by JD Hawkins
“Mi—I— What am I supposed to do?” I splutter, feeling half panicked and half stunned. “Just show up at his door and…it’s crazy!”
Mia looks up from her phone at me, her thumb hovering over it.
“Hazel, you met a soon-to-be billionaire by pretending to be his fiancée for his colleagues. And then had him pretend to be your boyfriend for your ex’s wedding. Everything about the two of you has been crazy so far, so maybe something like this is meant to be.”
Before I can think of a response, her thumb presses whatever was on her screen, and two seconds later my own phone pings. I feel my eyes widen and Mia widens hers as if to mirror me, though she’s wearing a gigantic grin also.
I reach into my scrubs for my phone and see the email notification, the details of my flight into ORD. I get in just after nine tonight.
My heart’s thumping and my chest feels hot. But inside, there’s a part of me that’s euphoric, gleeful, ecstatic that I’ve been forced into this. The possibility of simply telling Mia I won’t go never even enters my mind.
“But…but…” I flutter, looking around. “I’m still sweaty from my shift…I didn’t even wash my hair last night…I can’t go in my scrubs…”
Mia checks her watch and then smiles back at me. She nods towards the hospital behind us. “Best get changed quickly then,” she says casually, taking a little sip of goo and not even grimacing. “I’ll call you a cab.”
What seemed like a thrilling, radical, and even romantic idea while drinking black goo with Mia outside the hospital seems a little ridiculous and silly when you’re hanging around an airport lounge with your frazzled hair, hoodie, and jean shorts.
Airports give you a lot of time to stop and think—and that’s not exactly what you want in the middle of a grand, spontaneous, romantic gesture.
All I’m carrying is my phone, a charger, my wallet, and a bottle of water in the raggedy old yellow backpack I use to take things to and from work. Surrounded by people pulling heavy suitcases, dressed up for their flights, or at least dressed a little more sensibly for potentially cold Chicago weather, I feel a little subdued and vulnerable.
I double-check the address Nate had mentioned during our long drive talking about where we’d grown up, and pray that I haven’t got the name wrong, and that he still lives there. Then I spend the little time I have to wait for my flight in the bathroom, wrestling with my hair and a hurriedly bought travel size bottle of hair spray.
On the plane, the subtle, odd, physical sensations of the air pressure and flying mix with the butterflies in my stomach and the adrenaline in my veins, making me feel like this is all a strange, lucid daydream. A constant sense of surprise and exciting fear. As if in each moment I’m only just realizing that I’m really here, really going to Chicago, really about to see Nate again.
I spend most of the flight trying to plan, trying to think of what I might say when—if—he opens the door. What will he say? Or do?
Back in L.A. he had a knack for saying the right thing, or giving the right look. He knew when words weren’t enough and would just take me and…but what if he doesn’t do that now?
It’s gray, cold, and dark in Chicago when I arrive, so I feel even more out of place with my bare legs and scruffy clothing. Surrounded by even more suits and nice outfits, I imagine most people just judging me as a naïve European backpacker. Either way, my heart’s thumping too much to care, as if being in the same city as him, this close, is already having some powerful effect.
After waiting in the taxi line for twenty minutes, I finally duck into a cab and tell the driver the name of the street Nate mentioned to me, then tell him what Nate had told me.
“It’s a big building…tall. An old building…he said he was on the second-from-top floor, where these big windows give a south-facing view…and… Let me think… What else…”
“I know the one,” the cab driver says casually, pulling away from the curb. “It’s about twenty minutes from here.”
“Thanks.”
In the back seat I can’t even focus on checking out the city as we drive through it. I almost feel like apologizing for how hard my blood is pounding, almost certain the driver can hear it. Several times I think about blurting out why I’m here, what I’m doing—if only to test whether it’s real, but I’m too much of a giddy mess to even form words now. All planning for the moment of Nate opening the door is out of the window now, and I’m resigned to just winging it.
