I shrug, which he ignores, coming to sit on my desk and crossing his legs so he can angle in to pierce into my tired eyes.
“Come on, whose is it? Is it to do with the mystery guy on Friday night? Tell me, while we’re still alone.”
I open my mouth, but don’t get as far as uttering a single word when he continues.
“Is that where you sloped off to on Saturday night, too?”
“No, I went to Nate’s.” I’m quite pleased I’m able to answer his question honestly. The second one at least.
“So where, for the love of all things holy, did you get it?”
“A benefactor. From way back.”
I turn on my computer, adjusting the monitor so it’s a shield between me and Mr Nosey-pants.
“So, it’s not like it’s a rental. You own that sweet machine?”
“No, not really, I’m kinda using it. For now.” Which was the excuse I told my parents when I reluctantly had to pick Hope up in it yesterday.
“You’re not making any sense, Chica.”
“Hmm.” I ignore him, opening emails and clicking overly loudly on my keyboard.
He ducks his face, so he’s eye-level with the screen. “I need details and I’m not gonna stop being a pain in the ass until I get them.”
He straightens his back and waltzes off to his desk before his words cease to be the final ones in the conversation.
I sigh and bring up a used car website. I need to buy myself a runaround, sharpish. But with no money in the bank and Hope’s summer school fees on the horizon, it won’t be half as decent as my Ford Focus. I shut down the site and get on with my work. No point in looking if I don’t have a job.
It lasts the whole damn day, Elliot looking across at me with a questioning glint in his eye. He’s dying to fire more questions at me but I keep myself busy and don’t give him any opportunity to ambush me.
“Got it,” he screams. Scaring the intern so much she knocks her can of Mountain Dew into the trash and has to take the basket to the kitchen to deal with the spillage.
Taking the opportunity, he rushes over, flapping his hands. “Nate has proposed. You two are official.”
It starts as a quiet chuckle in the back of my throat then develops into a full-blown raucous laugh. The absurdity of it not even touching the actual ridiculous reason for me having a freaking Porsche sports car.
“Nate? You couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried. And when did a car replace an engagement ring?”
“But he’s the only one you know who’s loaded.” He wanders off to the window, no doubt to look for the millionth time at the Porsche in the company parking lot.
I screw up my face.
“Well he must be, he doesn’t spend it on anything else.”
I huff out a disinterested breath.
“Unless…”
His shoulders slump and he takes a long breath before walking over to me in his usual hip-jerking fashion. Lowering into my personal space he murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, “Is this to do with you know who?”
His accuracy must reflect in my expression because he drops his hands to my desk, stuttering and stammering with the shock of his revelation, he tilts his body toward me. “I… you… We need to talk somewhere private before you go home.”
“I can’t I’ve got Hope to pick up.”
“No, no, no.” He flourishes his palm in front of my face. “You know I can see her schedule. It’s Monday, and she’s got music class tonight.”
“I intend to clean the house before I have to pick her up.”
“Pft.” He flaps his hands. “That would be the day.”
I look around him, to the intern who has crept back into the office and is straining to hear what we’re talking about.
“Do you mind grabbing me a carton of paperclips from the stationary cupboard? You know where it is don’t you? Tenth floor, next to the vending machine,” I ask.
I don’t need any, but she dutifully trots off, giving me the chance to grab hold of Elliot’s hand and answer his never-ending questions.
“Yes,” I say, burrowing my gaze into his. “I met with Isaac over the weekend.”
“Holy shit.” He claps his hand over his mouth. “Are you two back together?”
“No.” I close my eyes.
“But he bought you a car? Who buys someone a car, unless… Hope. Is it because of her?”
With pursed lips I shake my head.
“What happened then?” He raises one foot as if to stamp it like a toddler, then thinks better of it and shuffles his weight from one leg to the other instead.
His reaction makes me feel nauseous, as it confirms how wrong this situation is.
