by Holly Rayner
“You’re going to need to rush a bit,” he said to the driver as he climbed in the back seat of the car.
They’d hit some headwinds over the Atlantic, and he was cutting it tight, but he was glad for that. It meant that he wouldn’t have to spend any more time than necessary once his feet hit the ground before meeting her at the restaurant. It made it feel as though he didn’t have to wait.
They didn’t hit any traffic. That was good. If there were ever a time that he was going to get road rage, it would be now. But now—it was smooth sailing all the way to the restaurant. And the maître d’ quickly showed him to his table up in a place of honor overlooking the rest of the dining room. The perfect place for him and Josie to preside over proceedings. Up above the rest of the crowd, where she belonged.
She wasn’t there yet. Good. He was glad that his tight schedule hadn’t made her wait.
Chapter 15
Josie
When she got out of the cab in front of Lewis’s apartment, Josie looked at her phone. She was supposed to be meeting Matteo at the restaurant right now. He would be there. He would be waiting, wouldn’t he? She should call him, she thought. Wouldn’t that be the polite thing to do?
But then, what would she tell him? I’m here at my ex’s house because he said he had dirt on you, and I believed him? Not exactly romantic. She could text him a quick excuse, but he didn’t like to text. And even if he did, sending him a cheap excuse felt even more wrong than being late to their date.
If she ended up going to their date at all. The doubts in her heart had stopped whispering and started screaming. When Lewis opened the door, and she saw the sad, worried look on his face, they grew louder still.
Wordlessly, Lewis stepped aside and motioned her in. In all the time she’d known him, Josie couldn’t think of a single time he had been at a loss for words. But as he showed her to the couch, he stayed quiet and somber.
“Now,” Lewis said, “I want you to keep in mind that what you’re about to hear might not be completely true. You probably exaggerated a little bit—so don’t be so hard on yourself. It might not be quite as bad as it sounds.”
She wanted to yell at him to just play whatever he had to show her, but her mouth felt frozen shut, so she just waited in silence until the TV roared to life.
Josie blinked. She knew that beach. She knew that shore. She knew that flattering lighting. And there was Matteo—giving his interview for the reality show they should have met on.
It felt like a lifetime ago. It felt like a different world.
And this man, looking directly at the camera like the cat that ate the canary, felt like an entirely different person than the Matteo she had been getting to know.
“Look, I’m not saying there aren’t men who come onto these shows looking for their one true love. I’m just saying that they’re idiots,” he guffawed. “What I’ve got here is a hell of a lot better than sighing and bonding. I’ve got a chance to bang as many hot women as I want without having to worry about any of them getting all angsty because they’re not The One.”
Matteo gave a smarmy smile to the camera.
“They’re competing. That’s not actually any different. In the outside world, they are too. It’s just that in the outside world they’re too dumb to actually know they are. They fall for all that crap, and they expect you to make them fall for it. So you have to go through the whole routine. Sure, I’ll let you guys record me, if it gets me out of pretending there’s more to this than there is. You know me—I’m an efficiency guy. All of us in tech are when you get right down to it. And I like the efficiency of cutting out the bullshit.”
He was a great actor. Either he was acting in this video, or he had been acting the entire time with her. Either way, how could she ever trust a man who was that good at pretending?
She heard the director’s voice behind the camera, and somehow that little detail made it worse. What she was seeing was raw—unedited. This wasn’t a carefully crafted narrative that they had run out of his words. This was him riffing. Being honest?
“And what do you see as the endgame? What happens to the winner?” the director asked.
Matteo—this man who looked like Matteo—leaned back with a grin on his face. He opened his arms wide as if getting ready for a hug.
“Well, she gets the best gift of all. I figure I’ll take her back to mine. Maybe take her out on my yacht. We’ll have a few whole days together. Better than any of the other women will get.”
“And then?”
“And then she’ll go her way, and I’ll go mine.”
“And what if she doesn’t want to go her own way?”
The man that looked like Matteo laughed.
“Look, I’ll give her plenty of what she really wants, deep down. But I’m not going to pick someone who believes in that fairy tale. She might get annoyed that she doesn’t get the money she was after. But if she wants money, she should earn it. And if she wants people to respect her enough to care when she gets all upset about something, she should find a way to make money that isn’t on her back.”
“So you believe these women are hookers, basically?”
The director sounded thrilled. Probably mostly excited that he didn’t have to say or do anything to get the right response out of him. What kind of man comes up with all this unprompted? What kind of man even thinks of it?
“There are shades of gray there…” Matteo began. “If you want me to say it, then yeah, they’re hookers. Maybe they’ll act offended if you tell them that to their faces, but they knew what they were getting in for when they started selling their bodies for money. But it’s worse than that—they’re hookers who are leaving without even getting paid.”
He looked like a movie villain. That sneer—she would never be able to un-see it. She would never be able to picture his face without it.
