Bittersweet (Book #1 Evening Wings Trilogy)

Chapter 17

17

Christmas was going by slowly.

I was going to be glad when it was over.

So far, no one knew about what had happened, not even my mom, and I told her everything—well, most everything.

There was a Christmas party being held at the country club this year that my mother had helped to organize. She was adamant that I come instead of staying in the house all day, randomly sketching imaginative compositions before throwing them on the floor like the others.

My drawings were lacking since the whole thing with Xander. I couldn’t draw without real inspiration and even when my mom complimented them, I still found them incomplete—a whole lot like me.

Xander didn’t love me. I refused to let myself stagnate on that topic.

Maybe this Christmas party might be good for me… Then again, it might not. Besides, I was still playing along with my mother’s whole ‘Xander’ pretense. I knew if I told her we weren’t together anymore, she would have said ‘I told you so’ and given me that horrible lecture again, so I went out with her and got him a present at her insistence. The most boring and bland grey knitted scarf I could find (my mom had rigged the ‘secret Santa’ effort so we got one another; it was childish really).

I clutched the present, wrapped in tacky Christmas paper with a dull Christmas card with the caption, ‘Merry Christmas – From Elizabeth’. I was trying hard not to show that I still loved him, even though I tried to push his stupid existence out of my head.

The Rust Bucket pulled into the parking lot and parked with an embarrassing backfire from the exhaust pipe. My mother chuckled and I shrouded my eyes with my hands.

“Old girl still works like a charm,” she chuckled, rubbing the dashboard while I looked at her as if she was mad.

I got out of the SUV and smoothed the skirt of my dress; one of my old castoffs that was too formal for me to wear. On my feet were a pair of elegantly constructed, shining gray high heels. Nothing too extravagant.

I walked behind my mother through the whipping wind, trying not to slip on dried ice on the pavement, even though the country club workers had come and cleared it just a few hours ago. A few guys in nice shirts and khaki pants hung out by the entrance, smelling of eggnog and Christmas ham.

Little children hung around the Christmas tree, exchanging their gifts and opening up Christmas crackers, being entertained by Santa or gorging themselves on sweet Christmas cookies in different shapes. The teenagers, mostly people from school and the neighborhoods conversed with one another, laughing loudly in their little mingling groups. I felt like the odd one out, because I knew none of them, and they were all having fun together while I was permanently downcast.

I scrunched Xander’s present in my palm, thankful it was just a stupid scarf and not something utterly breakable and priceless like what the other kids had. My claddagh ring sparkled under the light coming from the hearth as I sat at a table with my mom’s friends’ children: a horse faced girl named Bianca, and her two friends Lila and Sky. Two boys named Charlie and Shane and the last was Taylor, the boy from Heidi’s table at school.

He was nice to talk to but a bit dull because anything ranging further away from football paused him. Other than that, the conversation at the table was alright, except for the horse face girl slobbering on Charlie flirtatiously—it was a rather disturbing sight.

I was bored and fiddled with one of my earrings.

“Yoo-hoo, Elizabeth!”  I looked up to find my mother racing over to me, her hair bobbing as she went. When she was closer, she spoke again. “Xander’s here!”