I did not do my job.
“Closed? We’re already done?” I steady my voice. Eyes turn to me.
“Oh, you didn’t tell Emma our good news yet?” Diana giggles and rolls her eyes.
Alaric smiles at me and beckons me over, obviously counting on me to save him from her clutches.
I step forward.
“I’m out of champagne.” Diana pouts toward her glass. The stem dangles and sways between her fingers.
“There’s more inside,” I say.
She rolls her eyes and walks past.
“Thank you for saving me.” He pulls me to him once we’re alone. “It is becoming increasingly hard to keep her at bay without resorting to tossing her off the roof.” He punctuates his joke with a kiss to my temple.
I start to push away, refusing to let myself enjoy it. I need to tell him how thoroughly I have fucked up all that he has worked so hard for.
History repeats itself. He may not be married, and I may not be the other woman, but I have most likely just cost him everything.
Before I can form the words, glass shatters in a small explosion near our feet.
My legs are splattered in champagne. The broken pieces of a bottle lay swirled around our feet. Foam glugs from the broken neck like a thick, white tongue.
“What the hell, Diana?” Alaric glares at her.
I looked up to see him just as soaked as I am.
“Toss me off the roof?” Diana fumes and spins to march away. “Don’t think I will be waiting be around for you when you finally get tired of screwing the help.”
Yeah, that’s how I like my bitches: Angry and butt-hurt.
Alaric starts after her to, I assume, confront her.
“Wait.” I stop him. He turns and looks at me. Surprised.
“I need to leave.” Liquid has already soaked through my shoes. My feet feel slippery, sticky.
Brow knitted, he returns with me to the ballroom. Diana is there. Livid.
There are so many things I want to say to her. Things I want to do. Things like punch her right in her Mary Poppins’ bags.
Instead, I slide right by her and grab a final champagne glass from the tower. Liquid courage.
Alaric stops beside me. “Are you okay, Emma? You’re not acting like yourself.”
Too true.
Until now.
Diana appears. “You know, Emma, it is truly pathet—”
Her words are cut off when I suddenly toss the remainder of my drink in her face. All eyes on us.
“Let’s go,” Alaric says through clenched teeth.
Well, there now. I have embarrassed him. Nicely done, Emma. Jeopardized an entire company, his career, and embarrassed him in a single evening. Stellar job.
By the time I return the empty glass to the table, Diana has found her bearings. She grabs a full glass and starts to toss it at me. Everything is a blur, but it seems Alaric knocks her hand away as I duck to avoid it and irony descends in full force. My slippery feet give just enough that, instead of avoiding the splash of one glass, I bump the tower and everything rains down on us.
Covered. Soaked. To the bone.
Humiliation. Shock. Regret.
“I’m so sorry.” I sniffle and look up at him.
Champagne runs in rivulets down his face. “It’s okay. We just need to go.”
That is just it. There is no “we.”
There is him and me and someone who doesn’t even exist. Someone who does his bidding and gets his drinks.
Someone nobody takes seriously enough to read a report that she’s written. This mouse that I have become. This mouse that roars at night.
I am the other woman in my own relationship.
“I…I can’t do this. I can’t be with you. You don’t really want me, and I have jeopardized everything you have worked for.” My voice shakes as nerves and cool liquid wrack my body. “I will get a ride from Mitchell and pack up. I quit.”
He tries to hold my arm, but I snatch it away.
“I won’t always chase after you, Emma.”
You won’t have to. This is different. This is me leaving for you, not for myself.
The ride is quiet. Mitchell pulls up next to the hotel lobby door and nods twice in silent understanding that there are no words.
In the room, pale petals are strewn about the bed, the carpet. A bouquet of mixed, pastel colored roses sits on the dresser.
A single word written on the card: Everything.
Day of Employment: 372…381…maybe 495…something. They all run together.
2:00 a.m.
*
Champagne
: I’m covered in it.
*
Petals
: Litter my entire room.
*
Balcony Door
: Open.
*
Room
: Effing freezing.
*
Nipples
: Probably hard enough to puncture this silk camisole.
*
My Heart
: Who the hell knows at this point?
THE CURTAINS FLUTTER OPEN. It’s not the breeze. It’s him. He steps into the room, watching his own feet move.
He barely resembles the man who makes grown men cry, who barters lives and livelihoods like wares at a flea market, who I have fantasized about for over a year.
His hair is slick and dark and drips champagne. A single, thick lock escapes, flipping forward as he rakes his fingers through it. His gaze never leaves the floor.
“Just tell me why,” he whispers, barely audible over the street below.
Every instinct in me screams to run to him, to wrap my hands around him, to lose myself in his touch…in him.
But I would do just that. Lose myself.
It’s all been make-believe.
“You don’t know me,” I say as softly as I can, as if for the first time I consider that I need to be soft, that he might actually be breakable.
His head snaps up, and his eyes—oh, God, his eyes!—they swim, an unfocused torment swirling in their depths.
“How can you say that? After all…after everything?”
“This is not me. I’m not what you think I am.”
“You are everything I want.” He moves to me. I move twice as far away.
“Alaric, I’m not who you think I am. I’m a liar. And I can’t be what you want.”
“Liar?”
“Yes.”
“You have lied to me…”
“Yes.”
“Lied…”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” I would like to run my hands through my hair right about now—seems to be the thing to do in these instances—but the ol’ hands are otherwise engaged in a rumba-like series of gestures about my head. Or maybe I’m knitting a caftan. “Yes. Lies. All lies.”
“What is it you think you have lied to me about?”
“Think?” Frustrating! As if I don’t even comprehend when I’m not telling the truth…which may actually be a fair assessment given my conduct of late…but I’m not feeling generous enough to not be mad at him for thinking as much. My hands find their way to my soaked hair this time, threaten to uproot it…until I realize this maneuver has pulled the sodden camisole tight across my breasts. Nothing left to the imagination.
They are practically staring at him. He hasn’t noticed. I may be insulted.
“I don’t think I have…never mind.” Like weights, my hands drop. “These are lies.” I point to the bland clothes I’d been packing until I heard him at the door. He had gone straight to the balcony. I suppose he was giving me space.
“This.” I find a broken crescent of a button and hold it between my fingers. “I broke this lying. I don’t get aggressive in bed.”
He doesn’t hide his surprise at these particular words.
“I have pretended to be the sort of person who will hold my tongue. Who will follow, and take orders, and keep her opinions to herself, and play nice—far nicer than the people we’re dealing with deserve. I have made it so I can’t be taken seriously.”