“You’re just saying that.”
“Bloody oath, I mean every word.” He got close, dangerously close. I could almost taste his breath.
“I should warn you, I’m unavailable.” I glanced around to see if we were within anyone’s eyesight.
“It’s no surprise, lucky fellow … but it makes no difference to me.”
I laughed. “It should. He’s a big guy.”
“Let him come. I’m not afraid.” His eyes shone like the light, and I couldn’t help but be turned on by it.
“Yes, you should, and he won’t be happy if he sees me speaking to you.” I looked at him through my eyelashes.
“I’ll take my chances.” His eyes trailed down to my lips. “I really want to be alone with you.” His voice came out huskily, making my cheeks burn.
“Are you trying to get me into trouble?”
“Would it be wrong if I said I did?” He flashed a coy smile. “Forget about him. Meet me upstairs on the rooftop in five minutes … That is, if you’re feeling a little adventurous.”
“What if someone should see us together?”
“Let them.” He turned and left me, and I watched him disappear around the corner before I followed. I found him waiting for me inside the elevator, and I took my place beside him. Quietly we stood there, without touching or even looking at each other. Only when the doors opened did I allow him to walk out first, but I didn’t get far before he dragged me into his arms and kissed me like there might be no tomorrow.
“We probably shouldn’t be doing this here.” I smiled between kisses.
“You’re right, but how am I supposed to keep my hands to myself when you’re near? I can’t wait to get home and get you out of this fucking thing.” He tried to maneuver around my long train, but somehow part of my dress kept getting in the way. I laughed at his transgression. Then my hands went to his freshly cut hair.
“Is this the surprise you texted me about? You cut off your locks.” His hair seemed darker now that it was short.
“I thought it was time for a change. You don’t like it?” He searched my face.
“I do. It’s just different.” I smiled. The wind picked up, and I realized we were standing outside. This high up, the view of the city was always beautiful, especially at night. It almost felt magical.
“I thought tonight would be easy, but I’m having a hard time,” Simon pulled out his pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his tuxedo.
“With what?”
“Not having you by my side. At least that would have kept the vultures away.”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous?” My smile widened.
“Damn right. I don’t want some bonehead near my girl.” He fished out a cigarette and lit it.
“Jason was just saying hello,” I reassured him. I appreciated that Simon wasn’t possessive. He has his insecurities, sure, like I did, but he was always in check with his emotions and never would act out unless he was forced.
“His hand on your lower back had me concerned.” He knitted his brows together.
“You’re cute, you know that? But you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m yours,” I said, and his smile widened, like I’d shown him a magic trick.
“I like it that you’re mine.” Simon grabbed my hand and pulled me closer.
“We’ve got to get back,” I whispered. “They’re going to serve dinner.”
“Let them wait.”
“No, we can’t. The guests paid thirty-three thousand a ticket for me to sit at their table. We need this money to drill boreholes in villages.”
Simon cast an adoring look over me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“How lucky I am. To have met someone who feels equally passionate about the things I do.” He kissed me.
Simon and Amanie had opened my eyes to things I didn’t realize were happening in the world. They sparked this fire—inspired me to want to make a change. I’d signed up for Humanity Matters, and they were sending me on a learning mission in a few months. When they first asked me, there was no hesitation; I was on board. I would need to experience firsthand and see with my own eyes what was going on. So I had made sure Amanie was not to book me with any new projects. I was going to Rwanda, or maybe somewhere in India, but one thing was for sure: I wanted to be a strong advocate, bring light to the issues that girls living in poverty faced every day.
“This is a good sacrifice on your part not to have me by your side tonight,” I mused.
“Who’s sitting at your table?”
“Who’s sitting at yours?” I mimicked his tone, and he laughed.
“I asked you first.”
“Oh, I don’t know, we’ll soon find out.” I cast my eyes away from his. I knew Julian Gaspard was the one who’d paid for the whole table. Simon won’t be happy, but we’ll get through tonight somehow. I kissed him and turned to go back down.
“Mable.”
“Yes, darling.”
“We’re going together—to the after-party.” He didn’t ask; he demanded.
“I thought …”
“I had a change of heart. I want you by my side.”
I’d thought he would never ask.
When we arrived at the after-party, we didn’t stop to pose in front of the cameras that ambushed the invitees as they came. Mable, wearing a short black cocktail dress, dashed right inside the club, and I followed her, not far behind. This was killing me; we couldn’t be ourselves and instead were keeping a low profile. I knew this day would come, when the world would take notice of the woman I loved, and that worried me. They would soon want in, into her life, and I felt anxious that I wouldn’t be able to protect her from it.
