by S. L. Naeole
It was impossible not to blush at the term of endearment. He’d always said I was like the daughter he’d never had and had been as simultaneously hard on me as he had been supportive, just like a father should be. I’d always known it. I’d always felt it. From the moment we met, he’d always looked at me like one of his own. But it took looking at him on that balcony, seeing that faint dusting of sadness coating his eyes for me to realize that I looked at him as one of my own, too.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” I told him before grabbing my purse and leaving. He nodded and raised his wine glass at me in farewell. I left his apartment and headed to the elevator, the ride down quiet and lonely. The garage, too, was quiet and as I climbed into the Clam II, the sharp sting of loneliness bit into me even as prickles of awareness once again floated over the back of my neck.
My hand slammed down on the lock on the car door and as I popped the key into the ignition and turned, I could have sworn I saw a flicker of movement in the rearview mirror. Having seen one too many horror and suspense flicks in my lifetime, I put the car into gear and drove out, trying my best not to wince at the stark black tire marks I left behind in my wake on the pristine cement floor of Del’s parking stall.
Thursday’s soft opening went off without a hitch. All members of the art department were present, mingling and enjoying hors d'oeuvres as we walked through the gallery to see our hard work presented on the walls of MOAT. I had no responsibilities, nothing to do except admire what my team and I had accomplished, the artwork shining like the stars they were while we all beamed because we’d helped ensure it.
The theater department was also there because this was a joint exhibit, and as I walked around carrying my plate of canapes, I tried to find Holly. After an hour of searching, I’d come up empty and instead settled near the Degas with Vonne and Lara, who were both talking animatedly to one of the dancers cast to reenact the scene in the painting.
“It doesn’t matter who wins, though. It’s rigged! The judges already decided who was going to win the first day!” Henrietta, the dancer, had one hand weaving through the air, punctuating each word with a slash of finger and wrist.
“You can’t say that when they voted off Isis Oliver last week,” Lara argued. At the name of Lara’s favorite contestant on the dancing competition she was absolutely obsessed about, I rolled my eyes.
“It’s just a show,” I said to their fuming glares. “They’re all getting paid no matter what and it’s given them all exposure. I’m pretty sure Isis isn’t going to care too much about coming in third place if it means a fat paycheck and a dance contract with the show for the next nine months.”
Henrietta snorted. “Shows what you know. Isis doesn’t need the show, which is why they voted her off. Her rich boyfriend takes care of her and she only competed to prove that she could make the cut. Everyone knows this.”
“Everyone in the dance world,” Vonne cut in. “Ria’s too busy dealing with art collectors and rare paintings to pay attention to the banality of reality television.”
Smiling at the defensiveness of my friend, I shrugged at Henrietta. “I really don’t care, honestly, who wins or loses. I just want my DVR back so I can finally record that miniseries PBS did on Sandro Botticelli.”
“Just watch it online,” Henrietta said with a laugh.
I smiled flatly. “I don’t go online.”
Leaving her to sputter in shock, I turned and started toward the ballroom to see how the setup was going when I saw Del standing beside a beautiful woman with flowing black hair and a figure that men like Botticelli painted by heart. Intrigued, I headed over to them, a smile lifting on my face so that when Del saw me, he’d see that I didn’t feel at all awkward by what happened last night in his apartment.
When he finally did, his eyes widened momentarily before filling instantly with the taint of shame. “Darling, come here and meet my angel, my piccola, my sweet girl, Reina.”
My feet stilled. The woman standing beside him turned, and immediately I saw it, the shape of her eyes, the curve of her mouth. She was Delmonico in miniature, delicate and feminine with the same fire and passion behind those black eyes. Delmonico’s daughter. The daughter he never told me existed. “Reina,” I managed to say. “How lovely it is to finally meet you.”
A cough dragged my gaze up to Del’s, the lie I’d just told an acknowledgment that I was hurt. “I was away with my mum,” Reina’s sweet voice broke through. “And wasn’t allowed to travel to the states until now. I would have arrived on the plane with my father but I had one more class to finish before I could leave. And which one are you?”
