by Holly Rayner
Here it was. The unsteady ground that she always remembered being on with Lewis, even if she never quite had the words to describe it. The sense that the things he was telling her, he was telling her for a reason. And the truth was never an important part of that reason.
She was staring at him. It wasn’t polite. She wasn’t making her face non-threatening and just a little bit dull, the way men usually liked.
She had an objection. There was something about the situation that wasn't sitting right—something that didn't fit. It was just hard to find her way through the layers of emotion to see it clearly.
“You said you couldn't bring the tape to my apartment,” she said then. She studied Lewis’s face carefully as he responded. It was almost perfect. There was only a momentary look of panic on his face before he responded.
“What are you talking about?”
“You said you couldn't bring the tape to me. You said I had to come here.”
She could see him, deciding which of his lies to go with.
“That's right, I couldn't. It's proprietary material from the studio. I wasn't supposed to show it to you at all.”
“And then you said that you should have brought it to me right away when you heard?”
“Well, that was more a figure of speech.”
Josie felt a laugh, guttural and harsh, rip its way from her throat. “So it had nothing at all to do with you wanting me here, in this place that you control, with my heart broken.”
He was holding up one of his hands as though to defend himself, though Josie noticed his other arm was still around her shoulders.
“Josie, if you really think I ever wanted you to get hurt—”
“Oh, I'm sure you didn't want it. I don't think you actually want much in life at all. You just want what other people have, as soon as you find out what that is. So maybe you didn't want it, but you sure were fine with taking advantage of it.”
She could see the way he was putting it on, now—the concern. The gentle, patronizing tone.
“Josie, look, I know you're going through a lot right now. And I already told you that I wish I could have kept it from happening—”
“You're just as bad as he is.”
The words surprised her as she said them. She wasn't sure if they were true, she only knew that saying them would end this conversation and give her the best chance of stopping his wheels turning.
She stood, hating the weakness that crying had put into her legs. She did her best to stop them from shaking, but she knew he noticed. He noticed everything, didn’t he?
“I’m done with you. Both of you.”
“You’re going to have to choose someone eventually, Josie. You can’t stay a virgin forever.”
She heard the words from behind her as she fumbled with the door. They came as a shock. She had never told Lewis about her virgin status, but either he figured it out, or he had asked around until he had somehow put it together.
It had never occurred to her that he knew, and the shock of finding out that he did made it harder to open the door. It was a weird, newfangled locking mechanism that she had gotten the hang of when they dated, but was proving difficult to operate in her current state. She knew that whatever he was going to say next was going to be painful; he wasn’t one to leave an argument without a parting blow. But she couldn’t get away from it in time.
“You’re hanging onto your first time like some kind of precious little treasure. You’re just afraid to let go of it because then you’ll have nothing to distinguish yourself from anyone else.”
Finally, Josie got the door open. She made sure to slam it behind her.
Chapter 16
Matteo
This was one of the best restaurants in town. Aside from having a great atmosphere, great food, and great service, it was also one of the best places to see and be seen.
Matteo had never seen the downside of that until just now.
Where was Josie? It had been several days, sure, but how can a few days change anything? He was sure of her. He was more certain of her feelings for him than he had been of anything since he could remember.
Josie felt what he felt—something different and precious and sacred. Something that rendered all of the stares and judgments and opinions that anyone else might have moot. Something that years couldn’t change, much less a couple days in Italy.
So where was she?
He didn’t want to call her. He told himself that it was because he didn’t want to disturb her while she was getting ready, or getting into her car or hitting traffic. When that little practice in self-deceit ran thin, he told himself that he didn’t want her to think he doubted her. That he thought she wasn’t coming or wouldn’t have a good excuse for her lateness when she arrived. But as minute added upon minute, that excuse ran as thin as the first.
He didn’t want to call because he was afraid of what she might say when she answered.
He wasn’t a man of fear. He couldn’t have been afraid often and still have accomplished what he accomplished, especially after his initial false starts. When you saw fear, you had to recognize it and act against it. Fear was a signpost pointing the opposite direction to the way you should go. That quality made it a gift.
He hit the button and held the phone to his ear. He didn’t look around him while he did. He didn’t need to confirm that others were seeing him make this call. That would only make it worse, and it was already nearly unbearable.
Her phone was never far from her. He had teased her about it once, though only lightly. Secretly he had been glad for it. For as much as it annoyed him to feel like there was always some string pulling her to the world outside, it reassured him to know that wherever she was and whoever she was with, there was always that same string leading back to him.
The phone rang and rang. He pictured her holding it in her hand, deciding whether or not to answer. The image angered him, but it also felt right. It felt likely.