The footsteps of the intern coming back to the office, ward me off telling him more. “Okay Elliot, we’ll go to the bagel bar on the corner and I’ll give you the lowdown,” I fire out. “Now will you get back to work?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head vehemently. “We need to go somewhere you’ll drive me. In that.” He points over to the window.
I curse under my breath. “Okay, where?”
“The diner near Hope’s school, that way I get to see her too. It’s been ages since she spent time with her Uncle Elliot.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Okay, okay.”
Although, to be fair, he would make an excellent uncle.
Unlike Isaac, who would make an awful father.
Neither of us work particularly hard after that and leave as soon as it’s five pm.
On the way to the diner, Elliot presses every button and twists every knob in the car. “You have to keep this, Chica. It’s sooo cool.”
“Who said I would give it back?” I tap his hand as he goes to tune the radio to a different station.
He crosses his arms and looks across at me. “I know you, Chica. You’re too proud and independent to take a gift like this. Especially one with strings attached.”
“What strings?” I ask, as I pull into the lot in front of the diner.
“The ones winching your heart out into the open.”
Silently, I shake my head.
“So, you don’t think he’s trying to win you over with this?”
“Nope.” I sigh. “Absolutely not. Parting gift apparently.” I turn off the engine, forgetting about the stupid gears and it lurches toward the diner making our heads snap forward and then back.
He laughs, as do I. “Goddamn stupid car.”
We carry on the conversation over a ridiculously large stack of pancakes. Waiting until the server takes our order, comes back with cutlery, then cups, then water, then napkins, then syrup, then plates, and eventually pancakes. Each time asking if she could get us anything else. By the time the pancakes come out, Elliot has bust every vein in his temple and chewed away the skin across his knuckles.
I can wait. Wait until I know what on earth I will reveal to Elliot about my weekend and what emotion I use to convey it.
In the end, I tell him of the fight, the lift home, and the altercation over Isaac’s clothes. The car and his apartment, leaving out the orgasms and other more sensitive descriptions of our primal indulgences.
Elliot rests back on his seat, rubbing at his belly to calm the protestations of indigestion. “This will take time to process, Chica. Because there’s a whole load of gaps and even more questions swimming around in my brain.”
I pick up a jar of maple syrup, tipping it from one side to the other, lost in the motion of the brown liquid clinging hopelessly to the glass, while I mull over the précis I’ve aired.
“I know. I don’t know what to make of it either. It’s as if there’s unfinished business, you know?”
He guffaws. “Hello. Earth to Caterina.” He waves his finger in front of my face. “Hope?”
“Yes. Obviously, there’s Hope. I meant between me and him.”
He rolls his bottom lip and shuffles onto his sit-bones. “But he’s told you not to contact him?” His face falls in sympathy.
; “Hmm, yes he has. But I don’t know why?” I sigh. “Do you think he’s involved in something illegal?”
“Not that I know of. Nothing in the intel. Only him coming back as a fighter. For Carlos Hernandez.”
“And what did you find out about him?”
“Carlos?”
I nod, knitting my fingers together and resting on the table toward him.
“He’s a small-time businessman, trying to take a step up with his nightclubs and gyms.”
“No drugs or racketeering?” I recline, huffing with disbelief.
“Nothing I came across.” He rubs his belly again. “You don’t think Isaac’s involved in anything like that do you?”
“I don’t think so. He tells me I should stay away.” My anxious hands take hold of the syrup bottle again.
For a few moments, Elliot is silent and eventually, with as serious face as he’s ever shown, he drops his voice and inclines toward me. “If it wasn’t for Hope, then I would agree with him.”
I nod my head, slowly and surely, in agreement. “But there is Hope to think about. And I’m torn between keeping her well away from him and her right to know who her father is. Or I was…”
“So, you gonna meet him again?”