Maybe it was my fault that she found herself in this predicament. I had led her down this path, but there was only so far I could go, because the spotlight only had room for one. Is it wrong I want to keep her all to myself? Maybe it was, but with me, she could be any version of herself, no matter how small or big her insecurities. I will always love her for who she is. Love sometimes can be made to feel like a competition, with no one to adjudicate who wins or loses. And so we remained where we remained—no rules—only to anticipate what would happen next.
“Don’t you dare think you can maneuver yourself out of this.” She laid the magazine flat out on my desk.
“Huh?” I glanced up at the sharpness of her voice. “What am I looking at?”
“Take a good hard look, Simon. I think you owe me an explanation,” Mable said, flustered.
There’s a catch-22 to living under the lights: it could work in your favor, and it could also give you a ninety-degree burn. You couldn’t take your pick on which way it would go— only hope you weren’t the deer caught in the headlights. As a photographer, your job was more than to take good shots that told a story. It was about reflecting something most profound. It was my lens that disclosed life in a pure light, the way it was or the way we desired it to be. And then there was the ugly—paparazzi, their lenses distorting the truth. They were not artists; they were turds hiding in the shadows. Paired up with trashy magazines, they would take everything out of context if it made a juicy story that would sell their publication.
“Simon, aren’t you going to explain?” Mable looked at me as if I’d done the most horrible thing—maybe I had.
I took a second to process what she was showing me, and then I saw it. Shit … There you had it. Now I was the deer in the headlights. I was not totally fucked, at least … not after I explained to her about the picture.
Disappointment set in, and I didn’t know if I could ever forgive myself, that I had been deceitful to the woman who I loved with every fiber in me. Not that I was trying to get away with her not knowing, but I had thought it would be best. There it was, slapped hard on the glass window, like a bird that hadn’t seen it coming. I had a legitimate explanation—I did—on why Vanessa and I were on the front cover of a celebrity
gossip rag. It was not what it seemed. It never is, under the lights.
“So.” Her voice was steady, but I had known her long enough to know she was talented at holding back. She picked the copy up, studying every detail. “I will give you the benefit of the doubt, Simon, because I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.” She raised her eyebrows. “But you need to tell me what this is.” Some of her green rollers had come loose. Noah was prepping her for a shoot we were to start in an hour. “Is this true? Is this her apartment you’re coming out of?”
“I promise you, it’s nothing to worry about. Can we talk about it after?”
“After what? So you can come up with a better excuse to cover up the possibility that you’ve done something to hurt us? I won’t make a scene in front of everyone … I want to know … Simon, what’s this about?”
Her glassy eyes pegged me, and my stomach twisted in knots. I had never meant for this to happen. At the moment I had thought I was doing the right thing.
“You think I’m cheating on you?” I came closer, and she moved away.
“I don’t know, you tell me.” She glanced at me briefly before looking away, the magazine half-crumpled in her hand. “Apparently, Vanessa gave the interview herself …” She vigorously flipped through the pages, trying to find the article.
“Can you let me see it, please?” I wanted to tell her to relax, but I had a hard time doing that myself. She stuck the glossy paper hard to my chest and walked further away. I didn’t need to look at the picture. I know it was of us coming out of Vanessa’s apartment, but what the picture didn’t show was that three of her friends, two males and a female, had followed us right out after that picture was taken. What I didn’t expect to find next to that one was one of Mable and me on the rooftop that night at the Gala Fashion Show. The caption read: Vanessa slams cheating Simon. Then a smaller caption was underneath: “I thought we had a future together. This is the worst betrayal. I will never forgive him.”
I either wanted to laugh out loud or cry. Only Vanessa could mastermind this. I’d been helping her out, and this was the thanks I got. This was easy to feed to the press. No one knew Mable and I were dating except close friends and family … and, of course, Vanessa. She’d been trying to sabotage everything in my life since she found out Mable and I were together. Now Vanessa was trying to destroy the thing that mattered the most.
“You know this is pure rubbish, right?” I looked back at Mable.
“What, you’re going to tell me you were Photoshopped in?” Her tone was crude, but it had every reason to be.
“No, I was there … It’s definitely me,” I replied, feeling myself deflate.
“When was this taken?” She swallowed hard.
“In Los Angeles, a few months back.”
She closed her eyes like I had just confirmed what she suspected. “I thought you were on location for a shoot.”
“No, I wasn’t.” My voice came out hoarse, and I tossed the magazine on the desk.
“You lied to me?”
Her voice didn’t come out as anger, but as a disappointment.
“Did you sleep with her?” She asked me like I’d known she would. The light in her eyes diminished with each second, and my heart plunged. This is my fault. I created this. I wanted to come clean, but somehow I thought things were better left unsaid … unknown. For me, it was an unfinished business I had to take care of.
“You know I love you—only you—and I would do nothing to jeopardize what we have.”
“But yet you went behind my back … visiting an old girlfriend? What is she to you? Why does she have this pull on you?”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Just sit down.”
