“No, you look great,” one of the bunch admitted, sounding more than a little disappointed. “Come talk to us,” she urged, and I ended up standing in a large group near the drinks table. I looked a little longingly at it, but I wasn’t going for liquid courage, because I told myself that 1) I didn’t need it and 2) I was making positive changes, like Klere. No drinking. These were women I had gone out with, gone to exercise with, invited to my engagement party. I could deal.
“Scarlett, we all thought you fell off the face of the Earth! Explain what urgent business called you away from us last fall.”
I stared around at them, most of them people I had known for years. My mouth opened and closed. Looking at their faces, I thought that maybe not all, but some of them…they knew. And I had been wrong, because I couldn’t deal.
“Oh, there’s Mats, finally,” I announced. I stepped away, and as I did, I heard someone whisper that I had said that I’d come with him, and then I heard the name that had been on my mind, too: Missy. I tilted my chin higher and walked up to my former fiancé.
“Hi, honey,” he said, and kissed my cheek.
Honey? He hadn’t even called me that when we were together. I looked up at him questioningly, and he blushed.
“That’s what I call…called, uh, you know,” he tried to explain. “Drink?”
“No. No, thank you,” I corrected myself, and now it was his turn to look surprised. Yeah, ok, I got it. Say thank you more, noted.
Mats sipped the liquid in his glass. Like most everyone else at the party, he was avoiding the buffet table laden with delicious-looking food. Carbs, sugars, fats, meat, lactose, and whatever else, everyone at the party was avoiding something. In my case, I was sidestepping alcohol and also explanations about why I had been MIA; for Mats, it was synthetic food dyes and the fact that as far as I knew, he was supposed to be marrying another woman. “What happened with you and Missy?” I asked him as he finished a swallow of the drink.
“Uh, Missy?”
“The woman you were engaged to the last time I saw you,” I helpfully explained.
“Oh, right. I told you, we’re taking a break.”
“Why?”
He started to hem and haw and I told him to get on with it. It took a little while, but he finally did. “Well, ok, it was when I saw you at La Méprise that night. It made me think that I’d made a mistake, breaking up with you.”
“I broke up with you,” I reminded him, and he shrugged a little. Clearly, not in his own mind. “What specifically made you think that we’d made a mistake when we called it quits?” I graciously gave him the “we.”
“You looked…” His eyes widened and he looked at my chest, then my accentuated legs. “You looked so beautiful.”
“And Missy isn’t.”
“In her own way,” he answered. “But the comparison…”
“Oh, Mats. You’re such an asshole.”
His eyes now almost popped out of his head. “What?”
“Do you actually remember us together? We fought constantly.”
“You fought with me,” Mats said. “Not the other way around.”
“Is that really what you want for a wife? A woman who’s bawling you out all the time? That Missy may have a truly atrocious haircut, but she clearly loved you. What in the hell are you doing here with me? Seriously, don’t be such an asshole.”
He just stared at me. “Why did you come today?” he asked finally.
I thought for a moment. “I was lonely. I thought maybe I could go back and settle for what I had before, but I don’t want to settle. I did like you, but I’d rather be lonely than be with you again.”
Mats blinked.
“No offense, of course. You knew this wouldn’t have worked the first time around. You were relieved when I told you we shouldn’t get married. And you got engaged so fast, you couldn’t have had a broken heart.”
“No, I never really loved you either,” he said, getting his own jab back into me.
“Then it shouldn’t bother you that I’m leaving you now. Go back and beg Missy for forgiveness, and if you’re very, very lucky, she’ll listen. Oh, one more thing.” I typed quickly and sent him a contact from my phone. “If you do get back together, you could try to work the name I just sent you into conversation. It’s a stylist, Emilio, who can really help her hair. Not that it matters, since she can tolerate you and that’s what’s important, but it might make her feel better.” I thought she might need it after a certain person (me) had mocked her looks to her face and caused a break-up with her fiancé. I felt it was the least I could do.
Mats cleared his throat. “I think I got nervous, imagining just one woman for the rest of my life. When I saw you…”
“One woman is all you need, but that woman certainly isn’t me.” Feeling generous, I added, “I don’t care if you go back to telling people that you broke up with me, not the other way around.” I even patted his little-boy cheek, all smooth and round, no interesting scars, nothing to indicate that life had made him tougher and stronger and he had come out of the hard, scary things as a better man. “Bye. Again, bye.”
And that was that. I had walked into the party thinking that maybe I was going to salvage things and that Mats was the way to go, but everything I had said had been right. I would rather have been lonely. And Emilio really could save Missy’s bad bangs.
I looked for our host, Roberta, to say that I was leaving. I had to walk by the women I had broken away from before, and I heard them. I stopped when I caught my name, and I heard what they said.
“Scarlett…”
“I never would have thought it. She always acts like she’s—”
“Better than all of us?”
“Perfect! She acts like she’s perfect.”
“It’s true, though. I heard it from one of the guys there. Can you believe her? She has a lot of nerve after that night.”
There was laughter and I must have made some kind of sound, or moved involuntarily, so that they noticed me. They turned, almost as one, to look.
