by S. L. Naeole
She shook her head in denial, tears welling up in her eyes and spilling over onto her cheeks and then her dress, her hands clasped over her flat belly protectively. “I don’t know anything about you…except that you’re a liar. You’re a goddamn liar!”
Roy took Holly into her arms as he put himself between her and Lyle. “I think you should leave.”
“I have to explain. Please, let me explain,” Lyle countered but Roy wasn’t having it.
“Either you go now, on your own, or I get my brothers to kick your ass and drag you out of here like a used tampon. It’s my fucking wedding day and I don’t want to get violent in front of my wife and in-laws so don’t make me.”
With a resigned nod, Lyle turned and began walking toward the exit. He paused long enough to glance up at me. “I am sorry for what my family put you through. I truly am. For what it’s worth, I never lied to you about anything. Especially about Mal.”
With that, he was gone, and I had to put aside my fury, my confusion, and my hurt because Holly—pregnant Holly—was sobbing in the arms of the groom while the bride stared at me, waiting for an explanation.
I drove Holly home and tucked her into my bed. I slept by her side and woke up the next morning to find her clinging to my toilet bowl, her face a puffy mess.
“When are you going to tell the others?” I asked her as I pulled her hair back and tied it into a messy ponytail.
She groaned against the rim. “He told you?”
“He seemed quite excited about it. Genuinely excited, really.”
Tears slipped from her eyes, across her nose, and then dripped into the toilet. “I know he did. We both are…were…are. We’d already chosen names—Tori for a girl and Brandon for a boy—and he’d asked me to move in with him. Move into his new place that has enough room for a nursery and studio. It was gonna be great. I had this picture of a happy family, a happy life, and now…”
Her face puckered before she gagged and began vomiting again. I sat beside her, rubbing her back in gentle circles. “Now you’ll still have a happy family. Kara, Lara, Vonne and me, plus your parents. We’re your family. This baby will never want for love and affection, Holls. Never.”
She forced a smile across her lips before bursting into harsh sobs. “But how can I have his kid? How can I give birth to another fucking McAvery? Their entire family is evil!”
“Then don’t give birth to a McAvery,” I told her with a soft, sad smile. “Give birth to a Chang. A little Tori or Brandon Chang, with gorgeous dark hair and fabulous taste in clothes.”
Her eyes were filled with sadness, even as her mouth quirked up in a smile. “It’s about time we traded places,” she joked as she glanced at her position in front of the toilet and mine beside it.
My head tossed from side to side as the ache of guilt tugged at my heart. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to have prevented this from happening, Holly. Even if it meant never meeting Mal in the first place.”
Resting her forehead on the rim of the toilet seat, she sighed heavily. “I know.”
We sat on the floor of my bathroom together for a while. Her stomach kept churning and between intervals of vomiting, dry heaves, and groans of nausea and pain, we talked. We talked about Mal, about Franklyn, and about Lyle. She opened up about how quickly and deeply she’d fallen for him, and how devastated she was now that she knew the truth.
If anyone understood how she felt, it was me.
“I feel like I’ve been slapped by a pair of donkey balls during holy communion,” she muttered, her voice hoarse from all the barfing.
Chuckling, I reminded her that she wasn’t even Catholic. She frowned and stuck out her tongue. “That’s what makes it even more embarrassing. All those people…Kara’s whole family. The priest!”
My ass was hurting on the cold tile floor so I shifted as I pointed out that being lied to in front of a priest doesn’t make her the bad guy. “If anyone’s gonna have to be asking for forgiveness for his sins, it’s going to be Lyle. He’s the one who fucked up, Holly. He’s the one who should be embarrassed.”
She acknowledged this with a nod and then sighed. “But I’m the one still in love with him. Isn’t that embarrassing? Isn’t that fucked up?”
Shaking my head I sighed right along with her. “No more fucked up than me still loving Mal.”
