The Deal Breaker

by Cat Carmine

  The sudden thought of never talking to or seeing Wes again seems as shocking as losing a limb, and I almost gasp at the idea of it.

  Instead I look at Kyla. I try to ask her, without words, what I should do. She answers me without words too — by practically shoving me into Wes’s arms.

  I stumble forward, and then glare back at her. She shrugs innocently. Wes grins. I’m feeling seriously outnumbered here.

  I fold my arms again, to both prove that I’m not amused and because it feels safer, somehow.

  “Fine. We can talk.”

  Just hearing the words seems to release some of the tension in Wes’s shoulders. His grin broadens.

  “That’s great, Rori. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  He hesitates. “I want to take you somewhere.”

  “Where?” I repeat.

  “Can you please just trust me?”

  I glare at him, and he winces.

  “Sorry. I get it. But just ... Let’s go. Don’t make me ruin the surprise.”

  As much as I hate it, my interest is piqued. I shoot another look at Kyla, but she shrugs. I toss my hands up in the air.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  I set the corsage box down on the conference table, but Wes shakes his head.

  “You’re going to need that.”

  I wrinkle my brow in confusion, but he only smiles mysteriously. I follow him out of the office and down the stairs into the street.

  We don’t talk while we’re in the car. I don’t know where we’re going, but it seems like wherever it is, that’s where Wes wants to do his talking. Which is fine by me. I spend the time staring out the window, watching the buildings go by and trying not to think about the man sitting and breathing and existing beside me.

  Except soon we’re in a neighborhood I recognize.

  I whip my head around to face Wes.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Wes…”

  “Rori, please. I asked you to trust me. Just give me this.”

  “Fine.” I sit back in my seat, but only for a second. Then I’m pressing my face to the glass again, watching as Wes’s SUV pulls up in front of the Elmwood Gables Community Center.

  Before I can ask any more questions, Wes is out of the car and darting around behind it to open my door for me.

  “Thank you. Should I … take this?” I gesture to the corsage box.

  He nods, his face still giving nothing away, except the ghost of a smile that he can’t seem to keep off his lips.

  The humidity in the air has broken, and the sun is finally starting to burn through the grey, giving the sky that feeling that the city is waking up, coming alive again, even though it’s evening now. A flutter of hope passes through me, one I try hard to tamp down.

  Wes takes my hand and leads me up the cement front steps and pulls open the heavy blue door.

  “After you.”

  I step into the community center. Behind the front desk is the same bored Indian girl who sat there the last time I was here, only this time she looks excited to see me.

  “She came!” She hisses the words to Wes, and I can tell she’s trying to be quiet and failing spectacularly.

  Wes winks at her and leads me down the long hallway. The smell of bleach and gym shoes hasn’t changed, but there’s something else in the air tonight too. Something that feels like … electricity. Anticipation. Excitement. A group of kids cluster at the doors of the gym area, watching us walk down the hallway and pointing. Barb, the director I’d met with on my first visit here, pokes her head out of her office and flashes us a thumbs-up. I give her a confused wave and keep following Wes.

  We reach the back of the center and Wes pushes open the heavy door, the one that leads out to the garden. The smell hits me first, just like it did the first time, that rich perfumed haze of the roses, the azaleas, the peonies, made all the more lush by the rain and the moisture in the air. For a second I close my eyes and breathe it in.

  Then I feel Wes’s hand on my lower back. The touch sends a shiver through me, and I breathe that in too, just like the rich scents of the garden.

  “Well?” he says. There’s a hesitation in his voice. A note of worry. “What do you think?”

  I slowly open my eyes, taking in the sight in front of me. I suck in a breath and look at Wes in amazement.

  “What is this?”

  He smiles, and now it’s one that actually reaches the corners of his eyes, making his whole face look open and warm.

  “It’s what I never gave you before. It’s our prom.”

  Forty-Two

  My mouth must be hanging just about down to my chest, because Wes chuckles.

  “Here, let me.” He takes the white box from my hands and removes the corsage, then slips it onto my wrist. I let him, my hand limp in his, mostly because it feels like none of my muscles would actually work right now anyway.

  “This is …”

  I look down at the flower arrangement, now snug against my wrist, then back out at the garden. I shake my head.

  “This is truly unbelievable, Wes.”

  The garden, which had always been beautiful, has been completely transformed. Small cafe lights crisscross from one side to the other, glowing above the garden, and in between the lights hang tiny silver stars. Long white curtains have been hung up along the gazebo, giving it a romantic feel, and inside, a small table and chairs are set up. Somewhere, there must be speakers, because some kind of instrumental jazz is playing softly.

  Even the community garden section, which had been nothing but a huge plot of overturned earth last time I was here, is filled with new life, herbs and tomato plants and what even looks like a transplanted lemon tree. Everything feels fresh and beautiful and perfect.

  “You like?”

  I nod. He’s smiling, his eyes crinkling warmly again, and I have to look away. I finger the elastic on my wrist. I have a sudden and overwhelming urge to launch myself into his arms, to kiss him into oblivion, to let him throw me down on the grass and make love to me under the twinkling lights so that we can both forget these last two weeks.

