by Elena Armas
“Hi, Rosie, Lina. How are you ladies doing?”
As of right now, not too well anymore, I wanted to tell him.
“Hello, Gerald,” I muttered instead.
Neither of us bothered to answer his question.
Not that he cared, apparently, because he stayed rooted in place.
“So, how was the vacay, Lina?”
The vacay. It hadn’t even been a holiday—I had just taken three days off, for Christ’s sake—but there was no point in correcting him.
Turning in my chair and facing him with what I hoped wasn’t a grimace, I braced myself for a few tortuous minutes of small talk. “Wonderful, thank you.”
He gave me a knowing nod, followed by a blatant smirk. I frowned.
“Big day tomorrow with Open Day, huh?” He leaned a hand on our table, the buttons of his shirt struggling under the change in position.
Why did he have to stuff himself in clothing two sizes smaller? Someone should tell him. He didn’t deserve the courtesy, but the world didn’t deserve this kind of sight either.
“You have an outfit picked out and all? I know you girls take your time, deciding.”
My teeth grated together with the sheer effort of not turning the table over and flipping him off. “Yes,” I answered through my teeth. “Now, if you don’t mind, we were having lu—”
“Did you have trouble putting everything together?” Gerald asked, not caring about my brush-off.
I thought I’d heard Rosie mutter something that sounded a lot like jerk under her breath.
Damn, she’s ragey today.
“A little. But it’s all sorted now,” I told him with a neutral expression.
“I bet you managed to find some help.”
That last word—help—the way he had said it, accompanied by a twitch of his eyebrows, sounded as if it meant much more than it was supposed to.
I felt the blood rushing out of my face, a chilly sensation slowly advancing in its place. “Yeah, I did.”
I hadn’t thought to hide that Aaron had helped me; there wasn’t a point, but of course, that had happened before Spain. Now, there was something between us. Something new and wonderful and so very fragile.
“Yes, I just bet,” Gerald commented casually. “I guess it’s as easy as batting your eyelashes and asking nicely, right?”
Cold—glacial, icy cold—started seeping in all across my body. I shuddered.
“Things are easy for girls who ask nicely.”
My spine stiffened. Nicely. “Excuse me?”
Gerald laughed, waving his hand. “Oh, I’m just chatting, honey.”
“Lina.” My voice was frosty, but how could it not be? The chill had penetrated, made its way into my bones. Don’t let him get to you, I told myself, begged of myself. “Not honey. My name is Lina.” I watched his eyes roll. And it bugged me. It fucking angered me like it had never before. “I’ve always been very polite to you, Gerald.” My tone dripped with fury now, so much that I almost couldn’t listen to the petrifying fear beneath it. Threatening to come out. “So, I’m going to invite you to leave our table.” I didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say. If I did, everything would quiver, shake so violently that it would break. “I don’t have time for you and your sexist crap.”
His cackle traveled across the whole room, and heads turned in our direction. “Oh, honey.”
“Gerald, please leave.” Rosie stood up from her chair, but her voice hadn’t been heard by him.
No, a man that wore a face of someone who was about to leash out didn’t listen to anybody. “Well, well, well.” Gerald’s mouth curled in a grim mock. “Look at that.” He raised his voice. “Gets cozy with the boss and thinks she can go around, telling off people. Calling me stupid names.”
My whole world came to a halt. It simply stopped spinning. All that icy anger melted to the floor. The fear roared like a beast let out of a cage after an eternity in captivity.
There was a sharp beeping in my ears. My vision blurred. Memories from a past I had thought was left behind came rushing back, smacking into me with the force of a truck.
Whore. Slut. You fucked your way through college. Sucked some dick to get those grades.
I had done it again, hadn’t I? Stumbled upon the same fucking rock. Although this time, I hadn’t just scraped my knees. This time, I had gone down with everything I had. And I didn’t think standing back up, brushing it off, and moving on was something I’d be able to do. Not this time.
My career. All these years I had worked my ass off in a field that wasn’t exactly easy for a woman. Everything I had accomplished. All lit on fire by a vile man who had turned a beautiful thing—one I had just found—into gruesome mud and used it against me.
The warm grip of a hand against my arm. Delicate. Soft too. Familiar in a way that was contradictory because it felt like I hadn’t had enough time to learn. To tattoo it on my skin, so I wouldn’t forget.
“What’s going on, Lina?” a deep voice that spoke directly into my heart came through the chaos in my head.
My gaze wandered around, finding pairs of eyes upon more pairs of eyes staring at us. Eating it all up like one looked at a train wreck. How morbid. How very sad.
“Catalina?” I heard Aaron say with growing urgency.
I finally zeroed in on him, a smile wanting to claw its way out of me but dying off before it could. “Nothing,” I breathed out, shaking my head. Wishing to will him away from here. I didn’t want Aaron anywhere near this. I didn’t want Gerald’s poison to touch him, to splatter onto him. “Nothing’s going on.”
