Young Blood ~•~Timothée Chalamet

Chapter 2

"Put your red dress on, put your lipstick on. Sing your song, song, now the camera's on. And you're alive again."

•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•

Breakfast at the O'Heirs was no extravaganza, but the outside world commonly dreamed that the most important meal of the day for our family must have been nothing less of perfection. If only the envious knew how cold the meal actually was.

Every morning it was important to Father for us to start the day off as a family. Even if that mean't purposely ignoring one another's presence at the table. Father scrolled through his endless inbox of emails. Mother engaged in flipping through her recent Interior Design issue. Annette tapped away in conversation with Sebastian over text. And I sat quietly in my chair pushing my scrambled eggs back and forth. 

The silence was deafening. Mother scrapping her fork against her teeth caused the hairs on the nape of my neck to rise. Father gulped down his orange juice in a hurry and all I could hear was the suction of his swallowing bouncing off our dining room walls.

Our house was a museum with pretty objects and people. No one dared to touch anything or anyone unless asked to do so otherwise. While the maid did her routine dusting to retain the house's glittering brilliance, who would do their dusting to keep us presentable?

I scratched at the corner of my wrist, trying to keep the voicing hungers at bay. Breakfast was not what I was after on the menu this particular morning.

"So..." my father broke the ice, placing his phone down on the table. "As you guys know, this weekend are the Golden Globes. I expect you all to be ready and on time." He cleared his throat, wiped his mouth with a napkin and then pushed back in his chair to stand. "Carmen," he hollered for our maid, "come clear my plate." She came hurrying in to do as he ordered. Carmen never had my father waiting for more than a minute. He walked behind my mother's chair and placed a quick peck to her forehead and then took off in a march towards the front door. The three O'Heir women were left behind bathing in their own devious schemes of private thought.

"Got to go," Annette hurried from her chair, "Sebastian is picking me up." She left as well without a formal goodbye.

I glanced over at my mother, observing her bare face. In the morning, she appeared as any other troubled wife. Without the glitz and the glam to give her power, she was just a useless ornament.

I supposed with everyone leaving, I'd hurry off to my own appointment.

•••

"He's a man, Violet. That's just the way their mind works." Mrs. Jones recrossed her legs to get a better positioning.

I nodded, pretending to be satisfied with that overused answer.

I had been seeing Mrs. Jones for the last year and a half. My father recommended that I see a psychiatrist when all this bullshit had spiraled into my life. And of course, he had an excellent one in mind. Father did everything in his power to control the people who I could be vulnerable with. He wouldn't want his secrets getting out, now would he? Luckily for him, I planned on never telling anyone about what happened to me, not even Mrs. Jones.

Her response hung in the air for a few seconds.

"They certainly all can't be like that. Gems among the stones is a saying that I still want to believe in," I confessed.