by Bella Forro
I wanted to hit something. I wanted to demand that he treat Victoria like a human being instead of another piece of his puzzle.
But I wanted a lot of things that I realized I wasn’t going to get.
My father was propped up in the bed, a laptop perched on a lap desk in front of him. He adjusted his glasses. “Now, Mark,” he began.
“Don’t Mark me,” I all but yelled. “I don’t care about anything you have to say. Not one thing!”
I was getting ready to storm back out of the room, not sure if I had accomplished what I’d wanted to in the first place, but also feeling like I didn’t have anything else to add, that everything I could say had been said.
“Wait, Mark!” He called, and I turned in the doorway to face him. “If you’re going to go. If this is the last time, I need you to know the truth. All of it. Even the hard part.”
He was hesitating, and I have to say I wasn’t sure if I had the patience to see it through. If this was going to be my last time walking away from him, I was anxious to get it over with.
“It’s not that I’m obsessed with Amy. It’s not even that I dislike Victoria. I actually like her quite a bit.” He took a deep breath, and I wasn’t sure if it was another delaying tactic or if his frailty was catching up to him. “Amy and I…had an indiscretion. About a year ago. Just one time, son. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. And I didn’t want you to know about it. I didn’t want you to know I was that kind of man. And I wanted to take that to the grave with me. I never wanted you to know about it.”
“But you know Amy. And when she found out it was important to me to keep that from you, it became the biggest bargaining chip she’d ever had. And that’s why I’ve been pushing you to get back together with her. I thought that would protect you from this.”
“From this?” I snapped. “From this? The part where a woman I don’t care about, who has made my life nothing but difficult, slept with a man who has made it his personal goal to make my life unhappy? That is what you wanted to protect me from?”
“You’ve done a hell of a job, Dad. Ask me if I’m surprised about Amy. Do I look surprised? Her interests were always in herself, and if she saw something that was going to give her an edge, she was going to go for it. Especially something like sleeping with you. I don’t care about that at all. What I do care about — who I do care about — is Victoria. You’ve made her time with me awful, and now she’s gone. And I will never, ever, be able to forgive you for that.”
I did leave then, and nothing could feel better than the rush of relief that welcomed me when I stepped out of the house and back into my car.
I drove past her apartment, twice. I thought about ringing the bell, seeing if she or Cassie would let me in. But in the end, I drove myself back to my own condo, calling her twice on the way home.
I was still getting the automated message that let me know Victoria was pretending I had never existed.
That we had never existed.
Chapter 24
Victoria
I’d spent the last two days moping.
There was no other word for it. It was honest to goodness moping.
There had been Netflix. Made for T.V. movies. I’d called in sick to work. I’d barely changed out of my pajamas, and that was only to get into other pajamas.
I’d cried my way through three boxes of tissues and eaten just as many gallons of ice cream.
I was a total mess.
Cassie was sitting beside me. She looked just as bedraggled as I felt. The whole thing hadn’t been exactly easy on her, and she hadn’t spent more than a few minutes away from me.
“Maybe what you really need is a vacation,” Cassie said abruptly. “A nice long weekend away from Mark and everything that’s been happening here. You know. Time to just be you and to enjoy yourself.”
I wasn’t sure enjoying myself was in the cards, wherever I was going to be, but there was something appealing about the idea. Getting away from it all. Everything. The bed where I had slept with Mark. The kitchen where he had cooked me breakfast. The sofa where I hadn’t been able to stop crying.
“Yeah,” I said halfheartedly. “Maybe you’re right.”
I’d barely said the words before Cassie was whipping out her laptop and tapping into a last-minute cruise site.
“I think this is the one,” she said, tapping a gorgeous photo of bikini-clad women. “It sets sail from Cancun. Let’s do it.”
The women did look happy, and right now it wasn’t going to take much to twist my arm into searching for happiness.
“Okay, I said. Book it.”
I’d called in some sabbatical leave. I told my boss it was for my emotional wellbeing that I took some time off.
I also told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he didn’t give me that time off, he could consider this my notice. And that I would use the rest of my vacation time as my two weeks’ notice.
He agreed to give me the time I needed. Reluctantly, of course, but I was not in a place where I cared. And we both knew he was never going to pull off his job without me. So I had some bargaining power there.
Once work was handled, Cassie and I packed our bags, popped our sunglasses on, and headed out for some much needed R&R.
I pulled the door closed firmly behind me, the sound of the latch was loud, like it was locking out everything from the past, and there was nothing in front of me but an unadulterated future.
Chapter 25
Victoria
I was more than ready for the vacation.
The longer we’d talked about it, the more ready I had become. And packing my bags had never felt so freeing. So vindicating.
Cassie had been right about everything. I wasn’t going to let Mark get me down. I wasn’t going to let any of it get to me. None of it. Not the things that had been, and certainly not the things that might have been. Right now I was just going to focus on what was. And that meant that I was going to go with my best friend on an amazing vacation, but there were a few things I needed to do first.
