Work of Art

by Monica Alexander

  “I’ll go, but I need to tell you something first.”

  I sighed. What else could he possibly have to tell me?

  “What?” I said, probably harsher than I needed to be.

  “Shit, I don’t want to tell you this, but you should know. Your mother was involved.”

  My eyebrows rose involuntarily. “Come again?”

  He ran his hand back through his hair, and I could see how conflicted he was. “My parents paid her money to keep you away from me – and she took it.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “That’s why she kicked me out,” I reasoned, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, I just thought you needed to know, even though it can’t be easy to hear that, I had to tell you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, not even sure what to feel. I’d despised my mother for so long, but I’d still made an effort to have some sort of relationship with her. But now that I knew that she’d sold me out for money, and it made me sick to even think about it. I wish I never would have expelled the effort.

  “I’ll leave you alone now,” Ryan said then, before he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Then he started to walk away. He turned around once after he pressed the button for the elevator. “One day soon we’ll be together. You know it, and I know it. Just say the word, and I’m yours.”

  I almost instantly wrapped my arms around myself in an effort to remain standing. He’d always had the ability to knock me on my ass with just a few words, but I couldn’t let him know that. I just watched him smile at me once before he stepped into the elevator, the whole time thinking how much I didn’t want to let him walk away.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ryan

  I rode the elevator down to the parking garage in Harper’s building feeling lighter than I had in years. Sure, she’d rejected me, but she’d done it because she was protecting herself. That I was damn sure of. She was afraid to get hurt and afraid I wasn’t in the mindset to get involved with her, but she was wrong.

  I loved her. I loved her, and I had feelings for her that were so strong they were like nothing I’d ever felt before. And I knew she loved me. And she’d realize it soon enough.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Brandon. Maybe I’d head out to Sonoma and crash at his winery for a few weeks. I had the time off from work, and I didn’t have much else to do.

  “Dude! Where have you been?”

  “Hiding out and professing my love for a brown haired girl who I really wished you wouldn’t have kissed so much last night.”

  “You finally told her,” he said, as if he was relieved.

  “I told her.”

  “And, is everything good. Are you finally getting laid?”

  “Only if you want to sleep with me,” I threw out as a way of getting back at him for his early morning practical joke.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m crashing at your new place for two weeks. I’m off work, because I was supposed to be on my honeymoon, and the last place I want is to be is at my apartment – alone.”

  I was thinking I might move. Brandon was going to rent an apartment in Harper’s building. Maybe I’d see if there was another two bedroom apartment for rent. I needed to downsize if I was going to cut back on my salary, which was seeming like a pretty definite plan.

  Maybe I’d drive out to Stanford on Monday and see if I could chat with my business school professor from UMass. A faculty recommendation would carry a ton of weight, and I might even be able to start classes in the fall instead of waiting until the spring. But with my MBA, I could teach at a junior college, so perhaps that would be my first stop.

  “Dude, what happened with Harper?”

  “She needs time,” I explained. “And I’ll give it to her. If it means I can be with her in the end, I’ll give her all the time and space she needs.”

  “Right on. I’m so glad I didn’t try to sleep with her,” Brandon said then.

  You’re telling me.

  “Me too, because I would probably be kicking your ass right now if you did.”

  Brandon laughed. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Yeah, and tell me about this weekend in Boston you two had. She’d better not have slept in your bed.”

  Brandon just laughed again

  * * *

  “You okay, bro?” my brother asked when I called him a few days later.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  I sighed. It was the first time I was connecting with anyone in my family since I walked away from them at my wedding. I’d honestly expected my parents or Lisa to reach out, but they hadn’t, and that just strengthened my resolve that I needed to cut them out of my life.

  “Seriously? You’re really okay? You called off your wedding.”

  Thank you, Captain Obvious.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Dude, what the hell happened?! Were you sleeping with Harper Connelly on the side or something?”

  “No!” I said quickly. “Come on, John. After that shit with Courtney last year, you should know me better than that.”

  “Well I thought I did. Shit, you’re my big brother. I’ve looked up to you for years, because you’ve always done the right stuff in life, and it took me years to get to where you are. Then you pull a stunt like calling off your wedding at the last minute. Shit. That’s crazy.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “But I just hit a breaking point. I couldn’t do it.”

  “Yeah, but how did you get to that point? Didn’t you know you didn’t want to marry Trish?”

  I sighed. This was a topic I’d thought about non-stop for the past few days, and I wished like hell I could have found the break sooner.

  “Mom and Dad,” I said, and it sounded so incredibly lame when I heard the words come out of my mouth.

  “What do you mean?” John asked.

  And I realized then how little my brother really knew about the truth. I guess being four years younger than me and then being out of the country for two years didn’t give him quite the insight into our parents’ true perception of me

  “Well, as much as I appreciate your idolization, I don’t think Mom and Dad agree with you.”

