Chapter Text
This asshole actually did not remember you!
“My-my mom made a potato casserole…give it to you-well to your family for our condolence on the loss of your dad…I’m sorry do you actually not remember me?”
Phillip scoffs and lightly laughs like you just said the most ridiculous thing to him. You knew it wouldn’t take long for his buffoonery to show its ugly face. “I feel like if we met, I would have definitely not ignored you.” He says as he gets closer and to your surprise, grabs your waist to pull you into the house before closing the door.
He definitely didn’t ignore you in school when he would call you names or laugh with his jerk friends when they would do it. You still can see them high-fiving each other in celebration for making someone cry.
“So why don’t you let me in on who you are?” His hand is still on your waist as you continue to give him a confused look. Finally after years of PTSD and anxiety from being bullied by this jerk, you are finally gonna tell Phillp Altman how you really feel about him. Quickly you go over what you're gonna say in your head and start to open your mouth suddenly…
“Y/n! I see your mom has pawned you off to drop off the food, how are you?” You look over to the voice to see Charles Grodner. You still have food in your hand and are still waiting for someone to tell you where you can put it down. He says nothing as he gives you a side hug.
“Good, Charlie, I mean Rabbi Grodner, congratulations on the promotion by the way, that’s great!”
Phillip was looking between you two back and forth. “You know Boner?” Never taking his eyes off you.
Charlie looks at Philip annoyed. “Can you not call me…” he clicks his tongue and stops what he was saying to stay on track with what was first asked. “And yeah, Phillip you should know her too, we all went to school together. You called her Brace Face.” Phillip can’t help but quickly look back at you with shock, but interested even more than before.
Phillip looked at you with a smugness that you remember all too well. “Wow, braces did you good.” He begins to look you up and down again.
You wanted to be anywhere but here all of a sudden. You look back at Charlie in hope of ignoring Phillip’s stares. “Um-Charles, where can I put this down?” Charlie’s eyes went wide and then perked up to point his finger towards the kitchen. Nodding softly, barely audibly letting out a thank you. Heading into the kitchen without giving a second glance. As you were moving towards the kitchen you heard heavy footsteps behind you, knowing fully who they belonged to.
Trying to ignore him, you put the potato casserole down on the counter with all the rest of the many casseroles and dishes people have brought the Altmans. As you slide your hand from underneath, the glimmer of your engagement ring catches the sun coming from the kitchen window.
“Oh, so you're married?” You look over at Phillip who is leaning on the counter and staring at you. Looking at your ring and then back at Phillip.
“No, not yet. We are engaged.” You were looking down, not looking at him; you hated that this guy still made you nervous. “We actually got engaged last night.”
Silence fills the air. You find some courage to look up at him and see that he’s smirking at you. This guy was enjoying torturing you.
Phillip finally pipes up. “Congrats. Who’s the lucky guy, do I know him too?” he said with a snarky tone.
“Actually, you do.” All of a sudden you see Phillip’s very toned body straighten in a sarcastic way of showing interest, even though you knew he didn’t; that would be asking too much from him. All of a sudden you start to feel like you were back in grade school again,you could feel that PTSD flaring up again. Swallowing hard before you try to continue without the shakiness from your voice. “His name is Doug Pritchett; he went to school with us too.”
Phillip just stood there for what felt like forever with his stupid charming smirk on his face that you remembered why you hated this guy so much. He removed his hand from the counter and crossed his arms. “So, you're dating Doug, huh?”
“What, no clever nickname for Doug?” You’re surprised by the sudden spike of courage you just had, not sure where it came from. Phillip just smiled at you. You swear if you didn’t know any different you would have thought he had x- ray vision the way he was staring unapologetically. You see his eye twitch slightly but not enough for him to erase the cool of his demeanor.
“I remember the name now, but he was so invisible to me back in school, I didn’t fucking bother.” He speaks with an unusual lightness to his tone, like he knows that you were not the kind of girlfriend to defend his honor, like you knew as well how unimportant Doug was back then. In a silent agreement, he said no more.
“Phillip, mom wants you back in the seat, if I’m being forced to socialize, so do you.” A familiar brunette comes into the kitchen and suddenly turns around to look at you “Omg, Y/n, it’s so nice to see you.” She goes in for a hug, and you happily hug her back.
