by Poppy Dunne
And I could. And perhaps it would be wiser—in fact, I know that it would be. But after all the indignities I’ve suffered because of Gavin Walker, I will not do this. I am not going to debase myself by reassuring her that I am not the worst kind of man. If Emma believes it’s even possible, then she cannot believe in me at all. Love is an impossibility under such circumstances.
I won’t be her fool. If that’s what she wants, she can leave and never come back.
“And what is halfway, exactly?” I won’t move, and I won’t smile at her, or give her anything but the cold, neutral expression best used in board meetings. “How much should I embarrass myself to please you?”
She gapes. Blinking as if trying to see clearly, she says, “All I want is a simple yes or no answer.”
“And all I want is for you not to need one.” I step away. “It’s simple, Emma. If you need me to assure you that I am not the kind of man who would abandon his own child, I can’t give you that assurance. You need to decide on your own, and then you need to stop prying into my life. Do you understand?”
That last line comes harder and louder than I wanted it to. She jumps, as if responding to a general’s command to his troops. But Emma Brightman is not the type to be led. I know this about her. I knew how she’d react, but it doesn’t change anything.
“You know, in relationships couples are supposed to share things. Hell, they’re supposed to share everything. I grew up watching two people who were married but didn’t have anything to say to each other, Fraser.” Now her eyes are red, glinting with tears. “I’m not going to make that kind of dumbass mistake. I want you to tell me what is going on.”
“And I want you to be ashamed you had to ask me such a disgusting question.” I won’t budge on this, and I can see her realize that. Emma sniffs, and looks down. She discreetly wipes her eyes.
“I don’t want to be a part of whatever weirdness is going on with you. At least, I don’t want to be shut out of it, then get fed weird information from Gavin or other people. I want you to talk to me, and if you can’t do that.” She shrugs. “Then I don’t think it’s going to work out between us.”
Those words nearly shatter my resolve. After these past few days, I can’t go back to life before. I can’t be without her; the scent of her perfume, the warmth of her in my bed, the ridiculous joke emails she keeps forwarding at inappropriate times. Say anything it takes to keep her, a voice whispers in my mind.
But I don’t go in for whispering voices, and I don’t back down.
“Then I suppose that’s that.” I hear the words as though they’re coming from a distance, but I won’t take them back. Emma makes a short, wounded noise. She even staggers backward, as though I struck her.
“Um. You know I’m being serious, right?” She blinks at me in horror.
“Yes. So am I. Very serious.” I pause, giving her one last chance. Please, don’t make me do this. “Now are you going to let it drop, or not?”
Her face flushes bright red now, and a vein pulses in her neck. Normally, this would be enough to turn me off, but it seems that nothing Emma can do will kill my insatiable appetite. Well, she could dress like a circus clown. That might do it.
Or she could leave, Fraser, you idiot. Who the fuck thinks of clowns at a time of extreme emotional upheaval? Except perhaps Stephen King?
That is most certainly an Emma joke. She’s Incepted her way into my subconscious. I’ll never be free of her, even if she leaves.
Even when she leaves.
Which, incidentally, appears to be right now.
“Then I’ll see you at the next family Christmas party.” She stalks past me, hiking the strap of her purse up her shoulder. “Bye, Fraser.”
I don’t say goodbye; I don’t say anything. Instead, I walk calmly back through the revolving doors. The buzzing in my ears drowns out the hard squeak of my shoes on the marble floor. It’s all for the best, of course. A woman who can’t trust me can’t love me; and a woman who can’t respect me can’t love me, either. This was inevitable. After all, she asked too much. After being assaulted by her despicable boss—a man I could have given her clearer warning about—she came to me for support, only to find the apparent evidence of all she’d been warned about. Then she had the audacity to ask me to explain.
What kind of sane person asks for something like that?
Fuck. Fuck everything. What have I done?
“Emma.” The word is out of my mouth as I push back out the door, into the afternoon. To my right, I see the taillights of her car as she drives away. I pull out my phone and call her—I know she shouldn’t be on the phone while driving, but this is a damn emergency.
