Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle

Author:Kristina Riggle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Breast - Cancer - Patients, Psychological fiction, Cancer, Family, Parent and adult child, Breast cancer, Medical, American First Novelists, General, Fiction - General, Family Life, Patients, Breast, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Families, Fiction, Domestic fiction, Breast cancer - Patients
ISBN: 9780061706288
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 2009-05-22T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 35

Irina

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE, IRINA FINDS HERSELF IN ENVY OF her older brother.

The band plays “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and at the center of the floor, he sways along with Barbara. She is a looker. Wavy auburn hair, creamy skin, and a slender body with enough boobs to fill out her dress but not so much that she’s falling out all over the place. She envies Van not for his girlfriend—after all, Darius is smoking hot himself, and gets stares from women everywhere he goes—but because Barbara is only a girlfriend. At any time, he can walk away.

Oh sure, she can get divorced, and she most assuredly will. And she can even hand over the baby to Darius and wish him well. But, young though she is, Irina realizes she will be changed by this. In an elemental sense.

She’s already felt some primal urge to protect the baby, this baby she didn’t plan and does not want. Which means, no matter how much she wants to carry on with her single, freewheeling life, some part of her will resist. Some part of her will cling to that bundle and not want it taken away. That thought fills her stomach with a heavy dread.

And Darius will never forgive her. She will inevitably feel guilt over that. Unlike what Katya seems to think, she doesn’t just screw everything with a dick within a twenty-five-mile radius, to hell with consequences.

Just that the consequences have never been steep before since she always made the guy wear a condom.

Stupid old condoms aren’t supposed to break. She should sue Trojan. At the time, they made a joke of it. “No condom in the world can contain me,” Darius joked, standing over her on the bed, flexing his muscles and posing like a comic-book superhero. She laughed until she cried.

Two weeks later, she just cried.

Darius, sitting to her side, tries kneading her shoulder, but she gingerly shifts it out from under his hand. She begged off from dancing, pleading exhaustion, which was partly true. And the music was too loud for easy conversation, so they’ve been sitting in silence, watching the party.

Irina fingers an ivory cocktail napkin, with gold script reading, “Max and Mirabelle Zielinski, 35th anniversary, June 2, 2007.”

Irina couldn’t conceive of it. She’d known Darius barely thirty-five days before he knocked her up, and already she wanted out.

Maybe Kat was right about her after all.

“Hell of a storm,” Darius shouts over the music.

She nods vaguely. She hasn’t been paying attention, since they returned to the party. Inside the reception hall, everything is twinkle lights and candles refracted in crystal. Easy to forget the turmoil outside. She has to give Katya that much. It’s pretty, and her big sister is really good at pretty.

“Reenie!” Irina turns to see cousin Angela with her daughter propped on her hip. The kid’s name escapes her. Britney. Christina. Some pop-star name.

Angela plops down uninvited next to her. She’s wearing a dress that couldn’t be more unattractive if she’d gone out of her way.

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