Which one. As in, “which one of my dad’s employees are you?” Not, “you must be Ria, he’s told me so much about you.”
I glanced up at Del once more and kept the smile plastered on my face. “I’m Victoria,” I said, ignoring the flinch I saw in Del’s face. Oh, he didn’t like that, did he? Good.
“He’s never spoken of you, I’m afraid, but he did say that he has so many people working under him that sometimes he gets their faces mixed up.” She wasn’t sneering. Her voice wasn’t tinged with malice. In fact, I detected pity in her voice that her father had failed to mention me.
“Reina, this is Ria. My Ria. The one I told you about,” Del said quickly, his eyes filled with a silent plea to understand.
Instantly Reina’s demeanor changed, her eyes widening in surprise and then…joy as she leaned in and gave me a quick hug and peck on my cheek. “Ria! Papa has spoken of you so much I think of you like a sister. Every single day it’s ‘Ria this’ and ‘Ria that’ and I was beginning to think that you were a ghost who didn’t exist because he refused to show me pictures of you.”
My eyes returned to Del’s and I blinked with awareness, a shaky breath of relief streaming out of me that I hadn’t even been aware I’d been holding. “I told you, she doesn’t like taking pictures,” Del said before I could respond.
“Yes, but most people at least have one photo of their friends, Papa. Oh look, there’s that Degas you were telling me about. How splendid.” And without another word, she left Del and me to deal with the fallout of his omission.
“Ri, I need to explain,” he began. A part of me wanted to shake my head and deny him the chance, but I wasn’t that person. I couldn’t be that person to him. Seeing that I hadn’t stopped him, he continued. “Reina is my daughter. But until a few years ago I didn’t know she existed and she didn’t want to know me when I found out.”
My face fell flat at his words, at the absurdity of them. “Really? You’re going with the unknown daughter defense?” I hissed.
He shook his head and then pulled out something from inside his jacket pocket. I immediately recognized it as a copy of the photo he had in his desk of DeiDei. “Reina…”
A huff of impatience left me. “What? DeiDei’s twin? DeiDei’s baby sister? I don’t know anything about DeiDei since you refuse to talk about him so what am I supposed to glean from his photo, Del?”
My voice was low, but the tone of it, the sheer irritation that flowed out of me had drawn the attention of several people around us. Seeing this, Del grabbed me by my arm and tried to pull me toward an unoccupied corner. Instantly, the contact flipped the switch of memory on within me and the influx of panic swept over me like a tsunami.
I pulled back, my voice pulling in tightly through my throat in a strangled scream. Terror filled his face as he let go, his eyes dropping to his hand and then flying back up at me, an apology on his lips.
Too late.
Too fucking late.
I turned around and bolted out of the museum, hearing his voice call out after me. Ignoring it, I ran down the employee hallway to the exit. I got into my car and, thankful that the key was on the lanyard with my employee ID, I started the car. The back parking lot designated for employees was full, and as I peeled out I saw the unmistakable shape of Holly’s Honda near the end of the lot. I should have stayed. I should have hunted her down t
o talk.
But I was too overcome with fear.
Holly could wait.
I needed darkness. I needed to be alone.
I drove home.
I stumbled into the apartment, slammed my bedroom door, and then crawled under the safety of my comforter. I didn’t wake up until noon the next day. When I did, I saw that my phone had been plugged in and resting on my nightstand, my purse perched on the end of my dresser. A note was stuck to the mirror in Vonne’s handwriting letting me know that Del had explained everything and that I was not to worry about coming in until the gala.
“Fuck that,” I spat, but then groaned because there was no way I could miss the gala. I’d worked too hard on it, worked too hard on the Degas, and so did my coworkers.
With a sigh, I moved to grab my phone. It was blinking like a strobe light and as I unlocked it and started going through my emails and messages I saw why. Immediately I dealt with my work emails by forwarding them all to Del. He was back now; let him deal with logistical bullshit.