Nothing. It goes to voicemail after six rings. When I try again, it goes straight to voicemail: she’s turned off the phone.
As I turn to go back inside, back to Gillian and Anna, it occurs to me what I just lost. And this time, there is no Gavin Walker to blame.
20
Emma
“And so, after finding Fraser with his ‘probably not love child, but you can’t deny it looked suspicious’ situation, and after he basically told me he’d never give me all his secrets or let me into his life, I drove far away to the Venice boardwalk and had an ice cream. While having my ice cream, I looked out at the ocean and cried. The tears were partly because of the insane amounts of pot everyone was smoking, and I did get a pretty nice secondhand high. But mostly, the tears were for Fraser, because I am never going to find another man who gives me such good orgasms and such an all-around mindfuck.”
With those final words, I pick up my cupcake and toast Moira. Then, I take a bite. Let it never be said that Sprinkles can’t make a good red velvet cupcake. It’s the only thing keeping me alive at this point.
Moira sits in her office chair, her head in her hand. She swings back and forth idly, taking in everything I just said. Finally, she slides on her glasses and boots up her computer.
“While I can’t help you with the British Beefcake, I think we can file a little complaint against Gavin Grabbing Hands Walker.” The keyboard clacks as she types rapid fire, scanning the report she’s creating. “I can’t believe he tried that nonsense in the office kitchen. And I can’t believe he didn’t consider you’d come to me.”
That’s true. Moira is the sharpest eye in the HR department. These kinds of cut and dried instances of corporate creepiness are what she lives for. Most of the time, she deals with bizarre complaints. The woman who came in to complain about her cubicle mate’s Dilbert calendar was one for the books. Apparently, Dilbert is part of the oppressive cis-hetero male supremacist patriarchy. I hate that cartoon as much as the next guy, but come on.
But yes, like I said, Moira lives for having a reason to do her job. And I’m not about to try saving Gavin’s ass. Between what happened to me and how he treats poor Thea, it’s clear he’s got a problem that needs to be dealt with.
And Moira also has cupcakes on Wednesdays. I needed to make a trip down here anyway. Probably shouldn’t have waited two days, but I was a little flustered. And, in case you forgot: cupcakes. Only on Wednesday.
“Gavin believes everyone in the lit department is running scared of him.” I finish my cupcake, and toss the wrapper into the trash. “Plus, I don’t think he’s been in today.” Actually, I know he hasn’t been in, because I went to pound on his door when I came to work to demand a trial by combat, or at least a frank discussion. Lo and behold, Thea told me he hadn’t been in today. Or yesterday. In fact, he left soon after I did on Monday afternoon.
Probably knows what’s coming, the handsome jackass.
Moira’s eyebrows rise. She smirks. “Gee, wonder why he’d suddenly take a couple of sick days. He probably thinks he can slink back into the office on Friday with no consequences.” She utters a laugh that could give Maleficent lessons in evil joyfulness. “Oh, how wrong he is.”
“Out of curiosity, do you get off on this?”
“Just a little.”
My phone
buzzes in my purse. I take it out, and feel the tension headache incoming. Picking up, I say hello to my mother in the best way I know. “What’d I do now?”
“Emma, how can you speak to me like that during such a time?” Man, I can practically hear her throttling herself with those pearls. Okay, to be fair to my mother, she sounds genuinely distraught. And for once in her life, it’s not because the Gelfmans dropped out of the country club or they took Dynasty off of Netflix. This time, she’s worried about her children. Well, child. Well, any child but me, really. “You know as well as I do that Lily could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“Mom, Lily’s twenty-two. Not sixteen. Not twelve. Twenty-two. That means adult. She can drink, gamble, sign up for the draft if she wants.” Mom huffs at the very idea of Lily at boot camp. To be fair, that is a hilarious image. “Only thing she can’t do is rent a car without an extra fee. Which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. Apparently renting a U-Haul is more of a commitment than storming the beaches of Normandy. Now driving a U-Haul through an active war zone: that’s the greatest challenge of all.”
