Love in Slow Motion

50. Reed

50 REED

I stand outside the lake house for a long time. I wish for Quinn to come back. I contemplate all the ways I ruined everything. Not just tonight, but every single day for the rest of my life. I’ve ruined my own future.

By the time I turn to back to the lake house, my mother and Sabrina are long gone. I consider not going back in. I could get on my bike right now and drive back to Boston. Whatever reason I had to stay here is gone now, and I don’t want to have to face all this.

But Quinn is right. I owe it to my family to at least try.

I shut the door behind me, unsurprised to find Sabrina, my mother, and Chase all in the living room, watching me. I lean back against the door and take a deep breath before joining them. I can’t bring myself to sit just yet, so I hover by the kitchen island, trying not to look over at where the table Chase and I broke is still in pieces on the floor, glass surrounding it like a moat. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lydia retrieving large chunks of broken, green champagne bottle glass from the scene of the crime, stuffing them down into a sturdy trash bag.

Finally, my mother speaks. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”

There’s a long silence as we all wait to see who will speak up first. I don’t even know where to begin explaining this to my mother, and there are plenty of details I don’t necessarily think she needs to know. But before I have a chance to parse through them and make up my mind, Chase beats me to it.

He speaks from behind the ice pack he has pressed to his face. “Reed has been fucking my wife for the last week.”

“She’s not your wife,” I growl at him. How many fucking times do I need to remind him?

My mother puts her hands up to stop Chase before he can argue. “I don’t understand.”

I open my mouth to speak, but once again, Chase gets there first. “Reed was so fucking jealous of my life that he had to try and steal it.”

“I didn’t steal her; you threw her away because you’re a fucking idiot.”

Mom and Sabrina’s eyes settle on me, and Chase finally stops talking. Everyone waits for me to explain. I sigh and sink onto one of the barstools.

“Five years ago, I met Quinn just before Chase did.”

My mother looks confused, like I’ve mentioned two people she’s never met before. “Yes, you mentioned that last night. At the Halloween party. Quinn said you bumped into each other.” Her voice is so hopeful. I realize how much she wants to believe that nothing has changed. She’s grasping at the reality she’s known for so long.

“I pretended not to know her when we met at Thanksgiving. I guess I was…embarrassed. I didn’t know Chase was going to show up with her. We hit it off at that party, and I sort of thought we were…I don’t know, that we were going to hang out. And next thing I know, she and Chase are in a serious relationship. But I’ve…I’ve always had feelings for her.”

My mother’s hand comes up to cover her mouth. “Reed, she’s your brother’s wife.”

I have to clamp my lips together so I don’t go off again, and thankfully, someone else pipes in for me. Amina. I forgot she was here. What is she still doing here? “Chase told me that he and Quinn are divorced.”

Now my mother looks confused again. Her hand falls from her mouth and her eyes shoot to Chase. “Is that true? Have you been lying to me?” I see the realization cross her face that she’s the last one to know. Her expression smooths out. “You’ve all been lying to me?”

During this conversation, Chase’s head has been all the way back on the couch, and he’s been staring up at the ceiling like it holds the answers to the universe. Now, he looks right at our mother. “You offered us all five times more than usual to come out to the lake house.”

My mother sends him an incredulous look. “And, what, you thought I would rescind the offer if I found out you and Quinn were no longer together?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, pretty much.”

From the look on Mom’s face, she understands his logic about as much as I do. She turns back to me. “Okay, so Quinn and Chase are divorced, but they agreed to come here and pretend to be married anyway to get the money. How do you fit into this?”

I sigh. It sounds awful when I think about saying it out loud. “I’ve known for a while that Chase and Quinn had split up.” I level him with a glare. “I didn’t really have contact with Quinn after the fact, but when I heard she was going to be here for one last summer, I saw an opportunity.”

“An opportunity to sleep with her.”

I shoot up off my stool. “An opportunity to be with the person that I love so much it fucking tears me apart every single day. I was a good brother to you, Chase. I never flirted with her. I never tried to take her away from you. I kept my mouth shut that first Thanksgiving and pretended that night we met never happened. But you fucked up. You didn’t fucking deserve her.”

“But she chose me,” he says through gritted teeth.

It’s like he’s put a knife in my gut. “Yes. I’m very aware of that. But when you decided to cheat on her, she got a chance to choose someone else, and she chose me.”

I don’t dare say what’s going through my mind. After our talk by the lake tonight, I’m certain of it. If I hadn’t walked away from her at that Halloween party, she would have chosen me. We would have spent the rest of the party together. We would have gone on a date. We would have kissed, and I would have been the one to take her virginity and move her into my apartment and put a ring on her finger. I’m certain of all of that now.

We’re all quiet. None of us is really sure what to do now that all the secrets are out on the table.

My mother’s eyes raise to mine. “I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been a little suspicious that you might have feelings for Quinn. I’ve wondered for a long time why it seemed you started to slowly vanish from this family when she came into it, but I convinced myself that it was because of your work.” She sighs. “I’m disappointed that you all felt the need to keep this from me. I’m not even sure what to do with the knowledge that you and Quinn have been seeing each other while you’ve been here.”

That, at least, I can understand. Maybe our timing wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t about to let this chance pass me by. I don’t regret it.

She turns to face Chase. “I don’t even know what to say to you, Chase. How could you do that to Quinn?”

He doesn’t say anything, just stares back at her, his chest rising and falling rapidly, like this conversation is physically demanding for him.

When the silence has settled long enough, Sabrina pipes up. “I don’t understand why you needed the money from this trip so bad that you had to drag Quinn into this. You have a well-paying job and you’ve never needed the money before.”

He still doesn’t say anything, but his face has changed, moving from angry to anguished. His eyes shoot to me, and I start to feel anxious. I never once asked, but he came to my door to beg me to come to the lake house. He did drag Quinn into this. Sabrina is right. He needs the money, and he hasn’t told anyone why.

I walk toward him, until I’ve reached the step down into the living room. “Yeah, Chase. What do you need the money for?” I know why Quinn needs the money. She wasn’t trying to hide it from me or from Chase. But Chase is a whole other story.

He takes a deep breath. “I got fired from my job, okay? You happy now?”

A beat. “Is that all?” our mother asks. It’s the way she asks it that makes me turn to look at her. It’s not that she’s belittling the fact that he’s unemployed. It’s that she knows there’s more to this story. My skin starts to prickle. I have a very bad feeling about this.

Chase crosses his arms, abandoning his ice pack, and leans back on the couch. At first, I think he’s not going to answer, that he’s going to be a stubborn asshole. But then he speaks. “I got fired because a woman at work filed a sexual harassment suit against me.”

Even I wasn’t expecting that one. Sabrina’s hand comes up to cover her mouth, and my mother’s eyes go wide.

The question lingers over all of us. What did you do?

Chase shrugs. “There was a staff party about two months ago. I had a little too much to drink, and I guess I came on a little too strong with one of the accountants. Now she’s suing me for $50,000, which I can’t pay because I got fired.”

“What did you do to her?” Amina asks, her voice thick with horror.

But it doesn’t matter because before he can answer, I’ve stormed my way across the living room and punched him again.