I stop rocking the maple syrup and wipe my fingers on a napkin before I attempt to answer. The answer shouting loudest in my brain is, ‘yes’. Fortunately, I give the answer Isaac told me I should, “No.”
“But what about Hope?”
I stutter a laugh. “That’s why I said no.”
For a moment he rattles his head as if to dislodge the fog clouding it. “But, she’s his daughter.”
“Exactly. Can you imagine? She’s my priority and there’s no way she deserves to have a father like him.”
“I don’t understand why you would say that, Cate? It seems you barely know him. You told me yourself. You know what he used to be. You know why he was imprisoned. But you never once believed he wasn’t what you wanted. So why is he suddenly not good enough?”
“Because of what’s happened in between. The part of his life which turned him from Isaac, the father of my daughter, into the monster he is now. And, at the moment I can’t see beyond his rough exterior and mean ways. Simply looking at him scares me.”
A shudder racks through Elliot’s body.
I laugh. “What’s that for?”
“He sounds dreamy.”
I gasp at him. “Have you not been listening to anything I said? He rips men apart for a living and he must be good, considering the amount of money he splashes around. And that’s before he’s ruined your foo-foo for any other man.” I clamp a palm across my wayward mouth; sex with Isaac was part of the weekend re-count I missed out. I’d tried very hard to blank it from my mind, tell myself I wasn’t a selfish slut who enjoyed every rough minute of it. But Elliot isn’t naïve and, the way his expression has frozen, he knows exactly what I mean.
“You didn’t?” he gasps.
I feel so ashamed and utterly selfish for not once, but twice getting naked with my estranged ex. The father to my daughter. Who is now part monster and a whole lot repulsive.
“I didn’t mean to. And it won’t happen again.” I feign a disgusted look.
He makes a mewl noise deep in his throat. “Well, he can wreck my foo-foo any time.”
“Did you just say that?” I’m not shocked at his comment. He says stupid things about any rough-looking, tatted-up guy. It’s more because he changes his tune. Almost wanting me to see Isaac again.
“Do you think I’m a hoe, Elliot?”
He straightens his face. “Of course not, Chica. You’ve put Hope first in everything you do. Even down to keeping that guy of yours, Nate, at arm’s length.”
“He’s not my guy. And never will be.” Thinking back to the discussion we had on Saturday night and the note I left for him. He’s not contacted me since. So that says it all.
Elliot laughs for a few seconds before evening his expression. “So, are you not going to talk to Isaac about Hope?”
I drum my fingers on the tabletop.
“I know I have to. I just don’t know how.”
“I don’t think you should write him off yet. You’ve got to give him a good chance at this, because if you don’t, someone will hate you at some point. And whether it’s Hope, or Isaac, or yourself—now is the time to seriously think about it.”
The words stick me in the heart like a needle. Of course, he’s right.
“I don’t know how to meet with him. I don’t have his number. I know where he lives—if I can remember the apartment block that is. And I can’t go to the gym again.”
He points his fingers towards his chest. “Em, hello, Chica. You have the best research assistant in the history of law firms. Leave it with me.”
“Okay. Get his number and then I’ll decide.”
“Good.” He claps his hands on the table. “So, you gonna keep the car?”
“Do you think I should?”
“Hell yeah.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I can’t.”
“It’s the least he can do for you. You’ve endured the cost of raising a child and he’s got money to throw around. I think you should keep it.”
“We’ll see. It doesn’t feel comfortable right now. But I can’t afford to buy a replacement car yet.”
“Why you even bothered about that? Sell it and buy a decent car and save the rest for Hope’s college fees. You’ll even have spare to take her to Disney.” He claps his hands, rising on his sit-bones. “You could take me too. Oh, please say it’s a plan.”
I laugh at his absurdity. “Don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
15
Cate
Monday and Tuesday have flown by this week. Hope is in a great mood, to the point I’m wondering who has abducted my child.
After the initial phase of being wary of school and on the teacher’s watch-list, she’s settling. And has a friend, Tiggy, who she speaks about incessantly and whose house she’s been invited to after school on Thursday.