When he got her answering machine, he hung up and set the phone down on the table. It took everything in him not to show what her lack of answering had done to him, but he knew he couldn’t. He was on a stage, just as much as Josie was every time she took the runway. Just as much as he was every time he went to a club or passed by an area where he knew the paparazzi were waiting for him. His reaction to the phone call he had made would be noted. It would be talked about with feigned sympathy and whispered about with glee. He knew that as surely as he knew anything.
He couldn’t stay here any longer. He had to get out of this restaurant.
As nonchalantly as he could, Matteo slid his phone into his pocket and left. He hadn’t expected one of his standing agreements with one of the best restaurants in town to be such a mercy, but he was thankful for it now.
He tried to walk as though nothing was wrong. He tried his best to pretend that there had simply been a miscommunication or some kind of understandable change of plans. But he couldn’t even craft a scenario in his current state, much less find a way to convey it to the prying eyes around him.
It wasn’t until he was finally safely in the car, being driven back to the penthouse, that he let himself call George.
His assistant had no answers. He seemed surprised and very aware of the minefield he was walking on with his employer. Matteo would have set him at ease, but he didn’t have the space in his mind to do that right now.
“Find out if there’s some legitimate reason,” he told George. “If there is, tell me. If there isn’t, don’t.”
He hung up. He had to entertain the possibility that something had just gone wrong with her. But he couldn’t allow himself to cling to it.
Josie had shown him who she was. Whether she had been afraid, or disingenuous, he didn’t know. But either way, she knew what this would do to him, and she had done it anyway. And that told him everything he needed to know.
Chapter 17
Josie
I did the right thing. I made the smart choice.
&nbs
p; Josie told herself this, over and over and over. It became a mantra for her. She said it to herself when she woke in the morning, forgot for a moment what was wrong, and then remembered, doubling over as the emotional force hit her like physical pain. She repeated it when she found her thoughts wandering to Matteo while she made her breakfast. She said it before she talked to Elaine, when she told her that she had come down with something and wouldn’t be able to work for the next week or so. She said it to herself as she went to the beach, hoping to get her mind off of things. She said it when she came home again, finding that everything she saw there her reminded her in some way of Matteo.
She told herself these things countless times over the next few days. She really believed that if she repeated them enough, they might start actually feeling true.
Josie had had a taste of heartbreak—crushes unreturned in school and little flirtations that led to nothing. Lewis had been the biggest of these, but after their breakup she hadn’t felt anything like this. She’d been a bit down, but it hadn’t taken long for her to see the bright side, and before even a few days were over she had begun to see her future possibilities as better and more valuable than any possible happiness with Lewis might have been.
That wasn’t happening this time, and she almost regretted telling Elaine she had been sick—at least going out and going to work would have given her something to occupy her mind. But she knew that there was no way that she could do quality work under the circumstances. She got little sleep, and what little sleep she did get seemed to do almost nothing for her appearance. She looked tired, haggard and heartbroken. She looked that way because she was all of those things.
When she reasoned through what she should be doing right now, she thought of turning to her support system. She should look to those friends who had consoled her after she and Lewis had ended. She should tell them about Matteo, and how great he had seemed but how horrible he had turned out to be.
Her friends would counter her arguments and come up with ways to make Matteo seem less than perfect. That was their job—and they were good at it. As much as she hated so many of the stereotypes about models, Josie had to admit that they did tend to run through a fair number of men. Breakup protocol was well-established, and she should take advantage of that.
But the real problem, the thing that kept her from reaching out for help, was that she didn’t want to.
She was afraid that they would mock her, as unlikely as that was; most of her friends knew she was selective about men, and that a brief dalliance might affect her more than it would a more experienced girl. And it was also true that she didn’t want it to be public knowledge. It probably was already, considering they had been seen together, but “model and billionaire red-hot fling over” is a far cry from “rising star devastated by actions of aloof tech genius.” One of those headlines could do real damage to her career if she played it the wrong way.
These alone were good reasons for Josie not to confide in the people closest to her. But if she were honest with herself, what stopped her more than anything was the stubborn hope that she had misunderstood something, or that Matteo was about to come rushing in with a thousand apologies and an explanation that would make all of what she was feeling disappear. But the only phone call was from her doctor, concerned that some young man—who sounded a lot like George from the description—was trying to find out if everything was all right with her. Josie heard nothing from Matteo at all.
That should have killed the hope. At least, it should have killed it quicker. She could feel the hope dying—strangled as if by a boa constrictor. And she knew that that was a good thing. The sooner it died, the sooner she would be able to move on.
So, of course, she did what any deeply self-destructive person would do, and she indulged the hope. She tried to make the hope live, even as she knew that it was at the root of what was hurting her most. She hid behind dark glasses and went to the aquarium.
