Auctioned to Him 6: Damage

by Charlotte Byrd

  “I see.” I nod. That’s not much of an explanation, but we’ve been over this a million times. And a million explanations later, I am still not completely clear about what really happened.

  “So, how’s work going?” I ask. “Still as crazy as ever?”

  “Yes,” Tristan says. “More so even, I think. But I have a little bit of a routine now. So I don’t feel so lost all the time. Like I’m playing catch up.”

  “And do you like it?” I ask. “Do you think it’s something you want to do in the future?”

  “I don’t know,” Tristan says, looking up at the ceiling. I can tell he’s really thinking about what I had asked.

  “I like the internship. I mean, I really think I’m learning a lot,” he finally says. “I definitely want to do something with finance or investment banking in the future, I think. I’m just not sure about this particular job. Like the one that Kathryn has.”

  Agh, Kathryn. Why did he have to bring her up?

  “So how’s Kathryn? Did anything happen between you two?” I ask cautiously. I don’t want to seem too jealous or concerned. Just like I’m trying to make normal conversation.

  “No.” He shakes his head definitively. “I’m sorry again about before.”

  “What? What do you have to be sorry about?” I ask.

  “Well, you know, I wasn’t entirely truthful back then. I mean, I knew that she liked me. Of course, I did. She told me. Even before she kissed me at the bar that time. And I told her about you. But…I guess I should’ve been even more clear.”

  I nod. I feel very guilty. I need to tell him the truth. I know that. I owe him the truth. But now I’m even more scared than I was before. Now, I’m terrified. Even a few hours ago, he was sort of my ex. And now he’s back to being my boyfriend. I feel like I have the whole world on my shoulders – and it’s getting heavier and heavier by the minute.

  “Alice?” Tristan turns to me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you okay? You’re sort of spacing out for a bit.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, nodding. “It has been kind of a long day.”

  “Okay.” He springs out of bed. “Why don’t you relax for a bit while I try to put a dent into that Macroeconomics problem set. And try being the operative word, of course.”

  I smile and nod. I watch him get dressed. He gives me a peck on the cheek and leaves the room.

  I am still lying naked in bed and listening to music when I hear Tristan call my name from the living room. It has only been ten minutes since he left, but I suddenly realize that I’m in Tristan’s room and Dylan might be back.

  “Alice!” Tristan yells.

  “What?” I call back, scrambling to put on my clothes. I manage to throw on my sweater and underwear, but I struggle with the jeans. Why did I have to wear skinny jeans today? Of all days!

  “Alice!”

  “I’m coming!”

  I roll my bra into a little wad and hid it in my bag. Why can’t he just come over here? Why is he yelling like this?

  When I walk into the living room, I see Tristan pacing back and forth.

  “Tristan?” I ask.

  He stops dead in his tracks. When he turns around, I see an expression on his face that I have never seen before. His eyes are empty, his lips are pursed and his cheeks are devoid of color. I think that someone has died.

  “What’s wrong?” I run up to him. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  I try to put my around him, but he shrugs me off.

  “What’s this?” he says, waving something in my face. I take it out of his hand. It’s a postcard with a picture of a casino from Atlantic City. Oh wait. Not just some casino. The casino!

  “I don’t know,” I say, putting on the most innocent look I can. “What is it?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Alice,” Tristan says, shaking his head. He hands me the postcard. I flip it around. And see it. Those words. They will probably stay with me always.

  * * *

  Dear Mr. Dylan and Mrs. Alice Summers Worthington,

  Congratulations on your recent wedding. It was a pleasure to share this momentous occasion with you. We hope that you will join us again in the near future. As a thank you, we’d like to extend an invitation to you to stay at our hotel for a reduced priced.

  * * *

  There is more to it than that. The postcard offered us a 50% discount on all future bookings for the year. But, frankly, I stopped reading carefully after I saw the words Mrs. Worthington and wedding.