  It takes everything I have to remind myself that even though this is incredibly sweet, Wes has done a lot of other stuff that isn’t so sweet. I can’t let myself forget that stuff… even if he did throw me my own private prom.

  I gasp, suddenly, looking down at my outfit.

  “What?”

  “I’m wearing yoga pants. To a prom.”

  He chuckles. “That doesn’t matter. You could wear a garbage bag and still be the most beautiful woman in the room.”

  My cheeks color and I look away.

  “So how does this work?”

  He shrugs. “However you want. We could dance, or we could eat, or we could talk first.”

  “I think we should talk.” I don’t let myself think about it. If I dance with Wes, I might lose myself and I don’t want that to happen.

  But Wes smiles. “I thought you might say that. Come on.”

  He leads me over to the gazebo, and then up the stairs to the table, where a bucket of ice sits with a bottle of champagne chilling inside it.

  I glance down at the label and laugh. “Dom Perignon? I don’t think we would have had that at prom.”

  He grins. “I might have taken a few liberties. Can I pour you a glass?”

  Part of me thinks I should say no, that I should keep my faculties if Wes and I are going to have this conversation, but everything is too beautiful and perfect to say no to a glass of expensive champagne. So I nod, and Wes pours us each a glass.

  He pulls out one of the chairs and I slip into it, and then he’s sitting across from me. For a minute, neither of us says anything.

  I sip my champagne, suddenly nervous. Partly because I want to hear what Wes has to say … and partly because I don’t. There will be no going back after this conversation, that I can already tell.

  I take a deep breath.

&
nbsp; “Wes, you have to …”

  “I owe you an explanation,” he says, at the exact same time. Then, “Oh, sorry, what were you going to say?”

  “No, nothing. Just … you go ahead.”

  He grins nervously. “Okay. What I was saying is that I owe you an explanation. Well, I owe you an apology too — maybe a couple, actually — but I wanted to start with an explanation. Of who I was back when we first knew each other.”

  This is it. I’m practically holding my breath as Wes starts talking.

  “I was never completely honest with you back then. We never talked about my family much, as you might remember, and we never spent any time at my house. I knew you assumed it was easier to go to your house, especially since your parents worked so much, but the truth is, I let you believe that. I liked being at your house because it felt normal there.”

  He takes a deep breath, and then a sip of champagne. The silence is brief but deep. He sets his glass back down.

  “I didn’t have the best home life. My mom died when I was nine, and I spent the rest of my time in foster care. Until I aged out, that is.”

  I don’t say anything. The glass of champagne sits forgotten beside me, bubbles slowly bursting into nothingness.

  “If you’re doing the math, you may remember that I turned eighteen a good few weeks before graduation. We went to see a movie at the mall that night, remember? Well, not that we watched most of the movie. I think we spent most of the night making out in the back row. Still might be my favorite birthday memory ever.”

  That makes me smile, but I quickly swallow it down, letting Wes continue.

  “That was the first night I slept my car. The first night I was officially ‘homeless’. That word sounds so strange now, but that’s what I was. I was homeless. I lived out of my car for nine weeks, and then for another couple of months after I got to Boston. Until the dorms opened at Harvard and my scholarship kicked in.”

  There’s a lump in my throat now, so big and heavy that I couldn’t swallow even a sip of champagne.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  He shakes his head. “I was embarrassed. I had nothing, and you were everything. You deserved someone who could give you everything.”

  “Wes, all I ever wanted was you.” I realize as soon as the words are out of my mouth how true they are. Wes is everything I’ve ever wanted. Wes.

  He shakes his head sadly. “I get that now. But back then, I was eighteen. My pride was shot. I felt like I was failing at life already. And I felt like if I let you love me, I was just going to drag you down with me. I didn’t want that for you, Rori. You were this bright and shining star, the one good thing in my life. The last thing I wanted to do was taint that in any way.”

  “So you stood me up at the prom?”

  “I don’t know what to say about that, except I’m sorry. To my eighteen-year-old brain, it made sense. I thought I was saving you from me. I couldn’t be the man you deserved — Christ, I couldn’t even keep your corsage alive that day. By the time I was ready to go to your house, the stupid thing looked like shit, and the thought of you wearing it, the thought of your dad seeing it and knowing I couldn’t take care of it or you — I don’t know. I panicked, I guess. It was the lowest point of my life. Well, until the morning after the wedding.”

  I rub my eyes, trying to keep the tears from spilling over. Wes and I still have a lot of ground to cover, and I can’t afford to lose my shit now.

  “I guess I still don’t understand how I never knew,” I say now. “We were so close back then. Or at least I thought we were. How could I not have known about your home life? Or that you were living in your car? Jesus, what kind of girlfriend was I, if I didn’t even know my boyfriend was homeless? Was I really that wrapped up in myself?”

  He shakes his head, smiling softly. “Not at all, Rori. Honestly. You were perfect. You didn’t know because I put a hell of a lot of effort into making sure you never found out. That time we ran into Patty — that was my foster mother, though ‘mother’ is being generous — I was sure I was going to be outed. It would have been just like her to say something to humiliate me, especially since it was probably obvious how much I liked you. The fact that she didn’t, and that you didn’t realize anything after that encounter — well, I just thanked my lucky stars, and then tried to keep you as far away from the truth as I possibly could.”

