[Ambrosia Bellemore]
I sit on the pavement with my face between my legs. Mr Cadwallader sniffs my hair protectively and stands guard as my panic attack slowly morphs into paranoia.
"What am I going to do?" I moan, haphazardly brushing the hair off of my face. Mr Cadwallader gives me a look which probably says,'She's just your mother. Stop being so dramatic.'
"Easy for you to say," I retort. "You don't have to look for a man who's rich and famous and then make him like you!"
Mr Cadwallader gives a little whine and it seems as if he's rolling his eyes at me.
"She'll gut me alive if I tell her I don't have a man to accompany me to the wedding." I moan in despair.
Just then my phone starts ringing.
"Hello?"
"Ambrosia, do you know where the Anoxiom file is? I can't seem to find it." Calum Achorn asks without any pleasantries.
"Why are you still working?" I ask.
"I'll sign this and go home, I've the rest of the night free. Tell me where it is." He says.
"Left drawer of your desk. Blue file." I say.
"Aha, there it is." He says. I'm about to hang up when I notice the expression on Mr Cadwallader's face.
Wait. A. Second.
"Mr Achorn, didn't you say you were free for the rest of the evening?"
"Yes?"
"It's my birthday and I've this party Freida and Neave are throwing for me. Do you think you can make it?"
"It's your birthday today? How could you not tell me, Ambrosia?" He asks with disbelief.
"I didn't know myself until a few hours ago." I say.
"Fine. I'll be there." He says.
"Not like you, Mr Achorn. You can't be here like you." I think aloud, remembering the name I'd given to my mother a long time ago as an excuse.
"Excuse me?"
"Say Calum, do you still have that SWAG pendant?" I ask.
~•~
[An Hour Later]
The house is dark when I walk up the porch steps. I take a deep breath and try to act like everything's fine and that I've no clue what's about to happen.
But since I'm very bad at acting, when the lights turn on and everyone jumps out from behind the couch to yell surprise, I wave a little and say,"Hello."
Freida and Neave faceplam as Mr Cadwallader pounces on the balloons. Everyone starts laughing and I notice a few people I know. My friends from office, Kailley and Lint, Freida's boyfriend Jeremy, Neave's fiancé Paul, Patrick, Reggie and standing by herself, her face surly and predatory, my mother.
I return the hugs, eyes on my mother. She never looks at me, her eyes always concentrated on that little dot on the wall, as if she was far too great to pay us tiny mortals any attention. I hated that about her and she knew it.
"You should say hello," Neave says when I've accepted all the wishes and gifts.
I start to object but she pushes me away and I stumble directly in front of my mother.
YOU ARE READING
I Like Your Shoes | ✓
Humor"Sometimes, we are so smitten with happy endings, that we believe we'll end up with one too." Ambrosia Bellemore never believed in happy endings, even though the books she read said otherwise. The closest she ever came to magic was when she found th...