“Hey Wendy, don’t feel forced to socialize with me.” you say in a lighthearted tone and a smile. You actually always liked Wendy Altman; back in school she was the girl who could get straight A’s and be in AP classes, but when the weekend came she also knew how to shotgun a beer. The one time you actually went to a house party, it was because Wendy said you should come. It, of course, being at the same place you were now mourning a death.
“Oh shut up, you know I’m talking about the many neighbors and family who never stayed in touch with us until a death happens. They just can’t wait to see what we do.” You smile at this knowing everyone knew the Altmans had a reputation of being an unusual family, even the Altmans themselves knew this. The last sane person people knew of this family was dead. Of course everyone came out in heaps.
When you pull away from the hug you see Wendy looking down at the glittering ring that somehow always caught the light and was making everyone more aware of the big rock now placed on your finger giving you the unwanted attention you always tried to avoid.
“Oh my god, look at that!” Wendy lifts your hand to get a better look. “Who’s the lucky guy?” Hearing the same phrase, but in an actually sweet and heartfelt way that made you feel like you can relax your body again.
“Oh um, you remember…” you started to say but was interrupted by a deep voice that you forgot was still there.
“Doug Pritchett, you remember Doug right Wendy?” Wendy looks at Phillip quickly to silently tell him to shut up but the face when she turns back tells you that she really didn’t remember him either. You take the initiative to help her out so this situation doesn't become more awkward than it already is.
“He went to school with us, he was in the same grade as Judd.” A deep muffled laugh comes from the person behind, knowing he was proven correct with pointing out further about who your fiancé was. Past tense, he was a successful man who worked in advertising in the big city, you didn’t need to justify who he was back in school.
“He’s in advertisement now at a high profile company-we just got engaged last night actually.” You find yourself saying this quickly in which they both saw what you were trying to do in some way, most likely badly. They just look at each other like they’re having some sort of sibling conversation. Wendy looks back at you and grabs your hand again.
“Well, congratulations, the ring is beautiful. Hey, you should come say hi to everyone else, and by everyone else I mean just Judd since you probably see all these people more than me.” Before you have time to protest, she drags you by the arm into the family room where you see 5 chairs in a row with all the leftover Altmans sitting in them. Hilary Altman, the mother and now leader of the family, notices you first.
“Y/n, sweetheart.” She hugs you tightly as you notice the sudden cushion between you two. You heard rumors from the town’s busy-bodies about Ms. Altman’s procedure. Getting an up close and personal view of it wasn’t on your list of things to do. “Thank you so much for coming, are your parents here too?” Seeing her start to look around the room.
“Oh no, they both had work at the café today, but they sent their condolences, my mom made a potato casserole for your family,” you say sweetly.
You notice that Wendy is still next to you but also see in your peripheral the large man sitting back down in one of the chairs, but still looking at you. He puts his arm over the chair next to him and starts to whisper something to the man you know is Judd Altman. Your attention gets swept away when you feel Wendy grabbing your arm again.
“Look who got engaged last night as well.” you hear Wendy saying to her mom.
Hillary looks at it and looks at you and smiles. “Oh, that’s wonderful, I remember when I got engaged to Mort, we were so excited we just couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” Hillary leans into you. “We went at it for 2 days after that.” Audible groans come from all the Altman children.
“Mother, no one with sanity wants to hear about that,” a voice comes from the chair next to Phillip.
“Shush, Judd, just because you don’t want to hear my stories doesn’t mean others don't find enjoyment in them. People buy my book for a reason.” she says with a proud smile.
You hear Judd mumble something about how that’s the insane people he was talking about, but Hilary instead ignores it and goes back to the attention on you and this ring.
“Set a date yet?” she asks, smiling at you and still holding your hand in hers.
“Umm, no we got engaged last night. We kind of didn’t talk about it afterwards.” You say in a low voice. Was it normal to start planning right away the very moment you got engaged? You feel like you don’t know the rules yet. Didn’t even know there were rules to this. You officially want to talk about something besides this. “I’m sorry, this is such an inappropriate time to talk about me and my future plans, I’m so sorry for your loss Mrs. Altman.” She smiles at you and finally lets go of your hand.
“Oh, thank you sweetie, but I assure you, Mort would love that we are celebrating something so wonderful on a day that he would have hated it being so somber, just the kind of guy he was.” You can’t help but smile at that. Mr. Altman was always a nice guy who always felt like he looked out for others. He would come into the café and tip way more than was necessary, but whenever you or one of the other servers tried to correct him, he would always say. ‘You work so hard, get yourself something nice.’