We had retrieved her old Honda from the parking garage where she usually stored it. When you lived in the city like we did, you didn’t need a car of your own very often, but this was definitely one of the times we did. Our luggage was stowed in the trunk, and we were on our way to the vacation of a lifetime.
I pulled the envelope of money I still had from that weekend getaway with Mark. He hadn’t wanted to take it back. He’d insisted it was mine to keep, that I should go out and spend it however I wanted, as I saw fit.
And this was what I wanted to do with it.
I flipped through the bills until I’d pulled out an even half and handed it over to Cassie.
“Cass, I want you to have this. It’s for everything. All the times you told me things I should have listened to and all the times you put up with me because I hadn’t. You’re the best kind of friend. And I’m so excited for this vacation with you.”
I pressed the money into her hand. I didn’t want her to count it. I just wanted her to accept it. Like maybe she wouldn’t notice how much was actually there and she would think it was just a twenty-dollar tip.
I knew that wasn’t what would happen, though.
She gave a low whistle. “Victoria, I can’t take this,” she said, flicking through a few bills before deciding she’d seen enough and she was ready to decline the offer. “This is just too much. You should do something else with it. Something nice for you. You deserve it, after all, for putting up with Mark in the first place.”
“No. It’s fine. I actually don’t want it. I don’t want anything that reminds me of Mark. In fact, I’m going to take the rest of the money he gave me and I’m going to give it away. Just looking at it makes me think of him. I want him to be nothing more to me than a vague memory. A reminder of what I shouldn’t do next time.”
Cassie pursed her lips but had apparently decided not to press the issue. She folded the wad of money and placed it inside her purse, patting it awkwar
dly, like she was worried it might go somewhere without her permission.
“Music?” she asked, flipping through the radio until she came to something she liked. Aerosmith’s Crazy, of course. If anything spoke to Cassie, it was Steven Tyler, and if any one moment perfectly captured everything about her, it was Alicia Silverstone clambering into a classic sports car, head tossed back like she didn’t have a care in the world. That was going to be us.
Cassie cranked up the song, singing along to it. “Come on, Victoria. We’re going to have the best time. I’m not going to let you waste this amazing trip wallowing in Mark-related sadness.”
I gave her my best smile, even though pathetic didn’t even begin to describe the effort.
She was right. I did deserve this trip. And we were going to have the best time.
And I definitely wasn’t going to be wallowing in any kind of sadness. Especially the Mark-related kind.
Chapter 26
Mark
I was up with the sun.
I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep these days, anyway. The nights crept by, long and lonely and all I could do was spend that time thinking about what Victoria had said the day she’d left. How easily she had shattered me.
It just couldn’t believe it was possible. Victoria had never seemed to give even one bit of thought to the wealth I had. She’d never seemed to care how much money I had, what I could buy, or who I knew. It felt like every chance she had, she was reminding me of just that fact.
But who was to say that hadn’t all been an act, anyway? She wouldn’t be the first woman to pull something like that on a man.
It just had never happened to me before. God dammit, I’d prided myself on my ability to weed out people like that. And I came across a lot of them.
On top of that, I had never been with Victoria or a person like her. I’d spent my life around people who were interested in using me, my money, or my position for their own gain, and hearing Victoria was just another in a long line of users was a blow to the system I didn’t think I was going to recover from. Ever.
I flipped back the covers and hauled myself out of bed. It was just after five and even if I thought I might be able to fall asleep again, I knew it was in my best interest not to. That would just lead to one of those mornings where I felt like I’d missed my golden opportunity, and instead I would spend the next few hours feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. As far as I was concerned, I was already experiencing my maximum amount of discomfort.
I pressed the brew button on the coffee maker in the kitchen before grabbing my towel and stepping into the bathroom. I knew a hot shower and a hotter cup of caffeine wasn't going to solve all of my problems, but they were certainly going to put me in the best frame of mind to at least try. I was going to go out of my way to do whatever I needed to do to make my day the least painful as possible.
After a hot shower, a shave, two cups of coffee, and a depressing look at the current news, I still hadn’t managed to come out of the funk I’d woken up in.
Again, not that I was surprised. I’d been barely able to keep it together since Victoria had walked out. Why would this morning be any different than the others?
Only, I guess it was a little different. This morning when I’d first woken up, like all the other mornings before it, I was depressed that she had gone, that she was gone.
But now, sitting at my breakfast bar off of the kitchen, in a condo that was designed to impress company, I wasn’t just depressed.
I was angry.
Angrier than I had been in a long time.
There had to be something, one thing, even, that was sacred, one true thing I could have.
And for a moment I had thought that was Victoria.
But then I had to learn she was just like everyone else, and that they were all out to use me for their own gain and betterment.
I had thought Amy was a fluke. Just a brief lapse in my own ability to gauge people.