Holly lifted her head. “But Mal didn’t do anything, Ria. Lyle might not have told me the truth about who he was, but I know he wasn’t lying when he said that Mal hadn’t betrayed you. Mal loves you. Like, really, truly loves you.”
I knew this. I knew this before he’d even took one step away from me. I’d been fooling myself from the moment I’d gotten on that plane, trying to convince myself that he hadn’t really cared about me, that every word he’d said to me had been a lie. The question I’d refused to answer was why, and I’d refused because I knew why.
If he’d actually betrayed me, it would give me no choice but to break things off with him. I could leave without a guilty conscience. I could leave and it would be alright. No one would claim that I was running away again. He wouldn’t be able to accuse me of running away again. Because that’s what I’d wanted to do. I’d wanted to run away from the future he’d offered up to me, the future that had made him so blissfully happy because that future meant being exposed again to the public.
I was exposed anyway, dumbass. Not being with him didn’t save me. Him hating me didn’t save me. Being apart from him only hurt me.
A part of me wondered if being apart hurt him, too. A large part of me.
Sighing, I looked at Holly and pushed away the clump of hair that had gathered over her eyes. “Mal walked away from me, so whether he loves me or not is moot. We’re done. It’s over.”
That was the first time I’d said the words, the first time I’d acknowledged them, and in doing so I opened up a floodgate of emotions I hadn’t realized still existed. This was more than heartache. This was more than pain.
This was complete and utter devastation.
“Have you tried calling him?” Holly asked as my body began to shake, her hand reaching out to cover my trembling one. I stayed quiet for a while, trying to find the way to answer the question without bringing up the fiery pain that had filled up my chest and drove me to my knees at the memory of the truth I didn’t even want to admit, even in the solitude and privacy of my own head.
Yes, I had called him. Once on his cell phone and once at his New York office. The call to his cell had gone straight to voicemail, where an automated voice told me that the box was full before the phone promptly clicked off. The office call? Having his receptionist Preeta put me on an exasperatingly long hold only to return and inform me that he wasn’t accepting any personal calls at the office felt like a slap in the face. The fact that I could practically hear the smug smile in her voice as she told me that only made things worse.
But then I did the one thing I told myself I’d never do. I went online, searched the number for Hannah on Twenty and then called. I asked to speak to Ralph, who took the call with noticeable reservation. He still transferred my call to Hannah’s desk, however, and no matter the outcome, I knew I’d always be grateful for that. Unfortunately, even Hannah had been informed that Mal wasn’t taking any personal calls and that I should call his cell phone if I wanted to get in touch with him. Those words were like a knife to my heart, because it was confirmation that he didn’t want to talk to me at all.
Avoiding Holly’s gaze, I told her what I could. “It wouldn’t matter if I called or not. He hates me. I accused him of being a part of whatever sick game that Franklyn was playing. I didn’t trust him enough to believe him when he said I was wrong. I didn’t trust him enough to hear his explanation. That was the only thing he ever really wanted from me, you know. He wanted my trust and I couldn’t give it to him. It was a betrayal of the worst kind.”
Holly’s voice was soft, sweet, and slightly rough due to her vomiting. “Oh, honey. You couldn’t give your t
rust to him because you didn’t know how. If he knew you, if he loved you as much as he says he does then he’d understand.”
Sniffling, I nodded automatically, because that’s what you do when one of your closest friends tells you something that made sense, something that was logical and sound, even if you didn’t agree or didn’t want to hear it. But what I couldn’t explain to her, what she wouldn’t get is that he did know me. He knew me better than anyone. He knew me better than she did, and that was because he’d reached me in a way that only he could. He’d touched a part of me that I’d kept hidden from everyone. He’d made me see myself in ways that no one else had. My life up until the day I’d met him had simply been one long loop of concessions in the name of safety. I’d conceded my life to being nothing more than it was.
He’d made me see life as more than that. He’d given me freedom in a way that no one and nothing else had, and showed me that I’d been the keeper of the keys the whole time. He’d made me yearn, he’d made me want, he’d made me love, and then he showed me what it was to be yearned for, to be wanted, to be loved. To me, that was everything.
