Black Bounds

by Charlotte Byrd

  “What is this?”

  “It’s nothing,” I say, and hide my hand behind my back. I had put my engagement ring back on last night when I was feeling particularly pitiful and sorry for myself and I had forgotten to take it off.

  “This is an engagement ring!”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Caroline pipes in. If this is her idea of a joke, it’s not funny. I give her a look to shut her up.

  “We’re not engaged, okay? I forgot to take this off.”

  “But you were engaged. And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was going to, but then things got kind of complicated at dinner.”

  Mom shakes her head and paces around the room.

  “So, you were engaged when you came over? And you deliberately didn’t wear the ring?”

  “Yes, okay? So, what?”

  “So, what? I thought that we were close, Ellie. I thought that we had a good mother-daughter bond and then you go and get engaged and don’t even tell me. What the hell?”

  I shrug. I don’t really have an answer except that I have no idea what mother-daughter bond she’s talking about. Ever since I became a teenager, we have always had somewhat of a cool relationship. We used to fight a lot, and now that we don’t, we don’t talk much anymore either. She hardly knows anything about me or my life and what she does know, she criticizes. This makes it kind of difficult to share new and potentially dramatic information about my life. Of course, I can’t really go into any of this right now because it will just open a big can of worms that I’m not really equipped to deal with at the moment.

  “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier. The conversation at dinner sort of went off the rails and it didn’t seem like the right time. And now…well, it kind of doesn’t matter anymore since we broke up.”

  “Was it because of what you wrote in your novel?” Mom asks. She’s well aware of the Page Six article and, knowing her, she probably went out and researched me as a romance writer as well. I didn’t explicitly tell her not to read my books, but I did warn her that they have rather sexually explicit content that she might not want to read (mainly, because the writer is her daughter). Initially, I was pretty certain that she hadn’t read my work. But now with everything that has come out about it? I’m not so sure anymore.

  “No, not really. He was really supportive of my writing actually,” I say. It’s hard to explain why exactly we broke up. I hardly understand it myself.

  Chapter 27 - Ellie

  When I try to distract myself…

  My mom stays for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, but luckily we don’t spend all of our time talking about what a fuck up I am. Instead, we actually manage to have an okay time. She asks me a bit about Aiden, but when I give her a few one sentence answers and don’t elaborate, she lets it go. Same goes for my romance writing career. I still have no idea if she has read my books. She doesn’t mention them and I don’t bring them up either. When my mom finally leaves, I promise to call and text back whenever she contacts me. In return, she promises not to be so hard on my choice of career.

  “I like your mom,” Caroline announces after we both say goodbye.

  “That’s ‘cause you didn’t have to live with her for eighteen years,” I say.

  “Eh, she’s not that bad.”

  “No, she’s not,” I concede. “We’re just really different.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  After a day of socializing, I’m exhausted. I head to my room for some much needed me time. Hanging out with my mom tires me out on my good days, let alone when I don’t have any time to prepare for her visit at all. The truth is that I’m basically an introvert, so spending a lot of time with people can be quite exhausting for me. I feel the need to perform and be on my best behavior - act friendly and sweet and kind when those are often the last things in the world that I want to be.

  “Hey, so, I was thinking,” Caroline pops into my room just as I put my favorite Christmas music playlist on Spotify on my phone.

  “Yeah?” I ask, without taking out my earplugs. I don’t want to do anything to encourage her to stick around longer than she absolutely must.

  “What if we go out tonight?”

  “Where?” I look out the window. It’s already dark. Even though it’s warm in our apartment, I can almost feel the cold wind blowing outside.

  “I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Somewhere. A club maybe.”

  I shrug.

  “Oh c’mon, please. I haven’t been out in ages. And neither have you. I don’t want to go out myself.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s cold out there. I don’t really want to put on high heels and a short dress.”

  “C’mon, you’re going to look amazing. And when you get hot guys hitting on you…well, that will be pretty awesome too.”

  “I don’t need hot guys to hit on me to feel good.”

  “You may not need it, but it will definitely help,” Caroline says. “Okay, fine. Just come dancing then. It will be good for both of us to get out given what we’ve been through recently.”

  She’s right, of course. I know that. I’ve been spending way too much time hanging out in bed and on the couch, doing absolutely nothing.

  “But why do we have to go out to a club? Why can’t we just go out to lunch tomorrow when it’s light out?”

  “Because lunch isn’t the same thing as going dancing. It’s not as fun. It doesn’t get your endorphins going the same way.”

  I continue to protest for a while longer, but eventually I give in. I think I give in because I know deep down that Caroline is right, but I mostly give in because everyone eventually does when Caroline asks them for something.

  A few hours later, I am doing the unthinkable. I’m actually getting dressed to go out to a club. I put on one of my most comfortable yet still club-appropriate dresses in my closet and a pair of black high heel boots. Since the weather outside is below freezing, I also opt for a pair of tights. This won’t keep me that warm, but I know that I will be warmer than Caroline who is dressed in a short strapless dress, open-toe shoes and a light summer jacket. There’s no scarf or hat in sight.

