by Brenda Ford
“Hey there, Daniel,” he answers with a sunny voice. “How are things with you?”
“I take it that means you haven’t seen any of the news about me?” I reply wryly. “Living off grid, huh?”
“Something like that. You know that I am out and about all the time. I don’t have time for keeping up on social media and things like that. What’s going on? Are you married or something?” He laughs.
“Not exactly no.” I hope the grimness of my tone shows him that this is serious. “It’s been much more negative than that. A sex tape of me and Gemma from a networking event was leaked on the Internet.”
“Oh my God, I really have missed a lot!” Tim doesn’t sound horror struck, just a little stunned. “What the hell? How did that happen? I mean, that is just sheer craziness, isn’t it?”
“Tell me about it. It was CCTV from the elevator. Anyway, it’s fucked things up as I’m sure you can imagine. When it comes to my business, I am struggling and losing clients. But more importantly, I have lost Gemma with it all. She seems to think that I did it to hurt her company, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Now she won’t speak to me and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get out of this.”
“It sounds to me like you are seeing this as a lot worse than it actually is,” he replied calmly. “Both of you which is why there has been such a divide between the pair of you. Why you have both acted like you have. But this will blow over. Things like this always do. You just need to give it time. I mean, you guys aren’t celebrities, you aren’t going to remain interesting forever… sorry for putting it bluntly like that, but soon everyone will move on to something else and you and Gemma will be left to pick up the pieces of what is left behind.”
“But Gemma isn’t even talking to me. I don’t think that she will again. I think that it’s over…”
“Daniel, you actually like this woman,” Tim replies, exasperated. “I know that you haven’t exactly said it but I know you well enough to see right through you. I have never seen you like anyone as you like her, which means that you have to fight for it. You have to battle and show Gemma just how much she means to you. Screw the rest of the world and what they might think. Just focus on Gemma. I wouldn’t want you to throw away something that could potentially be incredible just because of a stupid Internet thing. Imagine if this is your future wife, ‘the one’, the woman that you are supposed to be with because of other people.”
I sigh and nod to myself. “You have it right, Tim. Living off grid seems like the best way. No worries about stupid shit posted on the Internet. I wish that I could be more like you. It sounds pretty blissful actually.”
“Oh God no,” he chuckles. “You are far too different to me. You could never live my life and I couldn’t live yours. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want the best for you. I think Gemma could be that.”
I muse on this thoughtfully for a couple of seconds, letting Tim’s advice wash over me, before I respond. “Maybe you are right. I mean, I have even kind of admitted to myself that I have feelings for Gemma, so perhaps I should try. But is now the right time when she hates me so much? I don’t want to make it worse.”
“If it really is that bad then you probably can’t make it worse, can you?” Tim rationalizes. “Plus, it will show her that it doesn’t matter to you what the rest of the world is saying. That you are willing to fight for her no matter what. Women love a big romantic gesture so perhaps you could go down that route…”
I don’t know if Gemma is like other women in that regard, but I’m desperate and willing to try anything because I just know that all of this will feel a million times less stressful if I have her by my side.
“Thank you, Tim,” I gush desperately. “I think you are right. I will give it a go.”
“Good, and maybe next time you call me, you will be married. I would prefer an invite, but I know what you are like. It’s more likely to be a random spontaneous thing to fit in with your rapid paced life style.”
I let out a little laugh even though I don’t know if I can seriously joke about marriage right now when my emotions are all up in the air, but at least Tim has cleared up something for me. He has helped me to see that my feelings for Gemma run much deeper than I would usually like to admit. I could even fall for her, given half the chance. I want that chance as well, I don’t want to come out of this with any regrets. I’m going to have to try. I don’t know how to do a big romantic gesture or even how to express my feelings for Gemma, much less so when everything is all so messy, but I’m going to give it a go. I really think that she’s worth it.
Chapter 14 – Gemma
I won’t cry, not again. I refuse to weep over this situation anymore. I don’t often cry about stuff, that isn’t me, but this mess is so dreadful that it’s really dragging me under. The pressure is weighing down on me, filling up my lungs, making it hard for me to live. I don’t know how to cope with this, how to get out of it.
Slut… whore… tramp… Eve might tell me not to look online and to ignore all of the comments being made about me, but that is so much easier said than done. I can’t help it; I keep getting really weak and cracking down. Then the comments fly through my brain all the time and a little bit of me starts to believe them.
“I got rid of Daniel on the phone,” Ami, one of the design girls who is helping out with answering the phones, since that seems to be the only thing that needs to be done at the moment, declares. “Sorry about that. I didn’t realize that he was the guy. He said that he was your friend. I didn’t know…”
“It’s okay.” I shake my head hard and turn away from her so she can’t see the agony in my eyes. “You weren’t to know. Thank you for doing that for me. I just can’t handle him right now.”