I didn’t say a word, and I left. Later, I didn’t remember getting into my car, I didn’t remember driving home, or going into my apartment. I didn’t remember anything, including about that night last fall. All that was in my head were vague impressions about getting dressed to go out, and then I remembered meeting a guy that my mom and her friend had pushed at me as a possible new boyfriend. But my next memory was that he was gone, and I was dancing, and drinking, and then I woke up in a hotel room, alone, having no idea how I’d gotten there. And I knew what had happened, even if I didn’t remember it.
I got back on my couch and pulled my blanket around me, tight, and I turned on the TV and put up the volume so I couldn’t hear the voices in my head. The women at the brunch today. The doctors and nurses last fall, at the hospital where I had brought myself the morning after, asking me what hurt, what I taken, what I had drunk. The police asking who I had been with, what I remembered. My mom crying and asking if I was ok, wanting to know what they had done to me, asking the doctors what was wrong with me and why was I screaming. I put my hands over my face, almost expecting to feel it disfiguring beneath my fingers.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. And I didn’t want to remember.
∞
“I don’t feel well,” I typed. “Sorry, I won’t be in.”
“Again?” Pascale shot the word back almost immediately, but I didn’t bother to answer that, or anything else she was writing about Klere and getting our money back, or how we could get her to post about our brand while she was in her rehab program.
I was busy looking at flights. If I hurried, and spent an obscene amount of money, I could be in Kona, in Hawaii, by the late afternoon. I hadn’t even bothered to shower that morning—I was still in my pajamas as I took a bag down from the closet shelf and started grabbing random shorts and shirts and shoes and shoving them in. I put on clothes, also without noticing much what I was doing, and was ready to go,
heading out the door, when I looked again at the phone in my hand. I stopped in the hallway and dialed.
“Scarlett? What’s wrong?” my brother answered my call.
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing immediate is wrong. I just wanted to tell you myself that I’m going back to Hawaii.”
“For a vacation?” Brooks sounded confused. But he didn’t immediately hang up at the sound of my voice, so I kept talking.
“I’m going for a long time. I’m going to stay there.”
There was a huge silence. “When did you decide this?”
Sometime in the scary, sleepless hours of the night before. “I’ve been thinking about leaving my job, and some things just got clearer, and I’m going to go.”
“Is this because of that guy?” Brooks asked.
“No. He and I aren’t…he’s not…” I sounded like Mats. “Just no. I’m ok, I wanted you to know that. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Another silence. “I’m already worried. I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”
No, I hadn’t. But I had to leave, immediately. “Brooks, you know I haven’t been happy here for a while. That’s an understatement. I need to make some changes, with everything. I,” I cleared my throat. “I’m not going to be drinking anymore, so there’s that. I have savings, and I’m going to take a minute and look for a job I really want to do, rather than hating going in to work every day.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way about your job. And I’m glad about what you said about drinking. I think that’s a really good choice.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. Since he wasn’t Nate, he didn’t guess what I was doing, so I spelled it out. “Me, too.”
“Scar, I don’t know…this Hawaii idea seems very rushed. Have you talked to Mom about it? Zara?”
“Only you. I’ll call Mom later. I don’t think Zara will want to talk to me. Since she blames me for her husband being a jackass.”
“She kicked Bradley out,” he responded.
I nearly dropped the phone. “What? She did?”
“She did. They had a long talk after he made it out of the pool at Mom’s. Then Zara took the kids to the zoo in Oakland and I went over to supervise him moving out of their house yesterday afternoon. She’s going to call you to apologize. I told her what I’d heard, that Bradley was having an affair with his new personal shopper. Zara believed me when she considered what he had been wearing lately. That made it easier for her to accept everything else her husband had been up to.”
“I did question that orange blazer he had on yesterday. It’s for sure?”
“The woman is telling everyone in the city about it, including people I know. Remember Luca Visconti? He called to tell me what he’d heard.”
“Shit.”
“Zara’s very sorry about what she said to you, and how she…pointed you out at the party. It was easier to blame you than him, I think. But you didn’t deserve that.”
I had been feeling for a long time like I deserved everything that I got, that every bad thing that happened was a punishment I had coming. It felt nice to hear that I didn’t in this case, but I still had the urge to go for a run before I left for the airport. I checked to see if I had time. Maybe if I went very fast, and very hard. “Brooks, I have to go.”
“Call me when you get to Hawaii. I don’t think I’m saying the right things to you, Scar. I still feel like I’m missing something here.”
I was nodding at him again. “I also wanted to say that I love you a lot.” The words came out very fast, then I pressed my lips together as hard as I could.
“I love you, too. Scarlett—”
I hung up and dropped my bag in the hallway, then went to go take off the strange outfit I’d had on and put on my running clothes instead. I closed the apartment door, quietly this time, but then pelted down the stairs and through the lobby. This was going to have to be fast so I could get to the airport on time. Fast and hard, to make it hurt.
I stopped as I got to the glass doors, because there was a man standing at the bottom of the two steps that led up to my building. He carried a bag like he was coming to stay, and I could see his eyes with the grey running through them, just like the onyx necklace tucked under my shirt. Those eyes were looking right into mine. I opened the doors and walked to the top of the steps, where he waited. I stood staring, not quite believing that he was really there, and definitely not knowing what to say to him.