  “Alice, what’s going on?” Tristan asks, taking the postcard out of my hand.

  17

  I take a deep breath. This is my chance. Tristan knows and he doesn’t really even know he knows.

  “I have something to tell you,” I say. “Can you sit down?”

  I can tell by the look on his face that he isn’t mad yet. Not even angry. Instead, he has this vacant look in his eyes. Like soldiers do in war movies, right after their friends get blown up. Shell-shocked.

  Tristan sits down and I tell him everything. I don’t even try to sugar coat it. I just tell him the truth. Exactly as it happened. He listens quietly and doesn’t interrupt me once.

  “I don’t understand,” he says after I’m done. “You’re actually married?”

  I hate that word. It makes me sound so old and worldly and stupid at the same time.

  I nod. “Yes, technically. But hopefully not for long.”

  “To my best friend, Dylan?”

  I didn’t know that they were best friends now. That’s news to me. I nod.

  “To our roommate, Dylan?” Tristan asks. I nod again.

  “And you two, what, slept together? On top of that?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say after a moment. “I honestly don’t know. But maybe.”

  “Oh my God, Alice! Oh my God! What were you thinking?” He gets up and starts pacing around the room.

  I want him to sit down, but I’m afraid to reach out to him. Afraid that he’ll push me away and never talk to me again.

  “I wasn’t,” I say. “I was really upset about us. I wanted to let out some steam. So we all drank a little too much. And I got really drunk.”

  “Yeah, everyone drank too much, but it was only you and Dylan who got married and slept together. Why? Why did you do that?”

  Tristan’s eyes search my face. I see longing and desperation in them. I want to make it all go away. But I can’t.

  “And you know what else, you were never going to tell me about this, were you Alice?” he asks. “If I didn’t see this stupid postcard, you and Dylan were just never going to tell me. You were just going to go on and pretend like nothing had happened.”

  “No…we weren’t,” I lie.

  “Yes, you were!” he yells in my face. The hair on the back of my arms stands up.

  “And what about Juliet? Does she know?”

  I don’t reply. I simply look away from him.

  “Oh shit! Juliet knows, doesn’t she? She knows?” Tristan says and goes back to pacing. “So, what do you all do? Do you all joke and laugh about this behind my back when I’m not here. Is that what you do?”

  “No, no,” I say. Before I can get a hold of myself, I run up to him and throw my arms around his shoulders. “No, I’m so, so sorry, Tristan. You have to believe me.”

  “Get the fuck off me!” He pushes me away. Hard. I lose my balance and fall to the floor. “I can’t believe you, Alice,” Tristan says, shaking his head. “I poured my heart out to you. I apologized for just flirting with Kathryn. And you just went out there and married our roommate. My best friend. What the fuck, Alice? Who the hell are you?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know who I am. All I know is that I’m not the person that I once was and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be her again.

  “Are you okay Alice? What are you doing on the floor?” Dylan walks into the living room.

  “You!” Tristan yells. I don’t see him run past me, but suddenly he and Dyla
n are intertwined and withering around on the floor.

  “Tristan, stop. Please,” I yell, but it’s to no avail. He punches Dylan in the face. He tries to punch him again, but Dylan blocks the second punch. And instead, knees him in the groin.

  “Tristan, Dylan, please stop!” I yell at the top of my lungs. But no one is listening to me. They’re back at it again. Pushing. Tussling. Fighting. At one moment, Dylan’s on top. But at the next, Tristan is. And then Dylan, again. And back to Tristan. Finally, I manage to grab someone’s shoulders. I pull as hard as I can. But he hardly budges.

  BAM!

  Everything turns to black. I can’t see anything. My whole face is tingling and throbbing. When I grab my nose to try to numb the pain, I feel something hot and sticky. I pull my hand away and see that I’m covered in blood. My nose is bleeding. I can’t see out of one eye.

  “Tristan, what the fuck are you doing?” I hear someone say somewhere very far away. I recognize the voice. It belongs to Dylan. But he’s speaking in slow motion.

