Close to Heaven

Dinner was so close to uneventful, but that wouldn’t have been the Waldorf family at all if there was an absence of tension amongst the members. Loretta scanned the table, her father sitting at the head of the table as he poked at his roast pork, her mother beside him and unusually not in her place at the south end. Her niece and nephew sat between their mother and father, and her brother and his fiancée Anna sat on the other side with Loretta. Alec was too busy to attend the dinner, as he’d told her and at this point in time she couldn’t have cared less. She’s spent the afternoon with another man, one who kissed her like she’d never been kissed and touched her like she was the most precious thing he’d ever come across. Nick Santino played on her mind as she cut her potato, skewering it harsher than needed on her fork. The clang of metal and porcelain drew attention, and Loretta mumbled a swift sorry to everyone peering at her.

“Well,” her mother spoke eventually; Loretta knew the dinner was going too smoothly to be counted as a real family gathering. “Alec rang you father today, Loretta.” When she looked up at her parents, their hands were touching in the simplest form of embrace and adorning looks on their faces as they smiled down the table at her. Dropping her knife and fork as gracefully as she could, Loretta ran her hands through her hair, knowing full well what to expect.

“Yes, I can imagine he would have...”

Emily’s mouth dropped open, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. “Did he? Finally?”

Eric Waldorf beamed as he looked between his daughters. Laurence kept quiet, but Anna squealed as she peered past him to look at Loretta. “Really?”

Loretta didn’t smile nor frown. This was exactly the kind of stunt that her family would have pulled. Of course this was way Emily and her husband and their two children were back from Connecticut for a short time. Of course this was why Alec was “too busy” to attend the dinner. “Yes, yes! Alec proposed this afternoon! Won’t it make for a lovely October wedding!” Eric cried, his excitement getting the better of him. “He rang me this morning, said that all he needed was my permission, which of course I said yes to, we have a child marrying into the Rockefeller family!”

The mention of the October wedding was enough for Loretta to lose her cool, but when her mother cried that she must see the ring, that was when she put her face in her hands. It had been a lovely ring, the largest diamond she’d ever seen sitting upon a white gold band. It must have cost him well over $50,000; Loretta assumed, judging by the price of her sister’s and soon to be sister-in-law’s rings respectively. This diamond was much larger, much more in your face, and very Rockefeller. “There isn’t one,” she said, forcefully.
“He didn’t get you a ring? My God Loretta, what on Earth did you do when he asked you to marry him without a ring?” Emily’s expression was shock and disgust mixed into one, as she played with her own large diamond encrusted band.

“He did, and it was lovely. But there is no ring for me to show you, because I didn’t say yes. It wouldn’t have seemed fair for me to take the ring without first having accepted.” Loretta was too scared to meet the eyes of her parents, instead settling on Laurence’s next to her. He gave her an understanding smile, her brother was eight years older than her but he certainly knew that Loretta and Alec weren’t ever going to make it to engagement. She had confessed several times throughout the courtship that while she loved him, what he expected her to be would never work for her and that was that. He wanted what his father had, a stay-at-home wife raising the heirs to the family fortune. Loretta refused to be that, do that. She wasn’t even sure she wanted children, a decision that would break her mother’s heart.

“You rejected?” Vivienne’s voice came laced with disbelief, unable to comprehend that her youngest daughter had just committed what seemed to be an unforgivable sin. If only she’d known what Loretta was doing that afternoon with a middle class, tattooed musician. She could imagine the reaction. Hell would be raised, her father Satan ruling with an iron fist. She would never see that boy again, he would demand. She would find a respectable, clean cut man, one with money and ambition. One that would look after her for years to come.

“You can’t have, Loretta. He’s the one for you, I can see it.” Eric was red, red with anger and red with embarrassment. How would he explain this to Alec’s father? How would the families ever be able to co-exist with each other at functions and at galas? How would their businesses be able to work together?

“You mustn’t be looking very hard,” Loretta said softly. “I’m too young, and it’s not right...he’s not right. I love him, I just don’t love him enough to marry him.” And it was true. If she loved him enough to marry him, she would be faithful. If she loved him enough to marry him, she’d have accepted his proposal. She’d have thrown her arms around his neck in excitement, kissing him with unexpected force from such a small girl. She would be able to see the engagement party, and the wedding and their life together. She could see none of that.

“How will I ever be able to explain this? Oh Eric, think of what people will say!” Vivienne muttered, but Loretta heard her loud and clear. She scoffed at the mention of what others would say, she’d been raised to consider reputation all her life and for the first time, she couldn’t have cared less what people would say or think about her. “Are you still together?”

Loretta shook her head. No, she was sure that she and Alec had broken up. They were not going to get married, so what was the point in staying together, only to have time ask the same question again in a year’s time? She’d used her youth-a mere 20 years old-as her excuse, but she knew that she would never reconsider the answer. “Loretta, please leave the table. I can’t look at you right now,” Eric was resting his head in his hand as he spoke, not making eye contact with anyone as he stared at the table.

It was like a bullet to the brain, what her father had said to her. There was no anger like she had expected, but there was disappointment, embarrassment. They were ashamed that she had denied such a wonderful offer, an offer of love that they thought had existed between the young couple. A love that on Loretta’s behalf did not exist. She pushed her chair back, exiting the dining room to find her handbag. She knew who to call and where she was going to go. She only prayed that he would answer his cell phone.

Upon leaving the house and heading for her car, she hearing murmurs of conversation from her family in the large dining hall. She had embarrassed her parents, shocked her siblings. She had pushed away a man that loved her, and for what she did not really know. She had an inkling that it came in the form of ginger hair and tattooed skin, a shy grin and a knack for singing. If she had turned down a marriage proposal from her boyfriend of two years for Nick Santino, she knew it was only going to get more and more complicated by the second. She was not meant to feel anything for the boy, he was a release from Alec and that’s all he was ever meant to be. She didn’t have any mutual friends with him, she didn’t even live in the same part of Braintree that he did. They’d have never met if it were not pure chance that day in the tattoo studio.

Still, Loretta thought it was the luckiest she’d ever gotten.