My personal email inbox showed dozens of spam emails in the junk mail box, and two emails from unknown senders that held attachments. I deleted them because I knew better than to open emails with attachments from people I didn’t know. Next, I tackled my voicemail because it had already beeped in warning at being full.
Frustrated, annoyed, and slightly hungover from disappointment and hurt, I pressed play, hitting the speaker icon so that I didn’t have to hold the phone to my ear.
“Hello, Victoria. I don’t know why you’re avoiding my messages but if it is something I did, please let me know so that I can fix it. You’ve made it impossible for me to think without hearing your voice or seeing a text from you, and that’s not good for business. I miss you.”
Oh, that voice. That voice melted me. It destroyed me. It made me want.
“Victoria, it’s been two days since I’ve heard from you. I’m worried. Please let me know that you’re okay. I have a surprise for you. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”
My heart ached to call him, to tell him that yes, I was okay, but the minute I heard him say name I knew I’d be lost. I needed to speak to Holly before anything went further between Michael and me. I owed it to my friend. I owed it to Michael. I owed it to myself.
“Sweetheart, I don’t know what I did, but whatever it is I am sorry. I’ve missed you this week. Lyle will be picking you up tonight and I’ll meet you at the gala since my flight does not arrive until six. I…can’t wait to see you.”
Groaning at the reminder that he was going to be there, I rolled over on the bed and listened to the rest of my messages, deleting as I went because with a full inbox, no one else could leave me any messages at all. I hesitated when the time came to delete his messages, wanting to keep them so that I could hear his voice over and over again, but even as I contemplated doing so, I could see Holly’s last voicemail sitting in that list right beneath the first one from him.
I stared at the two numbers resting one on top of the other, one message full of heartache and the unspoken accusation of betrayal, the other full of longing and concern. The thin line that separated the two mirrored perfectly the fragile hold I had on these two people, one who had been important to me for so long, and the other who was becoming important to me whether I wanted him to or not.
“Fuck!” I shouted to the ceiling.
Soft knocking sounded at my door. I answered numbly for them to come in. I lifted my head to the doorway and inhaled sharply at the figure standing in the doorway. My heart ached painfully and I stood, my body acting automatically as I threw myself into Holly’s arms. She embraced me back, her sobs into my shoulder easing a week’s worth of hurt and burdening me with two years of her own heartache and pain.
“I’m so sorry,” I said into her hair. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m such a bitch,” she said in return, her body shaking.
“No, I’m the bitch,” I replied.
We stood there, each of us sobbing, each of us refuting the other’s claim of ultimate bitch and insisting on claiming the title for our own until we were both blubbering and needing to sit down because crying and admitting to absolute bitchery was exhausting. So we sat, our legs tangled together and not giving a damn because it didn’t matter.
“Fuck, Ria, I feel like such a shit.”
“Why?” I demanded to know. “I’m the one who put a guy before our friendship. I’m the one that fucked up.”
Her head shook in disagreement. “Nu-uh. I’m the one that put a guy first. I put how I felt about Michael before our friendship. I was thinking about how I felt about him, and not about how the two of you felt for each other. Fuck, Ria, when I saw the two of you together last week, when I saw how you ran to him, how you held him and kissed him, it was like I was being stabbed.”
“Oh, Holly, no,” I cried, feeling the hurt she experienced as if it were my own. “I’m so sorry.”
She laughed and then sobbed before laughing again. “No, you don’t understand. It hurt because I could feel how wrong I was and how much this could screw things up with you. He wants you. I see that. He wants you in a way that he’s never wanted anyone else and I was trying to convince you that he didn’t, because I was mad that he didn’t want me that way and jealous that I was just like every other woman to him and you weren’t.”
The crack in my voice was prominent and sharp when I refused to accept her blame. “It hurts you too much to see us together. I can’t do that to you, Holly. You’re my friend. You come first.”
She reached for my hands then and took them, shaking them so hard that the vibrations rattled through me. “Stop. Stop, Ria. I don’t come first. Neither does Vonne, Kara, or Lara. When it comes to your life, you come first. You. You have such tremendous guilt over what happened all those years ago that you think you owe us, you think you owe all of us your life, but you don’t. You didn’t make us come out here. You didn’t even ask us to. We chose to come here and none of us regret it, okay? None of us.