He was everything.
“Well, whether he understands me or not doesn’t matter,” I said, hearing the blubbering in my voice, feeling the tears as they fell down my face in hot rivulets of emotion. “And besides, it’s you that we should be worrying about. Mama,” I nudged.
She smiled at me again, her face as puffy and swollen as mine felt. “Mama. I like that.”
It was impossible not to smile back at her enthusiasm despite the horror of finding out who Lyle really was. “You’re gonna be a great mom, Holly. This kid is going to be the luckiest and most loved kid in the world and is never gonna want for anything.”
Her head bobbed up and down, but her eyes said something different as she wiped her mouth and struggled to stand, the nausea finally gone. “I know…but what if what this kid wants is for its mom and dad to be together? And what if I want that, too? Even after everything?”
I stood to the side while she rinsed her mouth out and washed her face, unable to answer the question because I knew what she wanted meant, and I was selfish enough to not want it.
The next morning, a large bouquet of flowers arrived at the apartment for Holly. Her momentary burst of joy at the sight of them dissipated, however, when she read the card and learned they weren’t from Lyle but, instead, from Kara, who’d felt bad that she couldn’t be with Holly with the rest of us since she was on her honeymoon in Mexico.
Since Vonne had moved her things into Kara’s old room, Holly had her bedroom all to herself and I put the vase on the nightstand next to her bed. She was working at her desk and murmured a soft thanks without looking up at them or me once. Taking her hint that she wanted to be alone, I left her and returned to my bedroom.
It was Christmas, but our tradition of eating Chinese take-out together and opening presents afterward was still hours away. Vonne was having brunch with some of the musicians of the MOAT’s orchestra like she did every year, while Lara had spent the night with her parents at their hotel. Del was spending Christmas with his daughter Reina but would join us later to exchange gifts.
I had nothing to do and my eyes kept traveling to the box on my dresser. The box from Mal.
Opening it was out of the question, I’d told myself. If I did, then it would be me acknowledging the fact that this would be the last gift he’d ever give me, the last thing I’d ever receive from him besides the cold shoulder. The act of pulling apart that simple bow and undoing that neat wrapping would signal the end of everything and I wasn’t ready for that.
I also didn’t want what was in it. Whatever it was, it seemed wrong somehow. Last night’s conversation with Holly had finally driven home something that I’d avoided for too long: I wasn’t anything to Mal anymore. Accepting his gift would have just felt like a lie, and I was done with them.
I was done with the secrets and the self-imposed ignorance. So I began doing something I swore I wouldn’t do unless absolutely necessary. I googled. I googled like a fiend. I searched my name and my hand flew to my mouth in shock. I’d expected to see the pictures of me, the videos as I had that day in Holly’s parents’ house. I’d prepared myself for them as best as I could. But I wasn’t prepared to see that they were gone.
Instead, there were links to articles—recent ones—that discussed what had happened in that basement eight years ago. There were no click-bait headlines, nothing salacious. I clicked on one and began to read, my eyes widening in shock with each line. Soon my entire body was shaking, and my eyes were continuously fuzzy with tears. Every word filtered through the haze of emotions so thick they coated the back of my throat and slid down my face in snotty streams. I watched news videos, vlogs, and listened to podcasts. For the next couple of hours, I was a woman possessed. A woman obsessed. A woman in disbelief, shock, and regret.
A loud knocking sounded at the front door. I hurried out of my room to answer it. I admit that a part of me hoped that when the door swung open, Mal would be standing on the other side, a contrite look on his face, a pair of arms open and inviting for me to rush into. I wanted to see his face, hear his voice, hold him.
So when I opened that door, I did so with a full smile, one that I hoped conveyed my own sense of contrition and hope. Instead, another delivery man stood there, a box and a tablet at the ready for me to accept and sign.
“Package for Kara Travis,” the man said with a false smile.
