by Tasha Jones
“Like a glorified waitressing job. You smile at them. You laugh at their bad jokes. You get a big tip,” I hissed.
“I just don’t understand why you feel you have to do this.”
This was starting to feel like a conversation I had already had multiple times. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“We’re getting married!” he hissed, his hands flying up in exasperation. “Do anything else. Do nothing. I can pay for us. I can pay for your university or whatever. I just can’t do this anymore.”
I gulped. There it was. Did I expect him to learn this about me and not want me to stop? Did I expect him to just go along with it like an unwilling witness? “What happens if we don’t make it? What happens to me? I can’t put my education, my future, in your hands just because you have money.”
“Fine. Then do it because you love me.”
“I do not respond kindly to ultimatums.”
“This is not an ultimatum. This is me telling you to trust me. Why is that so fucking hard?”
I sucked in another breath, my lips folding into a frown and my brows furrowing. Why was it so hard? “And you’re saying this as you accuse me of having sex with everyone but you…?”
“You are having sex with everyone but me!”
“Are you calling me a whore?”
Edward shook his head. “I just want you to trust me. I want you to have a future. I want you to be happy. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”
As I stood there, searching the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind for the answer to that question, the scent of chicken seeped into my nostrils. It smelled almost burnt. I crossed my arms and faced Edward. “I have to go check on the food.” Then I left, knowing good and well that I had aggressively avoided his question… because I didn’t know how to answer it.
Chapter 17 - Edward
I woke up seriously wondering if I had destroyed my relationship with Nisha. There was nothing special about this day, or the night before. I just had been waking up to that effect every single day since she came to spend the night. I was furious with her and with myself for everything we had gone through. And yet, as I peeled myself off of my bed and made my way into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, I could feel my body missing her, aching to see her. I wanted to just sit down and talk to her, to explain to her all of my wishes and dreams for us. I needed her to understand that I loved her and thus, everything that I ever did, I did because I loved her. I needed her to know that I would never judge her.
But I already had.
Nisha was sharp, the sharpest woman I had ever met. She could smell me judging her from a mile away. I didn’t understand her job and, what’s more, I didn’t understand her either. I asked her to trust me and yet I made it so obvious that I couldn’t understand her.
And yet I barely trusted her.
As I made my way to my living room with a full mug of coffee at hand, I was starting to feel more and more like my relationship with her was hanging on a thread. Not a good thing to think about the woman I meant to marry.
I clicked the telly on and sat down.
***
Nisha
I woke up wondering if I had destroyed my relationship with Edward. As I rolled over in bed, I remembered the way he used to look at me. I remembered that gleam of life in his eyes and that permanent smile on his face. Then, I realized I hadn’t actually seen that in weeks, maybe even longer. I had fallen in love with him and he with me, but now it seemed like knowing that was all we had.
Why couldn’t I just quit?
In truth, I would have. I really would have. But the thing about this whole ordeal was that I resented being told what to do. I resented him for thinking that he could control me. And if I quit right then and there, it would have been because he pressured me to do it. He would know this, as would I and that’s how it always starts. First, he’s telling me to quit my job and then he’s telling me not to have one at all and then the next thing I know, I can’t even leave the house anymore unless it’s to drop Valerie off at school.
But I did love him.
And yet, as I climbed out of bed and made my way to the kitchen, I wondered if that would be enough. After picking up the coffee pot, I was thrilled to find that it was heavy with yesterday’s coffee. I filled a mug with it, popped it in the microwave and then turned on the telly. It was fairly early on a Sunday morning, so I kept the volume down.
***
There was a blonde woman with red lips and extremely white teeth in the center of the screen. I filled my mouth with that bitter caffeine drink as I heard her say, “Natural gas company owner and parliamentary candidate, Edward Worthington, has been outed as a John.”
I spat the drink right back into my cup and slammed it onto the ground. “What the fuck?”
***
“What the fuck?” My first thought was that he had been cheating on me, or he had used an escort before he met me. The notion that he could judge me so harshly for my job when he had benefitted of the use of people like me for so long made my blood boil.
But then she said, “Sources say his fiancée, Nisha Johnson, is a long time employee of the madam ironically named Alorah John. She is currently being investigated by the authorities.”
“No, but that’s not right. He’s not my client. He’s my fiancé!” I shook my head over and over again, but what I was seeing wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t a dream. It was very real and happening right in front of my face.
