Roommaid

by Sariah Wilson

  She didn’t reply.

  If she wasn’t going to speak, I still had some more complaining to do. “I did tell you and Delia, that night at the bar that I had a type. Men who suck up to my father. The streak continues.”

  “Hmm,” was the only sound she made in response.

  “What does that mean?” I asked between sniffles, because I was starting to get annoyed.

  “Nothing. I’m on your side.”

  Why had she felt the need to clarify that? “Which actually means you’re on my side but . . .”

  She reached over to grab my hand. “I’m on your side but . . . what if Tyler was telling the truth? I wouldn’t put it past your mom to orchestrate this whole thing and leave Tyler in the dark. I’ve seen her handiwork before.”

  Shay hadn’t been there. She didn’t get it. I shook my head. “I know what my mother’s capable of. I also know that the things she told me were true. Why would she lie now?”

  “To hurt you more? Since she was already plunging in the knife, she decided to twist it a little? Is it at all possible he didn’t know?” she asked gently.

  “How could he not? Wasn’t it common sense?”

  “That he didn’t immediately link you, somebody he’d never met, to the owner of a company he worked for? Because you guys are the only people in all of Texas named Huntington?”

  I was starting to get a little angry. “He knew I used to be rich and my last name.”

  “You were asking him to connect a lot of dots with no numbers attached to them,” she said, pausing. “You were introduced to him through Frederica, who has a different last name than your parents.”

  “So again, we’re back to I should just forgive him in case I’ve forgotten whether or not I specifically said my parents’ or my sisters’ names?”

  Why did some part of me want her to say yes?

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” she told me. “I’m saying you may not have all the facts and that I think you should find out whether or not he actually betrayed you before you write him off. Make a decision based on facts, not on feelings. And whatever you decide, I’m behind you a hundred percent.”

  She got up and grabbed sheets, a pillow, and a blanket for me. She also offered me some clothes to change into. I thought I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but I passed out as soon as I lay down.

  The next morning Shay woke me up with a cup of coffee.

  “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” I mumbled, reaching for the mug. It was Christmas Eve and I felt the opposite of festive.

  “I’m going to my mom’s today and tomorrow. You are coming with me.”

  No way. “I don’t want to crash your family celebration again. I don’t want to bring everybody down, either.” When I saw that she was going to protest, I said, “To be honest, I don’t really want to be around that much happiness right now. I think it would be good for me to have a break and think.”

  She kept telling me to come with her, and I kept declining. Eventually, when it was time for her to go, she hugged me and made me promise that I’d call her if I changed my mind.

  I wouldn’t.

  I found an old and slightly stale box of Lucky Charms in her pantry, and it was what I had for my Christmas Eve dinner.

  Thinking about Tyler was the last thing I wanted to do, but with absolute silence and nothing else to distract me, I found it difficult not to.

  Was this why he pulled away after he kissed me? The night we found out Pigeon would be okay? Because he wasn’t a total sociopath and felt guilty for using me to get his promotion? I remembered the night he’d gotten it, when he talked about how he’d done things he hadn’t wanted to in order to get it. Did that include me?

  Maybe he’d fallen for me by accident. That he’d only meant to keep me around and had caught feelings for me, despite himself. Did that change things for me?

  Wasn’t this very situation the “things” that we had to talk about? It was what made the most sense. That he had to confess his involvement in my mom’s scheme before we could move forward.

  But . . . what if Shay was right? And Tyler wasn’t to blame for this? What if he’d been used by my parents just like I had?

  It wasn’t like I had been blameless in this mess. I’d spent a long time covering up things I didn’t want him to know. Did I even have the right to be mad at him if he did lie? He’d forgiven me so easily for lying to him. Shouldn’t I do the same?

  At the time I’d confessed my past misdeeds, he’d said that desperation could drive people to do crazy things. Was that why he’d done it? Had desperation driven him to do something crazy?

  But as I thought about it between my third and fourth bowls of cereal, and maybe I was rationalizing, the two situations felt different to me. He hadn’t told me harmless white lies. He had been using me. Tricking me to get a promotion. He’d been another person in my life trying to manipulate me to get what they wanted.

  I’d never meant to hurt anyone. And Tyler had set out to hurt me.

  It definitely wasn’t the same.

  But knowing that didn’t stop the hollow ache inside me that missed him.

  Shay got back after celebrating the holidays with her family and found me pretty much the same as she’d left me. Sitting on the couch, intermittently crying, eating cereal, and watching television.

  Over the next week or so she did her best to cheer me up, but I wouldn’t leave the apartment. There was nothing outside worth getting dressed for. She sometimes watched TV with me; sometimes Delia came over and they were just there for me, like I needed them to be.

  Each morning I woke up, I hoped things would get a little easier. But they didn’t. I worried constantly about Pigeon, and I almost texted Tyler a dozen different times just to make sure she was okay. To make sure that he was okay. Even though I was furious with him, even though he’d hurt me, I missed him fiercely. Not knowing how either one of them was doing was painful. My heart literally ached for both of them.

