7:05 pm.
Octavien glances at his watch, tapping the fingers of his other hand on the table. He takes a moment to inspect his fingernails, then resumes tapping. Clean, uniform, and formal, just like the rest of his getup. His father would've smirked at his clearly distressed son. If he was still alive, that is.
Thin, delicate hands pressed against his face, Octavien exhales deeply for the nth time. He fixes his cuffs, his collar, and his styled, blonde hair. Crossing his arms, he looks around the restaurant stuffed with oil paintings, red carpetry, fine glass and people in suits and dresses.
A look of disdain crosses his face. Out of all the reasons he has for being unhappy, he feels wretched the most because of his ill-fitting clothing.
Suits and ties never were his thing, especially with this particular set. He can feel his brother's spite through the grey, single-breasted jacket lent to him. The hot pink dress shirt suffocates him at the collar, but he has suffered worse.
Formal attire makes Octavien fussy and self-conscious, like he has some sort of standard to live up to. He does, actually, but most of the time he just doesn't care about norms. More than that, it makes him suffer more than his teenage sweetheart did.
Wait, that sounds wrong. No matter how much his father stared angrily, how his mother sighed disapprovingly, how his brother beat him up, nothing could hurt him more than that memory.
Well that's an enlivening thought.
A pang of regret smacks him in the face. If only he didn't take that last shot glass that night of October 20th, maybe he wouldn't have acted foolishly.
It's true that he had done, and still does, an uncountable number of idiotic things (like calling his professor a lazy, dumb ox in front of the entire class), but sending one, fateful text message with words that should never have been spoken to the girl that loved him for three straight, unwavering years was out of bounds.
If only he didn't drink that glass – about five glasses, actually – of Chateau Barrettes from his dad's wine cellar, maybe he wouldn't be in this situation.
Which situation? Hoping and dreaming that someday Ms. Marie-Fleur Sicard would return to him, or being drawn into the plan of his mother and one of her rich friends of an arranged marriage? Probably both.
Fifteen more minutes, according to the text message.
Either way, he thinks while getting his phone, I'm screwed.