Something in his face was screaming at me to touch him, to cup his jaw and comfort him with soft kisses. But I didn’t do any of that. I simply watched how he turned toward my friend.
“Rosie,” Aaron said, sounding so … wrong. So unlike Aaron. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I looked at my friend, silently begging her not to say a word. He’d be enraged, and I knew Aaron well enough to be certain that he’d do something. He’d do anything.
But Rosie shook her head. “Gerald knows.”
Aaron didn’t need more than that to guess what had just happened because his profile hardened into granite.
“Not like you two tried to hide it.” Gerald laughed again, as if this were all a big joke to him. “Paul saw you two yesterday, but hey, I get it. It’s not a big deal, man.”
Everybody was watching, enraptured by the unfolding drama. And, God, I was so … weary and worn out. I wanted to rewind life and go back to any point before this.
“A word of advice? Don’t shit where you eat, Blackford. Word gets out. Especially if you are sleeping around with employees. But good for you, and hey, not that I blame her either. I see the appeal in getting it on with the boss.”
Silence. Thick, loaded silence engulfed us.
Then, Aaron’s voice sliced right through it. Sharp as a razor. “Do you want to keep your job?”
Oh no.
Aaron’s words had been meant for Gerald, but they harpooned their way right into my chest.
“Aaron, no.” I stepped forward, my hand coming to his arm.
“Oh, my mistake, Blackford.” Gerald tapped his head with a finger. “Future boss, you are not there yet. So, I think the firing privileges are out of your reach for now.”
Aaron shook off my hand, stepping in Gerald’s direction, into him. “I asked you a question.” One more slow, heavy step, and he got in the other man’s face. “Do you want to keep your job, Gerald? Because I can end you. Your golf friends up there won’t be able to do a single thing, and neither will your minions at HR.”
Gerald turned quiet, the mock falling off his face.
The frustration at being so powerless, so helpless at how everything had unraveled so out of control, brought a familiar pressure to the backs of my eyes.
I hate this. I hate it with all my fucking soul. Why do people find pleasure in bringing down others? Why us? Why so soon?
Aaron’
s sneer, the way his body was all stiff and impossibly tense, told me that he was about to lose his restraint.
“Aaron, stop.” My voice faltered. I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t do that. Not right here with half the people in the company staring.
But Aaron wasn’t budging. He remained a marble statue, awaiting Gerald’s answer, as if he had a whole lifetime to do so.
“Aaron, please.” I willed my voice to harden. But he was transfixed. Unmovable. “You are making it all worse.”
Was that the truth? I couldn’t be sure, but it was what had left my lips. It was what seemed to make it through and hit him like a physical blow, making him flinch.
I watched him turn slowly, and he—the man I had come to need and want in my life—faced me, hurt embedded into his eyes.
It broke my heart, putting it there, but what was the alternative?
I should have known better. I despised myself for putting us both in this situation when I knew firsthand what could happen. And it was happening.
Unable to take a single second more of it—of myself, the hurt in Aaron’s eyes, everything—I turned and walked away. I saw myself leaving the room and striding across a long hallway. I kept going, taking turns and climbing down stairs without a course of direction. I was on automatic, and cowering was my default.
“Catalina, stop running away.” Pure, unfiltered desperation governed Aaron’s voice, and it sickened me.
I despised myself even more for putting on him yet another ugly thing.
“Talk to me.”
I kept walking, not wanting to turn and not knowing where we were in the building. An empty hallway somewhere.
“Catalina, would you stop fucking running? Please.”
My legs came to a sudden halt, my eyes closed. I heard—sensed because that was how it worked now; I could feel the warmth of his body, crave it—Aaron walk around me, and when I opened them back up, I was welcomed by an angry, miserable man.
“Don’t do this. You hear me?” His voice didn’t crack or waver. “Don’t you even think of it. I won’t let you quit.”
God, he knew me so fucking well. Better than I did myself because his words only solidified what had been bubbling inside of me in the last few minutes.
But I was furious, so mad at the world and at myself. “Easy for you to say,” I snapped. Unfairly. But Gerald’s poison was eating away at my skin. Blackening everything in its way. “I’m the one whoring out anyway, right? You’ll brush it off and move on.”
He blinked, his features contorting with outrage and pain. “Easy for me to say? I’ll brush it off?” he hissed. “You think it was easy for me not to break his face on the spot? Maybe fuck up his mouth enough, so he couldn’t utter a word for a few weeks? Not to fucking end him for being a worthless pig?”
I believed Aaron would have done that. I knew he would have. And that… dissipated my anger, giving way to only anguish. How could I ever have anything for him that wasn’t adoration?
“I won’t let you do any of that,” I whispered. “He’s not worth the trouble you’d get into.”
