I leaned back into the cushions, contemplating how much I was willing to reveal to defuse my mother, and how much of what I had to reveal would only ramp her up more.
I had completely fallen for Emma. I couldn’t deny it anymore after the sickness that engulfed me following Baldric’s request. I felt things for Emma that I’d never felt for anyone. I just wasn’t sure if I was willing to admit this to anyone yet.
Paulina waited for my response expectantly, fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on the side of the glass. She wasn’t a patient lady, and as time continued to drag on, she started beating it out faster.
“Baldric wasn’t worth my time or energy,” I said finally. “Hitting him felt good. I won’t apologize for that.”
“Is that what you’re going to say to the investors?” she asked snidely.
I exhaled through my teeth. “That’s what I’m telling you. As my mother.”
This seemed to catch her off guard. Though it was never in question that she was my mother, it wasn’t often that it felt like that was the role we shared. Most of the time I was just happy to keep her off my back and well hydrated.
“I’m disappointed in you.”
The words cut deeper than I thought they would. I’d heard enough. Rising to my feet, I stood over my mother and stared down at her with a sad smile.
“Some things are more important than business,” I said.
Paulina looked like she was about to faint. Her pale cheeks turned ashen, eyes widening in their sockets.
I ignored her expression of horror and strolled to the door, opening it halfway and turning to toss a final phrase at her.
“If you don’t like it, you can get in line.”
Leaving my mother’s apartment had never felt so satisfying.
Chapter 27
Emma
I hadn’t lived on my own in a long time. I had moved straight from my parent’s house to a little cube with a sink and a toilet in the Bronx almost right out of high school. It was a hellish little flat but it was better than being locked away behind layers of intolerance and religious greed with my parents in Illinois. Hell, a cardboard box would have been preferable to that.
Growing up, they had controlled every single thing I did. They picked out my subjects, which sports I played, and who my friends were. They didn’t allow me to date, nor did they allow me to do anything else they thought might be fun or dangerous in any way. Teachers loved them because they rarely saw parents so involved in their child’s education, but those teachers also never saw how mean my Mom and Dad could be behind closed doors.
I knew why they did it. Losing Teddy had been a major blow to them, a wound they held closed by sheer force of will. The best way to honor their dead son, it seemed, was to protect their living daughter. Too bad their protection went too far, often resulting in me being punished for something as innocent as going to the mall after school instead of coming straight home and studying.
It wasn’t all because of Teddy’s death, of course. I think they were always a little unhinged, but losing their firstborn was a blow from which they never fully recovered. Many parents end up splitting up after a tragedy like that, but not mine. They banded together and became stronger. They encouraged each other’s madness. They became a wall that I needed to scale if I was ever going to have a normal life.
I remembered the feeling of freedom I had experienced the first day I moved into my new apartment. At that point, my parents were still convinced I was going to fail and come crawling back—refusing to talk to me until I admitted they were right. That meant that my first week of living in New York, I didn’t talk to anybody other than the guy who delivered my pizza.
I had no friends, no family, and no clue. Coming of age movies had taught me that things would start to fall into place by themselves and, once they did, I’d be well on my way to happily ever after. Maybe that was why I threw myself so wholeheartedly into the first relationship that landed on my door step.
I met Lance when I was trying to navigate the subway. I couldn’t figure out which direction I was supposed to be going, and the loopy lines all over the map didn’t help. He stopped to assist me, and from that point on I was smitten. My first real boyfriend, first apartment, and first step on the long but exciting road of adulthood.
I was alone again in a new place. Still no parents, but I had friends and technically even a boyfriend. So why did this feel like starting over? Something had shifted in my life and I still wasn’t sure what. There was change on the horizon, and the only thing I knew was that it involved Max. I just didn’t know how.
Rather than sitting by myself and stewing for the whole evening, I opted to give Willow a call and suggest we go out for drinks. It was one of the few times my despondency didn’t push me toward Pinterest and pretzels. I’d been dying to try the pub down the street, and I hadn’t seen my best friend in almost a week. Granted, I’d been in the Dominican Republic for most of that time, but I still missed her like crazy.
We agreed to meet in half an hour, which felt like a long time now that I was painfully aware of how lonely I was living by myself. Maybe I was just one of those people who preferred not to be alone. It would make sense why I’d jumped on Lance’s offer to move in together without the hesitation such an offer deserved.
After waiting a bit so I didn’t arrive too early, I tied up my hair and headed down the street to the pub. It was a cute little basement pub called The Bandstand, and from the sound of it they’d already started their live music for the evening. I walked through the frosted glass panelled front door, inhaling the warm, aged smelling atmosphere.
The bar was split in half, with half of it devoted to a recessed eating and drinking space, and the other focused more on the live music. Right now, there was a bearded man with an acoustic guitar crooning into the microphone about lost love. I decided to sit on the other side of the bar.
Willow joined me soon after, pulling me up into a fierce hug before she sat down.