“Turn it off,” Josie said.
Lewis paused the tape. “Are you sure?” he asked, laying a hand on her back. “It gets worse.”
“Why would I want to see it if it’s worse than this?”
“I know this is bad enough, I get it. I just feel bad that it took me so long to show this to you. I thought I would save you from getting your feelings hurt if I just let things fizzle out between you before you ever saw it. The show got canceled, so the world never has to find out what kind of a man he really is. But I shouldn’t have kept it from you for this long. I should have told the minute I heard you had been seen with him.”
This was something new on Lewis—humility. He seemed genuinely sorry, even though he wasn’t the man that Josie felt such blinding rage for at the moment.
“How could he…”
She didn’t know how to end the sentence. She didn’t know how to describe what she was angry about. How could he… what? How could he convince her so completely that he was a decent man—when underneath the whole time he was thinking these kinds of thoughts? How could he live that kind of double life? How could he think so little of her, and make her believe he thought so much?
Some things made more sense now, at least. His business trip at the last minute, where he was going to be essentially unreachable even in spite of the millions of different ways they could’ve kept in contact. Sending his assistant to greet her at the marina instead of greeting her himself. Doing so much through George, instead of giving her his personal attention. She saw his no-texting rule for what it was now—a way of avoiding having to deal with her any more than he felt like.
“I don’t know,” Lewis said. “Some men are just like that. They don’t have it in them to make an emotional connection with anyone, so they don’t think anyone can. So they don’t feel guilty about it because they think everyone’s like that.”
“Are you making excuses for him?” She was directing more of her anger at Lewis then she intended, and she saw it sting him a little bit. But she also saw him shake it off; he must know what she’s going through.
“No,” he said. “I’m not making
excuses. Not for him, at least. They’re so obvious to other men. It’s easy to forget they’re not obvious to women. They spend all their time trying to figure out how to trick you—how to bed you. I wasn’t prepared for how successful he would be. But that’s my fault, not yours. And I hope eventually you’ll be able to forgive me for putting you in the position to meet a man like that, just to push my own career forward.”
Josie shook her head. “This isn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
Lewis settled in closer, an intense look in his eyes.
“I couldn’t have known how it would happen. But I knew what he was. That’s why we cast him, after all. And I know that you’re young, and you think the best of people. And that’s a wonderful quality—probably one of the reasons I got so attached to you in the first place… But I should have seen it coming that a man like that would take advantage of it. And the second I heard that you had been with him, I should have brought this tape over. I should have shown you what he was so you wouldn’t have the look on your face you have right now.”
He looked so sad. Josie felt rage. She felt like the world had started shaking, like all the basic building blocks of her life had shifted, and everyone else was acting as though it was just fine. But Lewis didn’t have any reason to feel any of that. And yet, he was expressing more sincere and deeply felt emotion than she had ever seen him express.
“It really isn’t your fault,” she said, trying to reassure him. She put her hands on either side of his face. She had forgotten how easy it was to feel as though his inky eyes went on forever.
“This is on me,” she told him. “You came forward when it counted. Nothing happened between Matteo and me. Not really. I believed someone I shouldn’t have believed, and I let myself get carried away thinking he was something he wasn’t. But that’s over now, and at least now I know better.”
She could see Lewis begin to relax, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
“Do you have anywhere you need to be?” he asked her. “After what I almost let happen, I think I owe you some tea. That, and some time to decompress from what you just saw.”
Ah, that’s right, Lewis and his tea. She remembered it now—an odd little hobby he had. Most men in his position collected things like cars, or rare or illegal cigars, ostentatious suits, the latest technology… All the trappings of the rich and driven. But of all the things in the world for a man like Lewis to collect, unique varieties of tea was not one that she had expected. She had always found it charming—maybe one of the reasons she had ended up letting things stretch on with him longer than she had intended to at first.
But, she had to admit, a cup of tea did sound really good right now.
“I’d like that,” she said, letting her hands fall from his face. As soon as she had, she felt him give her hands a little squeeze.
“Then I’ll just boil some water and be right back. I don’t have anything that’s going to make this go away, but I’ll see if I can’t find anything to make it a little better.”
He left for the kitchen, and Josie was alone in the living room. She’d been here before; this was a familiar place. Sure, they had gone out to see and be seen plenty of times while they were together. But they had spent enough time here, too, that even after all this time, it still felt just a little bit like a second home.
She sank down into the sofa—another little oddity that she wouldn’t have expected from Lewis before she had gotten to know him. It was substance over style, an impossibly comfortable couch that didn’t look nearly expensive enough to belong in this apartment. She’d always thought it was a little bit out of place in the room.
But she was grateful for it now. She curled up, bringing her legs up to where she could wrap her arms around them, she curled up on the couch in an attempt to stop herself from crying.
She failed.