Nate broke the silence. “I’ve just been standing out here, thinking about going in. I got the idea that I needed to come back here.”
I nodded. “I’m glad you came,” I managed to get out, but then I just froze again. I didn’t know where to start.
“Just say it, Scarlett Letter.”
I breathed in a sharp gasp. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I acted that way at dinner and I’m sorry for what I said to you…” He held out his arms and I moved into them, and then I just clung, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, holding on as hard as I could. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” I kept repeating. Nate held me just as tightly, and I felt him kissing my hair. “I’m sorry, Nate.”
Vaguely, I heard the doors of my building opening and closing as my neighbors left for work, but I had my face buried in his neck, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Let’s go inside,” he said finally, and very reluctantly, I unlocked the nutcracker grip I held him in and slid to the ground. “Hang on.” He took my hand, removed the brass knuckles, and put them in his pocket.
I didn’t let go of his hand as he picked up his bag with his other one, and instead of taking the stairs as he usually did, he waited with me for the elevator, his arm around me. I leaned into his chest, my face pressed against the hard muscle. “Joey said you were coming back,” I told him. “But I wasn’t sure of when.”
“It was supposed to be tomorrow, and I wasn’t supposed to come back here. I wasn’t planning to.”
I tilted up my face to look at him. “Were you just going to forget me?”
“I wasn’t going to forget you, ever.” The elevator doors opened and we got in. I didn’t think I wanted to know any more. I just wanted to hold on to him and keep him.
“Are you taking a trip?” Nate asked as we walked into my apartment. With his foot, he pushed the bag I had quickly packed out of our way. My bikini top was stuck in the zipper, dragging on the ground, and one flip flop appeared from beneath the wheels as he moved it to the side of the hallway.
“I was going to Hawaii,” I said. “I needed to get away.”
“And you were running,” he said, pointing at my shoes.
I kicked them off. “I needed to.”
Nate led me into the guest bedroom, but then he stopped dead.
“What happened in here?” He looked at the organized shoes, the neat hanging racks divided by clothing type, the jewelry cases stacked on the new dresser (which I had filled with the clothes that I had actually folded. Mostly).
“I cleaned it up. I got it squared away,” I announced.
“I’m impressed,” he said, and smiled, the look I loved to see on his face. He took my hand and led me to the bed, where he sat down. “I flew all night,” he told me, and yawned. “And I don’t think I slept much last week, back in the hotel.”
“Me neither.” I stood between his knees and put my hands on his cheeks, feeling the scruff of his beard. Nate kicked off his shoes and lay back, then held out his arms again.
Thank God. I lay down next to him and he pulled me close against him.
“This is much better,” he murmured in my ear.
“Nate, I’m so sorry.”
“Go to sleep now, and we’ll talk when we get up.”
I let my eyes close, and I slept. I forgot about my flight to Kona, and I didn’t feel the need to run anymore, either.
When I woke up, I heard Nate in the kitchen. The bathroom was still steamy from his shower when I went in, with his shaving stuff placed neatly on the edge of the sink, his toothbr
ush and toothpaste lined up next to each other. I turned on the shower too, and when I came out, I smelled breakfast. I couldn’t think of the last time I had eaten, really eaten a meal. I was so hungry that I didn’t bother to put on clothes. I walked out, still dripping, wearing only my towel.
“Eggs, fruit, toast. Coffee.” Nate pointed at a stool. “Have a seat and eat.” I did, and as I stuffed my face, I asked him about how things were in Hawaii, which he seemed not overly pleased with.
“Howie—he’s the guy who I’m paying to fill in for me—he’s not doing the job the way I want him to,” Nate explained. “I ran through half my properties and made him a list about a mile long of things he needed to do. Worse than your list for your grandmother’s house,” he told me. “Howie just doesn’t pay attention to detail.”
I looked at the fruit, cut into careful cubes on my plate, and I couldn’t help smiling.
“What?” Nate asked.
I pointed at the melon, and then I started to laugh.
“Are you mocking me, Red Skelton?”
For some reason, that fruit was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Or maybe it was just that the relief that he was there was making me slightly hysterical. “Even the banana,” I gasped. “You make square banana pieces.”
Nate started to shake his head, but then he looked at the plate too, and he started to laugh with me. He rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t even know I did that. I can stop that with the square bananas.”
“No,” I told him. “Don’t stop anything. Because I’ll take you just the way you are.”
Nate slowly stopped laughing. “With these?” He pointed at the scars on his face. “And these?” He pulled up his t-shirt, revealing the ones on his side. “With me as a working stiff, living in the islands, no college, no—”
“Just the way you are,” I told him. “What about me?” I waited, all the laughter gone from me also.
He didn’t speak right away. “Do you know why I was so upset at that restaurant?”
I felt my blush begin immediately, blood rising with shame up into my face. “Because I acted like an idiot. I was trying to make Mats jealous, and make Missy cry. I thought it would make me feel better. And when you were angry, I just…I just wanted to make you feel as terrible as I did.”
Lovely You Page 22
