Miss Independent (22 page)

“You left them behind after moving out.”

“Yeah, and I’ve been looking for them ever since.” She took note of Gina staring at Maurice and scoffed. “Is he the reason you’re dressed like this? You think you can entice him with your fifteen year old off limits body or something?”

              Gina turned from her sister and watched as Maurice greeted Alexander in the den. She tossed her hair behind her and lifted to her toes to get a better look at him in his crisp white shirt and brown fitted slacks.

              “I’ll be sixteen soon.” She bit her lip and squint.

              “Teen being the key word here,” said Vanessa. “He’s not going to want you then, either.”

              “Why, because he’ll still be in love with you?”

              “No. Because you’re illegal.”

              “What about when I’m eighteen?”

              “Regina, sixteen, eighteen or twenty-eight, it’s not going to make a difference. He is still going to see you as my baby sister, and by extension, his. What about the guys at school? No one there has caught your eye?”

              “I go to a prep-school in Manhattan, V.”

              “So did I.”

              “For a few months before you transferred to a public high school freshman year. I don’t like any of the guys there. They’re boring. And none of them look like
that
.” She kept staring at Maurice as he grabbed a beer from the table and twisted off the cap. He guzzled it down as Alexander continued talking to him.

              “Trust me, G, looks aren’t everything. Maurice is nice to stare at from time to time, but you’ll need more than a few staring contests if you want a real relationship.”

              “Who’s talking about a relationship? I’m talking about a hot guy I can parade around school and make out with.”

              “Are you still a virgin?”

              She chuckled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

              Vanessa pulled her arm from Gina’s tight grip. “I’m guessing by those hormones raging, the answer would be yes. Where’s my mother?”

              Gina’s eyes never left Maurice as she spoke. When he looked over at them, she waved. He politely nodded and continued drinking his beer.

              “He just acknowledged me,” she squealed. “He so wants this.”

              “Of course, if he were also looking forward to prison time or your father beating his ass to a pulp. Now, my mother, Gina. Where is she?” Vanessa asked again.

              “She’s in the kitchen scolding the head caterer about something to do with her cake.” She lifted to her toes again and leaned to the side. “Would you look at his
ass
?”

              “Keep your eyes inside of your head and remember what I said.”

              She nodded, not paying attention as she left Vanessa’s side and headed to the den with her father and Maurice. When Alex noticed his daughter getting a little too close to Maurice’s face, he pulled her back and maneuvered his way between them. Maurice felt uncomfortable and looked around for Vanessa in a panic.

              She headed for the kitchen and found her mother complaining about the cake. It was supposed to be a mixture of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla flavors that fed over fifty people, with an exotic blueberry frosting and her name spelled in large white icing across the top and bottom. Instead it turned into a thirteen-by-five vanilla sheet cake with generic raspberry icing and a ‘Happy Birthday, Lexi!’ at the center as if she were celebrating her sweet sixteen. They stood near the marble counter where the cake sat as Vanessa watched them from the archway.

              “I specifically informed the members of your team of what I wanted, right?” said Alexis in a calm but stern voice. The caterer had his head down, his eyes focused on the wood flooring. His face was slightly puffy and as red as a beet; he looked like he had been crying nonstop for hours. “Am I right?”

              “Yes, ma’am.” He sniffed.

              “And still I ended up with a cake I didn’t want, yet one that I’m also still paying for.”

“You won’t be paying a dime, Ms. Brown. This was all on us.”

“Good. Because I’ve had doughnuts put on my car that are bigger than this thing. I assume that we’ll have to cut the slices by the fourth.” She looked down at the cake and glowered. “My husband is allergic to raspberries, did you know that?”

              “Yes, ma’am. I mean, no. I mean… that was never indicated and it was never my intention for this cake to be presented to you and your family and friends. I can have this fixed for you as soon as possible.”

              “I must ask how in the hell you plan on fixing this now? My party starts in little over an hour. Guests will be arriving soon and I have no cake to serve them all. I can only hope that some of them don’t even like cake, or don’t notice that they haven’t gotten a slice because my twenty-six year old first time caterer can’t distinguish five from fifty. I sincerely hope you’re better in other areas and haven’t quit your day job. Unless this is in fact you day job.”

              “No, ma’am. I go to school part-time.”

              “Wonderful. Education is always important, especially for someone such as yourself.”

He exhaled sharply and wiped a few fallen tears from his face.

“You know what,” she went on, “just do me a favor and get out of my face. I’ll take the cake from here and figure out what to do with it. Just get the rest of the food out of your van. Do you think you can manage that?” she asked. He nodded. “Good. Go on.”

              He scurried out of the kitchen like a cat in search of a mouse, never noticing Vanessa as she immediately jumped out of the way.

              Alexis stared down at her cake again and shook her head in complete disappointment.

              Vanessa moved in and placed her arms behind her.

              “Why would you tell him that Alex is allergic to raspberries when you know that’s not true?”

              Alexis turned, her face falling when she noticed Vanessa’s wardrobe and hair. But she was determined to be on her best behavior today, even if she felt like her daughter often dressed as if she was from another era outside of the office from time to time.

              “I told him that to make a point.” She tugged at the waist of her tight crimson dress, made especially for her by Donatella, and combed the back of her hair with her fingers. “He screwed up and he deserves to feel bad about it.”

              “I think you accomplished that with making him cry before I got here.”

              “It’s probably more my fault than his. He was young and less expensive and I should’ve known it would be a disaster before he even arrived. I suppose I should be thrilled he at least knew where I lived and didn’t forget the food.” She waved her hand carelessly. “Did you come by yourself?”