She tried to digest what had just happened. It wasn’t easy. She couldn’t stop the tears from coming, and she was glad she was at least in a safe place while they did.
More than anything, she just felt so dumb. All the lectures she had gotten from other models who had been where she was now came back to her. At the time, she had thought they were being a little silly and alarmist to assume that she wouldn’t be able to see a man like that coming a mile away.
She could remember, in particular, one woman—a model that she had looked up to back when the thought of modeling had first entered her mind. She had been so excited to get to meet her at that party, and to get to pick her brain about the industry and about the work. She hadn’t expected the warning the woman had given her.
“They seem so charming at first. They will draw you in and use their wealth to make you feel like a princess. And some of them might even be princes. But they’re just after you because you’re a model, and it means that other men desire you, and they only want what other men can’t have.”
Looking back, Josie could remember nodding her head. She could remember thinking that it seemed so obvious. Surely she wouldn’t fall for it? If anything, later on, she thought that she had listened too closely—that she had let the older, more experienced woman make her too cautious.
And yet, somehow, she’d fallen into the trap she had been warned about, time and time again. Even more than that—she’d had reason to believe from the beginning that he wasn’t being genuine. He’d recognized her and hadn’t told her.
And he’d agreed to do the show in the first place. Even if he had been lying in that interview—and Josie couldn’t believe that he could be that convincing in a lie—he had still agreed to do the show. And that was his opening interview. How much of what he said, would he have followed through with, and just claimed later that he had been acting for the sake of the cameras?
What you do is what you are. He had chosen to do this. Sure, she had agreed to do the show as well. But what she had agreed to wasn’t going to hurt anyone else. It wasn’t going to affect anyone but herself. Did it ever cross his mind what dangling himself in front of these women, with the implicit promise that he might give them something he never would, might do to them?
She was getting muddled. She was letting herself backtrack, she could feel it. She was trying to find ways to tell herself that maybe he hadn’t meant the things he said, when deep down she knew he must have. It hurt too much for it not to be true.
She didn’t know when Lewis came back into the room. She hadn’t heard him—she was too consumed in her own frustration and sadness. She only knew he was there when he put his arm around her and pulled her to his chest.
She was crying too hard to think about whether or not she wanted to be comforted. She did. She laid against the chest of the man she had left for no real reason at all, and let herself cry. And, being held as she was, she felt herself let go of the shame and regret, and just feel the sadness.
She didn’t know how long that lasted. It was the same kind of time warp that she had felt when she had been with Matteo, only much less pleasant. All she knew was that, eventually, the tears slowed down enough that she felt fully conscious again.
And there was Lewis—still and steady.
“I’m sorry—” she started, but he interrupted her with a shake of his head. Then, almost impossibly smoothly, his face went from a look of pity to the familiar wry grin he so often had.
“You really think I mind having you in my arms again?”
She laughed. Somehow, the return of his tongue-in-cheek humor was even more comforting than having him there to soothe her. His eyes went to the coffee table, and she followed them to a cup of tea.
“It’s probably cooled down enough to drink now. Might even be a bit cold. I can make you more if you want.”
“No, I’m sure it’s fine.”
She didn’t tell him what she was really thinking: that she didn’t want him to leave the room. The thought surprised her.
“I should have known,” she said after a few sips of the lukewarm tea. “No one really is like that. No
one comes out and says things the way he did. It isn’t ever that easy. I should have known that connecting like that so quickly wouldn’t be real.”
Lewis had settled into a more comfortable position, though he still kept one of his arms around her shoulders.
“That’s the worst thing about people like that,” he said, “they make it so that honest people can never have it that easy. They make it so that we can’t move too fast, let ourselves connect too quickly when it actually is real.”
He hesitated, and the long pause made her look at his face. Was he nervous?
Lewis continued. “Even when we want to. And sometimes we’re too cautious, and we wait too long, and we lose our chance.”
Was he really going there right now? Josie shook her head, and hoped he got the message not to go any further down that road.
Thankfully, he seemed to get the message. “So, other than that, how have you been?”
Again, that wry smile. Josie found herself laughing without meaning to, even in the midst of the raw, vulnerable feeling that had settled into her chest.
“Oh, you know…work. It is what it is.”
“Being wildly successful isn’t that exciting anymore, huh?”
Josie shrugged. “I wouldn’t say I’m wildly successful. Still trying to make a name for myself.”
Lewis raised his eyebrows. “Is that really how you see it?”
It was a familiar feeling she could remember having with Lewis—on the one hand, she was being flattered, and on the other hand, she felt like she needed to defend herself.
“I mean, it’s how it is…”
“If your agent is telling you that, your agent is lying to you.”
Or, she felt the need to defend her agent. “My agent is telling me that. Elaine encourages me…”
“If she’s not telling you every day that you are making a splash on the Miami modeling scene the way no one has in decades, then she’s definitely not telling you the whole truth.”