“More wedding presents,” I said, doing nothing to hide my obvious disappointment before taking the package and reaching for the pen he offered. “I wasn’t aware how many people worked for Christmas. We just had flowers delivered not that long ago.”
He huffed. “This is New York, lady. Business never stops.”
I signed the electronic tablet. “I guess not, huh?”
He shrugged and then left without another word. I wished him a merry Christmas but all I saw was his back before I closed the door behind him. I took the package and placed it in the closet to give to Kara when she got back from her honeymoon and then popped my head into Holly’s room to let her know who had been at the door.
She gave me a nod before turning her head back to her work, her desk littered with printouts of costume designs. I left her room and returned to mine, seeking the comfort of my private space. This was the quietest, loneliest Christmas I’d had in years. Perhaps ever. And I couldn’t stand it.
My eyes drifted back to the box on my dresser again. It had been delivered by the same company that had just dropped off Kara’s wedding gift, the original box still sitting beside the prettily wrapped one. Suddenly an idea popped into my head. A really bad idea.
I reached for my phone and scrolled through my contacts list. Once I found the number I was looking for, I pressed the small green phone icon to dial it and waited for the call to go through. One ring. Two.
Then…
“Lachlan Conglomerate. This is Preeta speaking. How may I help you?”
I immediately hung up and sprang into action.
The elevator wasn’t crowded, but there were still a surprising number of people in it considering that it was Christmas. A jazzy rendition of Carol of the Bells was streaming through the speakers and I couldn’t resist the urge to hum along.
The doors opened on the twentieth floor and all but two of the passengers exited the car. We hit the forty-eighth floor and then I was alone with a woman carrying a box of Christmas cupcakes. She left on the fifty-second floor. Alone, I moved up closer to the doors and waited until the elevator stopped at the top. The doors slid open and I stepped out into the reception area of the executive offices of Mal’s building.
Immediately I felt eyes on me and I turned my head to see Preeta glaring. Inhaling deeply, I turned to face her, returning her stare with a smile. It might not have been a genuine one, but it certainly wasn’t going to match the blatant scowl she was giving me.
I took the five steps toward the rece
ptionist’s desk. “Hi, Preeta. I know he’s not expecting me, but could you let Michael know that I’m here?”
Her eyes visibly rolled as she put a headset over her ears and reached forward and pressed a button on the console in front of her. She looked at me before speaking. “Mr. Lachlan, there’s a visitor up front to see you. Yes. No, sir. No. I’m sure. Yes. Okay. I’ll send her in.”
She removed the headset and then said in a syrupy sweet voice, “He’s waiting for you in his office.”
My heart, already a nervous ball of fluttering, leaped into overdrive as I turned on my heel and headed down the long hallway past occupied offices. My eyes quickly noticed that Hannah’s desk was unoccupied and I couldn’t help but smile at the photo that was prominently displayed there of her and Ralph in a double photo frame. Next to it? An ultrasound image.
Another baby.
Without another glance, I turned to face the glass double doors of Mal’s office, noting that they were opaque white instead of crystal clear. I took two deep breaths before putting my hand on the door handle and pushing the door open. It had been months since I’d stepped foot into his office, and a lifetime since I’d felt like I did the moment I saw him. His back was to me, his body turned to face the city below. There was visible tension in his shoulders, his thin shirt hiding nothing as he leaned against the glass, one hand crooked over his head, the other stuffed into his pocket.
I approached his desk and reached into my bag. I grabbed his gift to me and placed it on the blotter, my hand shaking as the images of what had happened there the last time I’d been in this office flashed through my mind.
“I…I just wanted to bring this back to you,” I said in a quiet, unsure voice. “Thank you for…whatever it was, but I can’t accept it. I hope you understand.”
Pausing for a moment, I looked down at my hands, examining the bare finger on my left hand and felt an avalanche of regret hit me. “I also came to tell you that I…I saw that the videos had been taken down. And the pictures. I know you were the reason why. I watched your press conference. I read the articles about Franklyn.”
