by Erin Zak
Actually, I have no idea what I’d scream at her about. Aside from her not giving me a real opportunity to explain before kicking me out of the suite that awful morning, I’m the one who cut off all contact with her. I’m the one who blocked her number. I’m the one who refused to reach out. I’m the one who really ended things.
But she’s the one who called me a liar. And of all the things I’ve ever been called in my life, a liar is the most hurtful. And some of the slurs I’ve been called are downright hateful. That’s how devastated I was.
How devastated I am.
“Do you think this is appropriate?” I say when I approach her and the woman she’s sitting next to. Is that a girlfriend? I look at the blond hair, the high cheekbones, the blue eyes, and it hits me. These two are related. Even their lips are similar. I glance between the two of them as I wait for a response. “You realize your mouth is hanging open?” I motion to the woman. “That taken aback, are ya?” Her mouth snaps closed, and I can see she’s fighting a smile. I look at Cecily, and when she opens her mouth to speak, I hold a hand up to silence her. “I don’t want any drama tonight. Okay?”
“Francesca,” she says, and her voice, the sound of my name on her tongue and her lips, causes my stomach to plummet.
“I’m not joking around.”
“I know you aren’t. I don’t want to cause drama.” She reaches across the bar top as if she thinks she’s close enough to touch me or that I would even allow her to, and I pull away. I don’t cross my arms, even though I want to recoil. I know it sends off a horrible vibe to the other guests, but my entire body wants to shut down.
“Why are you here, dammit? I don’t need this tonight. Or any night.” I try not to sound like I’m desperate for an answer, even though I really am. “And who is this?”
“This is Brenda. My sister.” Cecily shrugs. “I don’t think we talked about all my family.”
“Yeah, we obviously didn’t talk about a lot of things.” I take a deep breath and glance around the full bar. “Max is getting your drinks.”
“Francesca?”
I stop mid-turn and look back. “What?”
“Can we please talk after your shift?”
“Why? There’s nothing left to say.”
“Yes, there is. Please. I’m begging you.”
“Cecily, look, I…I just…I’ll think about it.” I turn and walk over to where Max is finishing up their drinks. I stand next to him and take a few deep breaths.
“You okay?” His voice is low and soothing. Exactly what I need.
I nod. “Yep. Never been better.”
“Now that’s a lie.” He laughs. “Want to take these to them?” And he laughs again. “Just kidding. Go get those drinks ready for the group at the end. I’ll take care of these jerks.”
I smile, place my hand on his back, and wonder what I ever did to have a friend like him. I only wish he could make them disappear. After Willow disappeared for good, it felt as if a giant weight lifted from my shoulders. So much happened between when she found out about Cecily to when she was fired that I sort of buried the heartache I went through with Cecily. I thought about her often, though, and wondered why I let myself go down such a dark and twisted path. Every time I ask myself why, I always come up with the same answer: It was fate. I was supposed to meet Cecily. I was supposed to feel love again with her. And I was supposed to be reminded why it’s so important to stay guarded and stay sane.
When I turn to ring in the drinks from the group at the end of the bar, I glance at Cecily. She’s looking right at me. And I realize once again, fate has a funny way of fucking with me. I wasn’t supposed to be working tonight. Yet here I am. And there she is. And suddenly, I hear my heart start to beat again.
Brenda has somehow found the employee lounge, and when I step through the doors after my shift, she’s standing there with a face that means business. I stop abruptly, pulling up short from running straight into her. “Can I help you?”
“Look, I know you don’t know me.”
“Nope, I sure don’t.”
“And you probably think I’m a crazy person, especially since I basically followed you back here and am now admitting to stalking you.”
“Jesus,” I say under my breath.
She chuckles. “I promise, I’m not a complete psycho.”