But apparently, I had been wrong. Even my own father couldn’t afford to stop thinking about himself long enough to refrain from having an affair with my fiancée.
And if that didn’t basically sum up my whole life, I wasn’t sure what would.
I was looking back on it — all of it. Those vacations with my friends. With their wives. The way they had treated Victoria and how quick I had been to dismiss their behavior, to dismiss the way my family treated others when they viewed them as less than they were.
I suppose I was getting what I deserved all along. That I had sat idly by and let other people be treated that way — maybe this was my reward.
For a minute I wanted to put my head down on the breakfast bar and never pick it up. To just sit there, with my face pressed into the cool granite, the breakfast I had no intention of touching; cold on the plate next to me.
But it was just a moment.
I didn’t have it in me to sink that low. To give up on everything that way. I would do what I always did, and I would take what had been given to me and I would make something good out of it the only way I knew how.
So I scraped the food in the trash and popped my dish in the sink and then I dressed in one of my favorite blue suits, reached for my cufflinks, and picked a tie Victoria had never seen me in. I didn’t need anything that might encourage me to think more about her.
In the lobby of my office building, I stopped into Au Bon Paine and picked up a croissant. Not that I thought I would be more likely to eat that than the scrambled egg and spinach I’d made that morning, but it seemed like something new and different, something that reminded me I didn’t need Victoria to move on with my day or to complete me.
I was going to have a croissant instead. And a coffee. Even if it was the kind of coffee I’d expect to pick up from a gas station.
I had almost convinced myself the whole thing was exactly what I had needed and how I’d wanted it to be, and it definitely more than compensated for not having Victoria in my life, when I rounded the corner heading to the escalator and almost collided with a senior management staff whose name I couldn’t remember, coffee sloshing up through the lid and splattering my suit and cuffs.
I determined I wasn’t going to let that be a sign.
“Oh, Mr. Pierce,” he was saying, abject horror written all over his face. I was sure he was thinking about my dry cleaning bill, and that it was seven a.m. And I was going to smell like day old coffee until I left the office in the evening. “I am so very sorry.”
I had the feeling that if he had napkins handy he’d be pressing them into me, like a bad commercial.
“Let me make it up to you. Lunch today? We can hit that new cafe that’s around the corner.”
I almost said no. I could feel the word forming in my mouth, the shake of my head coming on.
But then, I stopped. Reminded myself that Victoria was a thing of the past and I wasn’t beholden to her or any expectations that still lingered from her.
Instead, I clapped him heartily on the arm and gave a nod. “That sounds great. I’ll see you at 12 in the lobby. We can head over together.”
I gave a little gesture of goodbye and resolved that I would look him up in the directory as soon as I made it up to my office. I might be bad with names, but I knew right where his office was and exactly which projects he was working on.
But, by the time I reached my office I was thinking about Victoria again, and when I reached for my phone it was to have a call sent through to Victoria’s company.
I waited to be connected to her office, but when the phone finally put me through, it went to voicemail.
And it wasn’t even her voice, which made it that much worse.
I tried calling back, just in case, before dialing up Don, the CEO, and waiting for him to pick up the phone.
I used his direct line, which I suppose was in my purview, but the truth was I didn’t want to have to explain anything to the secretary. I just wanted to hear him pick up the phone and tell me where Victoria was and how I could get aho
ld of her.
I was thinking about the time it might take me to get over to her office and whether or not I could get what had to be done finished and still be back in time for that lunch appointment when Don answered the phone.
“Don,” I said without preamble, because now the only thing I seemed to be able to focus on at all was Victoria, and I didn’t have time for any kind of small talk or less important things. And it was all less important. “Mark Pierce.”
I waited for the gushing on the other end of the line to stop. There it was again, that insane need to appeal to me in the hopes that I might provide something beneficial to him.
Users. Every single one of them.
“I’m calling about Victoria Watts. I was wondering if you knew what her schedule looked like today or where I might find her.”
“Victoria Watts,” Don repeated like he had never heard the name before in his life. “I can’t say that I do. Let me see what I have here.”
I heard the vague sound of keys tapping and a cursor clicking and I knew he was pulling up calendars and searching through information.
I didn’t even feel bad that I’d inconvenienced him. I would have been happy to do it myself if I’d had access to the information in the first place.
“I’m just not seeing much here, Mr. Pierce. It looks like maybe she’s out of the office? You’d have to talk to Paul. Want me to have you put through?”
I grumbled something resembling a yes. It wasn’t even close to what I really wanted, but so far it seemed like it might be the best I was going to get.
Fifteen minutes on hold and I slammed the phone back in the cradle and reached for my keys.
There was a lot of truth to that adage about wanting things done right and doing it yourself.
And I definitely wanted this to be done right.
I found Paul at his desk, right where he should have been when I’d called earlier.
But I wasn’t beyond thinking he had been there all along and had just failed to answer the phone.
He scrambled to his feet when he saw me, flustered, his face flaming red in a matter of seconds.
