“Why did you not say anything about us staying here”
“Because I thought you were handling the conversation pretty well” Cade replied with his back to her.
They had gotten to bed after all the guests had left. When they had first attempted to step away from the party, Frances had come up and held them down with the excuse that the night had just begun. It was not until almost everyone was unable to hold their liquor anymore that she announced that the party was over.
Ophelia and Cade went to the room silent but mostly because both of them were tipsy. They stumbled into bed and were now lying side by side.
“Do you think your excuse makes sense?” Ophelia asked then followed by a hiccup.
“Why wouldn’t it?” he followed up shutting his eyes because of the pain that surged through his body because of the excessive drinking spree he had involved himself in.
“Are you trying to annoy me?” she asked sitting up in bed abruptly almost screaming at him.
“Lay back down and keep your choice down, remember that we are at our family house”
“And that is the reason I am yet to pull out all of your hair” she replied.
“What?” he asked string till he laid on his side so his face was facing her.
“You think I should just let you go after all the things you had done tonight?” she asked him. She could not believe that he was thinking about sleeping soundly after acting the way that he did.
“What did I do?”
“Do you want to talk about it now or later?” she asked.
Cade groaned as he lay on his back with his arm across his eyes. “Can we talk about it later? I am so tired that I just want to sleep” he replied.
Ophelia gasped as though she had just been told something ridiculous by him. “We should talk about it later? After you had spent the entire night trying your best to humiliate me? I should just forget about it right?’ she asked being extra. If she would keep replaying the event of the night in her head it would keep her awake all night then why did she need to allow him to fall asleep? If she would not be able to sleep because of him then neither should he.
“Do you want to talk about it now?” he asked taking off his hand from his face and turning to her again. Even though he could not see her face clearly from the angle he lay on the bed, he could tell that she was not happy from her side profile.
“Yes I do,” she said and he sat up straight in bed with his back on the headboard. “What is it that you want to talk about?” he asked her with a yawn.
“For starters with Harper today why did not say anything? And when Frances was bullying me by going on and on about our marriage why did you not say anything?” she asked.
“Because you were doing great in both situations,” he said again. Ophelia could not believe that his first response was his final response. How could that be? She could have sworn that he wanted her to be humiliated by both ladies who were coming after her just because of him.
She knew that not only would they not come after her if she was not married to Cade but she also knew that they would never have the right to do so. She was not on the same level as them so it would have taken a lot of networking for them to get to talk to each other. Frances who was on the same level with her would not have been able to talk to her because Opehlia would have reo]moved herself from any situation involving her as quickly as she could.
“If you are dying for them to know that this marriage is a sham and we are busy deceiving the media with our lobe lives then you should tell me” she said crossing her hand. She could not believe that was his excuse. He should have thought of something better to say at least.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I am trying to say that if you had told me that you were tired of putting up a show, it would have been a better excuse than the nonsense you keep spewing”
“I just can not believe that you do not know that you not telling Harper off when she was trying to take you away for a conversation was just you saying that you consented to the conversation and I was being extra and holding onto you when you did not want it” Ophelia explained.
“Why would she think that? I ignored her and should not have told her that I was not interested?” he asked.
“That is not how the woman’s mind works. We take silence and ignorance for yes because you not saying no tells us that you want to say yes but can not because of the environment and that if things were different you would say yes. She would be thinking that one day if I were not there then you would say yes”
Cade thought of how the woman’s mind worked and could not believe the complexity of it. He sighed and knew that he had to apologize, he opened his mouth to speak but Ophelai was already talking before he could say anything.
“And when Frances was trying to get to know about the baby situation, if you had said that we were waiting then she would have believed it better and easily. If I say it then it would seem like I was the one holding off, as though I had a condition or I was refusing to do so”
“But you are refusing to…”
“Do they need to know that? Why don’t we just take our entire plans out to them so they can be aware of it all?” she said annoyed that he was not fully getting the message she was trying to tell him.
“Ophelia” he pressed out and she stopped. Was she being too extra with the situation? “I am so sorry, I did not know what any of these things meant. I just thought that allowing you to speak was the best idea so I don’t end up saying something that was going to put us in more trouble and if I do say so myself I would have to compliment you for handling them all so intelligently”
Ophelia did not care for his compliments but they got to her and she could not lie about that. He had such a sweet mouth it was difficult for her to ignore it. “I am sorry too” she replied after a while.
“For what?”
She too had been a pain, maybe it was the transfer of aggression or maybe she wanted him to be as agitated as she was because of the ladies she had encountered, she did not know why it turned out to be that way but it just did.
“I transferred all of this aggression on you because I was pressed” she confessed.
She wondered if it was because she was growing up or if it was because she had gotten married but lately, she found herself apologising so easily to him now, she wondered if it was that way because of marriage or because of age.
“It is okay, you can be pressed if those around you made it that way” he said. The room fell silent in awkwardness. She cleared her throat and he glanced at her. “Can we go to bed now?” he asked and she nodded.
“Good night,” he said slipping into the bed and covering himself u to the neck.
“Good night” she replied as she watched him lay down.
As he laid down her clouded mind began to clear up and she realized that she had been put in the same room and bed as him. They had never shared a bed and she was afraid of touching him as they slept. She quietly pushed herself to lie down as she tried to put a gap between them. The bed was not that big so she did not know how to sleep and she would not touch him even if it was by error.
She laid down in bed thinking of it as she felt blood rush up to her cheeks. ‘Am I blushing?’ she asked herself in confusion. Was now the right time for her to be blushing? ‘Why am I blushing?’ she followed up asking herself.
“I better just go to bed instead of allowing all these kinds of thoughts to fill my mind” she whispered to herself closing her eyes and forcing her mind to draw blank so she could sleep.
She was not able to tell when she finally drifted to bed but she was sleeping soundly very soon.