Chapter 11 The cafeteria
Wade's POV
Lily walked past me with tears in her eyes and I felt a pang of pain somewhere in my heart.
I told myself it was necessary. If I had intervened, Clara would have become harder on Lily the moment I looked away. I knew how Clara worked. I had watched her operate for long enough to understand that public opposition only sharpened her focus. So I had stayed quiet and played along and told myself it was the smarter move.
How I regretted it now.
But I had a reputation to protect and I could not just risk everything over one moment.
I sat through the next lecture without hearing a single word of it. My mind was somewhere else entirely, replaying the look on Lily's face when she crouched to pick up those soaked pages, the way she had kept her head down so nobody could see her clearly.
The bell rang for free period and Clara appeared at my side immediately with the rest of the group behind her.
"Aren't you coming to the cafeteria?" she asked.
"I just feel like sitting—"
"Boy, stand up, let's go have some fun at the cafeteria!" Chris said, already pulling me to my feet with both hands.
"Okay, okay," I said and let myself be dragged along.
We ordered turkey and cheese sandwiches with a side of chips, a banana and a bottle of water each and settled at our usual table. The cafeteria was loud and familiar and I sat in the middle of it feeling completely removed from everything around me.
I watched Clara as she laughed and talked, performing the ease of someone who had not spent the morning destroying another person's schoolwork. She had not mentioned the messages she had been sending me. She was acting as though none of it existed, clinging to my side like nothing between us had changed, and I did not have the nerve yet to push her away properly.
Then the cafeteria doors opened and Lily walked in.
She was holding Mia's lunch box against her chest, eyes moving around the room searching for the delivery man. The box was large, bright and unmistakably a child's.
Our eyes met for one second then she looked away immediately.
Not now, I thought. Please, not now.
"Oh my God! What is that?" Clara's voice rose sharply above the table noise, her finger pointing directly at Lily.
I rubbed my forehead
"Damn! I knew she was a freak but I didn't realize she was that kinky," Frank said, grinning widely.
"Frank!" I whispered, nudging him hard.
"Can you guys just let the poor girl breathe?" Chris said quietly.
Clara gave him a mocking look and turned back to the table. "What do you reckon she has in there?"
"Sex toys," one of Clara's friends offered and the table dissolved into laughter.
Across the cafeteria Lily clutched the box tighter, her discomfort visible from where I sat.
Where is the delivery man? I thought furiously. Why is he taking so long?
"Hey! Come over here baby, show us what you got in that box!" Frank called out loudly enough for half the cafeteria to hear.
I closed my eyes and when I opened them Lily was walking toward our table.
She stopped directly in front of me, set the lunch box down and looked at me with complete composure.
"Wade, you left your lunch at home," she said.
The table went silent.
"What the hell? That's not Wade's," Clara said immediately.
"Yes it is," Lily replied calmly. She turned the box around to show the back where a name was printed in clear letters.
Harrington.
"Can you see now? Wade Harrington," she said and every mouth at the table fell open.
Lily Johnson! I screamed inside my head. I looked at her with pure fury and she looked straight back at me with the sweetest smile I had ever wanted to wipe off someone's face.
"Why's your last name on that box?" Clara asked, her eyes cutting straight to me.
I had to deny it. I absolutely had to deny it.
"I'm not the only one with that last name," I said.
"Why do you look so nervous man? Is it really yours?" Frank asked leaning forward.
"No! It's not mine, it's—" I started just as the cafeteria doors swung open.
"Pick up for Mia Harrington?" the delivery man called out from the entrance.
"Yes, thank you," Lily said smoothly, handing the box over.
When the man left, every head at the table turned back slowly and deliberately toward me.
"Mia Harrington," Clara said carefully. "That's your sister's name. What's that scholarship slut doing with it?"
"I'm actually the nanny for Mia and Wade," Lily announced to the entire cafeteria and I buried my face in my hands.
"Are you secretly a little baby?" Clara asked, her voice rising with disbelief.
"Oh my God!" Frank was already on his feet with laughter. "Do you want me to change your diapers or feed you, toddler?"
The entire cafeteria erupted. The laughter spread from table to table like something contagious and unstoppable.
"This is unbelievable," Chris said. His voice was flat and he was not laughing.
Something in me snapped
"Unbelievable?" I stood up, my voice carrying across the room. "It is unbelievable how Lily walked up to my house desperate for a job, crying like a baby. She charmed my dad and you know what? All my pleas to fire her fell on deaf ears."
"What? How desperate can she be!" Clara said shaking her head.
"I heard her mum is almost blind!" Frank said loudly, looking around the table for the reaction he wanted. "Too bad. A blind mum and a daughter inflicted with obesity!"
The laughter that followed was the loudest yet.
I watched Lily freeze at the mention of her mother. That one landed differently from everything else and I could see it happen in real time. The composure she had held through the entire cafeteria simply dissolved. Tears rolled steadily down her face and she made no move to wipe them away.
"Didn't your father check her weight before employing her?" someone from another table called out.
I opened my mouth to respond and Lily ran.
She turned and pushed through the cafeteria doors and was gone before I could say a single word, her sobs audible even over the laughter still filling the room.
The table carried on around me. Someone made another joke. Clara laughed, and Frank was still performing for the room.
I sat back down slowly and stared at the table in front of me.
The regret hit me immediately and completely, the way it always did when it was already too late to be useful.
Chris looked at me across the table for a long moment. He said nothing. He just looked at me with an expression I recognised because I had seen it in my own mirror.
It was disappointment.
He shook his head then picked up his food and turned away and somehow that was the worst part of all of it.