Ami rubs my back gently but clearly doesn’t know what to say to me, which is fair enough. I wouldn’t know what to say if I was in her position either, but I wish someone would say something to me. Just to give me some answers or something because right now my head is all over the place. I don’t know where to turn.
“Anyway, I have some work to do.” I take a seat by my computer and act like I’m answering emails. I probably have a very full inbox, but they aren’t messages that I want to see so I am avoiding them for the moment.
“Sure, thank you.” Ami scoots away quickly, leaving me by myself which is exactly where I am in this situation. Sure, I know that this horrible situation has been put on other women as well, but I don’t know any of them and so I don’t have anyone who can relate to me. I don’t have anyone who I can talk to.
Well, maybe I could talk to Daniel about it because much to my surprise the double standards haven’t played out quite as much as I thought they would and he has been getting a lot of shit as well, but I can’t totally let go of the idea that he did this to me in an attempt to sabotage me. Even Eve doesn’t think that’s possible, despite the fact that she doesn’t have anything nice to say about Daniel, she doesn’t think that he did this to me.
But I’m too scared to let him back in. I’m afraid to admit that things might not be as they seem because if I ever go anywhere near Daniel again, I will have to admit that there might be some real feelings there. We couldn’t go back to just screwing around because things like that don’t just happen. We need to go all in and how can I commit to a relationship with both feet at this time. That’s much too terrifying.
“Er, Gemma…” Eve pops her head around the door and looks at me with a shady scared expression. “Sorry to interrupt and I know that you don’t want to hear this, but Daniel is…”
“Daniel.” I roll my eyes. “Didn’t Ami get rid of him on the phone? He’s blocked on my cell phone as well so why doesn’t he get the hint? I don’t understand how the hell I’m going to stop all of this…”
“He isn’t on the phone.” Her tone silences me. She seems totally freaked out. “He’s here.”
“Oh God, what do you mean?” My blood runs ice cold, I feel sick to my stomach. “H
ere? Like now?”
“Yes. Erm… I tried to get rid of him because I know that you don’t want to see anyone right now, least of all him, but he isn’t going anywhere. He is insisting on just checking in on you to know that you are okay. I don’t know what to do and it doesn’t help that the creepy journalist is still out there. He is having a field day about this. I don’t know what to do about it all. I want to make it all go away but I’m losing control.”
I gulp down trying to get rid of the thick ball of emotion that’s lodged in my throat, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I rise to my feet and nod like I have this under my control.
“Fine, I will sort it out,” I rasp. “Don’t worry. I will… make this work. I need to get rid of the creepy journalist and Daniel as well. I need to tell him once and for all to get out of here. I need to make him understand.”
Eve grabs on to my hand and she gives me a soft smile. “Do you need me to help you?”
“No, thank you. I can deal with this.” I wish there wasn’t a shaking in my voice. “I think.”
I feel like I am walking towards my doom as I make my way towards the outside of my building, like this could be the end of the world for me, which doesn’t help. But somehow, I keep on going. Somehow, I manage to make it until I see Daniel. That’s the moment I freeze, and I almost tumble hard to the ground. In the corner of my eye I can see the journalist waiting for something to happen, but nothing immediately does.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “Haven’t I made it clear that I don’t want to talk to you?”
I don’t even notice the massive bunch of roses in his hands until he passes them over to me. I almost don’t want to take them, but I feel like I have an audience watching me and I don’t want to make this more of a scene than it already is. It’s already embarrassing enough. All of my life is at the moment.
“Please, Gemma, all I want to do is make this right.” There is such a pleading in his gaze that it nearly takes me down. I’m not going to easily forgive him, but this definitely isn’t as straight forward as it should be. “I want to show you how much you mean to me. I want to let you see that I didn’t do this to you, that I wouldn’t do it to us. I respect you too much for that, I care about you too much, I would never want to harm you.”
“You hate me,” I hiss back. “You always have done. Ever since I stole that first account from you. You have never had any respect for me either so I don’t see how you can suddenly act like you do right now.”
He steps closer to me, nearly reaching out to touch me but I refuse to let that happen. Not a chance in hell. “I might have been an asshole in the past and not treated you or other people with respect, but the more time that I have spent with you, the deeper I have fallen. I like you; I have surprised myself with how much I like you.”
I can’t listen to this. It’s terrifying and overwhelming. I need to escape him because he’s confusing me, mixing up my brain, making me feel sick to my stomach. The thing is he is giving me all the words that I could possibly need to jump in to this with both feet but I’m too terrified to do so. I can’t make that step. I don’t know if Daniel actually expects me to take that step like this… but there is also the intense sense that this is our last chance. If we don’t do this now, then the opportunity will slip through our fingers and we will lose it forever.
“Daniel, this is too intense,” I rasp out. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to give me a chance. I want you to see that this could be something amazing. I want you to forget about all the shitty Internet stuff and try once more. I mean when you really think about it, we had something great, didn’t we? I don’t know about you, but I haven’t ever felt anything like that before. No one has ever sparked such desire inside of me. Sure, you aren’t the person who I thought I would fall for because you are right, we didn’t get on before, did we? But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t right. These sorts of things can come from the strangest of places. For me and you it came from the unexpected charity date.”
