by R. R. Banks
"I told you, I don't have anything to say to you."
"Please, Cristina, just five minutes. Give me five minutes to say what I need to, and then you can do whatever you want. I just need to say these things to you."
I couldn't believe that he had just given me the "five minutes" speech. Maybe he had started watching the bad women's network movies, too.
"Fine," I said. "But not right now. I actually do have to work. Meet me up in the office and I'll let you say whatever it is that you want to say when I'm finished for the night."
Josh gave a slight, relieved smile and nodded.
"That works. Thank you. I'll see you soon."
He crossed the hallway into the elevator and I let out a heavy breath as the doors closed. It took actual effort to be around him now. That was such a painful prospect. He had been such a comforting presence. Even from the very beginning he had never made me feel uncomfortable. Being around him had been fun and easy, as though our friendship had blossomed naturally and eased into what it was. Or what I had thought it had been. Now, though, it was hard to breathe when he was close, and I felt like I was constantly struggling to keep my heart beating and stop the pain.
I felt myself cleaning at a slower pace than usual, drawing out each of the tasks in each office, hoping that the longer I kept him waiting, the more likely it was that he would give up and leave. I didn't want to hear what he had to say. I couldn't bear the thought of listening to him try to justify what he had done, or the hollow apologies that I knew would accompany those explanations.
I stopped wiping the desk in the office I had reached and stared out the window, letting my shoulders fall. No. The last thing that I wanted to deal with was the inevitable conversation that I was going to have to have with Matteo. It was the conversation that I never wanted to have to have with him. He had been just a toddler when his father and I had divorced so we had never had to explain to him that we weren't going to be together anymore or that he was going to start visiting his father rather than living with him. I highly doubted he had any memories of a time before those visits and it was just normal for him to have a split family. In just the brief time that he had known Josh, though, he had formed an attachment to him. He liked the idea of him, of a man who was around, strong, confident, and happy, and who wanted to make me and him happy as well. I knew that he had gotten comfortable with Josh being a part of our lives and now I was going to have to tell him that he wasn't going to be anymore.
The thought of the Christmas gifts he had brought over after our Black Friday shopping trip loomed large in my mind and weighed heavily on me. I didn't want anything that was going to tie us to Josh or that would be a constant reminder of the differences between us and the truth behind what Willa had said. At the same time, everything that I had said about Matteo still held true. He was working so hard and was such an incredible child. He deserved that game. It seemed so trivial, so inconsequential when I thought of the bigger things in life that he was going to have to cope with, but that was a big part of why it mattered to me so much. He was still so young, still so much of a little boy even if he didn't want to admit it, and I wanted him to enjoy that. I wanted those trivial things to be what he thought about and what affected him. I wanted him to not have anything else more impactful to worry about.
I took as much time as I could to get through the cleaning and then made my way up to the top floor. I cleaned the few smaller offices along the hallway and then walked into the main office. It was empty when I stepped inside, and I felt a wave of relief, but also a flicker of disappointment. No matter how much I didn't want to deal with these emotions or choke my way through the confrontation that was to come, I couldn't just toss aside all that I had felt for Josh. There was a part of me that still longed for him, still wanted to be close to him.
The containers from his takeout dinner earlier in the evening had just tumbled from the trash can into my cart when I heard the door to the office open. My body tensed, remembering the last time that I heard that door and turned around to see Willa, but when I glanced up at the window in front of me I could see Josh's reflection looking back at me. I said nothing but continued my work until I had completely finished, then stopped beside my cart and met his eyes.
"Alright," I said. "Go ahead."
"I'm so sorry for what Willa said to you," Josh started, "and for showing you that invitation. She never should have done that."
"When were you going to tell me?" I asked, surprising myself with the strength in my voice.
"What do you mean?"
"When were you going to tell me that I was sleeping with a man who was just a few months away from getting married?"
"I wasn't," he said. I gave a mirthless laugh and turned to leave the office, but heard him come up behind me. "I wasn't going to tell you that because it wasn't true. I'm not just a few months away from getting married."
"When did you decide that? Before or after we had sex?"
"Cristina, please." He took my arm and turned me around to face him. "I know that I should have told you that we had been engaged, but I didn't want to even think about it myself. You have to believe me."
He leaned down to kiss me, but just as his lips touched mine, the office door flew open so hard it smashed into the wall, and Willa stomped inside.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing? I thought that I made myself very clear, you little slut."
"Willa, stop," Josh said.
"No. You don't have any control here. But I do," she glared at me, "and you're fired. Get your things and leave. And don't forget to bring this cart downstairs with you. You can't possibly think that I would ever touch something like that."
I pulled away from Josh, looking into his face incredulously, then turned and rushed out of the office. I heard Josh chasing after me, calling out for me, but I whirled around to face him.
