Then, there she was, shouting through the silence. “You can’t do this. Stop!” Eliza was hysterical, barreling down the aisle dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. Everyone whipped their head to her, and the panic I felt was icy and unyielding. It felt like she was running to me in slow motion down the very aisle my father had just walked me down. My vision narrowed, blurring everything and everyone except Eliza, Anthony, and a single streak of blinding morning sunlight beaming through the stained glass, painting the somber marble aisle brilliant shades of red and blue.
I remember thinking how beautiful that light looked, cast against the marble like that, Aunt Eliza cutting through it as she approached us.
Anthony dropped my hands and rushed to her, grabbing Eliza’s shoulders, barking something through clenched teeth. Our crowd of loved ones started whispering, heads snapping from side to side, and I stood there in a stupor.
“I won’t let you do it!” She shouted at him. She was drunk. It was eleven in the morning and she was plastered. He gripped her elbow and she fought herself free, her words slurring, imperceptible from where I stood.
Then Anthony shot a look at our friend Christina. We’d all gone to high school together.
And I knew.
Just like that. An epiphany on display. I just knew, with that one prolonged glance and the way her skin blanched, that something still existed between them. Every cliché warning sign stitched together before me, weaving the fabric of the red flags that waved wildly in the back of my mind.
The locked phone screen. The surprise project deadlines at the office. The disinterest in sex. The sleeping with his phone under his pillow. And then there was the way Anthony had changed towards me.
He was a doting and smitten boyfriend in the beginning. But slowly that deteriorated. Anthony would hurt me with his words and cold indifference one week and then shower me with gifts and praise. He showed me a cruelness without cause that would arise and pass with seemingly no predictable pattern. In that brief moment of revelation, I realized it was when he was thinking of seeing Christina. And then when he would come back from seeing her and his guilt would make him sweet and doting again. It was a cycle of manipulation and his own guilt that had me caught up in his gaslighting. He convinced me in long tedious fights that it was all either my fault or my imagination. And I believed him.
Crimson flags as bright and bold as my lipstick. Tethered down—covered up—by the love I had for him.
“It’s not your business. You’re drunk. Let’s get you home.” Anthony hissed at her. A viper whispering his warning.
“You’re a spoiled little brat.” She pushed him off of her and turned to me. “I found them two nights ago.”
The pastor tried fruitlessly to quell the crowd.
The entire church erupted in shock as rumor transformed to truth, Anthony’s yelling cutting above all the noise. My balance faltered, legs like molten rock, heavy while also unsteady. I had the sensation that they were rolling out from under me. I took a step to regain my balance and I glanced behind me to the ornately decorated altar. I remember thinking for a second that I regretted spending all that money on the more expensive florist. Another glance at the frenzied crowd had me feeling as if I was watching from outside of myself. As if I were in a fishbowl, on display at an aquarium. Everything in me, everything that I am, was perfectly still as my entire perceived life went up in flames.
I felt my mother grab my shoulders and turn me to her. I snapped back into my body and that stillness evaporated. I was real, this was real. This was not a nightmare. The voice in my head was silent, unmoving, but my heart was ferocious.
I tore away from her grip and ran to Anthony, ripping the rings off of my finger, violence erupting in my chest. My hands shook franticly from the desire to grab him and dig my nails into the arteries of his throat. I threw them at his feet.
“Celeste, it was a mistake. I ended things. I swear. Let’s just go in the back. Just hear me out,” he pleaded.
We were quite a spectacle. He’d turned me into the star of the best kind of reality television. This was my worst fear, my humiliation on display for all to see. At least when Anthony humiliated me at home, I was alone and could suffer in peace, protected by the walls around me. How many times had I turned a blind eye? How many times had I changed my clothes, or wiped away my lipstick, because he said I looked like a whore, only to go out into public his smiling other half moments later? How many times had I laid quietly because he didn’t think I should be so loud?
How loud did he let Christina moan?
“What the fuck!” I whispered.
Our eyes locked one last time. Embarrassment and shame painting me red. I wanted to disappear. Vanish from the prying eyes and cacophonous silence as the congregation held their breath.
I would not let them see me cry.
So, I ran. Kicking off my heels at the top of the stairs, I ran. I was a flurry of lace, tulle, beads, and crystals on the streets of my childhood. Traffic stopped as I blazed ahead into oncoming, lazy Saturday traffic. Our neat little northeast town a blur of pastel shops in my periphery.
I felt the questions, the eyes, the surprise of strangers and neighbors branding my skin. The crisp spring air burned in my chest as I crossed into the park, colliding with a man walking his dog.
“I’m sorry!” I sobbed, gathering my skirts in my arms again. The man gave me a sad, worried look, handing me my shoe. His voice became another incoherent instrument in the noise filling my head.
My feet hit the pavement in long, practiced strides, the gravel sending piercing pain up my legs. I could have run on grass, but the biting feeling tearing up my soles kept me grounded in reality, kept me pushing forward and away. When I reached my parent’s house, the caterers were buzzing about, carrying trays of food and drink for the guests who would be arriving for the pre-reception.
