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“Okay, then I will.”
“Come along, you terror of a woman.” I hid my laughter behind my champagne flute as we started walking. “On second thought, she should come to me.”
I switched gears and headed over to Sabrina, who was talking to a somewhat younger crowd. There were easily about fifty people here, most of them Garrett’s friends and acquaintances that he’d known since childhood. The rest were mostly business associates of his and his Dad’s.
I spent about five minutes talking to the younger ones, who were all fascinated by my accent for some reason; then they moved on to how Garrett and I met; they all wanted to know if the interview was accurate, to which I assured them that it was.
Now, when I’m ignoring someone, I am genuinely ignoring them. I don’t keep tabs on where they are or who they are talking to. I find that when I do that, the other party goes out of their way to make themselves seen and Natalie was no different. Only, she wasn’t very good at hiding her pique.
She finally made her way over to where I was standing and I didn’t acknowledge her as I was in the middle of answering a question from one of the other women. “Oh, Alyssa, this is Natalie.” I turned to look at her at Sabrina’s introduction with a pleasant smile on my face.
“Oh, hi, are you thee Natalie?” She got flustered way too easily.
“Um, thee Natalie?”
“Yes, Garrett’s ex? Where is your husband? Is he not with you tonight?” I looked behind her as if expecting him.
“No, he’s not, he’s away on business.”
“Aw, that’s too bad, I was looking forward to meeting him. Garrett speaks very highly of the two of you and your son. You have a little boy, don’t you? He must be adorable because you’re absolutely gorgeous.”
I could feel the looks being passed between the other women, and just then, Garrett arrived by my side, putting the icing on the cake when he wrapped his arm around me. “I see you’ve met Natalie.”
“Yes, you told me she was gorgeous, but you didn’t tell me she was movie star gorgeous.” I playfully smacked his chest, then went back to talking to the other women, dragging him into the conversation along with me. See here bitch, you are not the main character!
I knew she’d tried convincing these people that I was a hick who had no social graces and wouldn’t fit in with them. Now, when they think of this night, they’d remember how wrong she was, and if they had any shame, they’d call her out on her shit.
I knocked down every last one of her stereotypes without trying. And when they all learned where I went to school and my degrees, they were even more impressed. The way some of them were looking back and forth at each other, I half expected one of them to call her out right then and there.
By the time we sat down to dinner, she was fuming. I don’t know who she knocked off to take their seat, but she was seated right across from Garrett and me. Now, usually, they separate couples at these things, but since we were the honorees, it was changed up a little bit.
I was engaging, I was charming, I was beautiful. I didn’t engage with her any more or any less than I did with everyone else just so she’d know that she was no different from everyone else here as far as I was concerned.
If anything, she should’ve been mad at Garrett because he was very attentive to yours truly. Not that he isn’t always, but I can imagine what it looked like to her. He kept his hand on my thigh beneath the table, but it was easy to tell from the angle.
When he wasn’t talking to the guest on his other side, he was leaning into my ear. He was being naughty, telling me what he planned to do to me later, and I was trying hard not to laugh out loud.
“You two are so adorable. I’m just so delighted to see my son this happy. Thank you, Alyssa, I never thought he’d settle down and make me a grandma, now I have hope.” I love this fucking woman.
“It might be sooner than you think, Mom, right, Lyssa.”
“Behave!” I elbowed him in the side and blushed into my salad. Meanwhile, Miss Thing had made her way through a bottle and a half of wine before the second course got started.
Me, I was just feeling myself. Gigi might have been nuts, but my grandmas and aunties all picked up the slack. I could dine with the queen… No, not that adulterous slag; she wouldn’t even make it past my backdoor. Anyway, you catch my drift.
I could feel her shooting daggers at me from across the table, and when it looked like she was about to fall over, I let someone else ask if she was okay. I don’t know her, so why would I bother? It must be burning her ass that Garrett didn’t even look in her direction, but I’m sure in her warped mind, it was all my fault.
Things went much better than I expected, and at one point, over the souffle, I looked her dead in the eye and smirked. That’s when she knew that I knew and had beaten her at her own game.
At the end of the night, she left in a huff while Garrett and I were still saying our goodbyes. I guess the fact that he didn’t even take a minute to give her a special goodbye was the last straw for her, and she peeled out of the driveway in her bitch mobile.
I hadn’t planned to do it since I figured the kid would be in bed by now and should be safe, but on the drive back in the back of the car while Garrett was on the phone with someone or the other, I got my phone out and pulled up the feed from her nanny cam.
Everything seemed fine and I breathed easy, knowing that I hadn’t pushed her too far. She was stomping through her house on a tear, which was to be expected, and I even had a good chuckle when she took a bottle of scotch to the head.
Garrett was still preoccupied with his phone call, and I was enjoying the late-night entertainment when things took a turn. “No-no-no-no-no.” I started to get Garrett’s attention but, in my panic leaned forward and told the driver to change course and gave him her address.
My heart was racing, and I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. By the time he got off the phone, he noticed that we were going in the wrong direction. “Why are we going this way?”