  “Like hell they don’t,” he roared. “They’ve shoved all of your accomplishments down my throat for years. They were all ‘Why can’t you be more like Ryan’ and ‘Ryan never made the mistakes you did when he was your age’. It was fucking exhausting to constantly be compared to you.”

  Jesus. My parents really were pieces of work.

  “John, if they were proud of me, they never told me. I was a constant disappointment to them. I fought for years to make them happy, and I think I finally realized a few days ago that if I made them happy, then I was making myself miserable, and I wasn’t going to live my life like that.”

  “Amen to that. So was all that shit you said about Harper getting pregnant for real?”

  I’d forgotten he’d been standing there when I’d gone off on my parents. I’d been so in the moment and so focused on letting them know that I finally knew the truth, that I hadn’t even noticed him.

  “Uh, yeah. It was.”

  “Shit. So you – you had a son?”

  I paused and swallowed. “Yeah, I did.”

  “Man, well, if you ever want to talk about anything, just let me know.”

  I think he knew me well enough to know it was too soon.

  “I will, and listen, since I know you heard everything, you should know that you probably can’t trust Mom and Dad. I never thought our parents would do something like that to any of us, but I guess I underestimated the lengths they’d go to protect what they thought was important, and it wasn’t me if you catch my drift.”

  “Yeah, sure. I hear you,” John said, and I figured he was processing what he’d heard that day all over again. “So, are you and Harper together now?”

  “No,” I said trying to keep the edge out of my voice but not really succeeding. “We’re not together.” And I think my tone was enough to keep his
questions at bay. “Listen, I need to go, but I just wanted to call and check in. I wanted you to know that I’m cutting out Mom and Dad and Lisa, but I’m still your brother, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, and I think he was surprised by how far I was taking this, but I wasn’t messing around. “Well, call me when you can.”

  “I will,” I told him and hung up the phone.

  Then I called Harper. It was the first time I’d reached out to her since I’d left her apartment on Saturday, and a part of me knew she wouldn’t answer the phone, and she wouldn’t call me back, but I had to try. And I’d keep on trying until I finally got ahold of her, because nothing in the world was going to keep me from being with her. I loved her, and it was just that simple.

  * * *

  “Hello?”

  “Courtney,” I said, my voice not as steady as I wanted it to be when I was calling my ex for the first time in almost a year.

  It had been a week since I’d called off my wedding, and I’d been laying low at Brandon’s house in Sonoma. I’d been drinking a lot of wine, sleeping and not really thinking of much outside of Harper and Tyler, what I’d missed in life and where I wanted to go. Harper let me keep a few of the pictures she’d taken of Tyler, and I’d put them on the nightstand in the room I was staying in, propped up against the lamp, so I could look at him. It made my heart ache, but it comforted me all the same.

  “Ryan?” Courtney questioned.

  “Yes, and please don’t hang up.”

  “Okay,” she said cautiously. “Hang on just a second.”

  I heard her talking to someone and muffling the speaker.

  “Okay, go ahead,” she said a few seconds later after I heard a door close.

  “Is this a bad time? Do you have company?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “It’s just . . . Beckett and I moved in together, so I was just telling him I was going in the other room.”

  “You two are still together?”

  “Yup,” she said, sounding cautious, as if she was nervous about my reason for calling.

  I’d only seen her once since we’d ended things with a bloody fight between me and my brother and the guy she was seeing on the side in her mom’s driveway. And when I’d seen her in December, I’d been with Trish, and we hadn’t exchanged more than a few pleasantries.

  “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

  “You are?” she questioned.

  “Yeah, I am,” I sighed. “Listen, I’m not calling for the reason you probably think I’m calling. It’s just, I wanted to apologize for the way I treated you.”

  “The way you treated me?” she said, and I could hear how appalled she was.

  “Yeah. I wasn’t fair to you. I was obsessed with getting ahead at work and having the perfect relationship on paper, and I don’t think I did a great job of being the guy you needed me to be. So, I’m sorry.”

  She was silent for a few minutes.

  “Wow, I’m not sure I’d ever hear you say that. Thank you.”

  I sighed. “I know it’s probably too little too late, but I just wanted to call.”

  “Ryan, are you okay? You sound a little down.”

  “I’m fine. I was supposed to get married last weekend, but I called it off.”

  And I feel like a total jackass for doing that.

  “Oh, wow. I actually saw your engagement announcement a few months back. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me. “It’s fine. There’s actually this other girl, and we have history, but she has always made me happy. I didn’t exactly call off my wedding for her, but she was definitely high on my list of reasons.”

  “Oh,” Courtney said then. “Ryan, I’m actually engaged. I’m sorry.”

  What did that have to do with anything? Then I realized what she’d assumed.

  “Oh, no. Shit. Sorry. No, Courtney, it’s not you.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding relieved as well as embarrassed. “Sorry. I just assumed. Man, that was conceited of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I assured her. “So, you’re engaged. That’s great. When did it happen?”

  “Fourth of July, at Summer’s wedding, but it had been a long time coming. We’re getting married at the end of the summer. We don’t want to wait, and we’re just having a small ceremony.”