Eventually the cab pulls up outside of a building that doesn’t seem too old, but is certainly tall.
“Hey, lady!” the cab driver calls right after I leap out of the cab.
I jump and turn back to him in shock, half expecting him to say something like “you’re crazy and this won’t work” or “you should never have come to Chicago,” but instead he just shrugs and rubs his finger and thumb.
“Oh, yeah…sorry. How much is it?”
I pay him and turn back to the building as he speeds away, feeling only slightly less shocked. I step through the crowd streaming across me, bumping clumsily into a couple of them, and then notice a doorman standing beside the doors. He holds them open immediately for me to go through but I stop to speak to him.
“Umm…I’m here to see Nate Keaton. Do you know what apartment number he’s in? I know it’s on the second-from-top floor.”
The doorman gives me a polite smile and replies, “There are only single suites on each of the top five floors, madam.”
I frown at him for a few seconds, struggling to absorb his simple words. “You mean his place is the whole floor?”
“Correct, madam.”
“Oh…okay. Thank you.”
I move through the large, ornate doors, treading on pristine purple carpet, and into a lobby big enough for several mid-sized apartments itself. Polished wood and brass fixtures. An elevator that looks ancient and large but somehow reliably so.
I’m so close that I rush to it. I’ve had enough time to try to deal with my nerves, and they’re still as jangly as ever. Now I just want to do it, too close to hesitate, too close to turn back. I just want to throw myself at this once again. The hours of speculating having become more difficult and frustrating than the idea of this massive risk.
The elevator opens with a patient smoothness and I step inside. Thirty floors, so I press the number marked twenty-nine and the gentle hum makes my stomach sink.
“Hey, Nate—it’s me…I just thought I’d…throw myself at you?” I mutter potential openers as the elevator lifts me. All of them sound weak and silly. “Just thought I’d drop by and…surprise, it’s me! Ugh…”
The doors open and I step carefully out into a nicely-wallpapered corridor. A couple of large potted plants and a table for packages. At the end of it is a large wooden door that’s clearly the apartment. A fire exit to one side. What must be a locked cleaning closet beside it. Stop stalling, I tell myself. This is it. No turning back.
I take a deep breath and march up to the door, hand hovering over the brass knocker, suddenly realizing there’s a big smile on my face. He’s right there. On the other side.
I hit the knocker a few times and then stand back, shaking my arms by my side as if to shake out the last nerves, trying to remember to breathe normally. When I hear something unlatch on the other side I freeze, however, bracing myself.
The door swings open.
“Yes?”
The voice is dismissive and a little repulsed. It comes from the perfect but somewhat disgusted looking face of a stunning Amazonian woman. Hair like an artwork, textured with beautiful shades of blonde and meticulously shaped to frame her angular beauty. A pale cream loose-knit sweater that contrasts with her golden skin and hides her figure, though the tight black jeans on her long legs tell you everything you need to know—that it’s as perfect as her face.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I laugh, her expression exacerbating all my already-firing anxieties. “I must have the wrong place. I’m looking for Nate Keaton. I
thought this was his floor—”
“It is,” she says, eyes scanning me so intently it feels as invasive as a strip search. “What do you want with him?”
I feel like I’m being dunked in the Antarctic. Coldness rushing over me, within me, freezing my muscles and stopping my blood. A head muddled and panicked as a single thing becomes obvious, clear, and worth noticing.
This is Nicole.
“Uh…nothing…” I say, trying to laugh again, but it comes out like stuttering breath. I tug at my hair nervously, then quickly pull my hand away lest it bring attention to how much of a worse state it’s in than hers. “I just wanted to talk to him, but—”
“He’s busy,” she says abruptly. “Who should I tell him stopped by?”
“Hazel,” I say, already backing away. “Thanks. Um…yeah. Thanks. Bye.”