Another luxury I’d splurged on so that guests wouldn’t be bored while we took pictures.
“My car. Now!” I screamed at one of them, vicious and wrong.
Within minutes I was slamming the gas pedal in my tiny convertible on my way back to my Manhattan apartment.
Apparently, Anthony’s mother, father, and Eliza had all known. They all knew about him and Christina and kept his little secret. They sheltered him from the shame. He’d been with her when he asked me for a break two years prior. They’d dated the entire six months that I waited for him, in agony, to come back to me.
Pathetic.
He did come back to me, with a ring. And apparently an ongoing relationship with Christina. I was stupid enough to feel triumphant. My makeup washed away with my tears as I drove into the city. I shut my phone off fifteen minutes into the drive, too sickened by Anthony’s confession to keep it on. After I hung up on him my phone rang ceaselessly. I had no desire to hear any more.
I spent a week sobbing in my tiny apartment. Surrounded, smothered by the memory of him everywhere. He was everywhere in that apartment. His toothbrush. His things. His smell. The memories of sex and love. Time wasted on a lie. I tore down every remnant of him and threw it all in black bags that crowded my doorway.
I refused to speak or see anyone. I needed to be in control of myself before facing the outside. Needed composure but couldn’t find it in the mess of my emotions.
The very foundation of my reality was now one long string of questions. I was now standing at the edge of an enormous canyon between fact and fiction, the reality and my fantasy of what we were. I was racking my brain trying to make sense of it all.
What kind of man watched a woman walk down the aisle towards him with his mistress in the corner? What kind of silly little girl allowed a man to chip away at her for six years? Until there was nothing left but her reliance on him.
What did she have that I didn’t?
What could she possibly give him that I didn’t provide?
I’d bent myself so far out of shape to be what he wanted that I was unrecognizable. Bent so intricately with his e
motional games that I was just a shell of myself filled with his expectations and desires. He’d erased me so completely that I didn’t even have a friend to call. He’d convinced me that he was all I needed.
How had I been so blind?
I had nothing left in that apartment by the seventh day but questions and a cell phone that wouldn’t stop. fucking. ringing.
Suffocating. I was suffocating.
“I need a transfer,” I begged George, my former boss.
“Are you sure? How soon?”
“Yesterday.”
He didn’t hesitate, but he spoke slowly, and I could feel him embrace me through the phone. “I’ll call the London Office. I’ll make it happen for you.”
In my room in London, thousands of miles away, I could still feel that panic. That humiliation. Two weeks ago I had woken up a bride and gone to bed in ruins. And now I was here.
I finished unpacking silently. I had no more tears to cry.
CHAPTER 2
Celeste
I woke to a hesitant rapping on my door. I glanced at my watch and did a double take. I’d slept almost six hours. I sprung out of bed and pulled open my door with a swoosh.
“Hi, sorry to bother you but, um, are you hungry?” Kieran wasn’t smiling. She looked deeply concerned.
“Sorry, I don’t even remember laying down,” I smoothed my hair.
Kieran sighed, “Oh good. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”
“Not at all. I finished unpacking and laid down for a second.”
“And woke up six hours later? I know the feeling. The real question is… How would you like to spend your first night in London?” Her eyes twinkled.
“I don’t know. I…” The truth was I didn’t have a clue what my next step was, or should be.
Kieran leaned against my doorframe. As she talked, she twirled a curl in her fingers. “Well, we can either stay in and dissect our entire lives here, over some take-away… or we can go to my favorite restaurant and we’ll do the get-to-know-you thing there. Then, we’ll forget our entire existence ever happened over drinks at my favorite club.”
We. Our. The language of friendship.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
She raised her brow and examined the ends of her curl. “It’s not about me. But if you want my opinion, moping about in our flat is a total waste of your first night.” Our eyes met her expression feline, an impish smile seeping through the nonchalance of her tone. “I wouldn’t let some asshole steal that from me if I were you. Besides, we can mope in the restaurant. It’s quite loud, so no one would be listening in.”
“Okay,” I said, not giving myself any time to rethink my decision. “Should I change?” I turned to my closet.
“Depends on whether you want to go out dancing after. Restaurant’s casual.”
I paused, considering this. My stomach fluttered in anticipation. “You know what? Yes. I haven’t gone out in years.” I looked out my window, expecting to see the palace or Big Ben. But, alas, it was just a quiet residential street in Kensington. I felt a wave of excitement. Kieran had a point, there was plenty of time to mope later. Anthony wouldn’t steal any more of my life away.
I practically ran to my closet, stripping on my way over.
“Meet me downstairs in thirty,” Kieran called out. “Miss McAlaster, I’m taking you out!”
I debated between a navy or black mini dress and decided on the bolder blue option. I brushed through my hip-length, pin-straight black hair and added a tiny dab of hair oil to the ends, giving my hair a glossy sheen and covering up the split ends that desperately needed cutting.
I’d always dreamed of having a wild curly mane like Kieran’s.
Fantasized about being the kind of girl who went out on a Saturday night to a bar and hooked up with strangers.
