Better Than Your Ex

by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  I thought I would rub my fingers over those scars and remember that night. I thought I would feel the blood slither between my fingers and the shards of glass that clung to me as reminders that it was all real. I hadn’t dreamed it.

  Instead there was detachment. Zion was beautiful. I recognized it the way I recognized the beauty in art that would never hang in my home. I saw luxury. I saw elegance.

  And I saw the way O’Shea looked at Zion.

  I recognized that I’d never loved Zion. I wanted her. Clung to her. Created a world with her. But there was never real love. If there were my expression would be identical to O’Shea’s. Close to Nadia’s.

  They sat further down the table. Directly across from Zion. And wasn’t that telling. That Zion didn’t choose to sit across from me. She arranged herself in the chair that she knew O’Shea would take. And they…I’d never seen a bird struggle to fly, to be free, to find home again, but I imagined it was what the two of them looked like.

  They threw words across the table at each other while I stayed in the space Cash made for me. O’Shea put her wrists on the table and I remembered that she’d cut them with a boxcutter right after she married Guy. Maybe because of Guy.

  Another person that bled for love.

  Huh.

  But they were different. The way he touched her. The way her body angled towards his. The way she seemed to see Zion but be focused completely on him. The way he was obviously focused solely on her.

  There was something between them that was so awful at one point that she cut her wrists and yet there they were in that moment. Almost one single being.

  Wonder was the next emotion I found. It showed me another side to the fear. It showed me the worry I didn’t know I was carrying that Cash would always pull away from me for just a little while and we would both know it was because of the elevator. An incident that lasted a handful of minutes that affected us for months after. I thought it would drag behind us forever. Maybe it would. And maybe we could get to what O’Shea and Guy had. Together. With the truth of what they’d both done to each other right there, literally, on the table.

  I didn’t need to be there. I didn’t have to sign anything. I didn’t have to say anything. What would I say? “Hey, it’s cool. I found the love of my life and we’re going to raise the kid I didn’t want with you but can’t wait to have with her.”

  O’Shea would be upset that she didn’t have a monopoly on cruelty.

  Cash made a fist on the table. I laid a hand over it. None of it mattered. It wasn’t about us. O’Shea and Zion would accuse each other of things in low tones. Eventually Zion would have to do what she came to Beyond to do.

  I held Cash’s hand in mine and waited. Let my mind wander. I found solutions to two different issues I had with apps my company was developing. I decided where I would take Cash on our next vacation. I did the math to try and guess how much college would cost by the time the baby was ready to go. I turned a little green.

  Cash shook me. I came out of my quiet place to hear Zion say, “Did you bring the paperwork?”

  Cassidy

  I looked up photos of Zion before the meeting. I…It would have been stupid not to. I sat on my bed while Cahir was in the shower and smiled when I heard him sing. Then I looked down at my phone. At the search bar and the blinking cursor. My fingers slipped across the keyboard. I almost dropped my phone before I finished typing in her name. Me-the woman who could type without looking down at her phone on any other day.

  And there she was. With him. Without him. She was stunning.

  And I was okay.

  I dropped my phone and took in a deep breath when I realized that. I was okay. And she was just the woman that got to hold my baby before I did.

  I wrapped my legs, then my arms, then my mouth around Cahir when he got out of the shower and laughed when he stepped back into the shower with me.

  The meeting was-Well, it became pretty obvious, pretty quickly that we were absolutely unnecessary. It wasn’t about the baby. It was about O’Shea and Zion and one last knock down drag out battle before O’Shea banished her forever.

  Or that was what I would have said if I didn’t feel the energy in that room. I’d never seen two people that wanted to be close, to touch, so badly. Anger born out of hurt and disappointment and a longing that it could all be forgiven and forgotten.

  I found myself feeling sorry for each of them until she talked about Cahir as if he were a thing, just a piece of her life, the way her closet or her chauffeur were. It all belonged to her so it should all fall in line.

  And the baby. A girl. Olivia, they called her. I loved that name. I grew up with re-runs of the Cosby show. Too young to understand most of what I saw but I remembered that there was a girl like me that showed up. One that had things to say and think and could make you laugh without trying. I used to hope that one day I could be that bright. I wanted to light up a room the way Olivia did.

  I glanced at Cahir but his eyes were on our hands. Was he here for any of it? Was I?

  Then Zion asked for the paperwork and it was real. A family.

  Olivia.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cassidy

  I didn’t stay to watch Zion sign the papers. Cahir’s pulse was normal. He made eye contact. His leg didn’t shake quite so much. I went back to work. Then I came back to him when it was all over.

  Except it wasn’t really over. Zion’s lawyer gave us pictures from the ultrasound. They were supposed to be part of her last attempt to get Cahir back. Her lawyer slid them to Cahir before he left.

  He waited for me. I loved him for that. He waited until our days were over and we were curled up on my couch to hand me the envelope. I put my wine down. The tears started before I saw all of the first photo.

  “Olivia.” I hid my face in his neck. “Did you hear that? That she’d named the baby Olivia.”

