Where my Heart Lies

Mess it up

There was another person who could not move his eyes from them.

Liam sipped the wine and looked at them. He looked at them and soaked the scene. It had been so long since he burned the way he did.

He, too, much like Jessica, had people he hated seeing eye to eye. But never did he let it slip from his mouth. For who?

Portia, again strangely unaware of the whole fiasco behind her back, saw Liam standing alone. She quickly made her way towards him under the usual pretext of socialization, something that she was actually up to, the whole night.

Besides being someone Jessica hated from the bottom of heart, Portia was also a woman oriented towards success. Her ambitions were wild, and she did get what she wanted, one way or the other. It was a quality anyone would appreciate. Anyone, who attached importance to success- like people climbing up the ladder in corporate?

"Mr. Anderson." She chimed, breaking Liam's intense gaze on his fiancée. "-or, could I call you Liam?"

"Yeah. Liam works." He responded uninterested, and his gaze made way for Portia to finally witness what she dreaded.

"Ah! How pretty they look!" She exclaimed, concealing in her excitement the fury of a madman's restrained wife.

"Truly, what a sight to behold." Liam finally broke his gaze and looked at the woman who had time and again approached him. He had finally decided to give her a chance, and to let her implement whatever she had planned. 

"Jessica has changed so much since school, hasn't she?"

"I would not know." Liam shrugged, and chugged the remaining wine down his throat. Then, he asked the waiter for another one. "I did not study with her in school." He stated a fact.

"Hmm, that's actually really nice, you know." Portia was elated. "I could tell you about her."

"We don't have to talk about her." Liam scrunched his face trying to express boredom. "We have been official for quite some time now, I know what I needed to know." He nodded in confirmation to his own words.

"Of course, but those are the fun times. I bet she never told you about it?"

"Tell me what, exactly?"

"She was a rather silly girl at school you know."

"Oh?"

"Umhmm. It amazes me to see her actually make it so big! I've heard it is credited heavily to you." Portia smirked and gave Liam a look.

Liam shook his head from left to right, testing and analyzing the words that would next come out from his mouth. 

"I mean you could give a conman the billion dollar lottery ticket, with the exact same number as the one which is set to win- and he would still manage to mess it up. You can only do so much to set the path for a fool. And if the one you are setting a path for, is actually a fool, they would never-"

"-walk on the path." Portia completed his words with a smile. Liam gestured with his hand, acknowledging she was right. "I understand, of course. Jessica is no fool."

Liam's speech was starting to get a bit slurred. The wine was too strong, but he had always been able to hold it all. Maybe, what got him drunk was not just the wine.

He did not remember where the conversation with Portia eventually headed on to, or whether the dinner they had was actually a meal. Definitely, not soon enough, when it was all over, his memory had gotten even mistier. 

Thankfully Jessica had kept her hands off any intoxicants when she saw Liam drinking glass after glass. She was sure it had something to do with the phone call he received earlier but was helpless since he had not shared anything with her at all.