A hush fell among us as several others passed through the hall, entering and exiting the restrooms, casting curious gazes at us along the way.
“I’m so disgusted right now, I don’t know what to do with myself,” Tobias said. “The two people I trust the most, and you go off and do something like this? Just get the hell out of my sight. Both of you.” Fuming, he turned around and stormed down the hall.
I stood, trembling on the spot and listening to Anderson calling after my brother.
The ‘big reveal’ for Anderson and I had gone ten thousand times worse than I could have ever anticipated. I was shaken to my very core. But on some level, I couldn’t entirely blame Tobias for being upset. It was incredibly stupid and inappropriate for Anderson and I to have snuck off in the middle of the gala like we had.
Our whole relationship thus far had been irresponsible.
Anderson chased Tobias down to the end of the hall and then swore at the top of his lungs. I watched as he disappeared back into the ballroom.
All the while, I continued standing in front of the closet, at a complete loss for what to do. My heart shattered into a million pieces at the mere thought that I had potentially caused such a riff between Anderson and Tobias. The two of them had been lifelong friends, and I’d never known them to be seriously upset with each other.
I felt sick to my stomach.
Anderson rounded the corner, coming back towards me. I suddenly felt a powerful wave of nausea that sent me running to the women’s room. I reached a toilet just in time. Every ounce of the fancy food that I’d consumed came pouring out of my mouth. When I was done, I almost felt too weak to stand.
Thankful the bathroom had emptied as everyone prepared to listen to my brother’s speech, I went to the sink, washing the tears and vomit from my face with cold tap water. I then stared at my reflection for a moment, seeing that I looked worse for the wear. My hair and makeup were ruined, making me look just as bad as I felt.
How could I have messed up so badly? After all Tobias had done for me in the aftermath of Zander—opening his home and workplace to me, loaning me a car, giving me the opportunity to have a safe haven and get back on me feet…
“And the worst sister award goes to…” I said, and gave a laugh that quickly shifted into an ugly cry.
I reached for paper towels to dry my face, and then realized I couldn’t stay. I needed to leave.
With trembling hands, I reached into my purse and ordered and Uber.
When I finally left the bathroom, Anderson stood right outside of the door.
“Joanna, are you all right?” he asked, rushing toward me.
I held my hand out, stopping him.
“Joanna—”
“No,” I said. “Just leave me alone.”
“Let me take you home.”
I shook my head. “I’ve already got a ride.”
“Uber? Why? I’ll take you home. I don’t give a damn about your brother.”
His words sent another pang through my chest, forcing me to realize once again the damage I had done to their friendship.
“I’m so sorry to come between the two of you like this,” I said, tears coming to my eyes once again.
Anderson shook his head. “Don’t you dare take all the blame. I’m at fault too. And Tobias, he’ll get over it. Don’t worry about him.”
Anderson may as well have been talking to a brick wall though, because I wasn’t in the mood to be comforted. I just wanted to get out of the building and put the whole miserable night behind me.
“Goodbye, Anderson,” I said, and rushed passed him. Just as he had chased after my brother, he began chasing after me. But I didn’t look back, and I ignored the stares I got as I rushed through the ballroom and toward the exit.
“Joanna!” Anderson yelled.
But I hopped into the car that was waiting for me without looking back.
CHAPTER 21
Anderson
I got to work early Monday morning, determined to catch Joanna when she entered the building and insisted that the two of us approach Tobias together and get him to see reason. From the moment she ran out of the gala and hopped into the cab, I had been trying to call her repeatedly. But she wouldn’t accept any of my calls. She wouldn’t even answer any of my texts…
And neither would Tobias, for that matter.
I never knew how much losing both of them would impact my life until I was faced with the reality of it happening. The Gentry family had been in my life for decades, and I had taken for granted how important they were to me. Now, with neither Tobias or Joanna speaking to me, it felt like my whole world had been shifted completely upside down, and if things stayed this way for much longer, I didn’t know how I was going to possibly carry on. A deep depression was starting to come over me, something I had never felt before in all my life. I could hardly even bring myself to get out of bed.
When my alarm clock went off Monday morning, I’d just lied there, letting it screech, unable to muster the energy to turn it off. I only turned it off when I heard the angry thumping from the tenant below me who had undoubtedly taken a broom to bang on her ceiling to send me a message. I already felt like shit, so by no means did I want to hear Ms. Ryan’s angry mouth, or find out that she’d complained to the landlord about me over a damned alarm clock.
When I finally managed to sit up in bed, I instantly reached for my phone—hoping that I had a message from Joanna, or even Tobias. But of course, I’d had no such luck. Besides, I had barely slept to begin with; if either of them had tried to contact me, I would have known immediately.
With a sigh, I figured that I was just going to have to talk to them in person when I got to work. That thought alone was the only thing that encouraged me to get out of bed. I was determined to get them both together in the office so that we could all talk like the rational adults we were supposed to be.
I forced myself through my morning routine, showering, dressing, eating a bagel, and getting to the office, determined to accomplish my task. Yet when I got to work that morning, I quickly learned that I was in for a rude awakening.