But she kept talking. She kept spreading her half-truths as if the information was free; as if she wasn’t ruining lives with every word she spoke. “Edward Worthington had been wooing the woman since the dinner party he threw as a benefit for the lower income neighborhoods of London.”
A rock had lodged itself in my throat. I had no idea what I was supposed to do about this. The whole world knew my secret. I could imagine all the people; people I didn’t even know going through their papers and turning on their tellys only to find that the woman they had watched on telly many times before on the right hand of the man she was engaged to was really nothing more than a common whore.
Because that’s what they would call me.
“No word yet on why Worthington decided to marry his prostitute.”
My mug slipped my hand, crashing onto the hardwood floor, its contents spilling out all over the place.
“Mum?” I turned to find Valerie looking up at me, her right hand still rubbing her eyes and her left hand clutching her blanket. I immediately turned the telly off and swiped her off of the floor. We were already late for her ballet lesson.
***
I was surrounded with reporters. As soon as I stepped out of my Camden flat, they assaulted me with their questions and their quotes. I couldn’t answer any of them because I couldn’t understand any of them. They were all just a blur of words being thrown at me for effect. Everywhere I turned, there was another face with another audio recorder. They looked at me with their eyes peeled and their mouths running a million miles a minute as thousands of words fell out of them. I gazed over their heads at the people who would pass idly by, a little confused by this scene, but undeniably curious of it. I could imagine that they wondered who this girl was that always hung around these parts and now was suddenly being pursued by the press. Or maybe they knew.
Maybe they knew.
After taking in a deep breath for courage, I moved on down the street, looking at the ground because I couldn’t really see ahead of me, and anyway, I didn’t want anyone getting a full frontal of my less-than-flattering face. I knew that all I had to do was make it to the tube station. If I could get underground, they couldn’t follow me. They wouldn’t follow me. So I kept walking, forging ahead and forging ahead and forging ahead until I finally reached the staircase to hell and disappeared underground.
By the time I came back up onto the street line right outside of Hyde Park, there seemed to be an eerie kind of silence. There were no reporters around and since it was early in the m
orning, hardly any people either. Edward had called me first thing in the morning, talking about how he needed to see me right away. We had discussed it and decided that going to one another’s homes would just be out of the question because of how many reporters could be lurking around. So we settled on meeting in the park around where he works. As soon as I stepped foot on that asphalt and the scent of fresh flowers and grass assaulted my nose, my stomach rolled with a strange and yet crippling apprehension.
What was it that Edward found so urgent he needed to tell me right away, and yet did not feel he could tell me over the phone? This question tormented me as I continued on down the path, following his directions exactly until I found him sitting on a bench just off the path.
“Edward?”
When he turned to look at me, I could see an inexplicable sadness in his eyes.
My heart stuttered at this.
He stood up and rounded the bench towards me, wrapping me in his embrace. I could feel his muscles trembling, even through his jacket and suit. When he traced his hands down my arms, I tilted my chin up at him for a kiss, but he did not give me one. He gestured at the bench. “Why don’t we sit down.”
I nodded. “All right.”
So we sat down.
He glanced at me with a curiously cautious expression on his face. “Did you sleep well?”
I shook my head. “Of course not.”
A small smile stretched across his face.
It disappeared quickly.
“I suppose that makes sense. I didn’t either.”
I nodded. “How do you do it?”
He looked at me then, “Do what?”
“Deal with the reporters?”
He let out a dry chuckle at this. “Oh right. Well, with some serious difficulty for sure.”
I giggled. “I could barely walk straight… and it was all just so noisy.”
“Right. It is. It is,” he said, nodding at me.
“So why did you want me here?” I asked. “I could have just...”
“I didn’t want us to be interrupted.”
I clamped my jaw shut. The fear was starting to get the best of me. His image became blurry in my eyes and the entire park was starting to spin. “Okay. We won’t be. Say what’s on your mind.”
“I should have known this would happen.”
“What does that mean?”
He refused to look at me, but kept his gaze cast down and fixed on his folded hands. “We did a terrible thing to George. We reached into him and took his deepest darkest secret. We broadcasted it to the world. I did that. I did it because no one believed in me. No one thought that I could beat him the real way; the ethical way.”
“I did.” I placed a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged me off.
“This isn’t really about you, Nisha.”
I pursed my lips, trying to ignore how insulted I felt by this. “So what is it about?”
His chest rose and fell with another breath before he responded. “I can’t sleep at night sometimes when I think about George and how he’s a real person and how…”
“And how he cheated on his wife,” I finished. I was getting sick and tired of this George person being made the victim for something he did.
