“Then what is going on?”
I wanted to ask him to go someplace quieter, somewhere without an audience, but I didn’t think he would leave if I asked him to. “A while back Brenda, who I’m sure you recognize, asked me to find out the truth about you. About whether or not you were actually a virgin. So I started talking to people you’d dated, like Whitley. Hanging out with you to uncover the truth. And then when you wanted to fake the engagement, Brenda thought—”
“She thought it would give you credibility,” Evan finished, the disgust in his voice evident. “So you’ve been lying to me this entire time. While I was falling in love with you, it was all just . . . a job? A story?”
“No! It started out that way, and I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t figure out a way. My feelings for you are real. That was never a lie, even when I wanted it to be.”
My words didn’t seem to have any effect on him. “You couldn’t figure out a way to tell me the truth? It’s not hard. You just open your mouth and say the words. You didn’t want to face the consequences of your actions, so you just lied and lied. I worked so hard to earn your trust, and the whole time you were lying and unworthy of mine.”
What could I say to that? He was right. There had been a way to tell him; I just hadn’t wanted to. I’d been a selfish chicken who was unworthy of his trust.
“I told her to have sex with you. To seduce you. Did she do it?” Brenda asked, the malicious glee in her voice evident.
The pain in Evan’s eyes increased, which didn’t seem possible. “The night of the reunion, was that what you were doing? Trying to seduce me for some story?”
How could he think that? “Evan, no. I would never do that. I was the one who stopped it.”
“You heard what I said,” Brenda kept interjecting, and I seriously considered punching her in the face just to get her to shut up. “I offered Ashton her dream job. Whatever she wants, as long as she tells the world all about you and your relationship. Do you really think she would turn that down? If you know anything about her, it’s how ambitious she is.”
“Don’t listen to her,” I said, even though I could see Brenda’s words had found their mark.
“She wanted to pay you back. For what you and your friends did to her in high school.”
“Shut up, Brenda!” She was going to ruin everything.
“Is that really what this is about?” Evan asked. “You’ve been waiting ten years to get me back? Like some kind of long con? To turn into my perfect woman and then destroy me?”
“No!” That had never been my intent. I could feel that I was losing him. That with every word he spoke and every protest I made, he was slipping farther away from me.
And I didn’t know how to make it stop. My throat became so thick I could barely breathe. A crushing, shooting pain started in my stomach and then spread throughout my chest. I blinked away hot tears. I had to keep it together. I wouldn’t break down and lose it. Not while I still had a chance of trying to convince him.
He looked down at the floor and then back up at me. “I would have given you everything. Every part of me. All of my future. And this was just a way to publicly humiliate me?”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t what happened.”
“An apology is not a magical token you can turn in for instant forgiveness,” he said.
But I was sorry. I had felt terrible about keeping a secret from him for such a long time. I didn’t know how to make him understand that.
When I didn’t respond, he said, “The worst part is you lied. Over and over again. You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, and guilty, defensive anger sneaked its way in to mingle with my fear and sadness. “But I’m not the only one who lied.”
“What?” He looked taken aback. “When did I lie?”
“You lied for your career, too.” Maybe I was grasping at straws, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and was throwing anything I could at him. “You lied about our engagement to get your contract renewed.”
“That’s not the same thing!”
“It was exactly the same.”
“No, it wasn’t. Because I did it only to be close to you! I couldn’t have cared less about my contract. I wanted to be with you. You lied to destroy me. They aren’t the same.”
“She wanted to hurt you,” Brenda added. I knew that if I lunged for her, Security would escort me from the building, and I might never get another chance to fix things with Evan. Not that I was anywhere close to doing that now. I had just accused him of lying! How was that going to solve anything?
“Well, mission accomplished,” Evan said sadly. There was such a note of finality in his voice that I realized there was nothing I could say or do to change his mind. He walked over to me and held out his hand.
For one hopeful moment I thought he was offering it to me, wanting us to go somewhere to work things out, despite his anger.
Instead, he said, “I need the ring. It was my mother’s.”
“Your mother’s ring?” My throat tightened even more, and I felt several tears escaping. He’d given me his beloved mother’s ring? He’d said he’d have his assistant pick one up, and the entire time it had been his mom’s? The ache in my chest intensified a hundredfold. “I didn’t know.”
“What does it matter?”
“It does matter. That you would let me wear this.” Somehow it made everything worse. I sniffed, wiping at my nose.
He lifted his hand. “Please give it back.”
With my tears blinding me, I pulled the ring off and let it drop into his palm. I noticed he made sure not to touch me.
“Not many people can pull a perfect blindside on me. You can at least feel good about that,” Evan said before he turned to walk out of the studio.
“I love you!” I called in a panicked voice and watched as he stopped. My heart lurched with hope. I hadn’t told him yet; could that be enough?
It wasn’t. He squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and walked out of sight. The fissures covering my heart began to break apart, drifting away one piece at a time until there was nothing left.