“I missed you,” she said.
“Missed you too.”
“So?” she asked. “Where’s my pukka?”
I laughed, remembering how I’d promised to get her a pukka shell necklace while I was away. I hadn’t realized at the time that I would end up leaving Punta Cana in a hurry like we did.
“Circumstances disallowed it,” I answered evasively. I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened with Max yet. I was still processing.
“Very mysterious indeed.” Willow flashed a grin. “Were these circumstances by chance you having too much sex to leave the room? If so, I wish I could be mad.”
I laughed. “If only.”
The server came around and took our drink orders, and once he was gone I made sure to change the topic as quickly and seamlessly as possible. We started talking about how things had been going at school for Willow.
After that she told me about her dad’s upcoming knee surgery, and how while I was away she had gone on a date with some weirdo who ate all his meals with chopsticks. It was nice to connect with my best friend again. It was nice to laugh. It was nice to not think about relationships or work, especially since those were one and the same where I was concerned.
Halfway through our second drink, however, Willow picked up the scent again and charged forward.
“Tell me about these circumstances in Punta Cana,” she said, giving me a steely stare that warned I wouldn’t be able to weasel my way out of this one.
I wanted to tell her anyway. She might not totally understand, being an outsider and all, but she was the only one who understood me.
I spilled the whole story, starting with Baldric’s lobby once-over, to my snappy conversation with Max on the way home. When I was finished, I chugged down half my beer, like telling the story had been akin to running a marathon.
“That’s insane!” she declared. “What has he said since you got home?”
I shrugged, “Nothing actually. I haven’t called him, he hasn’t called me.�
�
“That seems a bit strange. I mean, I completely believe you and all, but isn’t Max normally a little more...”
She trailed off, and I took the opportunity to fill in the blanks for her.
“Thoughtful? Kind? Pleasant?”
Willow laughed. “Yup. All of those things.”
“He is, usually,” I said with a sigh, slumping forward in my seat. The beer was doing its trick. My stomach felt bubbly and light, even if my heart still weighed heavily in my chest.
“I’m still trying to figure him out, to be honest,” I admitted. “I know how he likes his coffee, where he buys his pants, even which side of the bed he prefers to sleep on. I’ve met his mother, seen childhood photos of him, and now we’ve been on vacation together. Sometimes it seems like we’re close, like a couple should be.”
Willow’s blue eyes filled with worry. “But other times?”
I winced, as if the answer caused me physical pain. “Other times it’s like I’m just his personal assistant, who he also gets to bang. It feels one-sided, you know? I feel like I’m playing the part of girlfriend and assistant, which makes it confusing when I need to interpret his feedback as either boss or boyfriend.”
Willow nodded understandingly, reaching across to lay a hand over the top mine. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, delicately extracting my hand from under hers. “Cause the thing is...”
Could I say it? Could I finally say it out loud and just be out with it?
“I’m... I’m in love with him, Willow.”
She didn’t look even mildly surprised. “Figured as much.”
“Can you at least pretend to think this is kind of a big deal?” I asked, bitterly.
Willow’s eyebrows shot up and she practically leapt over the table to console me, bracelets jangling. “No! No! That’s not what I mean. Of course, this is a big deal.”
I had to push her away, guiding her back to her side of the table.
“This is a huge deal,” she continued. “I genuinely empathize with you. It’s just that I’ve known about your feelings for Max for a while—since before you and Max were even a thing, and then as soon as you guys slept together it was like a light turned on behind your eyes. I’ve basically been waiting for you to realize it yourself for a long time.”
I sent her a wry smile. “Any insight on how he feels about me?”
Willow’s angelic face took on a somber expression, one that did little to inspire hope in me.
“I don’t know him like I know you,” she said. “Besides, I haven’t spent much time with him. Only he will be able to tell you that. Unless he talks to that dumbass Jeremy as much as you talk to me.”
I laughed, picturing Jeremy and Max having girl talk over espresso in Max’s office. In my mind, Jeremy was an expert listener, patiently nodding as Max spilled bucket loads of feelings onto him.
Not a chance.
“Jury’s out, I suppose,” I said. “But it seems a bit pointless. I obviously would love for him to love me, but we’re too different. There’s too much standing in the way. Max has got a very particular idea in his head of how his life is going to go, and a wife and kids isn’t part of it. He’ll break up with me eventually. I can feel it. So, what am I even doing with him?”
Willow leaned back and crossed her arms, clearly thinking. I took another sip of my beer while I waited, feeling ten times lighter. It wasn’t just the effects of the alcohol, either. I’d been holding this in for a long time. Max was the only person I saw regularly, and it wasn’t like I could talk this over with him.
Hey, babe, are you going to dump me in two years citing your inability to commit? Cheers.
No thank you.
