Fractured by Erin Hayes

wordlessly pushed past Seth and headed back to the table.
    Speechless, Seth watched them for a few moments before heading into the men’s room. Once he was there, he noticed that the two of them hadn’t even bothered to clean up their mess. There were bloodied paper towels on the sink, smears along the glass where someone had had their hands up.
    How had no one walked in on them? The restaurant was busy enough, surely someone had come in. Although a quick look revealed that the stalls were empty. Somehow, miraculously, they had fucked each other by the sinks in a very public space without getting caught.
    Seth looked at his reflection in the mirror, feeling the old familiar anger rising inside him, a feeling that he had been trying to quell for months now.
    How dare she? How dare both of them? Rick was supposed to be in a committed relationship with Maria. And Lily...
    He met his own eyes in the mirror.
    “What the hell?”
     
    *****
     
    Rick seemed really out of it when he got back to the table. He hadn’t said anything, even at Maria’s concerned questions. Bash supposed it would have been from dealing with his nose. He must have been embarrassed that it had happened at the dinner table.
    She frowned, wanting to say something comforting to him, not knowing how to start.
    “Refreshed,” Lily declared, breaking into Bash’s thoughts.
    “Good,” Bash said with a tired smile.
    “Took you long enough,” Maria huffed from across the table. She seemed to be a bit more brazen now that Rick was back.
    “Oh well,” Lily answered, heat edging into her voice. “Food’s here, at least. Yummy salad and breadsticks.” With that, she sat down next to Bash’s right. Bash frowned at her. Something was off about her sister. She seemed...different.
    “Can someone cut my steak for me?” Scott asked weakly. His knife and fork scraped helplessly across the table.
    “I’ve got it,” Darius said. “You’re sad, you know.”
    Scott laughed nervously. “Thanks.”
    “I’m not hand feeding you,” Darius added after a beat, to which Scott sighed.
    Something caught Bash’s sense of smell. She wasn’t particularly good at discerning different scents—she could tell some things apart by them, but she was far from being a savant at it. Everyone did have a particular brand of smell though, so she was able to tell who she was talking to. Somehow, over the tantalizing scent of the food, Lily’s was different. It was hers, mingled with something else, something less familiar.
    Her blood ran cold when she recognized it.
    Rick. Lily’s scent had mingled with Rick’s.
    Why would...?
    “I’m back,” Seth whispered in her ear. “Sorry it took me so long.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze. There was too much tension in that squeeze for it to be a normal squeeze. Something was bothering him. Badly.
    “Seth, what’s wrong?” she whispered back, alarmed.
    He ignored her question and tapped on his wine glass, the clinking noise creating silence around the table.
    “Everyone,” he announced. He cleared his throat. “Bash and I have an announcement to make. Sometimes, when we’re stressed out and things aren’t going right, we can forget the things that matter to us.”
    It was barely perceptible, but Bash heard him emphasize “forget”. He’s going to announce our engagement , she realized. This wasn’t the time or the place to announce it. They hadn’t discussed doing that tonight, and she didn’t want to create ripples, especially with Lily already in such a disagreeable mood.
    “Seth,” she whispered, reaching up to try and pull him down. “Seth, I — ”
    He pulled away from her, not because he was angry at her. He had an agenda to his speech and he wasn’t listening. “In the last six months, Bash has made me the happiest man in the world. Darius, you can attest to that.”
    “Yep,” Darius said proudly.
    No. This was happening all wrong. She had wanted to prime Lily a bit