“So, are we not going to talk about the fact that your family owns a café and all you brought was one casserole?” Rolling your eyes, you know that voice from anywhere; it was the oldest, Paul, who was the male version of a Karen.
“Paul, seriously. Someone comes to give their condolences for dad, and you say what they could have done better?” Judd says to him as he gets up and joins the group and gently gives you a hug. Letting you go he whispers to you, “Sorry about him.”
Judd gets up and walks over to where you're all grouped together with Mrs. Altman and Wendy. “Who’s the lucky guy?” he asks as he looks at your ring, but doesn’t grab your hand, thankfully.
“Question of the day!” You hear Phillip say as he puts both hands behind his head. You look around and see Charlie hiding behind a corner; he must have been hiding cause for once it felt nice not being in the center of the Altman’s chaos. He is probably happy to have someone else take the reins for once. Coward.
“You may know him, he was in the same grade as you supposedly, Doug...” Wendy looks at you again, she’s already forgotten his name.
“Pritchett, he was a grade older than me, so I think that means he was in your same grade, it was a big school though.” You feel yourself spurting off fast facts out of nervousness again until Jude calmly answers you.
“Yeah, I remember Doug, didn’t know you both were dating each other back then.” He gives you a blank stare of indifference.
“Um, yeah we weren’t, we got together after college.” Judd puts his hands in his pockets.“Oh yeah? Where did you go to school?” Silence for a while; you know that this is going to be more awkward and you’re ready to find the door after this.
“I actually didn’t go, I stayed here and took a job at my parents’ café, I meant after he got back from college, we got together.” Jude just looks at Wendy and his mom and nods before leaving to go back to his seat.
“Which was so kind of you to do for your parents, bet they appreciate you being there.” Wendy says to make up for her sibling’s lack of social skills. It was definitely an understatement, but the issues with your parents’ expectations of you are none of their business, so you decide to not go further.
“Well, speaking of which, I should be getting back to the café; we are short a server because of one being on maternity leave.” You try to start heading towards the door, almost free from this feeling of wanting to crawl out of your skin and hide away, when you get stopped by Hilary one more time.
“Well tell your mom and dad I said hi and thank you for the potato casserole, hopefully one day you will be the one going on maternity leave.” You smile before heading to the door, as you turn you hear audible groans and mumbles about how inappropriate that was to say, but don’t stay to hear the rest. Before you turn the corner, you look back one more time. The Altmans have officially moved on and started arguing about something else, except one. Phillip, with that smug smile still on his face; he never stopped looking at you.
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That night you lie in bed, trying to put the pieces of what kind of day today was; you went from thinking you were going to have a normal day of working at the café to instead going to a wake or whatever they call it and being on forced display.
Everyone from their town was there and it did make you wonder if that was why your mom sent you there in the first place. Showing off that her daughter was engaged, no one was more excited about this more than your mother. Wonder how she would react if she knew that barely anyone remembers him. You can’t help but giggle at the idea.
“Whatcha giggling about, please don’t say my dick.” You hear a low baritone voice from next to you. It actually startles you. Rolling your eyes even though you know he can’t see it you hope he knows by the sarcastic tone.
“It’s not always about your dick, actually just how my mother tried to put me on display today during a freaking wake. Like, my mom tried to take the attention away from a dead guy.” You hear him do a short laugh.
“Yep, sounds like your mom alright. How are the awful Altman’s doing?”
You forgot that’s what the name of the siblings were called in school, not because they were all bad but annoying in their own way. People usually wanted to be them or hated them because they weren’t even on their radar.
“They are as fine as they can be with their father dying.” Still looking up at the ceiling, you can’t stop thinking about that interaction with them. You’ve always been cool with Wendy, but the others always seemed stand offish. Then there was Phillip, he was always crude and rude and strangely and annoyingly charming…You wonder if he has always been like this and why you are noticing it now.
“Well, thankfully you don’t have to deal with them anymore, now we can focus on the wedding.” As Doug puts his arms around you and puts his face in your hair. Knowing full well you could bring up to him that you want to wait a bit before planning the wedding to just enjoy being engaged for a bit longer but it was too late;Doug is asleep and snoring, for now it’s pointless.
Maybe this is a sign that this is exactly where you're supposed to be; you're at a crossroad where your brain and gut are all telling you to go right, yet you can’t help but still feel like something is missing, your heart is pointing left, but to what?