“I don’t have time for your bizarre ideas right now.” Mom practically wails that; shit, she really is scared. “I haven’t heard from your sister in two days.”
“Which means she’s probably getting her hair done, or at a spa, or she’s joined an all girl biker gang a la Mad Max Fury Road and is going to Valhalla. Wait. That last one’s my fantasy, never mind.” At Mom’s persistent snuffling, I close my eyes. I need to be a little nicer here. “Look. If she doesn’t call by tomorrow, I’ll go down to her apartment and check up on her. Okay?”
“Was that so hard to say the first time around?” Mom sniffles again. “She could be dating a man in retail, for all we know!”
And what a horror that would be. “Okay. I need to go now, Mom. It’s time for my afternoon session of autoerotic asphyxiation.”
“Yes, yes, thank you, Emma.” See? Moment she has what she wants, she stops listening. We hang up, and Moira looks at me over a cupcake of her own. Double chocolate with marshmallow topping. Wise woman.
“I love you, but if that last line wasn’t a joke—”
“It was, it was, don’t worry. I save all my truly dirty work for the evening.”
“I’m so relieved,” she drawls. “Look. The Phenomenal Groping Gavin aside, how are you feeling about Fraser?” She rolls away from her desk, munching carefully. “I mean, do you think you should try talking to him? Just because from what you said, he was in the middle of a chaotic situation. Kids are like monkeys: when they enter the picture, poop goes everywhere.”
I take a minute to digest that. “That’s probably the wisest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“You know what I mean. Look, I have never seen you happier than when you were with him, and believe it or not, I like seeing you happy. Is there any chance you could be throwing the hot baby out with the bathwater?”
“I’ll forget you said hot baby, and think about the rest of the question.” I lean back in the chair and close my eyes. Dammit. Now all I can think of is hot, manly babies, which is the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’m including getting trapped on the Pinocchio ride at Disneyland in that category. Two solid hours stuck in Monstro’s mouth. This is why I never donated to Save the Whales.
Okay, back to sanity.
It’s been two days without Fraser, and those two days have been a huge ass slog. He tried calling me a few times, but I never picked up. It’s his voice; it’s so hypnotic that if I’m not careful, he’ll talk me into anything and out of everything I’m wearing. It’s better to remain a little clearer headed when you’re dealing with the grumpiest sex god of all time.
I miss him. There, secret’s out. I miss him and I want him back, but I can’t want that. No matter how naked or intimate we get, there’s always a part of Fraser he’s not willing to share with me. That’s a huge no-no in a relationship.
But, at the same time, I did sort of turn up at his house and yell at him to open up to me. And I did sort of imply that I thought he was capable of being an absolute dickhead of the highest order. Breaking a woman’s heart is one thing; leaving her with a sick kid is another. Could the Fraser Drake I know be capable of something like that?
No. I don’t know the whole story, but I know that’s not possible.
And I kind of told him ‘yeah, I’ll bite. You could be the biggest asshole of the century.’
I wasn’t wrong to get angry about all his secrets, but I also didn’t give him any benefit of the doubt. That had to hurt.
Maybe I should call him? But he stopped calling last night, and I get the feeling he’s not the ‘forgive and forget’ sort. His good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. And then he probably writes angry hate sex fan fiction about seeing the good opinion again in a bar one night, when that opinion is wearing a cute little cocktail dress. Then, he and the lost good opinion engage in some epic BDSM sex and a hurt/comfort fic springs up.
In conclusion, I read too much Harry/Draco fanfic back in the day, and it’s warped my fragile little mind.
“I don’t mean to alarm you, but you’ve been staring at the ceiling and muttering to yourself for the last two minutes.” Moira slides her glasses off her nose.
“ Was it entertaining?”
“I’m not canceling my HBOgo subscription.” She pushes the box of cupcakes at me. “Take one more for the road.”
