by L.J. Shen
Oh, no way.
“Well, hello, Rosie. You grew up to be eye-candy.” He winked at her. I gagged.
“Well, hello, Dean. You grew up to be an arrogant bastard.” She winked back at him, wiggled her shoulders in a sassy way and added, “No, wait, you were always an arrogant bastard. My bad.”
“Why are you here?” I demanded, swiveling Dean’s shoulders so he faced me. I didn’t like it. The electricity in the air when Dean looked at Rosie. It was the same thing I felt when I was standing next to Vicious.
I thought a lot about how I’d feel if Dean walked into my life again, especially since I’d started sleeping with Vicious. I thought I’d feel shame, hurt and regret, maybe even sadness. But with him standing in my living room, all I felt was anger and a little annoyance. He looked at me like we were strangers, not exes.
To some extent, we were both.
Dean trained his gaze back at me reluctantly, like Rosie was the reason why he’d come here in the first place. “Right. I just wanted to let you know that for what it’s worth, I fully support your relationship with Vic, and I’m not saying that because he kicked me out of New York to stay here and chase you like a puppy and begged me to talk to you.”
It sounded more rehearsed than a Broadway show.
I cocked an eyebrow at him and folded my arms over my chest. “You don’t care?”
He shook his head. There was something light about him. Not just his body language, but his expression too. I believed him.
“We were kids. He was jealous, and you were…” He licked his lips, considering his next word.
He was still my first. My first lover. My first boyfriend. My first sexual partner.
Dean’s eyes dropped down as he finished softly, “And you were with the wrong guy. I never should have stepped between the two of you, but I did, and I don’t regret it for a second. We were a good couple, Millie, but Vicious and you…”
Another pause. Rosie listened closely behind us. Her face told me she was pretty sold too. Dean just had it in him. The ability to sound genuine and believable, no matter what he said.
“You were obviously meant to be together. Even if I didn’t completely believe that before, I do now, because of the sacrifices he made for you. That’s a first. And a last. Give him a chance, Millie. He deserves at least that.”
I loved the silence that followed Dean’s speech. We all processed it. Everything that had been said. Without being dramatic, Dean told me that he was okay with what Vicious and I did. With what we were, and weren’t. With what we could have been or could be, if I still wanted to.
“You should probably stay for coffee,” Rosie said then, still reading on her iPad.
“Nah.” He shrugged, jerking me by my shirt into a big suffocating hug.
It felt nice.
It felt safe.
But mostly, it felt platonic.
“If I stay, I’ll hit on your sister, and that’d be really messed up, now wouldn’t it, Millie?” he whispered into my ear.
And just like that, the touching moment was gone.
I had a blast at my new job. Brent was talented and worldly and knew everything about everything. We talked art every day and got ready to throw another event, an exhibition in which we planned to show twenty contemporary paintings about nature and love.
One of those paintings was going to be mine.
And it was going to be quite interesting, too. It wasn’t a cherry blossom tree, like I’d thought I’d paint.
But it was definitely a true definition of the word love.
Rosie had started working as a barista again. She was feeling well. We ate pasta a lot, but sometimes bought ground beef and made meatballs. She understood how much the exhibition meant to me, so she let me paint into the late hours of the night while locking herself in our bedroom. (We only had one and we happily shared it.) I opened all the windows, even though it was still cold, and hoped for the best.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask Vicious. How come he was still in New York? What happened with his father? Was he poor now? Well, not poor, obviously. More like un-rich. And what were his plans for Jo?
But I bit my tongue and said nothing every time I poured myself out of the station and saw his tall, broad frame, wrapped in a delicious suit and overcoat. He’d nod curtly and join me as I walked.
Two and a half months after he started escorting me home, it happened. The inevitable moment I’d expected, but dreaded.
He wasn’t there to see me home.
My face fell and my muscles slacked when I realized he wasn’t waiting for me. It wasn’t so bitterly cold anymore—though nowhere near warm—so I shook myself out of my coat and walked a little too fast out to the street to inspect. Maybe I’d missed him. Maybe he’d gone around the corner to the Turkish grocery store to get himself a cup of coffee. He liked their bitter, muddy coffee. Every time he came early enough, he treated himself to a cup and drank it while he was waiting for me.
He also read the Wall Street Journal and checked the Asian stock exchanges on his phone. It was almost like he made this arrangement about his downtime with himself.
I looked around, my eyes gliding over the brick buildings, the throng of people hurrying everywhere, the old brewery staring back at me, and the industrial buildings rising from the dirty crumbling concrete.
He wasn’t there.
My heart sank. I should’ve known his little mission had an expiration date. There was only so much a man could take, and especially a man like Vicious, who’d never had to beg for a date before. I’d refused to give him ten minutes of my time to listen. Not even five. He had every reason to stop coming.
I knew all that, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
I plugged my earbuds back into my ears, shoved my hands into my pockets and made my way to the apartment, passing by all the junkies sitting on the sidewalk against walls and holding cardboard telling their sob stories. I always fumbled in my pocket and gave them some change. And I always tended to give the change to the people with the dogs.