I scurry back down the hall and hit the elevator button, silently muttering under my breath at how slow it is to come back. When I glance behind me, I see she’s still standing there with her disgusted look and untouchable energy.
The doors open and I step through, Nicole still watching. I force a smile as the doors close, and the second they do I start crying.
How could I have been so fucking stupid?
20
Nate
I’m cracking. Genuinely starting to lose control.
Not doing a single piece of work since I got back, shouting at Eddy and Sam like that when they confronted me—practically proving their suspicions right—and now I’m hearing things. Four times in the shower I turned it off to listen, sure I heard something in the penthouse, before realizing it’s just the combination of post-workout fatigue and seeing my entire life crash to pieces around me.
I step out of the shower and wrap a towel around my waist, then run the taps, lathering up my face for shaving.
Again, a noise. The rhythm of a couple of footsteps. But I refuse to turn off the water to listen again. I can’t afford to let myself start believing my own madness. I grab my razor and concentrate on myself in the mirror.
Another noise. This time the unmistakable sound of that squeaky drawer in the heavy side table right outside the bathroom.
I slam off the tap and yank open the bathroom door, still holding my razor, ready to either prove myself crazy or give whoever was dumb enough to try robbing me the beating of their life. Three steps into the open plan area of the penthouse and I freeze.
“Hello, sexy.” Nicole smiles from her position by the window, dangling a wine glass from one hand, her phone in the other.
I glare at her for a full five seconds, hoping that I have gone mad, and this isn’t real, but the way her eyes run across my bare chest, and the grin like she knows something nobody else does is too real to deny.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask.
She just smiles coyly. “We need to talk, Nate.”
I turn aside as if I’m already done with her, and toss my razor onto my desk. “How the hell did you even get in?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about things.”
“You told me you’d give the key to the front desk.”
“That’s all I needed,” she goes on. “A bit of time.”
“Should have known you’d lie even about something like that.”
She stalks me as I walk back to the bathroom, standing in the doorway as I grab a towel and rub the lather from my face.
“I came here to talk. Don’t be unreasonable, Nate.”
I almost bite. The audacity of somebody like Nicole calling anyone else unreasonable—calling me unreasonable, after all I put up with from her, for so long. But then again, she knows how ridiculous that is; it’s part of the game. She needs me to bite before she can try to reel me in, but I’m not just aware of her game—I’m not playing.
“You left some clothes here,” I tell her without looking at her, instead focusing on smoothing out my hair in the mirror. “Why don’t you save me the trouble of taking them to Goodwill.”
“I know you’re upset, Nate. I know you’re hurt,” she says, still trying to get that hook into me. “And I’m trying to say that I’m sorry. Really, truly sorry. And if you’d just talk with me then—”
“You were always better at talking than listening, Nicole,” I interrupt her, turning from the mirror to glare and show her how little I care. “You were with me for a long time. Long enough to know that I don’t forgive. I don’t forget. That you think I’d choose to spend a second more with you after everything that happened only proves how dense you are.”
“Nate…” she coos as she steps into the bathroom toward me, but I sidestep her before her reaching hands can touch me, marching back through the long corridor to the kitchen. “Nate!” she calls again as she hurries behind me, heels clicking on the floor. “Stop being so childish! It was just a kiss. A minor indiscretion.”
I pull open the refrigerator but pause to turn and glare back at her for a second.
“Don’t kid yourself, Nicole. It was everything about you. The kiss was just the final straw. You need to leave.”
I yank out a beer and slam the cap off on the edge of the countertop. I take a long swig as Nicole stalks me from the other side of the island counter. She doesn’t talk for a while, and I can tell she’s just rethinking her strategy.
“Nate,” she purrs, sidling around the counter toward me, putting a little swing into her hips. “I love you.”
I snort and move away from her to the other side of the kitchen, taking another drink before speaking again.
“Do you remember when you proposed to me?” she says girlishly, innocently.