  Delia and Shay begged me to come out with them on New Year’s Eve, because given how the calendar had fallen this year, in two days’ time we’d be back at work. They figured it would be my last chance to celebrate and forget my troubles, but I declined. I was in no mood to party and my two best friends deserved to have a good time.

  There was a knock at Shay’s door just before midnight and I wondered if they were drunk and had forgotten their keys. And why they were home before the ball dropped.

  I got up to answer it and was shocked by who was standing out in the hallway.

  It was Violet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Before I could say anything, she came into the apartment and sat down on the couch. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to find you?”

  Not understanding what was going on, I shut the door and followed her to the sofa. I sat facing her. “No?”

  “You haven’t been answering your phone. You weren’t at your apartment. You haven’t been there in over a week.”

  “Did you talk to—” I wanted to ask her if she had spoken to Tyler and how he sounded, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

  She must have been able to interpret my meaning from my expression, because she said, “He sounds miserable.”

  Gulping, I nodded. I didn’t know whether that information made me feel better or worse. I landed on worse. I didn’t want him to be in pain. Even if I was mad at him.

  “The servants love you too much. I finally had to bribe Julio to get him to tell me where you were, and that was only after I promised that I was going to help you, not hurt you.”

  “Help me? How?”

  “Vanessa couldn’t wait to fill me in on everything that happened with you at the party. First, you need to know that I had no idea what was going to happen. I really did invite you there just for my benefit. They kept their plans from me. And I gave them a heads-up about half an hour before the party started because I was hoping that if I warned them you would be th
ere, they wouldn’t make a scene. Although Mom had on her evil grin when I told her, so I probably should have known. I’m so sorry for what happened.”

  That twisted part of my brain, the one always on the lookout for pain, warned me that maybe my mother had sent her. To make sure the damage was complete.

  I chose to believe my sister, who had gone out of her way to find me and apologize for something she hadn’t even done. “Thank you.”

  “Tyler had nothing to do with what Mom did.”

  The news shocked me, temporarily robbing me of my ability to breathe. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Bribing people is extremely effective,” she said, setting her purse down on the floor. “And my first stop was Frederica. Who very quickly owned up to the fact that she’d told our parents you were looking for a place to live and about meeting Tyler at a company dinner and how he was looking for a roommate. They decided to match you two up with neither one of you being the wiser. Frederica was just your caring aunt and, as far as Tyler knew, some nice lady he’d met at a party. You know how important appearances are to Mom and Daddy. They couldn’t have anyone discovering that you were living in some one-bedroom apartment on somebody’s couch.”

  That part made sense. It would have eternally shamed them if any of their friends had found out that I’d moved into one of those terrible places my aunt had shown me. “But why would Frederica do any of this?”

  “Like Mom mentioned, Frederica was low on funds, and she and our mother came up with this lovely plan, putting aside their normal hostility.”

  “So, for money. And to control me.”

  Violet shrugged. “Maybe it was some way for Mom to hold on to you. To show you that she loves you in her own bizarre way. By helping you find a place to live, a car to drive, a good job. Maybe, initially, she thought that it would make you trust her more if she could show you what a good job she’d done running your life.”

  My sister was far more forgiving a person than I was. That was the problem with my parents. They didn’t just want my trust; they demanded it—along with total obedience. And it made it so that I didn’t want to trust anybody.

  Especially not the people who deserved it.

  Like Violet.

  Or Tyler.

  And now, according to my sister, he had been nothing but trustworthy. That realization made me feel like I’d been punched in the gut, and I wanted to fall apart into a million pieces. He’d been trying to tell me the truth and I’d been ugly and dismissive.

  I’d behaved like my mother.

  And that made me feel like the absolute worst.

  “Why would she set me up with Tyler? When she so desperately wanted me to marry Brad?”

  “Oh no.” Violet shook her head. “Frederica told Mom that Tyler was way out of your league and would never date you.”

  I didn’t know how to feel about that information. “That’s kind of insulting.”

  “She also thought it would light a fire under Brad, you living with someone so attractive. That it would motivate him to finally propose.”

  I couldn’t help but let out a rueful laugh. “And then I screwed up all their plans by falling in love with Tyler.”

  She reached for my hand, her eyes sympathetic. “You love him?”

  Her kindness was almost my undoing. I nodded, ignoring the giant lump in my throat. “I do.”

  “So, Mom trying to control where you lived turned into you finding the man you love and turning away from the man she chose for you. I’m pretty sure that’s the textbook definition of ironic.”

  I laughed again, wiping away my tears. There was still something I didn’t quite understand. “Mom had no idea how I felt about Tyler. He doesn’t even know. So why would she throw Tyler under the bus? How could she know that framing him would hurt me?”

  “According to our aunt, who may not be the best person to rely on, she told Mom that she suspected you had a crush on Tyler. And then Mom saw you at an art exhibit and assumed you were a couple because of the way you were looking at each other. Some woman was there that you both know and spoke to you that night? I forget her name. But later on she told Mom that you and Tyler were boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  Mrs. Adams. She’d assumed we were together and we hadn’t corrected her, and that was what she’d told my mother. I sat there in raging silence, not knowing what to do. I wanted to hit something. Or someone.