“No, I’ll stand, if that’s okay with you.” Mable wrapped her arms around herself as I leaned into my desk.
“Vanessa Todd—she’s my sister-in-law … or was.”
“What?”
“Racheal and Vanessa are sisters … identical twins,” I said.
“Your wife Racheal?” And when I nodded, she settled down in the chair behind her. I could sense the wheels turning in her head.
“Oh God, don’t tell me you cheated on Racheal with Vanessa?”
“No. No, I would never—I thought you knew me better.”
“You lied to me. I never thought you’d do that either,” she responded coldly, and her eyes avoided mine. She was furious, and I wouldn’t hold it against her if she despised me.
“Look, Vanessa had always been a mess, and after Racheal died, it only escalated. She was the only one who understood what I was going through. And we hung out a little more than usual. Then one night she kissed me and I kissed her back. She looked like Racheal, but it didn’t feel right, so I stopped it from going any further. I swear. We were never together—nor ever will be, but Vanessa never accepted that fact. That time I flew to L.A. because she agreed to check herself into rehab if I was the one to bring her there. I told Vanessa that this was the last time I would help her out. After that, Vanessa needed to stay out of my life. But she never kept her word, checking herself out and following me back to New York. I should have known better. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you trust me enough I would understand? I thought we were a team; we would have worked through it together.” She stood up abruptly.
“I didn’t want to involve you in my past because Vanessa is not your problem. After my wife’s death, I felt like I owed Racheal to look out for her sister. It’s the least I could do. I know this puts you in the wrong light.”
“You mean my integrity?” She sarcastically laughed. “All my efforts to advocate for my charities—have you any idea what I look like now? I will be criticized as the other girl who broke up a relationship … one that never existed.” Her eyes lit up like it had just hit her. “I don’t think my career will recover from this.”
“I could fix this.” I quickly added.
“How are you going to do that? Get her to confess? She’ll never do that; she hates my guts.” Mable threw her arms up. “Vanessa was out to get me from the start, and you have been covering it up. Vanessa was the one who vandalized your car—and the calls on my phone in the middle of the night—you knew all of it.”
I couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“This magazine sent this morning—it was Vanessa—wasn’t it? You knew what she was capable of, and you never let me in on it because you thought … I don’t know what you thought.” Her voice got louder with every word.
“I was doing it to protect you. I thought I could take care of it on my own.”
“No—you’re selfish, Simon.”
“I made a mistake—okay. It’s one stupid mistake, and I don’t want it to come between us.”
“You chose Vanessa over me,” she said under her breath. “I can’t believe I took this long to realize it. It’s always been her.”
“What? No.” It came out sharp. “I chose no one over you. It’s just you—only you.”
She got up, regarding me for a moment, and something happened behind her eyes. The anger that was there a second before faded away, replaced with sadness.
“I’m not someone who will tell you what you want to hear. I love you, and that’s why I have to be transparent and give you the facts—you’re a mess, Simon. You’re struggling with guilt, and you think the solution is to help everyone you can because you don’t know how to save yourself, but it doesn’t work like that. You’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing you could have done to change things. Trying to save Vanessa will not bring Racheal back. Cut the cord, because she will take you down with her.”
Mable was right. I’d been trying to make things right through Vanessa. Nothing I ever did would change the past, but I couldn’t help but want to try.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
Her voice became bold. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe with time … but how can I trust you again?”
“Where are you going?” Mable was making her way out of my office.
“I can’t … I can’t think when I’m around you.” She shook her head.
“Mable.”
I tried to get her to look at me, but she only placed her face in her hands before looking up again. “No—Simon, I’m so pissed at you. I think we need space, you know—to breathe.” She took one step back and regained her composure, holding on to her tears because she was too proud to give me that privilege.
“Okay,” I said, and she took her final step toward the door.
“I hope you can forgive yourself, because this will eat you up if you continue like this. I care too much, and that’s why I can’t watch you crash and burn.” She spoke softly. “I can’t be around when that happens.”
Then I watched Mable disappear through the doorway, and most likely from my life.
There are days I wished I could go back to the beginning, when life was simpler, but then I would never have learned about myself like I did in the past two years. There would have been a trade-off at some point, and I wouldn’t imagine giving those best parts up. I thought about this and other things as I made my way back to New York City. Fresh off a plane, I ran out of the taxicab and scaled up the concrete stairs like my life depended on it. Because it did.
It had been twenty hours since I’d first gotten the call. I knew something was off by the sound of Gloria’s voice. It was uneven, and it cracked when she asked me what I was doing. Somehow it seemed like she didn’t care. Now I knew: she was trying to muster up the courage to tell me. I recognized that tone, the kind when someone was about to deliver the worst blow of your life. And just like it should have, those few words after would finish my already ailing heart.
Come home.
New York hadn’t been my home for the longest time. I had been living in Italy for the past five months.
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