Two Loves

Chapter 20

ISAAC

What a wonderful way to start the day: with two heart-attacks, one shortly after the other.

"Oh guts, Isaac, did you have to spill your tea over the whole table cloth?" Cym groans, completely oblivious to the fact that I just almost died of shock. "Be a little more careful, I made it just because of your cold."

I ignore her trivial comment because I am panicking. "He wants me to what?"
Cym stops her attempt of rubbing the stain away with her napkin and tosses the letter over to me.

"To meet his mother and take dinner with them and a few friends, as I said."

My hands are still shaking around my - empty - teacup as I read the first lines in Atticus' flowery handwriting. A thousand emotions rattle through my head all at once, each contradicting the other, and this overwhelmed pile of thought culminates very eloquently: "Fuck."

My sister snorts amusedly. "Come on, Piggie, it's just a dinner, don't you think you are overreacting?"

How can she say that?!

"No, nononono Cymbeline, you are underreacting! Do you know what that means?!"

Just a shrug. "You're going to meet a fancy old lady with an enormous nose, fish some new clients at the dinner and eat like the king in France, I don't see your problem."

Yes, of course you don't, I think and pull my hair. "It means that I will have to go there!"

"That's the purpose of an invitation, yes. Are you afraid of dying of boredom?"

"And I will have to talk to those people! - I'll have to make a good impression on his mother - and not confuse the dinner fork with the dessert fork, and - Oh God, I bet I will hold my napkin the wrong way and cause public scandal! And all of that - alone!"

"Atticus will be there, won't he? There no need to be nervous."

"No need to be nervous?! Cym, Atticus is part of the problem of making me nervous!"

My sister finally gives up and throws her napkin away. "So you are really saying that you would feel better if I came along? That I live to see this day."

I hate that she is right. When I go to such festivities with Cymbeline, it is merely an unwillingness. I just don't like being there. Alone, I am lost, And when I am lost, I am nervous, and when I am nervous, I say dumb things and hyperventilate and, and... But of course I don't tell her that.

"Yes I would" I say instead, "because when I am with you, I know that it is you who will cause public scandal, not me."

"Ahahaha."

Come on, if I would tell her that she's absolutely right, she wouldn't let that go for ever.

Cym wrinkles her nose. "To be frank, I would also enjoy going with you -"

"What, to protect me? Pff."

"No, to meet your cavaliers mother. She must be interesting. And definitely will have an eye on you."

Oh, great way to calm me, thank you.

"Ah, shit. I'll have to make a good impression, haven't I?"

Cym rolls her eyes. "Piggie, you are going there to eat dinner, not to ask for his hand, stop making such a fuss about it - if you act as always, people will barely notice you."

"Why, thanks for your support " I answer sarcastically and she frowns.

"I don't get it, do you want to go there now or not?!"