I crossed the street and jaywalked back to my apartment, almost reaching the entrance of my building, when I saw him. He jogged from the direction of the subway, looking a little flushed. Vicious. I bit down my smile and tugged the earbuds out of my ears. When he was about a foot from me, he stopped, straightening his tie with his hand.
“Hey,” he said. His hair was a disheveled mess, and I liked it. I liked it a lot.
I remembered how it felt in my hands when he went down on me in Dean’s office. I cleared my throat and nodded. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to let you know that next week, on Thursday, I won’t be able to make it. Something came up. I’ll call a taxi and make sure it picks you up from work.”
“No need,” I said. “You owe me nothing. And besides, I have an exhibition at work that night. I’ll probably stay until late, anyway.”
He shot me a weird look, tearing his eyes from my face and focusing on the building behind me, like he was trying to remember something. “Give me five minutes of your time?” he asked, as he did every single day, five days a week, excluding weekends.
“Nope. Bye, Vicious.” I turned around and slammed the door in his face. Admittedly, it didn’t feel good. It felt really bad the first time I did it, and as time passed, it had become worse and worse. I now absolutely hated myself for doing this to him.
But still, I did it.
Because protecting my heart over his had become my priority.
The problem was, I had been right all along. Loving someone was essentially wanting to make them feel good, and not the other way around.
No matter what Vicious felt for me, I knew exactly how I felt about him.
And I didn’t hate him. Not by a long shot.
It was almost a week later when I received the call. Afterward, I took an early lunch break, jumped into the subway, and bolted straight into Vicious’s office building. The receptionist
in the lobby knew me from my brief time as Vic’s PA and let me in. When I walked into the reception area of FHH, however, I was met with a new face of a young receptionist who’d replaced Patty.
I knew Patty had already retired because I kept in touch with her, mainly by email, so this wasn’t news, but I didn’t have time for pleasantries.
“I need to see Mr. Spencer.” I knocked on the reception’s counter with my knuckles, not offering any further explanation. Every hair on my body stood on end and hot shivers ran down the length of my spine. I was that angry.
The receptionist, pretty and bored and disinterested, batted her eyelashes a few times at me. “I’m sorry, ma’am, do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t need an appointment,” I breathed out, flinging my arms in the air. “I’m his…his…” What was I to Vicious, exactly? Friend? No. Lover? Ha! Ex-neighbor? But I was more than that. I shook my head, not really feeling like dwelling on the subject right now. “He’ll want to speak to me. Please, just tell him Emilia is here.”
“I can’t do that, I’m afraid.” Her tone was not in sync with my mental and physical state. She looked so jaded and sleepy, and I felt like a kernel of popcorn about to pop at any moment. “He doesn’t want any interruptions when he’s working.”
“Look…” I leaned over the counter, seriously tempted to grab her by the collar of her white shirt. “I know he’s a jerk, and you’re afraid that he’ll be even more of a jerk to you if you disobey his rules. But I’m telling you. If he finds out I was here and you didn’t let me in, he’ll fire you. Just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “So please, just tell him I’m here, waiting for him.”
She stared at me with a peculiar expression before punching in his extension and bringing the phone to her ear.
“Sir? I have a woman named Emilia here for you. She says it’s important.” She waited a few seconds, muttering a “mmm-hmm” punctuated with a nod, before her head snapped up, her gaze meeting mine.
“He said he doesn’t know any Emilia, but he does know a girl named Help.”
Darn you, Vicious. I rolled my eyes and leaned my elbows against the counter. “Tell him it’s important and that he’s a bastard.”
Her mouth hung open and her light brown eyes stared at me like I’d just tried to recruit her to the SS.
I repeated myself calmly. “Tell him that.”
She did.
And it almost made me forget how angry I was for one second. A faint smile tickled my lips.
A minute later, Vicious pushed his door open and appeared in the hallway in front of his glass wall. It took me less than a second to realize his new receptionist had a serious crush on him. She swallowed hard when her eyes swiped over his body, and then she shot me a hate glare when she saw the look on his face when we locked eyes.
“Missed me?” He offered one of his cocky smirks as I strode toward him.
“Not quite.” I gave him a shove back into his office.
He didn’t put up a fight. If anything, he grinned like an idiot and winked at the receptionist meaningfully while my back was to her as he walked backward. I slammed the door in her face, then pushed him to sit on his office couch and crouched down so that we looked at each other. He was still grinning like I came there for another make-out session.
“Your stepmom fired my parents because I worked for you,” I said evenly.
A frown replaced his smile. “What a bitch.”
I nodded, feeling hot tears welling in my eyes.
“How did she even know?” he asked
That one was easy. I thought about it on the train on my way here.
“My mom mentioned it to her. Look, Vicious, they have nowhere to go. Your stepmom’s their only reference. They’ve lived and worked on your estate for ten years. What do I do? I’d fly to them, but the exhibition…I mean, I could. I would. It’s just…” I shook my head.
Vicious considered my words for a few seconds, looking down at his hands, before shooting me a resolute glare. “I’ll take the next flight to San Diego and sort it out.”