“I prefer not to remember my mistakes,” I answer dryly.
“Didn’t you always tell me that we’d have to work on this? That nothing that came easy was worth anything?”
I lean back against the counter, Nicole standing at the island again, having put her phone and wine glass down to focus entirely on me.
“What are you doing here, Nicole?” I ask flatly. “Why show up out of the blue? Do you need money? Did you run out of people to ‘entertain’ you? Are there just no exclusive parties in Chicago tonight?”
Nicole hugs her arms around herself and puts on a whole new mask. The gentle, regretful, introspective, innocent. She sighs and looks away as if deeply thinking, Hollywood timing and perfect angling of her face. She looks close to tears, and I internally pray that she doesn’t. I know it’s all fake. I’ve seen this movie too many times.
But I could never handle even crocodile tears. No matter how angrily right I was, no matter how infuriatingly wrong she was, her tears would pull at something primal in me, and compel me to take her in my arms, to console her, to stop her crying.
“I really treated you badly, didn’t I?” she says, turning her eyes to me just for a second so that I can see their wetness. “You were too good to me, Nate…I couldn’t help taking you for granted. I see that now. It took me so long to understand, but all I’ve done since we parted is think about you. I just want you to forgive me, to talk to me, to give us another ch—”
“No,” I say casually, taking another pull from the beer as I move out of the kitchen toward my desk, where I pull open my laptop and bring up the work I was supposed to do.
“Oh, bullshit!” Nicole says as she follows me, dropping the mask even quicker than she put it on. “Quit that holier-than-thou act, Nate! It’s insufferable.”
“Sure,” I say, checking that I have the right papers in hand. “Listen, I’ve got work to do tonight, so if you’re planning on hanging around here like a bad smell, I’ll have to call security.”
She comes right up beside the desk and I see in my periphery that she’s folding her arms haughtily.
“Got some ‘work to do,’ have you?” she mimics in a tone drenched in disgusted mockery. The sound of knowing something I don’t.
It compels me to glance up at her, and sure enough I see the mean smile of someone about to crack a whip.
�
�Yeah,” I reply.
“Is that why you were getting yourself all showered and shaved? To look good alone at your desk?”
“I just worked out,” I say, hating that I’m playing the game but curious to see where she’s going. “And tomorrow’s an important day at M and B.”
“Oh,” she remarks, voice still full of cruel disdain. “I see…and was that little slut who came to visit you going to help you with your spreadsheets?”
It’s a comment so bizarre that I can’t help looking up from my laptop at her, and the smile on her face shows how much she’s enjoying my reaction.
“Only one slut came to visit me tonight,” I reply, hating that she’s bringing something like this out of me. “Not a little one.”
Nicole laughs enthusiastically. Getting a reaction her most genuine pleasure. I feel something sink inside of me, knowing her well enough to realize that she’s got something solid to back up her joy.
“You’re such a good, hardworking, and virtuous man, aren’t you?” she says, milking whatever it is she’s holding back. “And I treated you so badly, didn’t I? However could you trust someone else? Wait—what was that you said in that last argument? Oh yes. You were ‘done with women.’ Well…I suppose it’s true, she didn’t seem like much of a ‘woman.’ Looked like you picked her up off the street…”
I let out a heavy sigh and hit a few keys on my laptop, pushing a folder aside to check another.
“Calling security it is, then,” I mutter as if to myself.
Nicole leans over and puts her hand on top of the folder to stop me from moving through the pages. “Didn’t take you long to replace me, did it?” she snarls.
I step back to stare directly into her disgusted expression, tightening the towel around my waist. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Hazel.” she says, spitting the name out like it’s a bad taste.
A lifetime of practice hiding my emotions, of keeping my feelings buried deep, can’t stop me from showing how shaken I am to hear that name come out of that mouth. Nicole instantly picks up on it, face twisting into a huge grin and then a laugh bordering on maniacal.