  “No.” His voice was as bogged down with emotion as mine was. “I didn’t.”

  “Gran says even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

  He laughed. “So you like that name.”

  “I think it’s perfect.” I wiped his tears. His thumb caught mine. “Is that weird?”

  “A good name is a good name.”

  We sat with the pictures spread on the couch between us. Spread wide but not so much that my hand couldn’t find his. That his fingers couldn’t play in my hair.

  “So…Olivia?”

  I nodded. “Olivia.”

  I floated for days. Days. I carried the pictures in my purse. The ones that Cahir didn’t stash in his car, office, and apartment.

  Reality was there while I floated. I had clients to deal with. Delia. I could see her from where we sat at her desk in her loft office. She didn’t know that. There was no way she would have stood and sat, looked over at us in Zion’s office, looked at Zion, picked up her phone and put it down if she knew we could see her.

  I could see the way she watched me.

  When had O’Shea told her what Cahir was to me? When did Delia find out that I was going to be a mother? She wasn’t different when we worked together. But that was easy. We didn’t really see each other. She was busy with her online boutique. I was busy with the styling side and I was good enough at my job that I didn’t need any real input from her.

  But I knew when I walked into the office and turned on my tablet that she would find me before my first client arrived. She saw the cowboy boots Cahir found for me when he went on a business trip and I wanted to smile. We had more in common than she thought. Shoes changed how I dealt with a person too.

  I sat on the sofa surrounded by the clothes she sold and the racks I used to dress clients. By the props I used when I took photos of them for their social media and waited.

  She sat down beside me. “Cassidy, can we talk?”

  “Sure.” Best to address it head on. “How are you doing? With everything? I know the last few days have been tough for you guys.”

  Bless her. Her facial
expression didn’t change. Still. Calm. Delia had grown so much since her first day as a stylist. “It has been difficult. Some of the things I’ve learned have made it a little more difficult.”

  Oh.

  Well.

  “Your relationship with Cahir.”

  My father taught me that to save your ground, to gain a little more, become a parrot. Repeat it all until people stop wasting your time and get to the point. “Cahir and I?”

  “You’re having a relationship with a client.”

  That didn’t take long. “Okay.”

  “Without telling me.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Excuse me?”

  And there she was. Good. My client would arrive soon. “It’s not interfering with the quality of my work. Obviously or you wouldn’t have had to be told about it. It hasn’t affected his status as a client or my ability to bring in or maintain my clients. And there’s noting in the employee conduct paperwork that I signed that forbids or discourages it.”

  I checked. Based on Delia’s facial expression, she hadn’t.

  “I would have liked to know,” she said. “It’s not fun hearing things about my business second-hand.”

  “What did you hear about your business?”

  “I-”

  Fishing. I hated that. “I could have told you. Sure. But something, something, told me not to.”

  She angled her body away from me. Smoothed down her skirt.

  “In the beginning, it was because I wasn’t about it. He’s an amazing man. Of course I was attracted to him. Then I got to know him. What kind of business did I have messing with a man with so much going on in his life, a man that was admittedly trying to get over his feelings for another woman.” I smoothed a hand down my skirt and adjusted an earring that didn’t need to be adjusted. So Delia wouldn’t feel alone. “Then I got to know him. He showed up- doesn’t matter. I got to know him. I liked him. I wanted to be his friend. I didn’t have to tell you who my friends were.”

  I shrugged. She stared.

  “Then it was so new I couldn’t believe it was real and any little thing would have ruined it.” God, those early days. That first trip to the farmer’s market. That late night in that dark bar. “And I just didn’t want to share it. I wanted to keep the beautiful thing to myself. The reason why I haven’t told you now? Why I’m not talking about it? I’m not apologizing. I’m not telling you that I’ve found someone to love and then apologizing for who it is. That’s not something I have to do and even if it was, it ain’t something I’m going to do.”

  Whoa. Too much Baltimore. I usually had more control over how much of home showed up in my voice.

  “Okay,” Delia said.

  She went up to her desk.

  I went back to work. And thanked the ancestors I wasn’t stupid enough to think the conversation was over.

  Cassidy

  “It’ll be easier for you if you tell me on your own.” Cahir laid his napkin on my dinner table and leaned back in his chair. He was shirtless. That wasn’t fair. “If I have to fuck it out of you, you won’t realize you enjoyed it until the next day. Maybe the day after.”

  Wildly unfair. I put my napkin on the chair and ran a finger around the rim of my wine glass. Weighed my options and sighed. I didn’t want to cry during sex. Not that kind of crying at least. “Delia’s going to fire me.”

  “What?” He grabbed my hand and moved my wine away. “Why?”

  “I need that.”

  “I’m stretching you across that bed either way. No, you don’t.”

  “She doesn’t like that I’m with her sister’s ex boyfriend.”

  “Childish.”

  I shrugged. “She’s young.”

  “You’re good at your job.”

  “You’d think that would count for something.”

  “Do you need to work for Delia?”

