the speakers, where the best man’s voice should have been amplified. But it wasn’t. Of course. I hadn’t thought. I’d fucked it up again. They had switched to a different system for outside. Looking past Evan I could see it. The best man’s mic cord snaking to a small PA desk and a large black speaker. It had been behind me when I was sitting at the table. I hadn’t even noticed it. The sound was being broadcast through there.
“Come on,” he said, “talk to me.”
But I couldn’t. I pulled the cord out from my phone and grabbed my bag. Then started to run. I had to get away from him. I didn’t want to see his eyes. I didn’t want to know how differently he’d be looking at me now, now that he knew what a freak I was. Now that he knew I was so pathetic, so nasty, such a psycho. He was right. I was a stalker. I could go to jail for what I’d been doing.
I ran out the back way, out to the vineyards. I’d let him go back, find Saanvi. They’d have a nice night, a nice life, and I’d slip away into the dark.
The lines of vineyards stretched endlessly in front of me, a grid fading slowly to black the farther I got away from the lights of the wedding. The scent of overripe fruit was cloying and sweet.
“Ava!”
He was chasing me now. I could hear him behind me. His breath, his footfalls. I whirled around.
“What?” I yelled. “What do you want?”
He reached me and leaned forward, hands on his knees, breathing heavily. “God, when did you get so quick?”
“Why are you here? Why are you following me?”
“Um, Auntie Ava,” he puffed, looking up at me, “I don’t think you’re one to say anything when it comes to following people.”
He was smiling, trying to joke.
“Go back to the party. I won’t do anything. I’ll go. Just leave me alone.”
“Can’t, I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“Well, obviously I’m in love with you,” he said, and I was about to scream, yell at him for making fun of me again, right now of all times, but he straightened up, looked at me seriously.
“Really. I love you. I’ve tried to stop, but I can’t help it.”
I waited for his chin to quiver, for the laugh to come, for the got you. It didn’t happen.
“I see you, Ava. I see what you are, what you’ve done, what’s been done to you, and I still love you.”
His face was solemn. I’d never seen it like that before. His skin was pale in this light, with the huge starry sky pressing down around him. He looked so vulnerable. I could barely stand it. He didn’t mean it. There was no way. It wasn’t possible for someone to love me, not when they knew the truth.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. All that love and forever crap, I want that to be with you. I want you to be the person I argue with about grocery shopping. It’s you I want to slowly live to resent. I want to get fat and bald and out of touch with you, Auntie Ava.”
“You don’t!” I yelled. “I’m all messed up. I’m a leech. A parasite, a disgusting psycho—can’t you see? Anyway, I’d be so wrong for you. I don’t even know if I like girls or guys.”
“Who cares?” He shrugged one shoulder. “You don’t have to get everything sorted out at once. We’ll figure it out as we go along.”
He meant it. He actually genuinely meant it, I could tell. This wasn’t a joke or a trick. I could see it there in his eyes as he stared at me. Warmth.
Love. I don’t know how I’d missed it for so long. I couldn’t deal with it. The way his eyes were fixed onto mine, imploring me to come to him, to touch him. I broke away, looked to the ground. My arms were still shaking in the heat.
“Look, I know love isn’t going to save you from all this shit. But this hate you’re harboring isn’t either. You can’t live just for hate—there’s too much in the world already. I can’t bear to see you keep on going like this.”
He didn’t understand. “I can’t let them win.”
“Win what? If this is a game, you’re the only one playing.”
I didn’t reply.
“If you want me to fuck off, I will. I promise.”
It was like time slowed down all around us. A slow inhale, a mild breeze brushing my hair across my cheek. If I told him to go, that would be it. He would be out of my life, for good this time. No going back. No second chances.
I watched my foot step forward, then the other, wobbling on the heel. They were sore, I noticed, blistered from the run. I reached out gently, touched his shoulder with my hand, felt the coarse material of his suit jacket with the pads of my fingers. His eyes were so unguarded, his face so vulnerable. He reached out and wrapped his arms around me. Folding me into his chest until the shakes began to stop. Music floated down the hill toward us. The first dance had started. It took me a moment to realize what it was. Ed Sheeran “Thinking Out Loud.” I could feel his laugh jiggle through his body.
“So obvious,” I murmured.
“So bloody tacky.”
“There won’t be a dry eye in the place,” I said, but my own voice was cracking.
I pulled him closer, his belly pressed softly against mine, and we began to sway to the music. His arms were gentle; I could feel his breath on my bare shoulder, feel his heartbeat beating against my chest. The music rose and he took my hand and made me spin, I laughed, spinning around in a circle, then took his hand and let him spin. I could have stayed there forever, dancing with him to that cheesy song. Being alive in that moment and not having to think about what all this would mean, about what would come next.
Soon enough, the song ended and Evan took a step back, still holding one of my hands in his.
The Spite Game Page 23
