The Bitter Illusion
It’s just after midnight when Aunt Delilah raises a glass. As she clinks her dessert fork against the crystal, long and loud enough to silence even the distant harpist, a heaviness settles in my bones. I sink deeper into my chair at the head of the table. Alone. Dressed in all white so as to blend in with the elegant villa I’d rented for the weeklong celebration.
“I prayed this day would come,” Aunt Delilah begins, mustering a tear. Because this is Hollywood, and she’s always been desperate for work. “When our little Beau glued quarters to the bottoms of his shoes and told us he wanted to be Fred Astaire, we laughed.”
The room laughs with her. Directors. Starlets. People I’ve spent the last five years learning to emulate. It’s my family that laughs the loudest, though.
Somehow, I manage to laugh along with them.
“But when he told us he was getting married…”
My aunt’s painted-on eyebrows creep higher, sending another wave of laughter through the hall. Perhaps if I hadn’t endured a week of this torture—a week of relatives dragging me up and down Sunset Boulevard by my coattails—I could’ve laughed along with them. Thank God my bride-to-be had already retired for the evening and I had no one to mutter the pretenses of excuse me to before fleeing. Discreetly, of course. Not running. Not at all how I’d left home.
Anyone who saw me flee would think it was simply the wine going right through me.
Anyone but Hugh.
He catches up with me on the patio overlooking the rose garden, his dark eyes locked on the meticulously maintained illusion of perfection that stretches before us. He stands closer than he should. Close enough that I forget how cold the nights have been without him.
“You don’t have to go through with it,” Hugh reminds me.
He says it like he isn’t the reason for all of this. Like either of our careers could survive such honesty. I want to throw him over the garden wall and drown him with kisses in the fountain.
Instead, I say, “Neither did you.”
“True,” Hugh concedes, “but you never met my wedding planner. That woman was never going to give me my deposit back.”
Laughter shivers through me. Quiet. Not enough to make it past my lips, but true. The first honest laugh I’ve had all week.
It’s a shame it comes with tears. I can’t bring myself to wipe them away. What if someone sees? It’s better I stay put. Still as any other statue in the garden.
Hugh glances over his shoulder—making sure we’re actually alone this time—before he pulls the cigarette tin from his jacket. Its dented corner is the only souvenir from our trip to Palm Springs. He lights a smoke and sets it between my lips. The brush of his fingertips against my jaw is as subtle as the licorice laced through the nicotine, sweetening the bitter illusion we’ve trapped ourselves in.
Author’s Note
This story was originally produced for the NYC Midnight 500-word Fiction Challenge 2025.
It received an Honorable Mention.
The assigned prompts were:
Genre: historical fiction
Action: empathizing
Word: licorice