  “Are you planning it?”

  Courtney was a wedding planner by trade. My mom had always hated her job, because she thought it was too low class for someone I’d be marrying. My mom hired party planners, she didn’t want them in her family.

  She laughed. “No, I let Kate have that honor, but I demanded she keep it small.”

  “I think that’s smart. There were two hundred and fifty people at my wedding. It was sort of overwhelming.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t go through with it.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I was the asshole who called it off five minutes before any of the walking down the aisle began.”

  “Ryan!” she chastised, and I knew it was the wedding planner in her. I wasn’t sure if she’d ever had a jilted bride, but I knew she understood what a big deal my decision had been.

  “I know, I suck. And I’ll probably never forgive myself for letting the relationship go on as long as it did, but sometimes you realize too late that a relationship isn’t right for you.”

  She laughed lightly. “I know what you mean. At least you didn’t cheat, right?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “No offense, but I know how that feels, and I’d never do that to someone.”

  “I know. It was incredibly shitty of me to do that to you, and I could probably say I was sorry until I turned blue, and it wouldn’t make it any less shitty.”

  “Are you happy, Courtney?” I asked, simply because I hadn’t called her to walk down memory lane. Everything happened between us just needed to be forgotten.

  “Yes, I am,” she answered simply.

  “Then just be happy,” I told her. “I’m fine. You don’t have to apologize. I know you weren’t trying to hurt me.”

  “But I did hurt you.”

  “I know, but I’m fine. Really. I just wanted to call and let you know that I wasn’t as good of a boyfriend/fiancé as I should have been, and for that, I’m sorry, because you deserved so much more.”

  “Thank you, Ryan. I do appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh, and also, I never actually hated your music. Nineties Alt Rock just reminds me of the girl I’m in love with, and we kind of had a shitty break-up, so I hated to be reminded of her.”

  Courtney laughed. “Well that actually makes me feel a little better considering my music is pretty awesome.”

  “Yeah, it really is. Alright, well, I’m going to go. I have a girl to win back, after all.”

  She laughed. “Good luck, Ryan. I hope she sees what a great guy you really are, because you deserve to be happy.”

  “Thanks, Court.”

  When I hung up the phone, I was surprised the conversation had gone so well. It gave me hope that if Courtney and I could be friends after everything we went through, maybe Harper and I could bridge the gap that was between us, as well. And I decided to call her again, just to say hi, hoping this time she would answer the phone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harper

  “Have you talked to my boy?” Brandon asked me when he was hanging out in my living room two weeks after the wedding.

  I’d invited him over along with Kelly, Devin and Julian. Kelly had wanted to cook, so I was her official wine-drinking assistant, which basically meant that I drank wine, munched on appetizers, refilled everyone’s wine glasses, and sometimes she’d ask me stir or chop something.

  I shook my head. “He’s called a bunch of times, but I’m giving him space.”

  “He loves you, you know,” Brandon reminded me.

  I nodded. “I know.”

  It was something I was painfully aware of and had to f
ight like hell not to give in to, because the last thing I needed was to jump headlong into something that I knew I wanted to be serious with a guy who just got out of two back-to-back relationships that hadn’t ended well.

  “You do?” Kelly exclaimed with her head practically in the oven as she temped the roast she was cooking.

  “Yeah, he told me.”

  “Then, Cupcake, what are you waiting for?” Julian chimed in from where he sat perched on a chair in the living room across from his brother and Brandon who were watching a baseball game.

  “For him to be stable, to be independent and to know that he’s not just emotionally charged by everything that happened between us.”

  “Yeah, he’s still kind of reeling from the whole Tyler thing,” Brandon told me, “but he’s stable. He’s going back to work on Monday, and he’s making all sorts of positive changes in his life.”

  “Like what?” I asked, as I went to sit on the arm of Julian’s chair. He put his arm around me, so I leaned into him.

  Brandon looked over at me. “I’ll let him tell you that when you talk to him.”

  “But I’m not calling him back,” I reminded him.

  Brandon shrugged. “Well then, I guess you’ll never know.”

  “Brandon!” I chastised him. “It’s only been two weeks. He needs space, time.”

  “Hey, I’m just saying, he’s in a good place. He’s getting his shit together, so he can be happy and be with you.”

  “He’s doing all that for her?” Devin asked.

  Brandon nodded. “Yeah, he is. He wants to make up for lost time and make things right as much as he can.”

  “Shit, Harper,” Devin said then. “Give the boy a chance.”

  “Yeah, give him a chance,” Kelly cheered from the kitchen. “I’m tearing up over here. That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “And you’re sure he’s not just rebounding?” I asked Brandon.

  “No, he’s not. I even tried to get him to go out and get laid with me a few times to help clear his head, but he said he didn’t need it.”

  I took a sip of my wine. Julian looked up at me, lowering his voice so only I could hear him. “Baby girl, how long have I known you?”