“So far, I see no evidence to prove otherwise.” I fold my arms across my chest and tap my heel on the floor. I’m still in my work clothes because I am going home. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to crawl into bed and go to sleep and wake up to no alarm clock for the first time in months. And if I’m going to party with Max and Armando, I need at least ten good hours of sleep and fuck, this woman is annoying me. “Lady, I don’t know what I need to do to get you to leave me alone, but I’m super tired and irritable, and I didn’t expect to see Cecily tonight or ever again, for that matter, so I’m on edge. Tell me what you want, and then please leave me alone.”
Her face softens. “I would really love it if you would let her explain.”
“Explain what?”
“Why she acted the way she did. Why she freaked out. Why she can’t stop thinking about you. All of it.” Brenda takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long, low whistle. “I know she hurt you. Lord, don’t I know it. But she knows it, too. And believe it or not, hurting you has basically killed her. She hasn’t been the same in months. She just…” Her voice shakes on that last word. Please, don’t start crying, Brenda, or I will crumble like a cookie. She pauses, again takes a breath. “I just want her to find happiness. And maybe it’s not with you, but she’ll never be able to move on if she doesn’t get this off her chest.”
I rack my brain to come up with a list of reasons to say no, but I come up short. So very short. Brenda’s similar eyes and smile are too much for me, and I find myself saying, “Okay. Fine.”
“Come up to our room.”
“What?”
“It’s the only place I know of.” She takes a few steps, then turns to look at me. “She already went up to the room. She was…a mess.”
Great. I follow her through the casino, the lobby, to the elevators. When we board, a group of men get on with us. All of them are drunk, all of them reek of weed, and all of them think it’s time to hit on us.
“Ladies, ladies, are you all coming to our room? We have a lot of alcohol.”
“We have sink beer,” one of them says, followed by a hiccup.
“Yes, sink beer!” They all cheer.
“What the hell is sink beer?” Brenda asks, and the cutest of the bunch gets closer to her, presses his hand on the back wall of the elevator stall, and smiles down at her.
“Why don’t you come up and find out?”
“Um, sorry boys, she’s with me,” I say as I insert myself between the guy and Brenda. “Save the advances for your fantasies.”
“Oh Jesus, that’s hot,” I hear one of them say softly. The elevator dings, and the doors open to their floor. They all pile out and stand there watching us as the doors slide closed.
“Sorry. He was just too close for comfort.”
“No, it’s fine,” she says softly. “Very chivalrous of you.”
I laugh. “Yeah, well, I know what it’s like having guys hit on you nonstop. It’s fun at first, but drunk boys like that unfortunately don’t know the meaning of no.”
Her soft gasp is followed by the arrival ding and the doors opening to the suite floor. I follow her to the same door from months earlier. The door I stormed out of. The door that slammed behind me and broke my poorly repaired heart into a million more pieces. I take a deep breath and wait as Brenda unlocks the door and pushes her way inside. The entryway is dark, the living area is as well, save for a lamp on one of the end tables.
“She’s upstairs,” Brenda explains.
“Does she know you came to get me?”
“No.” She shrugs. “She would have never allowed that.”
I chuckl
e. “She wears the pants, hmm?”
“Always has.” She places her hand on my arm and squeezes. “She is still in love with you. I think you should know that.”
Her admission, warning, whatever it is, causes my breath to catch in my throat. Weirdly enough, wanting that to be the case and knowing it is the case cause two completely different emotions. Dealing with the want causes hope and fear; handling the truth is fear and desire. And I haven’t felt desire since the last time I saw Cecily.
“Go up. Her door is open. I made sure she didn’t lock me out.” She chuckles. “I used to always wake her up in the mornings by running and jumping full force onto her bed.”
“You are very mean.” I laugh with her.
“I know.” She smiles and pushes me through the entryway and over toward the stairs. “Go.”
I quietly ascend, hoping the entire way that I’m not doing something I’m going to regret.
