By evening, Mark returned home to Shelly waiting by the door with her cane. She smoothly tucked Mark’s hair—blown astray by the breeze—into place. “You’re gonna wanna take a bath, right? Go quickly, dinner’s waiting.”
Mark was still unaccustomed to Shelly’s affectionate gesture. In reply, he hummed uneasily and hurried upstairs.
Arianne watched their interaction, unperturbed. The only thing she was thinking about was how excessively Shelly doted on him. Honestly, Arianne was a little jealous of Mark having an aunt who loved him this much.
It was time for dinner. Everyone was having medium-rare steaks, Arianne noticed to her dismay, except Smore, who had tender, well-done steak.
She was not a fan of steaks with any pink in their middle. The longer she looked at her pinkish slab, the more her appetite waned. Arianne found steaks any less than well-done to be too gross to eat, but another part of her insisted that she should not waste food by throwing it away. In the end, she decided to have salad as makeshift dinner and pushed her steak onto Mark’s plate.
Shelly observed Arianne from her spot and immediately launched an inquisition with a straight face. “What? You don’t like it? I thought I’d asked you earlier today, Arianne. You told me anything will do.”
Arianne eyed Mark for a second before answering, “I’m not feeling my appetite today, so I’ll just make-do with a bowl of salad.”
Shelly stabbed her fork into Arianne’s steak and flung it onto the table. “If you disliked it that much, then throw it away to a proper place. Mark isn’t your garbage disposal, for Pete’s sake. Just because you don’t like to eat something doesn’t mean you’re entitled to throw it to someone else however you like. That’s, frankly, a very rude and uncultured thing to do!”
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride