Escaping to Ireland

Liam

I was losing my mind.

Work barely kept my mind off of her. I would start in on one project and be distracted by the void of a text back from her. I had sent four total, and not one had been returned. That was also why I told Ian I would attend dinner with him, mom, and dad. I should not have been surprised when I stepped in the door to find Chloe, dad, mom, and Ian.

"Father, mother," I said, looking over at Ian and Chloe in the living room when I had arrived at my parent's house. Ian smiled at me, and I did not return it; Chloe had yet to look up and see me.

"Son," my father said, genuinely happy to see me. He patted me on the back, a smile on his face. Ian and I had a joke that I was my father's favorite, and he was my mother. Seeing my father's pride in my eye whenever I came over and my mom's grave disapproval for me, I assumed Ian and I were onto something.

"Why is Chloe here?" I asked my mother, pulling her off into the hallway. My mother chuckled; it was her way of letting me know I was not in control of her. "Just because you did not want Chloe does not mean that your family does not. To me, she will always be that daughter that I did not get."

I walked away. My mother had prayed that Ian would be a girl; she wanted one so bad that it made her cry when Ian came out a boy. Ian enjoyed this story, which made zero sense. My mother would someday get a daughter-in-law, and if she wanted it to be Chloe, she better set her up with Ian. Which it looked like she was attempting to do, with her comments between them.

Ian had zero clue what she was doing, and it was hard not to laugh at my mother's hideous attempt.

Dinner was long, my mother had made it a five-course dinner, and I had regretted coming, but it was a tad bit better than sitting at home wondering what Ireland was doing, and it kept me from texting her every hour.

"Anything new going on?" Chloe asked me in between conversations with my other family members. She had worn a plum-colored dress; her hair was down, curls were bouncing around everywhere. I had never seen her in curls, and I wondered if it had something to do with Vinessa's normal curly hair.

"Work." I had kept all my answers to Chloe to one-worded answers. Anytime she asked me something, I cringed inwardly, knowing that I had been in a relationship with her.

We had met through my mother at one of her fundraisers. The first time I had met her, she had seemed easy-going and carefree. She hid her judgmental, overbearing self for six months. She started to shed her natural skin little by little. I remember the first time I had noticed something different. We had gone out to dinner in Dublin, and a couple had walked in. The man had a suit on, and the woman had jeans and a dressy shirt on.

"How did she get him?" she snarled at me as she watched the couple walked past our table. I had cleared my throat and asked what she meant, to which she just said, "Nevermind," shaking her head. After that dinner, her condescending tone on everyone and everything around her came out more. She had been staying a lot of the nights at my house, and I never knew how that came to be about.

When I went away on business trips, I would go home to my maids, telling me that she stayed the whole time. They did not come out and say they did not like her, but I could tell they were not her fans. And then, a few months before I met Vinessa, I snapped, calling everything off.

Tonight at dinner, anytime Chloe talked, it made me feel good that she was no longer in my life today.

"And how is your assistant? I hear she had quite the breakdown at your office. It is a real shame people cannot be professional anymore nowadays." She said this all with a tisk tisk tone, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.