It’ll be awesome if her good behavior lasts, although I’m not counting my chickens yet. She is my daughter, after all.
The pace at work is heavy going—caught in a whirlwind of court appearances, case reviews and end of month reports. But it’s good for me as it limits time to think about Isaac.
The only downside—I’ve not had a chance to follow up on my car. I’m sure Isaac is right. It’ll be food cans by now, even if it wasn’t when he said it. My head is telling me to sell the car but my gut is saying give it back. Either way, it irks me how loaded he must be and how the money could be put in a trust fund for Hope. I’ve not checked how much a Porsche Panamera costs, but I’m sure it’s enough; certainly to lighten the load with college fees. I shudder at the amount of debt I racked up putting myself through college.
Elliot comes up trumps with a mobile number for Isaac. Even giving me a few draft texts to send.
Fancy another fucked-up sex-fight? was ruled out straight away. In fact, I dismissed everything other than. Need to TALK. Your apartment 5pm Thursday.
Isaac chooses not to respond. Not even to tell me he got the damn text. Leaving me hanging and with no chance to rehearse my lines. My mind going from there’s no point, to, he doesn’t deserve to know about her, anyway.
Then, to cap it all, Elliot has had a sudden change of heart about Isaac. Telling me, on reflection it’s best I forget him and move on. I don’t get his U-turn other than him agreeing with my view. It seems his thoughts on it are attached to a Yo-Yo string too.
Despite the advice, and my sensible head insisting I should leave well alone, I have a doubt—a nugget wriggling around in my brain like a worm of self-destruction.
I’ve always been this way—going against the grain. It’s the reason I took up with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks in the first place and why I bust a gut making my way in this world instead of taking the easy route. And why Isaac turns me on. Espe
cially the way he is now.
“So, what you wearing tonight?” Elliot asks me, as I gather my purse and stuff my briefcase with papers—which will not be looked at until I show for work tomorrow.
Studying my tailored, gray dress, partially covered with a matching bolero jacket, I screw up my face and hold out my arms. “This.”
He pulls his chin into his neck. “Oh, okay. That’s good.”
Now I’m feeling self-conscious. “Why, what’s wrong with this?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Elliot swipes an arm across his desk, brushing a stack of files into an open drawer. “It’s good you’re focusing on talking to him tonight.” Locking the drawer with the key which he slides under his mouse mat.
His bitchiness makes me chuckle. “Of course, I’m of no mind to do anything else.” Lie. Lie. Lie.
All the way over to Isaac’s apartment building, my stomach churns. I’m debating what I’ll say, where I’ll sit when I say it, and what I should do if he makes an advance on me. The over-thinking is endless.
Waiting in the parked-up car until five pm, I scroll through my phone to find there’s nothing exciting going on in my little world and thankfully no message from Hope asking to pick her up early from Tiggy’s.
I log onto the school calendar to make sure she’s still booked in for music class next week and there’s no other teacher appointments scheduled. All good.
It kills me to wait until after five to face Isaac, but when it comes, I feel as sick as a parrot. Forcing myself to leave the comfort of the car and go into the reception, only to feel my shoulders sag when the concierge informs me Isaac isn’t home. A ruse maybe?
Deflated, I leave the sleek building and stand on the sidewalk for a few moments weighing up my options.
Isaac’s apartment is at a quiet intersection off the main commuter route and his bright yellow SUV easily beacons from a distance.
Quickly, I retreat into the shadow of a reveal in the brick wall a few meters from the glass doors. I blow out a breath and smooth my skirt, rocking nervously on my heels as his car burbles toward me.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him when I’ve been wearing my work attire and after Elliot’s jibe, I wonder what Isaac will make of it. It’s pathetic I have such a thought—I shouldn’t care what he thinks of me like this. But I do.
Bad Ink Page 11
