Chapter 20
TW - abuse
I looks at myself in the mirror. I look atrocious. Perfect for this stupid party that I have to go to. I have far better things to be spending my weekend doing, but instead I’m forced to go to this party hosted by my mother’s friend or something.
Just because I have a preference for dating men, and this lady’s son does too, our parents are playing matchmaker. A knock on my door has me finally dragging my gaze away from the mirror and I watch as my mum pokes her head around the door.
“Are you ready to go sweetie? The party is starting soon and apparently Dahlia’s son is going to be playing the piano! He’s very gifted in music, did I tell you?”
I groan slightly, tilting my head back in exasperation and acting like a brat in general. “Yes,” I grunt eventually when she looks at me expectantly. She pats me on the back before adjusting my bow-tie slightly.
I hate the thing, I look so stupid, but my mother likes it so I’ll wear it.
“Thank you for coming to this sweetie, I’m sure it won’t be as bad as whatever you’re thinking about!”
Yeah right. It’s not that I don’t trust my mother’s judgement, it’s just that…I mean come on, I’m not interested in some stuck-up music prodigy kid.
Grabbing my phone off the desk, I follow my mum out of my bedroom and downstairs, where I check I have the car keys. “Ready to go?” She asks again, and I nod. “Yep,” I reply as we head out the door.
Mum gives me directions to the place, wherever this party is, and as soon as I lay eyes on the mansion I start to feel very out of my league. Parking the car carefully, I let out a little sigh. My mother reaches across, giving my hand a squeeze.
“Sweetie, is everything ok?” She asks gently, smoothing some of my hair out of my eyes. I tried to make it look smart by gelling it back so that only a little bit hangs over the front, but I hate how different it makes me look.
“Busy,” I breathe out after a moment, watching as assortments of rich-looking people stream out of their chauffeured cars. I’ve always preferred just driving myself to places.
My mother gives me a sympathetic smile as she pats my cheek. “I know it is my lovely but I already told Dahlia that you’re a little shy and won’t be that talkative. She understands; she’s really such a lovely woman.”
I give her the best smile I can muster before we both step out of the car. I adjust my suit jacket slightly, letting my mother adjust my bow-tie again just because she wants to. And then suddenly we’re among the swathes of people waving our invites at the door and waltzing in.
I hate it here already. Sure, the building is nice, but I hate how these people are just showing off the fact that they’re rich. My family is quite well-off, but we have a normal sized house for the number of people living there; we don’t have a massive place like this for just three people.
This is obscene.
I just have to try and evade everyone and then I can go home. I’ll probably be forced to meet this prodigy guy at some point but hopefully me ignoring him for a while will get him to just go away and play his piano or something.
My mother goes around talking to people for a while, and as soon as I see her go up to a woman, I know that this must be Dahlia. She exudes an air of grace and decorum whilst having this commanding presence about her.
She smiles at my mother and the two begin talking about something, and although I know that I should at least introduce myself to her, I don’t really want to and I’m starting to feel very suffocated being here.
So instead, I slink off into the background before my mother can turn around and try to introduce me. By the time it occurs to her, I’ll be in a completely different part of this damn mansion.
After a moment, the light tinkling of a piano catches my ears and I roll my eyes. I guess I’ve found prince-pompous or whatever his actual name is. The gentle piece suddenly gets faster and more urgent, the soft tinkling becoming dynamic and flowing with incredible grace. It eventually draws to a close and dainty claps erupt from the room, but I daren’t actually go in.
The piano playing is nice, I’ll admit that, but I don’t want to have to actually introduce myself to anyone or even worse, have to talk to piano-dude. Instead, I just lean back against the wall, letting the long shadows over the dimly-lit corridor hide me.
The piano music starts up again, and this time the piece is extremely different. The best word to describe it is dramatic. It is fast but not a single wrong note is evident; the piece has clearly been practiced to perfection.
The music grows like a tempest, and it occurs to me that the piece really does sound like a storm, the notes harsh like the rain whipping down on the pianist whilst the chords rumble thunderously beneath the tune; fast and utterly unstoppable.
This piece also ends after a while and with it comes more clapping. A woman walks past me, not even sparing me a glance, and after a quick inspection I determine that this is Dahlia. She probably wants to gush and brag about how good her son is, and I’ll admit, his playing was very evocative.
So, I’m a little surprised when I hear someone hiss. Poking my head around the door, I watch as Dahlia stands next to the piano stool, blocking her son and her expression from my view. Still, I don’t need to see what she looks like to understand that she’s angry.
Why is she angry?
“Keep playing, I didn’t say you could stop. You sound terrible, you have to keep playing until you can make a sound which isn’t this disgusting screeching,” Dahlia hisses again. I blink in shock for a moment before glancing around the room, noticing that most people aren’t even paying attention to the woman as she ridicules her son.
Why is she saying those things to him?
I may not play music but it’s evident even to me that he is very good, so why is she making it sound like he’s a bad pianist when he clearly isn’t?
People begin filing out of the room and I’m forced to take a step back. Once everyone is out of the way, I tentatively step into the room again, just to check that everything is ok between these two.
“Give me one good reason why you can’t keep playing, I’ll even let you come up with a convincing excuse for a moment. Go on, take your time, everyone has already left now anyway,” she snarls, not even realising that I’m still here.
“I’ve told you before, mother, that I can’t play. I was told by the doctor not to, because it injures my wrists.”
I frown at the familiar voice, but without a face to go with it, I can’t work out where I know this person from.
The woman grabs the young man’s arm, pulling his wrist into view, her grip evidently tight on his skin even at the distance I am from them. Why is she treating him like this?
I take another step into the room; I’m hoping that I won’t have to step in to stop things between them because I’m basically limited to one word sentences (and it’s hardly even reliable then) and it’ll take me an age to say anything whilst my brain works out how speech works, but I have no idea what kind of woman this is but I know that she isn’t all my mother cracks her up to be.
“Really now, you’re still going with that terrible excuse?! Pathetic,” she spits, her tone getting more and more hostile by the minute.
“An excuse?! I was prescribed medication for the pain and told to make lifestyle changes unless I wanted to have surgery on my wrists, and you’re saying that this is an excuse?! Come on, you already threw out my medicine and now you want me to actively cause damage to my joints?!”
My frown deepens and I take a large stride towards the two; I have a bad feeling about this woman (probably due to the fact that she ridiculed her son and apparently threw away his medication too) and she’s clearly making her son uncomfortable. I reach the woman, patting her shoulder lightly just in time to see her slap the man across the face.
His head snaps to the side, his eyes wide at the realisation of what just happened. “You will not talk back to me,” she commands, her tone completely frigid and totally lacking any remorse for what she just did to her son.
His eyes dart up to his mother, but where I expect to see some kind of hurt, some kind of fear, there is only disappointment. Disappointment because of her treatment of him?
And then his eyes drag up to meet mine as he realises I’m there, still shocked into absolute stillness.
“Beck?”
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