  “It’s better than working for anyone else. And I need to work.”

  “What?”

  “It’s better than-”

  “No, the second part.” There was a crease between his eyebrows.

  “I need to work.”

  “You need to work? Why?”

  I waved an arm. “All of this doesn’t pay for itself. That closet doesn’t just replenish itself automatically.”

  “Money? You’re upset about this job situation because of money?”

  “Why is this so confusing for you?”

  “Because-Cash.” His fingers tightened over mine. He was close enough for me to smell the wine on his breath. To want to kiss him and taste the wine again in a different way. “You’re my best friend and the mother of my child. Money isn’t an issue for you anymore.”

  “What?”

  “That’s my line.”

  I tried to smile and failed. I could see how badly I failed by the way his face shifted, he bit his lip, and looked away.

  “Cash,” he said when his shoulders stopped shaking. “You’re family. Before Olivia you were family. You’re good.”

  “I’m good.”

  “You’re an investor in all of the software I develop. I started a trust for you when I started one for Olivia. You’re very good.”

  “What in the hell?”

  “You know…this was kind of the reaction I thought I would get.”

  “So you shoveled heinous amounts of money-”

  “You sound like the beginning of Law and Order: SVU.” He laughed. “And we’re having an Olivia. That’s so corny it’s funny.”

  “Is it?”

  “Cash, it’s money. I have it. I want to share it with the two most important women in my life. What’s the problem?”

  That he thought to take care of me that way. That it wasn’t something friends did for each other. That it tied us together in ways I told him I couldn’t consider. That I loved him for doing it and couldn’t remember why I said I wasn’t ready to be with him.

  I sighed. “Take me to bed.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cassidy

  It was there in the way she didn’t say good morning to me after I said it to her. It was there in the way she stayed upstairs at her desk and didn’t come down to interact with her favorite clients. It was there in the way Nadia and O’Shea gave me sympathetic looks and a whole lot of silence when they went up the stairs.

  Okay. I breathed through it. Meditated when I entered and left the office. Burned herbs and left crystals to rebalance the energy after she left. I put on music that settled my soul. And I smiled.

  No one was allowed to take away my smile.

  I brought in more clients. I was proud of that. I went out to bars and restaurants and the farmer’s market and events with and without Cahir and handed out my business cards. So many business cards that reaching for them and re-ordering them felt like second nature. The women and men came to me. The racks that surrounded me bulged with clothes. Local stores called me-they called me. They set up appointments for me to see them. I didn’t have to beg for their attention or for them to take me seriously.

  And I had offers. To manage social media accounts. To dress celebrities. They didn’t want Beyond or Delia. They wanted me.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so strong, so capable. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d jumped out of bed ready to go to work. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so valuable and respected in the workplace.

  But that was what working for someone that didn’t want to limit you was like. Room. Expansion. Trust in a different form. Confidence that you would be heard.

  So I smiled at Delia. I said good morning and good night and didn’t care if she responded. Until one day.

  She came in not with the coffee that she grabbed every morning with Colton but with something O’Shea must have made. Comfort. Strength. Or it was supposed to be. Support made her smile. She didn’t smile when she stomped up to her office.

  She wasn’t quiet when she scheduled meetings.

  I took another dee
p breath and smiled. To myself. For myself. Everything was going to be okay.

  It took her three hours to come back down the stairs. I was ready. I’d picked a place to have a drink with Junie and Cahir. I told Cahir what I thought would happen. He asked how disrespectful I felt and if the Lonely Third was empty. I didn’t laugh aloud. I ran around the office manically looking for a way to wipe away the tears rolling down my face. I packed up my files.

  I was mostly done with packing up my files when Delia walked down the stairs.

  “I need your resignation.”

  I put my smile away. Delia didn’t need it. I could see it in the way her hands shook and she hesitated at the bottom of the stairs.

  I took a moment to check in with myself. Gran taught me that. In all situations, but especially high conflict situations, check in with yourself before you speak. Find your emotions. Identify them. Find their source. Make peace with them before you speak.

  No anger. No fear. No worry. Because Cahir said I didn’t have to worry. Because even if I didn’t admit it to him or admit it to myself, I believed him. And I was with him. He was mine again. I was his. I knew we’d never have another elevator situation again. He would never hide from me again. I didn’t have a reason to hide from him.

  I wanted to go to him. I wanted to meet him on the Lonely Third or lock the door to his office. I didn’t know how I would tell him. But I wanted him close.

  I put more files in my container. “Are you sure?”

  “You said the conflict of interest wouldn’t stop. That you’re adopting my niece. Yeah. I’m sure.”

  Poor Delia. She would hate that that was the first thought to enter my mind. But there was so much hurt there. I could do it on my own. And her business would survive without me. She’d grown so much. But why should we break up a good thing?

  “Forty percent increase in revenue. Think, Delia. Forty percent. You want to let that go for a woman that betrayed you and isn’t sorry about it? A woman that violated Ca-”

  “You don’t know her, so don’t speak about her.”