"Stop," I demanded. "I don't want to hear anything that you have to say. You've already cost me enough. You need to just go back to your life. Willa was right. We're never going to be able to understand each other. It's time that we stop pretending that we will and move on."
I didn't give him a chance to say anything back. I simply turned and walked away, too numb now to even cry.
Chapter Eighteen
Josh
"I really got myself into a mess this time, didn't I, Pop?"
The painting of my father stared down at me, his eyes the same shade of blue as my own. Though the artist had done an exceptional job on the painting, he hadn't been able to capture my father's eyes in a way that would ever show what it was really like to look at him. His eyes had always been so happy, so full of life. Even when he was going through the most difficult times or facing something serious, there was a light and a life about him that made him someone that everyone wanted to be around. Especially me.
No matter what I was going through or how much I had messed up, he was always there for me. He had never judged me or made me feel like I wasn't good enough. The worst thing in my life were the moments when I felt like I had disappointed him, even when he wouldn't tell me himself that he felt that way. I could always go to him, always sit down with him and pour myself out to him, and he would know exactly what to say to somehow make the situation seem so much less daunting than it was. I wished that he was here with me now and could help me find the way that I was supposed to take.
"He would be so proud of you."
I turned toward the sound of the voice and saw Wilton Sommers standing a few feet away.
"Wilton," I said. "What brings you here?"
His eyes stayed on the painting of my father and he walked up to stand beside me so that he could look at him more closely.
"Edward was my dearest friend. He helped me through some really hard times and he was always there to celebrate the good times. This company was so important to him."
"I know," I said.
"But it wasn't the most valuable thing in his life, the most important." He turned his head
to look at me. "You were."
"I was?"
"Come have some coffee with me. I need to talk to you."
We crossed through the lobby and I kept my eyes diverted from the corner that had, until just days before, held the Christmas tree that Cristina had decorated. It had been the one she usually had up in her home but that had been replaced by the massive live tree we had gotten together. She had surprised me with the tree in the lobby, putting it up and decorating it so that there was a piece of her there with me and I could think about her even when we weren't together. It had been a wonderful gesture and it had pained me to take the tree down when the calendar turned over into the second week of January. I had asked my receptionist to pack the tree up and send it back to Cristina. As much as I wanted to keep it, to hold onto that part of her, I knew that she should have it back.
Wilton and I hurried down the cold sidewalk and ducked into the nearby coffee shop. I exhaled gratefully when the warmth seeped into my tingling skin and the smell of coffee filled my lungs. We each ordered black dark roast and took a seat in the most isolated corner, letting habit bring us away from anyone who might listen to our conversation. I took a sip of the hot, bitter drink as Wilton sat across from me and felt it flow through my body, seeming to reach my toes.
"I heard from Willa today," he said.
I nodded, taking another sip of my coffee.
"Has she finished shopping for her new wardrobe yet?" I asked.
It was her annual tradition. Some people greeted the new year with traditional foods or by making resolutions that they hoped would make them better people. Willa greeted it by taking a private jet through Europe and then to New York to refresh her wardrobe for the year ahead.
"I think that she still has a few stops that she wants to make."
"Well, we can't have her being seen in the same dress at two social events," I said wryly.
"She asked about you."
"Why?"
"She wants to know if you've sent out the wedding invitations yet."
"No, I haven’t, and I never will. I just cannot marry someone I don’t love. It wouldn’t be fair to me or to Willa. "
Wilton stared at me for a second.
"I am all my father had to carry on his legacy. It was the most important thing to him. He trusted me, and I let him down.”
"Josh, I already told you, this company and any plans that your father might have had for it were not the most important thing in his life. They were important, yes, but you had so much more value to him. He saw this company at first as a way to honor his own father and to carry on the family tradition. When you were born, though, that changed. Then he started looking at it as the way that he was going to make sure that you had the life that he wanted to give you. He loved you with everything in him and he was so incredibly proud of you."
"I don't know if he still would be."
"I do. He would be even more proud of you now. He would be proud of you no matter what. The business mattered to him, of course, and the two of us had planned for a long time to merge both companies, but that was our plan. It doesn't have to be yours. And you don't have to enter into a loveless marriage just to get success. That's not what your father wanted for you."
"Then what did he want for me?"
"Happiness."
"I don't even know if I remember what that really is anymore."
"You know, Willa told me about that woman."
I cringed and let my head fall back, letting out a burdened sigh.
"Cristina," I said.
"Cristina," he repeated. "I thought that was her name, but Willa refused to actually say it."
"What did she tell you?"
"That she found out that there was something going on between the two of you before Christmas. Is it true?"
I met his eyes.