When I get to her room, the lights are off, so I tiptoe in, slipping my heels off near the door. She’s in the bed, covers pulled up around her, the curtains wide open. “Cecily?” I ask, and she doesn’t move. I walk closer. “Cecily?” She stirs, so I go around to the side she’s facing. “Are you asleep?”
She opens her eyes and sits bolt upright. “What are you doing here? Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?” She pats the bed frantically, then leans over and turns on the lamp. “What is going on?” She grabs a pair of glasses from the nightstand and slips them on. Another thing I never knew about her. Everything was such a whirlwind with us that I didn’t even know she wore glasses. “Why are you here? Seriously?” She pulls the blanket up around her. She’s wearing a red tank top, her hair is pulled into a messy ponytail, and I feel as if I’ve never seen her look more beautiful.
I hold my hands out. “Brenda came down and got me. Well, she begged me, actually.”
“Begged you for what?”
“For me to talk to you…to give you a chance to explain.” I watch her, the way she rolls her eyes, a flash of irritation flying across her face. “She was very persuasive.”
“She needs to learn to keep her mouth shut.” She adjusts her glasses. The dark frames look really good on her. The familiar pull she has on my heart has been reactivated, and I really wish I knew how to control my emotions around her. “You really don’t have to do this.” Her voice is coated with sadness.
“No,” I say softly. “I do have to do this.” I don’t want to sit on the bed with her because that’s too close for comfort right now. I know what will happen if I move any closer, so I kneel on the floor, then sit with my legs crossed. I run a hand through my hair and move it over my shoulder. She’s watching my every move. It’s unnerving, having her eyes on me again like that, but it’s also strangely comforting.
“Francesca, seriously.” She sighs and releases the blanket so it’s not held as closely around her. Her shoulders sag a bit, and she leans against the headboard. “Do you really think my explaining will help?”
“Don’t you sort of hope it does?” I’m close enough to the bed to see her face soften, her eyes fill with tears, and she nods. “Then? Try.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about the beginning?”
She moves her glasses and wipes at her eyes. “With Willow?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I mean, I worked with her. She, y’know, she sort of breezed into my life at a really horrible time, like I told you before.”
I smile. “I know. Same here.”
“I just…How did she start with you? I feel like it’s important to know that…to know what she said, how she said it.”
“She told me I was everything she thought she wanted in life…I was exactly her type…I was good for her ego. And she never mentioned you, Cecily. I need you to understand that.” I raise my hand to my heart. “I swear on everything. She never said your name, she never told me what you looked like, she never really mentioned you or your relationship until she broke up with me. And then she still never told me about you. She said she had been with someone, and she was married, and that was it.”
“I believe you.”
“Do you? Because six months ago, you called me a liar and broke my heart all over again.” I want her to see how badly she hurt me, but as I followed Brenda up here, I promised myself I wasn’t going to let Cecily see me cry. Not yet. It’s too soon to let her back into my life, including, and especially, my emotional turmoil.
“I do. I know.” She pauses as she leans forward. I hate myself for noticing how the blanket has fallen from her chest. “When Willow told me she found someone else, I was so jealous. I have never been jealous like I was over this other woman who could pull Willow’s attention from me. I started to compare myself to this person who I literally knew not one thing about. I had no idea who she could be, how beautiful she must be, how she was probably more than me in every aspect. I felt small and ugly and not good enough. The emotions I went through from the moment Willow told me until the moment I sat at that bar were crazy. Jealousy, anger, fear, sadness, hatred, guilt. And then…” She smiles at me. “Then I met you.” She has her hand on her heart, and my eyes are drawn to her chest again. But I move my gaze up the soft skin of her neck to her jawline to the trembling of her chin to how she’s biting on her bottom lip. “Meeting you was like a blessing.”
“I’ll take that compliment.” I chuckle, and she does as well. She’s crying now, and I’m fighting my entire body. All I want to do is wrap my arms around her and comfort her.