So I trudge back up to my desk, a strawberry cupcake in one hand, my heart in my throat, and an itch right between my shoulder blades that I can’t scratch. I’ll have to park up against a doorframe and itch myself Baloo from Jungle Book style.
But the itch I really can’t scratch is on my heart.
Both because it’s not medically safe to scratch your heart, and because Fraser Drake and I might not be able to work it out.
It’s one thing to search for love; it’s another to possibly find it, and lose it forever.
I plop back down at my desk, my appetite for cupcakes dissolved. The manuscript I’m trying to read blurs as tears fill my eyes. Dammit, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this at work. And since it’s lunch, Casey’s out. There’s no one to hand me a tissue or give me a hug. Cupcakes, hugs…why am I such a child sometimes?
Besides the fact that it’s part of my personality, I mean.
I’m blowing my nose when I hear footsteps approaching my desk. Oh, thank God. Casey’s back with a turkey sandwich and a delicious piece of advice. My favorite take out.
“Hey, thanks for.” When I look up, the words stop. In fact, my whole body freezes. I’m pretty sure I’m grimacing right now; must be a pleasant sight.
“Ms. Brightman?” she says, her voice husky and low. She looks as marvelous and well put together as ever. Well, I’ve only seen her twice, and briefly. But now that I’m getting a close, personal view, I’ve got to say: damn. This woman is hot. “I didn’t mean to show up unannounced. I just needed to clear the air.”
Gillian places her purse on top of my desk. The look in her lovely dark eyes is pure apology. I pick up my cupcake like it’s a fragile chick, and she’s a glamorous fox. No. My sugar. Not for you.
“Is it all right for us to talk like this?” she asks tentatively.
In response, all I can say is, “Hooooo.”
I’m a damn poet, and confused as all hell.
21
Fraser
I ring Justin’s bell, hoping blindly that the door will swing open and Emma will be standing there. I want to believe that Justin called me over on the pretext of business as a simple ruse. Emma would have asked him for a favor. She’ll open the door, looking as delectable and harried as ever, and lean up on her toes. She’ll whisper how she wished she’d done things differently, and I’ll reassure her with a gentle yet still somewhat forceful kiss that she’s done nothing wrong. I should apologize. I should hold her close, and breathe in the scent of her hair, and whisper sweet endearments like—
&nbs
p; The door opens. Justin appears before me, wearing his Berkeley sweatshirt. “Hey, Fraser.”
“I love you.” It comes out of me in a strangled whisper.
We stare at each other for a full minute, listening to a plane pass overhead. Right sentiment, wrong Brightman sibling. Perhaps I should just go and drive east never to return. All the way into the Atlantic Ocean. Final stop.
“I…I value you as well. Come on in.” Justin brushes that off, which is quite classic him. What’s not classic him, however, is what I find when I enter the living room.
Justin has always been intelligent and a good worker, but he’s not much of a self-starter. Even when we were kids, he needed me to remind him that our Dungeons and Dragons quests needed a magic ring or a troll attack to get the journey started.
I am not ashamed of my former Dungeon Master talents, incidentally.
The point is, that there are file boxes laid out orderly around the coffee table. A half-eaten lunch and a forgotten cup of tea have been pushed to one side, to make way for an open laptop and loads of manila envelopes. The phone rings, and Justin busies himself with a call, jotting something down on a notepad. At first, I was confused as to why the hell he’d invited me over in the middle of the day. Surely he had work at his firm.
Is that what this is? Is he taking a sick day?
No. I see some names scribbled down on a post it quite near the coffee table. Brightman and Connington, the Brightman Office. These are names he’s trying out for his own firm.
The man has gone full blown entrepreneur. I’m sure it’s insulting to look as impressed as I know I do, but I can’t help it. I’ve wanted Justin to take some initiative for himself since seventh grade. Back when Emma outsold our neighborhood lemonade and Kool-Aid stand three to one.
Back when she laughed in my face and then made a farting noise.