My eyes widened. “Didn’t you say you have something on Thursday?” It was already Tuesday afternoon, and no matter what his plans were, it was a long shot to make it in time for whatever it was he’d wanted to do by then.
He shrugged. “I’ll postpone my plans.”
“What were they?”
“Does it matter?”
I considered his question for a second. Did I have any right to ask him what he was doing? No, seeing as I kept pushing him away, not even giving him the chance to explain himself to me for five minutes.
I shook my head. “Thank you. Can you keep me posted?”
He arched an eyebrow, which I imagined meant “what the fuck do you think?” and strode to his glass desk.
Being back in office reminded me that not long ago, we were different. For a fraction of a second, we were together, and it had felt divine. Not nice. Not safe. Not taken for granted. It was short and beautiful and painfully memorable. Like the tree I was obsessed with.
“Anything else?” He fell into his executive chair and didn’t try begging for more of my time. He pressed a finger to his intercom. “Sue, book me the earliest flight to San Diego and get me my turkey and cranberry sandwich. Also, for fuck’s sake, tell the girl at the reception to stop sending me “Have a Good Day” cards. We all know my days are shitty because this city is a motherfucking downer.”
He hung up the phone and tilted his head back to me. “You’re still here. Do you want your PA job back?”
I shook my head quickly. “I’m just not sure how you can be both nice and compassionate and a terrible asshole all at the same time,” I muttered.
He smiled. “It’s a hard job, but someone’s gotta do it.”
IT WAS TIME I CAME face to face with Jo.
I needed to. Not because of closure or to talk about it or some psychological bullshit, but because I needed to deal with what she’d done. She’d tricked my father. She’d sent her brother to kill my mother. And now she’d revealed her true, shitty personality again by firing Emilia’s folks.
This had to stop.
It had to stop a long time ago, but now I didn’t have time to stew in my anger for her anymore. I had to act.
My plan wasn’t sophisticated. It wasn’t brilliant. It was actually borderline stupid. But it was the only one I had at this point.
I hoped Jo wasn’t there when I got to town, because it would’ve made things a lot easier, but I knew that more than likely, she was there and waiting for me.
The flight to San Diego passed quickly. I had so much shit to catch up on, seeing as I’d slept through the majority of the day two days ago—hence my lateness to Emilia’s commute home. At least I saw the complete and utter relief on her face when I finally made it, albeit ten minutes late when she was already at the door.
Our private driver, Cliff, was no longer at my disposal, seeing as my father no longer owned the car, so I took a cab to Todos Santos and called Dean on my way there. We were still cold to each other, but being the new majority shareholder of FHH—something neither Jaime nor Trent liked one bit—had made Dean fucking agreeable for a change. He was no longer falsely heartbroken over his ex-girlfriend, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he actually loved the LA life.
“Where’s a good Mexican place to eat in this city?” he muttered when he picked up the phone, then yawned. It was seven in the morning. Jesus fuck.
“Pink Taco. Listen, I need a favor.”
“Another one?” Dean groaned.
I could practically hear him rolling his eyes on the other end of the line, and it grated on my nerves. I could also practically hear another woman in my bed moaning for him to lower his voice.
And then another one.
Two. Goddammit, Dean.
“Spit it out.” He sighed.
“I’ll be at your place tonight, ten or later. We’ll party all night. You’re throwing a big-ass party at my condo, a
nd you must invite a ton of people. I’m talking at least fifty.”
“And why the fuck?”
“Dean,” I warned. I hated it when he asked questions. He never asked the right ones. “Just do it.”
“Fine, asswipe.”
I hung up the phone just as I entered the estate. The codes were the same. Jo hadn’t bothered changing them for some reason. She didn’t think I’d come back. Naturally. She didn’t know I was privy to what they did to my mom. I think she just assumed I hated her because she was competition. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t the truth.
My first stop was at Emilia’s parents at the servants’ apartment. I knocked on their door and walked right in. They were packing. Her mom, Charlene, shoved their tacky tablecloths and family pictures into a box while her dad swept the floor. Like fucking Jo deserved them cleaning their house before they left.
“You need to come with me,” I told them. I didn’t ask them how they were doing because the answer was fucking obvious, and I didn’t offer my apology because it wasn’t my fault Josephine was a nasty piece of work. Instead, I offered solutions. Fast ones. “I booked you a room at a hotel and rented a space for your stuff in a self-storage warehouse outside of town. Come on, the taxi’s waiting.”
Emilia’s mom was the first to react to me. She stopped what she was doing, walked silently to where I stood and slapped me across the face. Hard. I guess she did what both her daughters tried to at some point, so I had this coming.
I cocked my head to the side and watched her. Tears streamed down her face freely. Such a change from Emilia, who always held back. Even though Emilia looked like a young Jo, she looked nothing like either of her parents.
Charlene looked tired and worn out.
“What have you done to my daughter?” Her voice shook.
I looked her in the eye. “I did to her exactly what she did to me, but I promise you, I will take care of her from now on. That is, if she’ll let me.”