I’d started dating him right after undergrad and wasted all my twenties on that tragedy. I was twenty-eight and had never gone to a club with my girlfriends, having been a hermit in college, studying and staying in. I’d never even kissed a stranger. Never felt the freedom of youth, booze, and reckless behavior.
Looking at myself, I felt a faint shadow of power lurking behind my melancholy. I needed to nurture that sense of power. Find myself again. Maybe even reinvent myself. I didn’t know. Something. I felt like I’d missed out on my whole life. Wasted it with a guy who wore polo shirts and boat shoes and called it fashion.
And I believed him.
Excuse me while I vomit.
We ate Indian food while I poured out every last sordid detail about my wedding to Kieran. Pink peonies, enormous ball gown, traditional veil, shoes way beyond my budget. My mom’s meddling in the planning. Both of our mother’s disapproval that we wanted to pay for the wedding ourselves. How hard it was to whittle down the guest list. How I was so thankful so few people in the States go to the church ceremony.
For all of her previous chattiness, Kieran was an empathetic listener. She passed no judgment, made no great show of shock, awe, or disgust. She held my hand when my throat closed up, choking on a reality that was starting to feel like someone else’s life.
We never did get to talk about her life, as I sucked up all of the oxygen between us. The way her eyes encouraged me, and her small interjections comforted me, kept me going. It was so easy to talk to her. I realized, with a deep sadness, that it had been years since I did this—talked to someone who was listening.
I hadn’t talked to anyone about that day, yet. In New York, I didn’t have anyone who would hear me. Not like this. Not without their own agenda. And there I was pouring it out to essentially a stranger.
It didn’t feel like my life anymore. It was safer to feel that way, to separate myself from that and guard my emotions. I felt like there was a rift happening between that bride and who I was now, splitting my soul in two.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore, you know? How can you just not know that your fiancé is cheating on you? I just wanted to be the perfect bride. And the wedding was really perfect.” I admitted with a sour taste on my tongue.
“It sounds like you were trying to make everyone else happy.” Kieran took a long sip of her drink and waited for my response.
“I… I was happy.”
“Were you? He sounds like a monkey’s asshole to me.”
I choked on my rice. “He is a monkey’s asshole.” I laughed, swallowed, and thought for a moment. “But he was so good to me in so many ways.”
“Yeah, to manipulate you into staying from where I’m sitting.”
“Well, in hindsight, yes.”
“Monkey’s dung-filled asshole.” She shook her head, pointing her fork at me.
I whispered, not meeting her gaze. “I panicked the week of the wedding. I got cold feet and was hiding it until my mom caught me having a breakdown the night before. I should have known.”
“That was your intuition, love. You’ve got to listen to that voice. It’ll never lead you astray.”
“I think so, too.” I mused into my soda. “I think that I have no clue who I am. I went to college and was a bookworm, immediately got my dream job and threw myself into my work after that, and then just…. I just became whatever he wanted me to be.”
Kieran put a gentle hand over mine and I couldn’t meet her gaze. “Everyone has that relationship. The one where you give it all up and get lost. Usually, we all get that in high school or uni. You just blossomed late, is all. But I think a lot of people who meet their husband young go through that. My mum forbade me from getting hitched before thirty.”
I snorted a laugh. “My mom practically threw me at Anthony. She wanted us to get married a few years ago and it caused him to ask me for a break.” To screw around with Christina.
“That’s gross.”
“Yeah, we’ll talk about my mom another day.” I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath.
Kieran picked up the check and we agreed drinks were on me at the club. Kieran slipped her hand to the cr
ook of my elbow and the pretty scent of her perfume reminded me that I didn’t own any because Anthony hated it.
The club was crowded and dark. The crush of skin and laughter was new to me. At first, off-putting, but after a drink, being pushed up against people I didn’t know, and one I did, lost its intimacy. The press of bodies everywhere was exhilarating. I melted into a crowd of nameless faces, found myself seeing a beauty in the anonymity. The music thumped so loud I could feel the vibrations coming up through my stilettos.
I didn’t feel exposed the way I thought I would. Instead, I closed my eyes and smiled at the feeling of fullness in my chest, a single word standing out and carrying over the lyrics, repeating in my mind: free. I felt so free.
Kieran held my hand and turned me. Then tucked me in close to her body as we swayed to the music. Kieran rolled her hips against mine and tucked my hair behind my ears when she made sly comments about the people around us. She took the liberty to squeeze my ass and I couldn’t stop laughing at the welcome invasion. She crossed physical boundaries and I let her, found myself repaying in kind, hugging my body to hers.
This was a far cry from the reserved step-touches of my past. I laughed at the straight-back-stick-up-our-ass dancing of weddings before… where we all stood in a big circle and respected personal space. The awkward bobbing of stuffy rich folk being careful not to ruin their expensive shoes. This was nothing like that. Kieran was teaching me the rhythm of feeling young.
“I don’t remember the last time I had fun,” I said, leaning into her ear and practically shouting.
“Fuck Anthony Whatever-the-Shit his name is!” She shouted back. “You’re mine now!”
See You Monday: An Office Romance (Weekday series Book 1) Page 2