My knees are weak and shaking, my whole body trembling, my head is scrambled. I almost want to fall in to Daniel’s arms to agree with him and let him know that I felt some unexpected things as well. I want to let him know that he isn’t alone with his emotions, but there is something silencing me, something blocking me, making it impossible for me to make any kind of sound. I don’t know what is being expected of me here.
Being in the bubble with Daniel once more gives me a moment to think. I stare in to his eyes and lose myself in the love swimming there, knowing that it could be incredible if I let it. If I just got over my moment of fear and let this happen then it could be the best choice that I ever make. It could be amazing…
But then the journalist drags me back in to the present moment with his camera flash flickering to life. All of a sudden, I see this scene through his eyes, and I realize just what Daniel is doing here. He’s come to my work with a bunch of roses and earnest looking promises of love forever to make himself seem like the good guy here. Since this is affecting him as well, he doesn’t want to look like the bad, one-night stand guy, he wants to seem like the hopeless romantic who is just looking for ‘the one’ and he doesn’t care about throwing me under the bus to make that image come true. He knows that people think of me as icy anyway and he knows that the inevitable rejection will look that way and only tarnish me further. He is being clever and manipulative all over again.
“Get out of here.” I don’t care if I’m falling in to that trap of his once more. I just want him gone. “Just leave me alone, Daniel. I don’t want to be a pawn in your game anymore. I just want to go back to the place where me and you had no interaction. You have messed everything up for me and I hate it. I hate it.”
With that, I turn on my heels and I stalk away from him, hoping that Daniel will finally get the hint and leave me alone for good. I know that there are going to be more negative stories about me now online, but I couldn’t care less. Everyone is trying to break me down anyway. All I need to do is hold my head up high and find a way to get through it. I am strong, I am powerful, I can do this. This might be the biggest challenge that I have ever had to face in my life, but I need to show Daniel that I won’t be defeated. That I am better than him.
Chapter 15 – Daniel
Three Months Later…
Life is sort of back to normal these days. Almost. It took some time and a lot of frustration, but people seem to have finally moved on from the stupid sex tape debacle and they are on to something else. It’s just good that we live in a world where everything is so fast paced and crazy that people have a short-term memory. A lot of them don’t seem to remember that they turned their backs on me at the first opportunity. But now they are back, and I have to let a lot of them in once more because I really don’t want to lose it all.
There is a much calmer atmosphere here these days anyway, which I like. No one seems panicked and stressed thank goodness. The focus is all on work and nothing else. That’s the main thing.
“Hey, Boss, we just got the account from Cambridge Accounting,” Rebecca tells me with a grin. “They were wavering before but now they are fully on board. It must have been that charm of yours.”
“Good news.” I grin from ear to ear. “I’m glad that somehow I have managed to claw it back.”
Rebecca talks to me some more and I have some conversations with other people in the office as well, but I can’t shake off the sense that something isn’t quite right. Not with work but with my life. Something has been missing ever since the day that Gemma told me to leave her alone and I can’t seem to fill that hole at all. I haven’t been dating, I haven’t been interested in anyone else, no one sparks desire within me like she has done so I have been very lonely. But these days, just sex, a one-night stand isn’t enough for me. If it isn’t going to lead anywhere then what is the point? I want so much more, and my life won’t feel complete without it.
But I tried, di
dn’t I? I did my best with the romantic gesture and it got me nowhere. She didn’t like it at all. She has fully turned away from me and I just know that she won’t come back. It’s a shame because I miss her a lot. I know that we could be good together as well. We were good together. I know that Gemma wants me as well. I could see it in her eyes every time that we looked at one another but she was just too scared to take that step. She has been too scared for me and her to become a real relationship because of all that happened between us. She’s afraid because of the sex tape and all the drama that we have suffered. She doesn’t want more.
Tim doesn’t agree with me. He doesn’t think that my romantic gesture was big enough. When I told him about the flowers he scoffed in absolute disgust at the idea and said that I was a fool, but I think it’s fear.
The day comes to an end much in the same way as it always does, without any fuss anymore, people simply quietly exit the building and head back to their normal lives and I am by myself with nothing and no one. I let out a deep sigh from the pit of my stomach and rest my head on my hands, wondering where I can go next. I don’t want to go home yet; I don’t want to be alone in those four walls where I have memories of Gemma clinging to every part of it. I would much rather head out and get a drink somewhere, something like that, but I also don’t want the hassle of talking to people who I don’t really know. I can’t socialize easily when I’m not in the mood.
Really, there is only one person that I want to talk to, and she isn’t calling me back, so I’m stuffed. Even after all of this time she hasn’t thawed out to me even a bit and I don’t know if she will now.