“That was perfect,” Brenda gushed. “Now just sign this release, and tomorrow we can discuss your new position.”
A heavy, hollow emptiness began in my chest, spreading out like a dark stain until it filled every part of me. I was numb to the pain—for now. I knew it would destroy me later. “Did you really think you could get me to go on air and lie?”
“I don’t care if you do or not.” She gestured toward the cameras. “Either way, I already have a story to air.”
That would just be the icing on the cake. Having my personal heartache and trauma played out as entertainment across the country.
“I quit.”
It might have been too little too late, but I was done with Brenda and this network.
“Ha,” she said. “I predicted it weeks ago. That you’d be the girl who’d give up her career for some guy.”
“You don’t understand. Although I’m not surprised someone like you wouldn’t. I’m not choosing a guy or a relationship over this job. I’m choosing my integrity. I’m choosing me.” I’d been gambling with my integrity for months, letting Brenda and my anger chip away at it one piece at a time. It was time for that to stop.
I wouldn’t be this person any longer.
I pulled the microphone off my shirt and placed it on a nearby table.
“You should probably get professional help,” I said to her as I made my way out of the studio.
Part of me should have felt triumphant at finally standing up to my boss, but all I felt was an overwhelming, acute sense of loss.
No job, no prospects. Soon I’d be unable to afford to live on my own.
And no Evan.
That hurt worst of all.
I hid in my condo. I had nowhere else to go, nothing I had to do. I’d already paid my rent through the end of the year, so I had until January first before I had to move out. My bank account was get
ting close to empty, and it didn’t help that I occasionally ordered takeout. I didn’t want to go to the grocery store.
At some point I texted Aubrey to give her the full details of the breakup, thinking that if I could write down the words, maybe everything would stop hurting so much. It turned out not to be very helpful, as I cried for about three hours straight after I’d finished.
I’d had to call and ask my parents if I could move back home at the beginning of the new year. While I’d braced myself for scolding and gloating, they were beyond kind about it, and not a single “I told you so” left their lips.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Lots of people my age moved home again.
The one kindness the universe had given me was that Brenda had been unable to air the footage of Evan and me arguing. To my surprise, Rand emailed me to tell me about it, informing me that Brenda had been beyond furious because although Evan had an old release on file, I hadn’t signed the form, and I was in every shot. It rendered everything they had filmed unusable. He sent it to me as a jokey email, as if we were still work buddies who wanted to mock our boss together.
I didn’t know what he’d hoped to get out of it—maybe my reaction? But I blocked his email and felt some small relief that at least I’d been spared that public humiliation.
A couple of weeks after our breakup, around dinnertime, I heard a knock at my door. I actually had a sunshine-y moment of hope that Evan had come to see me. Realistically, I knew it wasn’t him, but I was desperate for things to be better.
When I answered the door, I saw that I’d been right. It was my mom, my sisters, and my niece.
“Ashton, seriously. You stink. When is the last time you showered?” Rory asked, averting her face when she walked in.
“I don’t know.” It had been a while. I couldn’t bring myself to care. What was the point of showering when there was no one around to appreciate it?
As they came inside, I went back to my nest on the couch. I’d made it up with blankets and pillows, and the seat cushion essentially had a permanent imprint of my butt. Aubrey began collecting the empty takeout containers on the coffee table, taking them into the kitchen and putting them in the trash.
My mom sat down on the couch next to me, and I felt a family therapy moment coming on.
“I know I’m depressed, Mom. But I’m sad. I’m allowed to be sad. I loved him, and I messed it all up.” My mom nodded knowingly, and I was sure that by this point Aubrey had broken our attorney-client privilege and shared the whole story with my family. In fact, I was sure of it, given the sympathetic looks they were all shooting in my direction.
It was also probably why my parents had been so low-key about letting me move back home.
“You did something he didn’t know how to handle,” my mother said. “Kids with dependable parents who are around feel taken care of and safe. To kids like Evan, who feel abandoned or abused or lose their parents in an accident, the world doesn’t feel safe at all. And in order to be safe, they have to be in control of everything.
“He thought he understood what the situation was between you, and you threw him a horrible curveball. I’m hoping that while he processes it, there’s someone in his life who will show him that forgiveness is what will heal him, not anger.”
That made some sense. And I knew all about how anger couldn’t heal you and just left behind festering, gaping sores. I had wanted to destroy him for something I thought he’d done to me. I’d spent ten years hating him. But the best thing for me had been forgiving him. Even though I hadn’t realized it at the time, forgiving him, beginning to trust in him, was what had made it so I could move on.
It had helped me become a better, stronger person.
“I don’t think it will matter, Mom.” I didn’t have any hope that things would work out between Evan and me. “He hasn’t called or texted. I’ve tried composing the perfect text to him a million times. The one that will make him accept my apology and beg me to get back together with him. But I just can’t find the right words.”
“So you’re just giving up?”
“I’m not giving up,” I retorted. “I’m accepting reality.”