Walking around the exhibits, she let herself remember what it had been like to be there with Matteo. The way he had looked at her, and listened as she got too excited telling him all the things she remembered about marine biology. The way he had taken her hand when they left, and how that action had made the entire visit sweeter.
She was the weird adult walking around the aquarium alone, occasionally crying. That was what she was. It was ridiculous, and if she were trying to defend her reputation, this was not the way to do it.
Staying home was a wiser option. She was in no state to be able to be out in public and not potentially do damage to her career over the emotional fallout from some guy she’d known only for a couple of days. Some guy, who it turned out, she didn’t know very well at all.
So she couldn’t work. She couldn’t leave her apartment. She couldn’t talk to her friends, and she certainly couldn’t talk to her agent. There were only so many movies and TV shows she could stream that didn’t have cloying romantic couples on the screen, and it was getting a little old to have to clean up all the food she kept throwing at the TV. Booze was supposed to make things better, but the few times she tried it, it only seemed to make everything so much worse.
She was running out of options. As she saw, she had only one left.
She called her mother.
The conversation started, as it always did, with her mother guilting her that she didn’t call enough. Josie told her mother that the reason she didn’t call was because this was how they began each and every call. And, after all, couldn’t she see that her daughter was in pain?
“I can’t see you through the phone, dear.”
Technically, her mom had a point, but Josie was pretty sure that her emotional distress was obvious, even from a thousand miles away.
“Okay, Mom, but can you just listen? Just for once?”
She hadn’t realized how desperate she had been for someone to listen—for someone to hear the whole story and commiserate and tell her she had done the right thing. She couldn’t get it from her friends right now, but the possibility that she might be able to get it from her mother had made her more eager to get to the heart of the conversation, so she flew past the prologue. Gone were all the pleasantries and talk about her recent jobs and upcoming prospects. This call had a purpose, and she needed to get to it.
And to her credit, Josie’s mother managed to hear the desperation in her daughter’s voice.
“Okay, honey, go ahead.”
Josie spilled her thoughts and emotions through the phone. Telling her mother everything that was perfect and exciting about Matteo and their time together.
“If this guy is so wonderful, why are you so upset?” her mother asked when Josie finally stopped talking. “Did he cheat on you? How long were you together?”
The questions were direct. That was how her mother was, after all.
“No, Mom. He didn’t cheat on me. And we weren’t even really together—I guess we weren’t, anyway. But it felt intense and special, and I was excited and…”
The words still weren’t coming out.
“And?” Her mother was a strong woman, but she knew how to make her voice gentle when it needed to be.
“And it turned out it was all a lie.”
Josie started crying. She didn’t mean to—it only happened a few times a day now—but all that self-control was suddenly gone.
“Oh, honey. I wish I was there.”
When the tears abated enough that Josie could finally talk, she told her mother about the tape. She didn’t repeat the exact words that he had said, but she said enough that her mother got the gist.
“Well,” said her mother after a long sigh and a long pause that indicated that Josie wasn’t going to interrupt her as she had the last few times she had tried to render her verdict. “It sure sounds like you dodged a bullet.”
“Then why doesn’t it feel like I did?”
“Oh, my baby. Grazes hurt too.”
Josie wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t sure there was anything to say. B
ut though the great, big, empty space inside of her that Matteo had left still felt achingly vacuous, somehow it hurt just a little bit less to hear her mother acknowledge it.
Ding.
The sound of the text felt like a rude awakening. And it was strange—it didn’t have a ringtone assigned to it.
Josie looked to see who the message was from.
Her heart started racing.
“Mom?” she said into the phone. “I think I’m going to have to call you back.”
“But we were just in the middle—”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”
She hung up on her mother, something she hadn’t done since her “angry teenager” phase.
It was Matteo. That was what the phone said. His name popped up with the text. But considering how Matteo felt about texting, it felt like a break from reality to see his name sitting there.
I think I understand what’s going on. Meet me if you want to talk.
Maybe there was a reason Matteo didn’t text; he sounded just a little bit like a kidnapper. Involuntarily, Josie smiled. The words “meet me” had a link, and when she tapped on them, a map location popped up.
So, this horrible man, who she had no intention of ever speaking to again, wanted her to drive out in the middle of rush hour to some random beach that she had never even been to. Absolutely not. That wasn’t the kind of thing she would do even for someone that she actually liked, much less for someone who had broken her heart in record time.
But she was still smiling.
Her smile was a traitor. Her heart—leaping in her chest and beating faster and faster with every passing second while her mind caught up to the decision her heart had already made—was a traitor. Her arms and legs were all traitors as they began rushing around the house, finding something to wear. Her keys were traitors, as was her car and the unexpectedly open highway. The afternoon sun, and the sea breeze off the water—they were traitors, too.