“It really is. You made me feel good again after she stripped so much away from me in less than twenty minutes. And then I started to feel things for you, things I didn’t know I could feel. Things I should have been feeling with Willow but was too caught up in my own guilt to ever be able to truly experience. Falling for someone.”
“Cecily…”
“My past is my own fault, Francesca. It really is.” She takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. She looks so beautiful stripped of all the chains that have been holding her back. “My divorce is final. Willow is no longer a part of my life. I’ve settled into my new role at work. I am finally figuring out who I am and what I want in life. And honestly?” She shrugs. “I really owe it all to you.”
“Not to Willow, hmm?”
“No,” she says softly. “Willow allowed me to stay safe. But you? You made me realize safety isn’t always best for my sanity.”
It’s my turn to be moved to tears. “Can I please come up there?”
She holds her arms out, and within seconds, I’ve moved from the floor to the bed. I’m hugging her, holding on for dear life because the idea of letting her go now is the most ridiculous idea either of us could have.
Cecily
Having Francesca’s arms around me is calming in a way I have never experienced before. I knew I had fallen for her months earlier, but ever since then, I’ve been a horrible mess. My emotions have been out of control, I’ve been anxious, upset, sad, and all of it has made me question a lot of different aspects of my life. My sexuality. My sanity. My marriage. For the briefest of moments right after I came home, I tried to get Luke to sleep with me. That’s how crazy I felt.
We didn’t, of course, but even the fact that I thought I wanted to go back to him was frightening.
We were both drunk on pinot noir and packing boxes to move from our home in Wrigleyville, and the emotions were running really high for both of us. He was lamenting about how we didn’t work out, and I was sad and needed to be touched, and before long, he was rubbing my back, and I was melting into his arms.
I pulled away as soon as he tried to kiss me. I almost allowed it because every part of me was questioning who I had become. Thankfully, nothing happened. And after the awkwardness wore off, we laughed about it. That weird laughter where we were relieved that we didn’t do something that was impossible to come back from. Sometimes, I wonder if we were ever supposed to be together. Or if we were always supposed t
o be the best of friends and nothing else because our relationship is stronger now than it ever has been.
I confided in him about Francesca. I told him details I didn’t realize I’d be comfortable sharing with him. He told me things about the new woman in his life, who turned out to be Cindy, a good family friend and the recently promoted head volleyball coach from one of the district’s middle schools. Their relationship was better suited for him and his busy athletic director lifestyle. And honestly, our relationship was never based on amazing sex or the inability to keep our hands off each other. It was based on trust and honesty. Two things I broke the second I met Willow Carmichael.
“So he’s been understanding about everything?”
“Shockingly, yes.”
“You’re lucky. You know that, right?”
I sigh. “I know. He could have been a real jerk.”
“Yeah…I mean, his wife cheated on him with a woman. That had to be a real blow to his self-esteem.”
“Excuse me,” I say followed by a sigh. “Do you really need to point out my indiscretions?”
Francesca giggles, very girly. The same laugh I fell for all those months ago. “I’m sorry,” she says softly as she moves some of the strands of hair that have worked their way out of my ponytail away from my face. “I’m really happy for you, though.” Her voice is so sincere, so smooth. “Indiscretions aside, you deserve to find happiness.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” I smile as I run two fingers along her jawline. She’s lying on her side, mimicking me, and for the first time in months, I feel at home in my own skin. “That it took me this long to finally figure out what I want in life.”
“And what is it that you want?”
“Up until recently, I thought money was all I needed. Luke was a nice bonus, but I just…wasn’t completely happy. And even with Willow, something was missing.” I roll to my stomach and prop myself up on my elbows. Expressing myself has always been difficult. I remember sobbing on Brenda’s bed as a kid, unable to get myself together enough to say what the heck was going on. A lot of times, especially now, I don’t even know what I’m feeling, let alone what words I need to string together an explanation. Lately, I have the urge to lay it all on the line.