“Ashton, my daughter, I love you. But this is what you do. You’re not ‘accepting reality.’ You are definitely giving up. You always take the easy way out. Instead of telling Evan the truth about your work situation, you pretended like it didn’t exist. You literally did nothing and hoped it would all work out and that there wouldn’t be any consequences for your inaction.”
I gasped, unable to believe my own mother was talking this way to me.
She went on, still in full therapist mode. “And ever since high school, you make protecting yourself your number-one priority. You’re never vulnerable. You don’t take risks.”
“I take risks!” I protested.
My mom smiled sadly at me. “I don’t mean professionally. I mean personally. You keep everyone at arm’s length, including Evan. He didn’t deserve that.”
I was in complete and total shock. Was she right? Was I just giving up?
“Maybe you need to make the first move. Show him how you feel instead of waiting for him to come to you. I think you’re the one who needs to apologize and own your behavior.”
Anger and denial roared up inside me, and I was about to tell my mom she had no idea what she was talking about when Aubrey asked, “Ashton, when was the last time you ate?”
Her question diffused my anger, which was probably the point. She’d always been good at running interference for me and my mother. “I’m not sure.” My appetite had been completely killed, and I couldn’t find the energy to eat on a regular basis. But I didn’t want to tell her in front of Charlotte that I’d been too sad to eat.
“Your fridge has nothing but soy sauce packets and milk that has turned into cottage cheese. Mom, would you mind going to the store? I’m going to clear out whatever science experiments are happening in the refrigerator.”
“Any special requests?” my mom asked, but I just shook my head. She promised she’d be back soon, and I tried not to think about what she’d just said to me. As she pulled her keys from her purse, I had to force myself to not think about when Evan went shopping for me after my surgery. The way he’d taken care of me, looked at me like he’d loved me.
And I’d ruined all of it.
My mom was right. I had screwed up even worse than I’d originally thought. I sucked in several deep breaths, trying to ignore the sharp shooting pains against my chest.
“Come on,” Rory said, standing in front of me and offering me her hands. “Aubrey and I will clean your kitchen, but you have to clean yourself. We won’t be able to tell if we cleaned away that funky smell until we know for sure it’s not you.”
She walked me to my bathroom, turning on the hot water and staying while I took off my clothes.
“Use soap. And shampoo,” she said before turning on the ventilation fan and leaving me in my shower.
The water actually felt amazing. I’d forgotten how nice it was to be clean. I washed my hair two times and scrubbed myself all over.
I took the longest shower of my life, until the heat began to disappear. The water beating down on me felt so cleansing. Not just physically but emotionally as well.
I got out and changed, leaving my hair wet. I brushed through it, getting a couple of tangles clear.
My sisters were loudly discussing the state of my kitchen when I came back out to join them. “Good. You’re no longer sporting a cloud of stench behind you,” Rory said.
Aubrey stopped scrubbing my peninsula counter and said, “Do you remember when you last left your condo?”
I realized I hadn’t since Evan and I broke up. The days all blended together. I could have used my daily sports shows to keep track, but I couldn’t watch SportsCenter or Sports Today without breaking down in hysterical sobs.
Rory, who had never been a big fan of cleaning, came to sit next to me on the couch. She moved the yarn I’d halfhear
tedly attempted to keep working on out of her way. “What’s this?”
“It was a sweater. For Evan for Christmas.” There didn’t seem much point in making it now, but it did occasionally help keep my hands busy.
She held up the partially constructed sweater. “You must have really loved him, given how bad you are at knitting. Did he know you’re terrible? There wouldn’t have been a better way to show him how much you truly loved him.”
Rory was gently teasing me, trying to get me to smile. It didn’t work, and so she changed tactics. “So things got pretty messed up?”
“Yeah. I made some really dumb decisions. I regret them.” Which was probably the understatement of the year. There were no words for how bad I felt about the choices I’d made. Or, like my mom said, the choices I had just refused to make.
My sister moved my knitting to the floor at the side of the couch. “You know, Mom was telling me the other day that the decision-making parts of our brains aren’t totally developed until we’re twenty-five.”
“You’re saying I have an excuse.”
“Yep. Factory installation error.” She rubbed her hands together, playing with one of her rings. I recognized her telltale signs that she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure that she should.
“Spit it out, Rory.”
“Look, I’m not the person to tell other people how to live their lives. I’m barely keeping mine together. But at some point, you have to accept that this is your life now. Evan’s not a part of it, and he’s probably not coming back. You can’t stop living just because he’s gone. You need to eat and shower and go outside once in a while.”
I nodded. Maybe Rory was right. I had to make some effort to be normal again. To try and live my life the way I had before Evan had become such an important part of it. I needed to fix the parts of me that felt too sad to do anything. Even if that meant faking until I made it.
I couldn’t keep sitting around my condo feeling sorry for myself.
Or was that more of me taking the easy way out?
Maybe my mom was right, and I needed to put myself out there. Be vulnerable with Evan. Take a risk.
#Awestruck (A #Lovestruck Novel) Page 24