              “I told you I was bringing Maurice. He’s in the den talking to Alex and probably trying to avoid Gina’s advances.”

              “That girl is like an animal in heat. I thought you were bad at her age, but she is giving you a run for your money in the teenage hormone department. Her mother stopped by here last week and told me that she found her making out with a boy on the couch. She came home from work and found them half dressed.”

              Vanessa reached for a baby carrot on one of the food trays before it was taken to the dining room, and tossed it into her mouth. “Did you tell Alex about it?” she asked.

              “That man would’ve lost his mind and sent her to a boarding school in Siberia, while trying to find the boy and run him down with his car. In a word, no. We don’t need to deal with any of that, so I told her mother that we’d be a lot stricter with her over here. She said she’d do the same.”

              “I’m glad you two can finally talk like normal people,” said Vanessa. She went over to the other counter and grabbed a few grapes from a tray before it too was taken off. “I never thought the three of you would ever get to a place of being civil.”

              “Things change when children are involved. Sometimes that woman could drive me up a wall with her demands, but I learned to keep my cool over the years and let Alexander handle things with her. It helps that Gina’s almost eighteen.”

              “Yep, and she has no problems reminding people of that.”

              “That she does not.” She tilted her head and smiled sheepishly. “So you’re here with Maurice?”

              “Don’t start.”

              She raised her hands and stepped back, leaning against the counter. “I’m not starting a thing, Vanessa. I’m only glad you didn’t falter and bring Nathaniel instead.”

              “Yeah, well, I don’t think his future wife would’ve been too thrilled about that.” She stood over the various plates of cheeses and other snacks.

              Alexis crossed her arms. “Have you eaten today?”

              “Are you kidding? I waited all day to eat whatever we were having here. I didn’t want to feel bloated before good food and cake.”

              “That might be for the best. Your hips are looking a bit wide in that skirt.”

              “Mother--!”

              “Girl, don’t even
get
me started on your hair and that blouse. Walking through here looking like Thelma from ‘Good Times’.”

              As Alexis moved around the kitchen, Vanessa closed her eyes, annoyed, and threw a piece of cheese into her mouth.

              “I am definitely gonna need some wine with a few shots of vodka to get through this,” she mumbled to herself.

              Once the caterer returned with the rest of his help, they removed the remaining trays of food from the kitchen and placed them on various tables around the living room, den, and dining room where the actual party was going to take place. Vanessa looked at her watch again and noticed one of the waiters filling various glasses with red and white flavored wines. She went over and grabbed a glass of white while Alexis continued overseeing everything as it made its way out the door, making sure nothing was out of place for her guests. The cake was already a mess, the last thing she wanted or needed was for anything else to go wrong as well.

              While sitting alone in her room at the Palace, reading over the guest list for the reunion and drinking tea spiked with the tiny bottles of hotel rum, Sheila noticed a few names missing, those who had yet to RSVP and those who had turned down the invite to return altogether. When she came across Maurice’s name but not Nikki or Vanessa’s, she went over to her suitcase and pulled out her yearbook. She flipped through the pages, looking at pictures of the three of them from various cheerleading competitions, in which they won every single time, to pictures of them all dressed for junior prom, and posed as Charlie’s Angels in the class photo booth.

When it came to senior prom, however, it was terrible for everyone. By that time, Vanessa had found out about Sheila and Nathan and decided not to attend to save herself the humiliation of seeing them together. Maurice and Nikki didn’t attend either. Instead, Nathan and Sheila attended together, as predicted, and were crowned honorary king and queen by the prom committee. Mo and Vanessa were the ones their class had originally voted for, while Sheila and Nathan were first runners up. Most people clapped for them as the crowns were placed upon their heads despite knowing the truth of their indiscretions, but it was a demeaning moment for Sheila, one she tried had tried so hard to forget over the years. She went out of her way all throughout high school to prove that she was more than a pretty face and fantastic body, more than someone who liked having sex with certain guys of a certain status from time to time. But after sleeping with Nathan and showing no remorse for it, she knew that that part of her, the part that everyone had deemed a lifelong slut would never be erased, and would in fact be amplified as time went on.

              As the bad memories grew in her mind, she slammed her yearbook shut and pushed it aside. She got up and went over to her makeup bag, pulling out a bottle of prescription pills. It was filled with anti-anxiety medication. She began taking them during her senior year of high school and could never seem to stop. She believed it calmed her nerves and controlled her paranoia and chronic mood swings. She was right to a certain extent, but the pills had also become somewhat of a crutch. Whenever she felt bad, she took them. Whenever she felt good, she took them. It was like giving a baby candy for the first time and expecting it to only like what little was given to them, and not beg for more.

When she realized after a few years that her relationship with Nathan was falling faster than a shooting star, she had stopped taking the pills because she tried to get pregnant without his knowledge, hoping to surprise him. Only she learned not long after he proposed that it may never happen for them. It seemed that her eggs and his sperm didn’t agree that making a baby was the right thing to do. She increased her pill dosage during that time with the help of a pharmacist friend out West, and never looked back.

              She swallowed back two pills with her tea and went over to the mirror, staring at her features. Her hair was a complete mess. It hadn’t been combed or even washed in the last few days. She had dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, her skin was starting to breakout from stress and she thought she was starting to look thinner than usual. As someone who weighed around 125lbs soaking wet, she knew that it was probably unhealthy to deprive herself of food more often than not, but as time went on, she felt like eating was becoming more of a chore rather than an enjoyable and healthy activity.