Joanna never showed up.
Tobias did though.
“Tobias!” I said, seeing him walk down the hall to his office. But he didn’t even bother to turn around, as if he was deaf to my voice.
“Come on, Tobias. Don’t be like that. Let’s talk about this,” I said, but still got no response. “Really? Are you honestly going to give me the silent treatment? Aren’t we too old for this, man? Tobias! Tobias! I’m your best friend in the world, and you’re going to treat me like this?”
“Were,” he said quietly, although he still wouldn’t look at me. “You were my best friend in the world. I don’t know who the hell you are now. My best friend wouldn’t treat my sister like one of his sleazy conquests, in the middle of our firm’s gala, no less.”
“I’m not treating her like a conquest! Come on, now! You should know that I have too much respect for Joanna to do something like that.”
“Oh yeah? I bet you respected the hell out of her in that closet.”
“Look, we were being stupid. I know that. But I swear, it’s not what you think.”
“Get the hell out of my way, Anderson. Go do your work and just get out of my sight.” With that, he turned and I knew that I had essentially been dismissed. I watched him storm off and disappear behind his office door with a slam.
“Shit,” I muttered, turning around and seeing several employees passing by, giving me scolding glances as if they’d never heard an expletive before. “What the hell are you guys looking at?” I said, agitated. “Are you done with your reports?”
“Ah…N-no,” one of the stuttered. “They’re not due until the end of the week though, right?”
“Doesn’t mean you have to wait that long to finish,” I fussed. “So stop looking at me and get to work.”
“Y-yes, Mr. Anderson.”
I watched them hurry away, feeling mildly guilty for bullyi
ng them for no reason. But I couldn’t help myself. When I felt bad, I tended to act bad. It was a habit that I had yet managed to get control over.
I glanced back to the door Tobias had disappeared behind, tempted to bang on it until he opened up and heard me out.
I tried to recall the last time Tobias had been seriously mad at me. It had seemed like a lifetime ago. We’d been fresh out of high school at the time. He had let me use his car for a date. I had stayed out longer than normal with for that particular date, and hadn’t returned Tobias’s car for two whole days. I’d been careless, taking my date on joyrides, stopping here and there to drink and make out.
In the end, I’d left it far from the pristine condition Tobias had initially lent it to me in.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tobias yelled when I finally returned with his car. “And what the hell happened?” His gaze had raked over his car, seeing that it certainly looked worse for wear on the outside. That was nothing compared to what it had looked like on the inside though. Unfortunately, it was like I had been wearing beer goggles the whole time that had left my vision distorted; I hadn’t been able to see the damages I’d done to his beloved car until that very instant, right as he was pointing it out.
It was like watching in slow motion as he approached his car, his keen vision seeing every speck of dirt, every scratch, every smudge… He opened the door to the reek of the wine coolers my date had spilled all over the cloth seats. I still remembered the way he had closed his eyes, keeping them shut for a moment as if hoping that when he reopened them, his car would be restored to new.
“Anderson, so help me god… You did not mess up my car like this. You. Did. Not.”
I had stood there, sputtering and trying to figure out what to say. Wishing I had a magic wand to repair the car Tobias had worked so hard to acquire.
“Anderson!” Tobias had yelled, demanding an answer.
I flinched, not having a single idea what to say for myself. “It’s nothing, man. Don’t worry about it. I’ll fix it…I’ll clean it and it’ll be good as new before you know it,” I had said, trying to act as if it was no big deal.
“You damn straight you will, you jackass,” Tobias had growled. He didn’t speak to me for two days after that, and those had been two of the longest days of my life. I had managed to scrape up every penny I owned to fix his car.
Things were different this time though. Joanna wasn’t a car that I could just run through a wash and repair to restore to new. And as much as Tobias had loved his first car, he loved his sister more. It was going to take a lot more to make it up to him. And if I didn’t figure out how to do it soon, I was at risk of losing my best friend forever.
My stomach twisted painfully at the thought.
Knowing I was highly unlikely to get another word out of Tobias for the day, I left from standing in front of his closed office door and headed to my own office.
When I reached my office, thoughts of Joanna returned.
It dawned on me that if I could at least get her back on my side, perhaps we could win over Tobias’s blessing together.
First though, I needed to get her to accept my calls.
I closed and locked my office door, went to the phone, and dialed Joanna’s number, my fingers automatically finding the right digits. I was very much a product of my generation, and therefore hardly knew anyone’s phone number by heart, thanks to my constant usage of speed-dial. But considering how many times I had called Joanna over the past two days, I had learned her number by heart. It may have just been my imagination, but I thought I could even distinguish between the sounds of the rings; when I listened to the rings of calls she wasn’t going to answer, there was a hollow tone to them that other rings didn’t have.
“Come on, Jo, pick up,” I pleaded, but already knowing it was useless after the fourth ring. The phone chirped, delivering me to her voicemail for the billionth time. I had a feeling that I was just a couple messages away from completely filling up her inbox.
