“I didn’t want to spoil Dad’s night.”
“So you chose to let me down again. You let everyone walk all over me.”
Chris leaned closer.
“Just cover it tonight. We’ll work it out at home.”
“We already tried that.”
“You’re humiliating me.”
“Were you humiliated when Serena called me a credit card?”
He looked away.
“Were you humiliated when you took our anniversary money?”
“Or did it only become humiliating when you had to answer for it?”
Serena pushed the folder toward the center of the table.
“I wouldn’t have ordered all that if I’d known.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “You ordered it because you thought the money was mine.”
“You set us up. I can’t afford this.”
“Neither could I. I just kept covering it.”
One relative asked the waiter to remove an unopened bottle of wine. Another canceled dessert.
Henry reached for his wallet.
“I’ll pay for myself and your mother.”
“Your meals are my gift, Henry,” I said.
He paused.
“Because you want them to be, Nat?”
The question tightened something inside my chest.
“Yes.”
“Then thank you, darling.”
Tarryn looked at me.
“I thought you and Chris had offered.”
“I did at first. Then everyone stopped asking.”
“We should’ve noticed,” she said.
Henry looked around at his children.
“We should have.”
He did not offer to cover the entire table.
He simply stopped acting as though he had never seen what was happening.
Outside, Chris caught up with me beside the car.
“You embarrassed me, Natalie.”
I unlocked the door.
“I gave you three chances to tell them.”
“You showed everyone the tickets.”
“You let them think my money belonged to them. Why?”
Chris glanced back toward the restaurant.
“I wanted them to think I was doing well.”
“You let them laugh at me because it made you look successful.”
“No. You didn’t see me at all.”
“Tell me how to fix it.”
“You start by carrying the cost yourself.”