  “You’re going to get pneumonia going out like that,” I say.

  “Hey, go big or go home,” she says with a smile. “Besides, we’re just going to go in and out of a cab.

  “And what if we have to wait outside in a line?”

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  Half an hour later, I find myself in the warmth of a hopping club, where sweat quickly starts to roll down the small of my back. I immediately regret the tights, and the closed-toe boots, but there isn’t much to do about it. Luckily, they have a coat check.

  After Caroline and I get our drinks at the bar, we start dancing. I brace myself for the headache that I’m sure is about to come on at any moment now. I’ve never had a migraine, but I am prone to annoying pain at the back of my head especially when I find myself in hot, crowded places. But as we start dancing, something unlikely happens. The tension in my shoulders quickly starts to vanish. One song replaces another and we start to dance harder. I no longer care that I’m drenched in sweat. I’m just enjoying moving my body to the beat and lose myself in the music. I completely forget to worry about a possible headache and an hour later, when we take a little break to get another drink, I realize that I never got one.

  As we wait for our drinks, my feet continue to move to the music. I hate to admit it, but coming dancing actually did improve my mood. Somehow, it lifted all of my worries away and made me forget about all the things that I’ve been obsessing about for the last few days.

  Chapter 28 - Ellie

  When this isn’t such a good idea…

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” Caroline yells into my ear over the music. Still, I barely hear her.

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  I head back out to the dance floor and lose myself in the crowd. M
ost people are paired off into couples, grinding on each other as a prelude to what is to come later. But I feel totally content dancing by myself. There isn’t much separation between me and everyone else so it’s not like I’m all alone in front of the world. No, this feels good. More than good. Amazing. As my body moves to the beats blaring from the speakers, I lose myself in the expression. Words and thoughts melt into my physical experience and I’m able to show the crappiness that I’ve felt about the breakup through my movements.

  I’ve taken dancing lessons when I was a little girl, but I’m not much of a dancer. Still, in this moment, it finally hits me why some people are so driven to dance. The exhilarating feeling seems to fill every crevice and molecule of my body. And for the first time since he called off the engagement, I feel like maybe I’m going to survive this after all.

  I don’t know how much time passes as I dance, but when I look down at my phone, I realize that it has been more than forty minutes since Caroline left.

  I head straight there. Slowly, I make my way through the crowd, which only intensifies near the bathrooms.

  “Hey, the line starts back there,” a girl says when I almost get to the entrance.

  “I’m just looking for a friend,” I explain and walk past them toward the stalls.

  “Caroline?”

  The bathroom is actually quite spacious with more than twenty stalls. I can’t imagine how long the line would be if it weren’t this big.

  “Caroline!” I yell when I spot her sitting at the far end of the waiting and makeup area, on the floor, behind the couches.

  The couches are overflowing with women in gorgeous dresses laughing and talking amongst themselves, paying absolutely no attention to the tears streaming down Caroline’s face.

  “What’s wrong?” I run over.

  “I don’t know,” she mumbles through the tears. “I just started crying and I couldn’t stop.”

  “Did something happen?” I ask and immediately regret it. Of course, something happened. It happened back in Maine and being here has just brought it all back up to the surface.

  “I don’t know,” Caroline mumbles as I wipe her tears. “This guy came up and hit on me while I was in line. He was very sweet and ridiculously hot and I just couldn’t deal with it. I wanted him to leave, but we were both in line and…I just felt trapped.”

  She chokes up when she says the last bit and my heart breaks for her.

  “C’mon, let’s get out of here,” I say, helping her up.

  “But you were having such a good time.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” I lie. “I was just pretending because I thought you were.”

  “Really?’

  “Yes, of course. It’s hard for me to be out here. I just don’t think either of us are ready to party quite yet.”

  She smiles. “This is just dancing. I’m not sure it’s much of a party.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, shaking my head. “I see that you’re not that upset since you still have the energy to make fun of me.”

  “Oh, you know, I love you.”

  Caroline and I walk hand in hand to the coat check. I get her ticket and hold her up as we wait for other people ahead of us to get their coats. The fact that everything around here has a line makes it feel like Disneyland, but with no kids. I want to ask her more about how she’s feeling while we wait, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. Instead, we talk about what we’re going to do when we get home. Neither of us are really sleepy, so we decide to rent a couple of stupid movies on Amazon and watch them.

  “What kind of movie do you want to see?” she asks.

  “I don’t care. As long as it’s stupid and mindless,” I say. Caroline starts to go through possible options on her phone. I tune her out a bit and look around. There are happy couples all around. Some have known each other for some time. Others have just met and are just at the beginning of whatever their relationship is going to be. It might last only a few hours and they will never see each other again. It might last until morning, a few months, or a lifetime. That’s the thing about meeting the love of your life, isn’t it? You never know when and where it will happen.