“And yeah, it hurt me to see you two together. I’m not gonna bullshit you on that. But you know what else hurt me? The realization that choosing him was you finally doing something for yourself and I was taking it away because I’m a jealous, catty bitch. Not once in eight years have you looked as happy as you did that day in the parking lot. Not once in eight years have you ever—” she gasped, her eyes growing wide, as if the very tough of air in her lungs burned “—ever let a man touch you like that.
“Shit, Ria, I almost ran down and beat the crap out of him because I thought he was going to send you into a full-blown panic attack when I saw his hands on you, but then you smiled. Oh, fuck…”
She looked up at the ceiling, her eyes fat with tears. “When I saw you smile, it was like…like a cloud that had been hanging over all of our heads finally moved aside a little so that you could finally feel the sun. I was still mad, still hurt, but not as much because I was happier than angry if that makes any sense to you. I was happy that you were happy. I just couldn’t tell you yet because I wasn’t ready.
“Then when I heard Lara and Vonne talking yesterday about how you’d been avoiding Michael’s calls and messages, and how he’s been calling them to check up on you, make sure that you’re okay and everything, I knew that you’d chosen me and I felt fucking elated. You chose me over the guy who’d broken my heart but who fixed yours, and I guess I wanted to be selfish a little longer because, like the bitch that I am, I was still mad at you. Chicks before dicks and all that. But I’m sorry. I’ll never stop being sorry for that, Ria.
“But then last night, when I saw Del grab you—”
“You saw? You were there?” I gasped.
She nodded and wiped at her eyes. “I’ve always been around, just trying to hide so that I wouldn’t have to be the bigger woman and admit that I’d fucked up. But last night, after Del, when I saw your face…God, Ria, it all finally clicked home with me. You need Michael. You need him more than I need to feel angry an
d jealous. He makes you feel safe. You let him touch you. You let him hold you. You let him kiss you. That’s like finding the goddamn fountain of youth, okay? It’s myth, it’s legend. And don’t you dare tell him I said that or so help me I’ll design an entire fucking line of tutus for sheep and name them after him.”
I couldn’t help it and laughed, a bubble of snot blowing out of my nose. Holly shrieked at the sight and we both erupted into loud, hiccup-laced laughter, our bodies braced against each other and the doorframe. Her face was puffy. Mine was probably equally swollen if not more so.
We sat there on the floor, laughing, sniffling, wiping snot on our arms and squealing in disgust at each other before laughing some more. It was beautiful, and I became drunk on the sensation of giddiness. I didn’t lose Holly. I wouldn’t lose her. And I won’t have to give up Michael, either.
Suddenly my body tensed as my evil subconscious conjured up a speed bump the size of a sperm whale. “What about the harassment claim?”
Immediately her joy dissipated. “I feel like such an idiot. I thought...after that night, I thought that we had a connection. I thought that what I saw in him he also saw in me. So when he didn’t call me, or stop by to see me, I was hurt. I was so goddamn hurt. I called his office but I never got past the receptionists. My pride was hurt, my heart was broken, and I felt so damn confused, but I didn’t go crazy. I swear, I didn’t go all stalker on him. I just...I let time heal me, I guess you could say. I got over him. Until—”
My mouth turned down as I finished for her, “Until me.”
Nodding, she started drawing circles on her thigh with her finger. “So I did something stupid. I started calling his office again, telling those receptionists who’d never even let me past their pearly gates of bitchiness that their boss was a jerk who was going to break my best friend’s heart. I even cornered him at MOAT one day after he’d stood you up and gave him a piece of my mind. I told him that he wasn’t going to do to you what he did to me and when he denied ever sleeping with me I...I kinda lost it and called him a hobag twatwaffle and told him to stay away from you. He filed the complaint that day and Tobias and Gladys came to see me soon after so I told them about you.”