“Joanna, please. Just call me back. We can work this out. I’ll talk to Tobias. He’ll get over it. He has to. I’m not going to just give up because he caught us. Come on, Joanna! Answer me! Just pick up—” but I was cut off by the beep, which had also happened to me for the billionth time.
I leaned back in my seat, wondering again how I had managed to get myself into such an unfortunate predicament. In one night, I had lost my best friend and the girl of my dreams. It just didn’t make sense.
I sat in my seat, so disappointed with myself that I started getting a pounding headache. I rested my head on my desk, tired, angry, frustrated, and sickened all at once.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but I eventually realized I couldn’t spend the entire day hiding in my office in despair, especially while there was still a lot of work to be done. After all, I had just harassed a couple of employees. What message would I be sending if I spent an entire day being useless and unproductive?
Furthermore, I didn’t need another reason for Tobias to be upset with me, that was for sure.
An uncomfortable feeling washed over me again, knowing that too many people already thought I had only landed my role at the firm for being Tobias’s best friend. I had never cared much about the rumors, believing them to be nonsense. Now, however, if I lost my best friend status, how could I be certain that my job wouldn’t be the next thing to get lost?
I wanted to believe that I was important to the firm, but I couldn’t be naïve enough to think that Joanna couldn’t easily take over my job if necessary. And where would that leave me?
Out of a best friend. Out of a woman. Out of work…
At the end of the day, I wasn’t irreplaceable.
I shuddered, and turned on my computer. The times of taking anything for granted was far behind me now.
Trying to ignore my pounding headache, I began to pull up the latest numbers. Yet they only sent a pang through my chest, for I knew that they would be a lot easier to make sense of if Joanna beside me, checking over them also. We’d made a good team.
“Dammit,” I said and sighed.
CHAPTER 22
Joanna
I knew Anderson had been trying to call me, but I just couldn’t muster the energy to speak with him. After leaving the gala, I’d turned off my phone and went straight back to Tobias’s, hating that I didn’t have anywhere else to go. When I got back to Tobias’s big empty mansion, it was almost too much for me to bear, thinking back to the utter disappointment and disgust that had been on his face when he’d caught me with Anderson.
I shuddered just thinking about it, for never in my life had my brother looked at me that way. It was a look that I hoped to never to receive from him ever again.
I had contemplated packing my things and staying at a hotel, but before I had a chance to act on it, my stomach heaved with nausea again.
I spent the rest of the night and the following morning vomiting. I could only presume the fancy food provided at the gala hadn’t agreed with me at all. Clinging to the toilet bowl, I wished I had just opted to stay home that night entirely. Perhaps the whole Lauren fiasco had been foreshadowing that the night had been doomed.
It had been late when Tobias made it home from the event. I had just cleaned myself up from another bout of vomiting when I heard him tinkering around in the kitchen. I halfway wanted to hide from him indefinitely, but doing so made me feel too much like a child, as if I was refusing to come out of my room after upsetting my parents. So I forced myself to go downstairs to greet him.
When I reached the kitchen, he was facing the refrigerator, throwing back a drink of some kind.
“How did your speech go?” I asked, my voice cutting through the icy silence permeating the house.
Tobias turned around, slammed his cup onto the kitchen counter, and walked passed me without saying a word.
I started to feel sick all over again, but felt grateful that he hadn’t kicked me out of his house, at least…
&nb
sp; Taking the hint that he didn’t want to talk, I headed back to my room, where I remained for the rest of the night, fighting intense bouts of nausea every time I thought of Tobias and Anderson and what I could possibly do to remedy our situation.
* * *
The night of the gala, I went to bed, hoping and praying that I would feel better when I woke the following morning. But the sickness persisted, and even got worse in the morning. I had wanted to ask Tobias about the dinner that had been served and whether he was feeling all right afterwards. But he continued avoiding me like the plague and was out of the house before I could even think about trying to have a heart-to-heart conversation with him about what had happened.
Anderson continued to call and text me, but I resisted responding to him. As much as I hated ignoring him, I felt that talking to him would only make things worse. I needed to get things right with my brother first, because deep down, I agreed that Anderson and I had been disrespectful to him in hiding our relationship.
Plus, I didn’t think I could even carry out a long conversation with the way my nausea had me constantly running to the toilet.
When Monday rolled around, I woke up feeling just as sick. Tobias still hadn’t bothered to speak with me, not even caring that I wouldn’t be going to work that day. While I understood his disappointment, a part of me was growing increasingly annoyed. I was his little sister, for crying out loud. He could have at least checked to make sure I wasn’t dying, because I certainly felt like I was…
My mood souring by the second, I was grateful when my nausea started to ease by that afternoon. I was positively starving by then, particularly since it felt like I had been throwing up everything I’d ever eaten in my entire life.
Still in my pajamas, I went to the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator and the cabinets, thinking that I should probably eat some chicken noodle soup and crackers, with ginger-ale. But I noticed I had a sweet tooth. When I spotted a tub of vanilla ice cream in the freezer, my mouth practically started to salivate.
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