  “Are…you….okay?” Dylan asks me. I see him above me. He’s still talking incredibly slowly. I try to say yes, but nothing comes out. My blood over my body is freaking me out. My heart starts to beat faster. My breaths get shallower. My hands and legs go numb. And everything turns blurry.

  “Alice? Alice?” I hear someone one’s voice somewhere above me. It’s a female voice. I try to open my eyes. But I only manage to get one open. The light from the lamp causes me great pain and shut it quickly. The other one doesn’t open at all.

  “Oh my God, Alice,” I hear the girl say again. “What the fuck is wrong with you two?”

  “It was an accident. He didn’t mean to elbow her,” a guy says.

  “I don’t care. You shouldn’t have been fighting in the first place,” she says. Juliet. It’s Juliet, I decide.

  “He started it,” the guy says. And suddenly, everything starts to come back to me.

  Tristan finding the postcard. Telling him about the accidental wedding. Dylan walking in. Tristan and Dylan fighting. Trying to stop them. Getting elbowed in the face. My nose bleeding. I don’t remember this, but that’s probably when I must’ve passed out.

  I sit up and look around. I can barely see out of my left eye. The eyelid feels incredibly heavy and I don’t have enough strength to lift it. All I can make is a little slit.

  “You need to put some ice on that,” Juliet says. She goes to the refrigerator and gets me a bag of frozen berries.

  “Here. We don’t have any peas, but this should do.”

  “Where’s Tristan?” I ask, taking the berries. I press the bag onto my eye. It relieves some of the pain from the swelling but brings about more of a different kind of pain from pressing something so cold onto such a sensitive surface.

  “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug.

  “He’s outside,” Dylan says.

  “What the hell happened, Dylan?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, what the hell happened to you? You weren’t supposed to tell him anything! Or don’t you remember that little promise?”

  “I wasn’t going to. But that stupid hotel sent us a postcard thanking us for getting married there, with some sort of discount for future stays. He saw it,” I say.

  I point to the dining room table where the postcard, which has ruined my life, lays innocently.

  “Shit,” Dylan says, picking it up. “Why would they do this?”

  No one says anything for a few moments.

  “It’s probably for the best,” I finally say. “He was going to find out anyway.”

  “But not like this,” Dylan says.

  Dylan goes to his room. And then comes out with a concerned look on his face.

  “Do you know where my phone is?” he asks. “I just had it.”

  “I saw it earlier,” Juliet says. “It was on the floor when you two were fighting.”

  Juliet helps Dylan look for his phone while I continue to sit motionlessly in a daze.

  “It’s not here,” Dylan says. His voice is getting frantic. What’s the big deal? I wonder. Who the hell cares about a phone right now?

  “It’s not here, Alice,” he says.

  “So?”

  “So? So? Don’t you know what this means?”

  “What?”

  “Tristan must’ve took it,” Dylan says. His face drains of all color. I stare at him.

  “Why would he want your phone? He has his own.”

  “Because his has Peyton’s number on it,” Juliet says quietly.

  Oh no, I think. I shake my head.

  “But Tristan wouldn’t do that,” I say slowly.

  “Of course he would,” Dylan says. “He’s really pissed at us.”

  “Do you know her number?” Juliet asks. “You can use my phone.”

  Dylan walks around, trying to remember. No, he shakes his head.

  “I used to know her old one, but she recently got a new one with a New Haven number,” he says.

  “Wait, I called her a few weekends back. I think I can find it. What’s the area code?”

  “203,” Dylan says.

  Juliet scrolls through her phone. Eventually she finds it and hands Dylan her phone. He’s about to dial it. But then hesitates.

  “I can’t,” he says, shaking his head.

  “You have to know,” Juliet says.

  “But how will I know? Do I just ask her?” he asks.

  “You won’t have to,” Juliet says. “If he called her and told her…you’ll know right when she answers.”