  And that’s when I see him.

  He walks past me and into the main dancing area of the club. The thing that makes my heart sink is not that he’s here, but the fact that there’s a gorgeous blonde with her arm around his shoulder. She gives him a peck on the cheek as they walk past us and whispers something funny into his ear.

  “I have to go,” I say to Caroline. My chest seizes up and I can’t breathe.

  “What? But you need to get your coat.”

  I manage to press both coat check tickets into her hand before everything turns to black. My feet carry me outside where the cold air hits me like a ton of bricks. I can’t catch my breath and I feel like I’m going to pass out. I want to run, get away from this place as fast as possible, but my chest seizes up and all I can do is kneel down to the ground and wrap my arms around my knees.

  “Ellie?” Aiden asks. “Are you okay?”

  Chapter 29 - Aiden

  When I see a light at the end of the tunnel…

  I never knew that it would be so difficult to be unemployed. I’ve never not worked before. Even though I seemed like a slacker growing up, not paying much attention in school and turning in many homework assignments late, I spent all of my free time working on computers. And once I started Owl, that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing. The idea of working for forty hours a week was pretty foreign. I typically put in at least sixty hours. But the thing about doing something you love is that it doesn’t really feel like work. Sometimes it does, you get tired and need a break. But most of the time, the work itself fuels the sleepless nights. If I couldn’t sleep, I would just get up and work through it.

  And now? Well, now things are different. I’m not allowed to set foot in my company. I stopped contacting people who I considered my closest friends because most wouldn’t respond to my emails and calls. In a matter of a few weeks, my whole life has been hijacked. Taken. Kidnapped. All I’m left with is a huge severance package and a signed non-disclosure agreement promising never to talk about any of this again.

  Poor me, right? God, all of this makes me sick to my stomach. I’m actually complaining when there are lots of people out there who get fired without so much as a good-bye. They aren’t given millions of dollars of their company’s money to just go away. When they are told to get the hell out at Christmas, they get to go home wondering how the hell they’re going to afford their kids presents that year and pay rent. Or their health care insurance payment.

  I know that I’m incredibly lucky, but I still can’t help but feel like shit. I walk around my apartment and suddenly hate the cold, modern way in which it’s decorated. When I first hired the woman who did it for me, I loved this look. Contemporary and rich. Everything is a tone of silver, white and grey. But now the place just reminds me of a hospital. And not even a hospital, the morgue. The sterility of this place makes me sick to my stomach.

  I’m lost. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with myself now. Owl was my life for all of my adult life. How am I supposed to just pick myself up and start something else? I guess I could get a job. But who the hell is going to hire a washed up CEO who got fired from one of the biggest start ups around? Besides, I’m pretty unqualified for basically every position out there. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that I don’t really need the money.

  No, the only way forward with any of this is to start something else. But the thought of that is too daunting to consider. I’m still mourning what I had lost, or what was taken from me. And I don’t mean just Owl.

  I try to focus all of my thinking on the company because thinking about her is just too painful. I made a horrible, irreversible mistake for which I know that she will never forgive me for. I hardly forgive myself for it. Breaking off my engagement with Ellie was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I want her
back more than anything. I should’ve told her how I was feeling. I should’ve opened up to her about everything that I’ve been going through. But instead, I acted like a coward. I pushed her away. And now it’s too late. She has probably moved on, or she will very soon. She’s gorgeous and kind and when she walks into a room, she lights it up. Frankly, she deserves a lot more than me. She deserves someone outgoing and patient and loving. Someone who will treat her like the queen that she is, rather than cause her pain. She deserves someone who isn’t a fuck up, someone who has their life together. I mean, what can I really offer her besides money? My eternal devotion and love, yes. But is that enough to get past all the shit that I come with as well? I don’t know.

  My buzzer rings. It’s John and Annie and I let them up. They storm into my apartment like a hurricane, carrying bags of takeout and sweet gifts. I can’t resist grabbing a cupcake from my favorite place down in Chelsea and stuffing it in my mouth. John is one of the Vice-Presidents from Owl, a guy I’ve known since I first hired him straight out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Annie is his fiancée. They’ve been together since high school. They are one of those couples that have never broken up once and have been eternally and blissfully happy since they first met. Annie’s parents went through a bad divorce so the fact that they are only recently engaged is all of her doing. John has told me that if she had let him, he would’ve married her after their senior prom.

  John and Annie are here to make me feel better. John complains about work and how busy things are at Owl and the bad direction that they’re taking under the new CEO. I appreciate his efforts, but I doubt things are really that bad. Annie dances around the topic of Ellie without coming straight out and asking about her. When she finally does ask how I’m dealing with the breakup, I can’t help but lie. Even though they’re my close friends, how can I just come out and say that life isn’t worth living without her?