Willow released a sigh, and took a drink of beer before fixing me with an apologetic smile. “I think you should make a clean break.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “You’ve got enough experience now that you could probably find another, similar job. Your feelings for him are wonderful, but like you said—even if he reciprocated to the fullest, you’re going different places in life. It might just be easier to end it now. That being said, this has got to be your decision.”
“I know,” I said, nodding. “I appreciate the input though. I’ve been going mad from the beginning with this set of anxieties. I feel like there’s an axe hanging over our heads.”
“Let’s not think about that anymore,” she suggested, raising her glass. “At least not for tonight. Tonight, we’ll have a couple more drinks, giggle like school girls, and do anything but think about being adults.”
I laughed. “Cheers to that.”
My one last, parting adult thought as we descended into a night of revelry, was this—leaving Max would be torture. No doubt about it. But wouldn’t it be worse in the long run if I stayed around trying to pull water from a stone?
Chapter 28
Max
It was my first day back at the office, and it was just as I’d dreaded it would be. Phone calls and emails had been trickling all day. Most were disgruntled investors, and it took some time to calm each of them down. Nevertheless, calm them I did. In fact, I made an art out of it.
Surprisingly, there were a few calls from other high ranking members of the business community who’d heard about what happened and wanted to congratulate me. The first time I answered one of those calls was a shock. Apparently, Baldric Hammond had a reputation among certain groups for being a complete sleaze, and a few women in particular wanted to pay their respects to the man who’d jumped at the opportunity to put Hammond down. Not that I was taking credit as some sort of vigilante for women’s rights, or anything.
It did make me even more glad that I’d hit him, though I’d never once regretted it. If my mother was upset, she could blame her own goddamn flair for the dramatic. And her hot head.
As for the rest? I was dealing with it one step at a time.
The news of the prospective sale hadn’t reached investors until after the scandalous events of Punta Cana, so the stock didn’t take much of a beating. I felt like my desk had been turned into a complaint hotline more than anything else, except everybody wanted to comment or complain about me personally and not Goodman-Westfield as a company.
All the same, I deserved it. I took full responsibility for my actions, and would spend the entire week mopping up this mess if I had to. It wasn’t my fault that the guy was a complete dick, which made it all seem a little unfair, but at least I got to remember the sweet look of horror on Baldric’s face the moment his nose cracked.
I’d be remembering that with glee for a long time.
I was too busy throughout the day to talk to Emma, and I didn’t know what to say to her in the first place. An apology was in order—that much I knew. But then what? I had all these feelings swirling under my skin, so close to the surface, yet too far away for me to identify.
The intensity of emotions I’d felt on that trip were beyond anything I’d grown to expect in these kinds of relationships. Or any relationship. The fury, the fear, the worry. And something a helluva lot warmer than any of those.
I almost wished I could talk it through with someone, to map it all out visually like I normally did with big ideas and questions in business, but the person I normally did that with was sitting outside my office quietly hating my guts. She was the only one I wanted to talk to about this, or about anything, really. She’d become my rock and now that I’d screwed that up, I didn’t know what to do.
Around midday there was a lull as people went off to lunch meetings and the like. Normally, this would be around the time Emma ordered us lunch, but I was still surprised when she buzzed to tell me she was on her way in.
I sat up straighter in my chair and adjusted my tie just as she walked through the door. She was carrying a folded piece of paper, and at first I thought it was a new take out menu to add to our collection. The paper wasn’t glossy though, like one would expect, and as she handed it to me she loo
ked away.
“What’s this?” I took it and unfolded it. After reading the first two lines, I dropped it onto my desk. “You’re quitting?”
Emma pulled her lower lip between her teeth and her brow creased.
“Yeah,” she said. “Technically resigning. I’ve already started drafting a job posting for the website and I’ve contacted a couple recruiters.”
“Emma...” I rose, walking around to her side of the desk.
She backed away, which stopped me in my place. Each step she took backward felt like something being ripped from my chest.
“I’ve made my decision, Max.” She lifted her gaze to mine and held it unwaveringly.
“Let’s talk—”
The door banged open and Jeremy stormed in. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
It didn’t end, did it?
“Jeremy, if you woul—”
“Yes, I would like to come in and sit down and talk about this, thank you very much, Max.”
I stared past him at Emma, who was quietly slipping out of the room. She shut the door behind her, leaving me alone with a headache on legs.
“You’re getting upset over nothing,” I said. “I’ve been handling it all morning. It’s not as big a deal as it seems.”
“Not as big a deal as it seems?” Jeremy hissed. “The only reason I didn’t come down here earlier to tan your hide is because I’ve been on the phone with Hammond’s lawyers all day, convincing them not to press charges.”
“It’s not my fault he can’t take a punch.”
I knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as I said it, but seriously—what kind of coward presses charges for a punch he rightfully deserved?
“What has gotten into you?” Jeremy asked. He plunked down into the chair across from my desk as I sighed and took my own.
“You sound like my mother.”
“She and I do get along rather well. I wouldn’t be so surprised.”
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