"I had already told Willa that I didn't want to be with her anymore, that that wasn't what I wanted for my life. I wasn't unfaithful to her."
"I didn't think that you would be. But it's hard to be unfaithful to someone who you never wanted to be faithful to in the first place."
"I'm sorry," I said.
He shook his head.
"There's no reason to tell me that you're sorry. I should be apologizing to you."
"To me? Why?"
"Your father and I had big dreams of our companies and our families coming together and how wonderful it would be. We assumed since the two of you grew up together that you would naturally come together. It never occurred to us that that might not happen, and I never would have imagined that you would get engaged when it was so obvious that the two of you were never in love."
"I tried," I told him. "There were times early on when I was happy with her."
"I know. You gave it an admirable try. But that's just the thing, Josh. It shouldn't be an admirable try. Being in love shouldn't be about trying at all. My daughter is my daughter and I will always love her, but it hurt me every time that I looked into your eyes and saw how miserable you were."
"I wanted to do what I thought was right."
"I believe that, Josh. I believe that you were doing what you thought that your father would want from you, and what you should do, and I believe that you would have done everything that you could to be a good husband to Willa had you married her. But your heart is somewhere else." He stared at me, waiting, but I didn't respond, so he continued. "So, if your heart is there, why aren't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I couldn't help but notice how much happier you got right around the end of October. There was light and life in you that I haven't seen in a long time. I can't help but think that that was because of Cristina. Anyone who can do that deserves to be chased."
"I have chased her. I've tried to get her to talk to me. After the things that Willa said to her, she won't even look at me."
"So, you chase harder. You don't let what other people think or say dictate the life that you are going to live. You've done that enough, and now it's time that you start living for yourself." He drew in a breath. "And that's another thing."
"What?"
Wilton looked down at his cup and then back at me.
"You know that I haven't been quite myself lately."
I nodded.
"I know."
I felt my heart suddenly give a harder beat as I worried that he was about to tell me something horrible. It had been impossible not to notice the change that had come over him since the last summer, but I hadn't wanted to bring it up.
"The truth is, I haven't felt like myself. I have been so tired and under so much stress, and that's because I have been thinking about my own children."
The sentence struck me as strange and I thought about it for a beat before answering.
"Your children?" I asked. "Willa and Alvin?"
"Those are the only ones I have," he said with a hint of a laugh that reminded me of what he had been like before my parents died.
"What have you been thinking about them?"
"I've been thinking about the future of their involvement with the company. I know that I've been a fairly indulgent father. That's actually a tremendous understatement. I've just wanted to give my family a comfortable, happy life, and have always assumed that there would come a time when I would transfer the company over to my children so that they could carry it on. In recent years, though, I've noticed that neither of them are turning into the type of people who I would want to hold this legacy in their hands. It might be partly my doing, but they are both selfish, greedy, and entitled, and though Willa has shown determination and drive when it comes to making decisions about the stores, so much of what she has done has been tactics that I would never consider on my own."
"What are you saying?"
"I've decided that I can't leave the entire empire to them. My family has worked far too hard building it, and I have worked far too hard maintaining it and growing it to hand it over to them and allow it to fall apart."
"So, what are you goin
g to do?" I asked.
"I tried to take a step back last year and watch them to see how they might handle themselves and the company if it were left entirely into their hands. After what I saw, I know that that's not something that I can do. I've decided that I will give them each positions within the company. They will have jobs and responsibilities, and with those jobs and responsibilities will come salaries. I will leave them each a token from my estate, but the rest will go back into the company and to a few other beneficiaries and organizations I have chosen. If they want to maintain any type of lifestyle, they will need to learn their jobs and do them well, and know what it's like to earn their way in life."
I was stunned at the revelation and felt more than a small amount of vindication about Willa. She had never known what it was to have to really try or work for anything. Even when she was working, it was because she was greedy and wanted to grow what she expected to be her astounding inheritance. Now she would finally know what it was like to actually have to challenge and dedicate herself. It might be good for her. It might cause her to implode. Either way, it was a step.
"What does that mean for your company?" I asked.
"Well," he said. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
By the time that I left the coffee shop that afternoon, the world around me looked completely different. There was a smile on my lips that hadn't been there in weeks and my brain was buzzing. I barely even felt the cold as I hurried back to the office. There was work to be done. A huge amount. But I was going to do it. It was my chance and I was going to give it everything that I could.
Chapter Nineteen
Cristina
"Did you get that weird flyer in the mail today?"
I held my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I walked down the hallway toward the kitchen. The teapot was screaming on the eye of the stove before I could get to it, muffling Constance's voice on the other end of the line.
"Hold on," I said. "I can't hear you." I moved the teapot over and turned off the stove. "Alright. What were you saying?"