Edward bit his lip. “The point is that now he’s struck back and all of a sudden, I’m marrying a prostitute.”
My hands clenched into fists. “I am not a fucking prostitute.”
“It doesn’t matter what you are,” he pressed. “Don’t you understand? They will say whatever they want with this. They will spin it however they want.”
“I’m sorry, Edward. I am. You have to believe me.”
“Are you asking me to trust you?”
“Yes!”
He scoffed, looking away from me. “Imagine the irony.”
“I trust you! I swear I do!” I cried.
He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Nisha.”
“What do you want from me?” I demanded.
“You know what I want from you. You’ve always known. And yet, sometimes I look at you and I feel like being in a relationship with you is like being at war with you. We’re fighting each other for the same thing. Constantly. It’s exhausting. I am exhausted.”
“No. No. No. We’re not fighting, I just… It’s just hard for me to trust other people sometimes, that’s all. It’s just hard for me to depend on other people.”
“That’s all fine, Nisha. But I’ve felt alone in this for a long time.”
“You’re not alone...“
“This would have gone differently if you would have just trusted me. Don’t you understand? If you could have quit, we could have spun this differently. Felix and Peter are up to their ears in shit trying to find a way to rewrite the narrative, because you. Wouldn’t. Do. This. For. Me.”
“But that wasn’t about you. I just wanted to feel like I could stand on my own feet; like I didn’t have to depend on another person.”
“We were going to be married. What do you think that is? Cohabitation? I am seriously wondering why you’d ever want to marry me if you cannot bring yourself to love me or trust me or make sacrifices for me.”
“I love you, but love is not sacrifice.”
“Why did you say yes to me?” he demanded.
My eyes stung, because I could sense that this conversation was coming to an end. It was only then that I realized, and far too late, that this whole time, I had been on some kind of trial. He wanted to…
He was trying to…
“Because you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You are my prince.”
He nodded. “I would have never known that.”
“I don’t understand.”
Then he stood up and buttoned his coat.
“Your words are meaningless if they completely contradict your actions.”
“Edward.” I stood up. My whole chest felt tight, like my internal organs were inflating inside of me.
“I won’t fight you anymore. This, all of this has no become far too much for me to handle.”
“You can’t do this, Edward.” The whole park spun.
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do,” he said.
I think I would have preferred it if he hadn’t have looked at me, because then I wouldn’t have seen that lifeless gaze in his eyes; that nonchalance that would keep me awake for many nights to come. “You’re just afraid of your reputation. You’re being shallow. You’re running scared.”
“This election is the beginning of what I have dreamed about since I was a kid. I’ve always wanted to be a public servant. I’ve always wanted to help people. That company, that stupid company, was always only going to be a paycheck. How can you marry me if you don’t understand this? I was winning. My dream was right there for the taking and you destroyed it.”
I couldn’t breathe. “No. Edward.” I wrapped my hands around his torso, but he did not give to my touch.
“Even if I get elected, this scandal will follow me for the rest of my life. How can I go on to become a Prime Minister with this in tabloids?”
“I’m sorry! Oh Edward, I’m so sorry! I’m so fucking sorry, I don’t know how many other ways I can say it. I am so sorry!”
For a short second, I thought he would give. For a tiny moment, as he leaned into me, as his muscles gave way and his head rested on top of mine, I thought he might have changed his mind. But I was wrong. People don’t change their minds after they decide something like this.
Then, he slipped his hands down my arms. His touch brought goosebumps to my skin. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for him to kiss me again, to love me again. I remembered the first moment he saw me; the way that he made me feel. I remembered on our first date, when he pulled up in a black cab and rescued me from the rain with his expensive umbrella. I remembered all the restaurants and the food and the wine. In that moment when I wanted him to kiss me and I honestly thought he would, I missed what we had for the first time. I regretted every decisi
on I had made, for the first time.
His lips found mine just as our fingers intertwined. I melted into his embrace, breathing him in and wanting more. I prayed to God. I prayed to him. I wished with every fiber of my being that he would just change his mind. That he would just not leave me. Just please not leave me. But I could feel in my bones as sure as I could feel it in his mouth. Edward was a strong man. No woman could change his mind; could change him.
When he pulled away from me, he wouldn’t look at me, but instead gazed right at my ring finger. He clasped my wrist with one hand and eased the ring off of my finger with the other.