  Dylan breathes in deeply. I look at Juliet. We both seem to hold our breath.

  “Peyton?” Dylan says after she finally picks up. “Hey.”

  His face simply grows white. All blood drains from his cheeks and his lips turn almost blue. Dylan’s shoulders slouch and he drops down to the couch as if his legs can’t hold him up anymore. Without saying a word, he looks down at the phone.

  “She hung up,” he says even though no explanations are needed. Juliet and I both know that Peyton knows.

  A week passes. My eye manages to heal somewhat, not look so black and blue. I can see out of it again. Unfortunately, my life is a little harder to heal. Tristan doesn’t return any of my calls or texts and he refuses to talk to me. One day we ride the elevator down together. No matter how hard I try, he ignores me. I’m not even a stranger to him anymore. I’m worse. I’m a ghost. He doesn’t even acknowledge my existence.

  And the worst part? I know that I deserve it. I should’ve just told him the truth right away. I shouldn’t have led him on and acted like everything was fine when he made up with me. I shouldn’t have done a million things, but if I were to do it again, I would. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to be with him. If only one last time. Looking back now, I wonder if I knew that it was going to be our last time together. Maybe that’s why I went along with it. Seized the day, so to speak.

  I made an unusual discovery this week. I didn’t know how difficult it was to explain why I had a black eye and make someone believe that it was an accident. For some reason, I came up with a ridiculous story – that I fell into a corner of a bookshelf. It seemed so reasonable, but when I ran it by a few people who asked me with a concerned look on their face what had happened, I could tell right away that though they nodded and said they were sorry, none of them believed me. Luckily, my eye started to heal and fewer and fewer people asked me about it as time passed.

  Outside of my roommates, the only people who know the truth about what happened are Tea and Dr. Greyson. They were the only ones with whom I actually talked about all this in detail and told the truth. When I talked to Tea about it, she acted like a good friend. She didn’t make judgements and she didn’t give me advice. I messed up so much that I’m beyond advice. I don’t want to hear it. I can’t take any of it in. I just want to run away screaming whenever someone (like Juliet) offers it up. Dr. Greyson, on the other hand, isn’t much of an advice giver. But when I talked to her, I got the impre
ssion that she actually thinks that I secretly want my whole life to fall apart. Like I’m on some sort of mission to destroy my life. And I’m not. Not really. At least I hope not.

  But honestly, talking about it doesn’t help much. Instead, it makes me feel like I’m dwelling on something that I can never get over or change and that makes me feel like crap. So recently, I’ve come to a decision. I’m not going to talk about it anymore. And I’m not even going to think about it. If Tristan doesn’t want to talk about it, then why should I? What’s done is done. It’s over. It was a terrible mistake. All I can do now is try to move on. If only the legal system understood the urgency with which I wanted to move on…

  18

  The legal system moves at its own pace. And it cannot be rushed no matter how hard you try. And dealing with it is an exercise in patience. What I find out from Dylan and later confirm on my own by researching the topic online is that an annulment is incredibly difficult to get in the state of New York.

  I’ve heard the word “annulment” many times before, but I didn’t actually know what it meant. Apparently, an annulment is a finding by a court that a marriage is invalid or void and this finding allows the court to make it as if the marriage never occurred. This is what both Dylan and I want, but it doesn’t look like it’s something that can happen.

  “I can’t believe that we can’t get an annulment,” I say. Dylan is sitting on the couch texting someone.

  “We’ve been over this already,” he says without looking up.

  “I know.” I sigh. “But what if…”

  “Look, here, let me read it to you,” he says, cutting me off.

  He already told me this and I read a lot about it already online, but I still feel like there must be a way. Dylan searches for something on his phone and clears his throat.

  “There are various grounds that allow either spouse to bring the action to annul the marriage,” Dylan reads. “These are the grounds. Either spouse had not reached the age of legal consent, 18 years of age. That doesn’t apply to us.”