  Violet added, “It sounds like Mom made an educated guess on what would hurt you most, and ended up being correct.”

  She’d been more than correct. She’d hit her target with a deadly accuracy. “Why didn’t they actually do it?” I asked. “Bring Tyler in on it, offer him the promotion?” There were too many variables to the situation, and it would have made more sense to have him be a part of it. Because things could go haywire, like me falling for him.

  “Frederica said something about how he has a reputation for being really honest and they didn’t think he would do it. So they tricked him into it, too.”

  That made everything worse. My own parents had known that Tyler would never be involved in a situation like this, while I’d immediately decided he was guilty.

  He was never going to trust me again.

  “You should call him,” Violet offered. I nodded, but there was no way I could do that yet. I needed to process this and figure out what to say. How I could apologize and make this up to him.

  After a few seconds of us both sitting there in silence, she asked, “Is it okay that I told you?”

  “Yes! I’m glad you did. I just don’t know what to do next and I don’t know how to stop feeling sad and angry.”

  Dealing with emotions had never been our family’s strong suit, so it didn’t surprise me that Violet’s way of fixing it was to say, “I could tell you something happy. Would that help?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not long after you left I told Mom and Daddy that I wasn’t going to marry Howard and that I was in love with Santiago.”

  “How did they take it?”

  “About as well as you’d expect,” she admitted. “It certainly knocked our mother off her smug high horse.”

  I had to admit, that did give me a pang of satisfaction. That my mother hadn’t been able to glory in my downfall for long.

  She kept talking. “Daddy did fire me, but I’ve had four job offers in the last few days. And that’s during the holidays! Santiago thinks I should wait and see what else comes in once everybody’s back to work.”

  “He’s right. And that is great news. I’m really happy for you.”

  “Thank you!” She was practically glowing, excited for her future with a man she loved. I deeply envied her and wondered if it was even possible for me to get that back or if I’d been so awful to him that he couldn’t ever forgive me.

  “But,” she said, “all that work stuff is going to have to wait. Santiago wants me to fly to Puerto Rico to meet his family. I think he might be gearing up to ask me to marry him. The one problem is Daddy has all my money and I don’t have access to my air miles or the private jet. I don’t know what we’re going to do to get there.”

  “Fly coach,” I told her, shaking my head. She was in for a very big surprise, and she had managed to make me smile and feel slightly better. It was like the old saying—you could lead a horse to the airport, but you couldn’t make her fly commercial.

  We chatted for a while longer, mostly about her excitement about possibly getting engaged to Santiago. She mentioned overhearing Vanessa and Gilbert arguing about her being the one to run for senator, and I had to admit that it surprised me that she might actually do it. But I was glad because I knew it would be good for her. Then it was really, really late and Violet told me she’d call as soon as he asked, and to both of our surprise, we hugged.

  “Travel safely! And good luck and a preemptive congratulations!” I said, walking her to the door. I hoped flying coach wouldn’t put her off airline travel for life.

  When I shu
t the door, I was swamped by thoughts of Tyler, thoughts I’d been able to keep at bay while my sister was there. How could I have ever doubted him? When the entire time I’d known him, he’d always been honest with me. With everyone. He never wanted to fudge or tell a half truth about anything. And I had actually believed that he’d spent all these weeks lying to me? Using me?

  Now I felt incredibly dumb. Part of me wanted to run to him and beg for his forgiveness, but the other part thought I didn’t deserve to just waltz back into his life and say, “Whoops, sorry, my bad.” Thanks to all those dysfunctional years in my family and a lying, cheating boyfriend, I was seriously lacking in my interpersonal communication skills. I didn’t know how to talk to Tyler or how to apologize. I’d accused him of something pretty awful and refused to believe him when he told me the truth.

  I’d compared him in my mind to Brad, which was totally unfair.

  I hadn’t even given Tyler a chance. I’d just cut him out of my life. The way that my parents had cut me out of theirs.

  It was wrong.

  But even knowing all that, I wasn’t ready to face him yet. More accurately, I wasn’t really ready to face how untrusting and awful I’d been toward him.

  My mother had wanted me to think the worst of him and I had.

  That was not the person I wanted to be.

  Regardless of who I wanted to be, I currently felt a bit like a hermit/coward. Shay had told me that I could stay as long as I needed to, but I didn’t want to go back to staying on her couch. I needed to move forward. I didn’t tell her what Violet had told me, because I had to work through it and figure out what my next step would be. I would have to start looking for my own apartment, now that I knew my aunt had deliberately steered me away from decent places that I could have afforded. I decided my next step was to go back to the apartment and get my clothes and my car and my toiletries.

  So I waited until the day after New Year’s Day, knowing that Tyler would be at work, and went at noon to his place.

  Gerald didn’t stop me, just waved, and I felt a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been told not to let me up.

  When I got upstairs, Pigeon was waiting for me, her tail happily wagging. Seeing her broke my heart all over again. I was so happy that she was okay and back to her old self, but I was going to be leaving her once more. I crouched down to pet her and tell her what a good girl she was.