Aces Wild (House of Cards Series 4)

Perforations

Ophelia sat in the loudly thrumming, undeniably alive club and wondered just why she felt like such an outsider. She had always been reserved, but sometime after learning she had breast cancer and this moment, she had truly stopped feeling alive. It was hard to keep hope, especially after all the rounds of treatment, the nausea, pain and hairloss, it turns out that she is not getting better. No, worse than that, it's infected her other breast now too. Maybe that's why she felt like she shouldn't be here, surrounded by all these vitally alive people, she would just taint this place for them with her memory after she died.

A ghost of a smile brushed her lip as she realized that if anyone knew she was thinking that, she'd get a hell of a chewing out. Her neice Grace would scoff at her and give her an earful on staying positive and not letting illness and depression beat her. As if a strong mental fortitude would equate a strong body. But that was Grace, she was the quintessential red head, hot blooded Cuban. Not that that combination occured often. But Ophelia knew both her brother and Maddison, Grace's mother, well and they were fighters through and through. Delinquints to the core. It was easy to tease them because she loved them, and it was strange to her to almost envy them their wildness.

Now if Nathaniel had heard her giving up, his reaction would be vastly different than the others. Grace would argue about perserverance, West would bluster and threaten abou beating Death itself, Maddison would crack jokes. But Nate, he would simply smile at her and shrug in that lazy lethario way of his and say something like You're too good for death just yet. Besides, who would keep me in line if you died. Or some other equally joking yet tragic line.

Opheila swallowed a sigh, not wanting to be stuck in these depressing thoughts like always, but that was the curse of living in your own head. It is very hard to escape it when you need to. Which was how they had ended up at the club tonight in the first place. Grace had been... strange this morning, when Ophelia returned home. Everyone had realized that she wasn't there this morning, but she'd lied to her family, telling them all that she had felt great this morning and wanted to go to her apartment to get some work done on grading some reports. It felt terrible to lie to them, and when her brother West had actually had the audacity to say that she shouldn't go anywhere alone, Ophelia had felt true anger burn through her.

"In your condition, I don't want you going anywhere alone, I won't allow it." West had fumed. Ophelia had a moment to see both Grace and Maddison give him this warning look but it was too late.

"Won't let? Westley Vincent James Junior, I am neither your child nor your property. I am a grown woman and although I live under this roof for convience sake, I am not yours to control. I WILL go where I choose when I choose to, and I will not abide an escort or chaperone. Get this foolish whimsy out of your head that you have the right to tell me what to do. Because BIG BROTHER, I am not so sick as to need a keeper!" Ophelia had felt wildly alive in that moment, and the astonished look on West's face had given her a sensation of elation. It had been that energy that had allowed her to walk out of the kitchen and to her room before the shaking had started.

Ophelia felt the faint smile linger on her lips as she had to admit, just to herself, that the anger had compelled her to go ask Grace to go out to eat at the club. She had neither the energy nor desire to be surrounded by several scores of people, but she'd known it would make West angry. There was a little bit of the rebel in her own blood it seemed. Or maybe living in the same household as he did had rubbed off on her. As Nathaniel swirled back to their table with the inate grace of a dancer, Ophelia almost laughed at the looks that followed him. She was ten years older than he was, had in fact babysat him and changed his diapers on more than one occassion, and it would break these young women's hearts to know she had spent the night with him in bed. True, it was not passionate liason as they would assume, instead she had acted the child and cried in his arms. It made her uncomfortable to admit that she had been emotional in front of anyone, and yet at the same time she'd felt for a moment slightly free, having a friend there at that precise moment.