  “Oh, Wes.” I shake my head. There’s so much sadness welling up inside me. A lifetime of it, it feels like. Sadness for me, and for us, but mostly for Wes, for that sweet eighteen year old kid who was just trying to handle things the best way he knew how.

  “You don’t sound all that surprised by any of this,” Wes observes now.

  “My mom told me a bit about it last weekend,” I admit. “I guess my parents must have known, or at least some of it. They assumed I knew too. It was embarrassing, admitting that I’d had no idea.”

  I don’t mean to dump that on him, but Wes reaches across the table to take my hand. I hesitate, then let him, feeling the instant warmth as his big palm envelops my smaller one.

  “If I could do the whole thing over, I’d do it completely differently,” he admits. “I should have trusted you with the truth back then.”

  I run my thumb over his.

  “Why didn’t you?” I ask softly.

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I was a kid. I was proud. I didn’t know what was really important in life.”

  “That’s what my dad said,” I admit.

  “Oh yeah?” Wes chuckles. “Your dad was always a pretty smart guy.”

  “He was. Still is.” I smile. “He really likes you. Both my parents do. Despite everything, they still talk about what a great guy you are.”

  “That’s sweet. Not quite sure I deserve the praise, though.”

  I don’t answer that, because I can’t say I disagree. I understand our past a bit better now, and I have sympathy for the kid Wes was. But he’s a man now, and he made his own choices.

  Wes is quiet now, and I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. Finally, he takes a deep breath.

  “I guess that brings us to now,” he says. “To this place. The garden.”

  I look around. The sun is going down now, and the cafe lights seem to twinkle even more brightly above us. The silver stars catch the last of the dying light and reflect it back down on us, glinting and shimmering like something magical.

  “The development project is off,” he says now. “I want to start off with that.”

  “How?” Excitement bubbles in my gut. The garden is too precious to be bulldozed over, and the fact that Wes sees that is encouraging.

  “I’ll get to that in a bit. But first I want to apologize for using you. It was really awful — a low point in my life, for sure. Except … that was only one of the reasons I wanted to hire you.”

  I raise my eyebrows now, and I try to brace myself.

  “The truth is, I had never forgotten about you, Rori. This may sound crazy but even after all this time, I thought about you every day. So when Levi and I hatched this plan with the hiring initiative, you were the first person I thought of. It was an excuse to see you again.”

  I must look skeptical, but Wes chuckles. “Come on, Rori. While it’s true that we didn’t want to use our own in-house marketing team, or one of our usual global PR companies, there are still a hundred other marketing firms in this city who specialize in non-profits. We could have worked with any one of them. Hotchkiss Burns was calling us up from the day word got out about the project. We went with Marigold because I wanted you.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks a lot for that,” I say sarcastically.

  “I didn’t think it would turn into such a shit show,” he says earnestly. “I really thought it would be a good opportunity for you, that it would maybe help even the score from what I did all those years ago.”

  “Didn’t work,” I say, though this time I’m smiling. A little, at least.

  “Tell me about it.” H
e pretends to roll his eyes. “Look, I know I stepped in it. I have no excuse for it. I got caught up in the thrill of closing the deal. For so long, all I’ve been focused on was the money. I lost sight of what mattered.”

  “What matters?” I ask, holding my breath.

  “You matter, Rori.”

  I swallow. Wes’s voice is so earnest and plaintive that I believe him.

  “Thank you,” I say now. It’s hard to get the words out, but I force myself to persevere. “For saying that. That was the worse part of all this, Wes. Thinking that you were just using me. That I didn’t matter. Because you matter to me. You always have. You probably always will.”

  “I feel the same way, Rori. You’re the only thing that’s ever made my heart feel complete. Not the deals I’ve closed, not the money I’ve chased. Only you. Always you.”

  Tears are springing to my eyes now, but I brush them away and swallow.

  “I feel like I should apologize too,” I say now, though my voice shakes.

  Wes frowns. “Why?”

  “Because I never gave you an honest chance. I made up my mind about you ages ago, and I didn’t even bother to wonder whether you had your own reasons for doing what you did. And ever since you’ve been back in my life, I guess I’ve been waiting for you to do something wrong. So that I could be right about you. If that makes sense? I ignored every sweet thing you did and only looked for the bad.”

  “To be fair, there was some bad in there,” Wes jokes.

  I grin. “Yes. There was. But what you did for Maria, for Celia — you’re a good person, Wes. I know you like to pretend you aren’t, but I know the real you, remember?”

  He smiles at me. There’s a sheen in his eyes that wasn’t there before, and he looks away for a second.

  “I think this would be a good time to pause for dinner,” he says now, looking back towards the door of the community center.

  I turn and see two tuxedoed waiters emerge, each carrying an ornate platter topped with a silver dome. They wordlessly set them down in front of Wes and I, magically produce silverware wrapped in white cloth napkins, and then silently disappear again.