“But you are. You are worth all that trouble. You are worth walking through a fucking fire. Don’t you see that?” He exhaled roughly through his nose, his hand coming to my cheek, making me lean on his touch on pure instinct. “Whatever shit Daniel put in your head about you not being worth fighting for is wrong. Love is worth fighting for. And I am not him, Lina. This is not the past either.”
I shook my head, but his palm held on to my face harder.
“When there’s a rock on the way and you fall, I tumble down with you. We fight our way up together.”
“It’s not that easy, Aaron.” I wished it were. I wanted so bad for the world to be that goddamn easy. “Those are just idealistic, beautiful words. At the end of the day, you can’t protect me from everything, hold my hand, and fire whoever disrespects me.”
“Maybe I can’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. When someone mistreats you and I have the power to do something about it, I’m going to speak up. I’m not going to wait on the sidelines and watch you take the hit of it on your own.” His chest heaved, moving up and down almost violently. “Just how I know you would fight tooth and claw against anyone who tried to hurt me. We protect and heal each other. That’s how this is supposed to be.”
“This is not only life we are talking about. This is my career. Yours too, Aaron.”
“It is, and I would never do anything to jeopardize it.”
“But what about everybody else? They might. Look at what happened with Gerald.” I fought the sudden urge to lean on his chest and break down. “What happens from now on? Every time I accomplish something, I will fear the possibility of someone pointing a finger and accusing me of sleeping my way to it.”
His jaw clenched, fury seeping into his features again. “Things don’t need to be that way. Gerald is not everyone else, Lina.”
I closed my eyes, not able to work around the lump in my throat.
Aaron continued, “I’m not downplaying your fears, baby. I swear I’m not. But we can’t give up at the first sign of adversity. We can’t let everyone else matter more than we do. Not without giving us a fair shot.”
But what if we don’t even get the chance of giving this a shot? I wanted to scream.
“I need you to trust in us, in me. Can you do that?”
“I trust you, Aaron.” I shook my head and stepped out of his reach. “But this is just … too complicated. I don’t think I can do it. Go through it again.” My heart would never recover if this didn’t work. If Aaron fled the ship like Daniel had.
More hurt poured into the blue of his eyes. “You don’t then,” he whispered, his voice broken. “If you mean that, then you don’t trust me.”
Silence weighed down on us. Aaron’s shoulders eventually falling.
“I love you, Lina.”
A crack sliced its way across my poor, beaten heart at how wrong those four words sounded. How void of happiness and full of sorrow they were when they shouldn’t have been.
“How is it possible that it feels like you are breaking my heart, and I haven’t even had you yet?”
My soul shattered. I broke in a hundred million pieces.
“I can’t make you trust me like I need you to. With your whole fucking heart.” He searched my face, those blue eyes missing their usual light. Reflecting only hurt. “I can’t make you run into my arms instead of in the opposite direction. I just … can’t make you love me enough to give us a chance.”
A hole opened in my chest, my knees almost giving out at the earth beneath my feet tilting the wrong way. Unbalanced.
We stared into each other’s eyes for a long time, our hearts in each other’s fists for all the wrong reasons. It all felt unreal. Like a cruel nightmare I’d wake up from any minute now.
But it never happened. At some point, I thought I heard his phone ringing, and I watched him ignore it until it rang again. And again. Then, I thought he pulled it out of his pocket and peered down at the screen. But I wasn’t sure.
My head kept chanting, Trust him, trust him, trust him, making it hard for me to make sense of anything else but that.
I was trapped by my own mind. Sucked in a vacuum where I didn’t grasp time or space. Although I did remember one thing. And that was Aaron’s back moving away from me. His legs walking him down the empty hallway and him not looking back.
Not even once.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rosie came home with me that night.
We curled under a blanket on my bed and rewatched Moulin Rouge! on my laptop. How tragic—to find love and see it slip through your fingers before your eyes. I always wondered what Ewan McGregor would have done had he known since the moment he met the love of his life that their story wouldn’t last more than one hundred thirty minutes. Would he still take her hand in his and jump? Would he still hold on to every moment left even if only a few? Would he still lie down by her side, knowing that
when she was gone, that space would never be filled again?
Rosie didn’t even think before giving me her answer. “Yes,” she whispered. “When you find that kind of love, time stops mattering. Come what may, Lina, he would love her regardless of how long they had.”
Then, we both bawled our eyes out. Rosie because she could never hold it in when “Come What May” kicked in, and me … well, mostly because I had welcomed the excuse.
So, I cried. I let those tears fall as I held my phone in my hand. Waiting for a call, a message, a sign that I knew I didn’t deserve. But that was what dumb chickenshits like me did. They cowered, hid under a blanket, and cried to “El Tango de Roxanne.”
Ugh. I didn’t like myself one single bit.
But come what fucking may, I’d still have to live with myself for the rest of my life. Find solace in the little time I had shared with Aaron. Past tense. Because when he had asked me to run into his arms instead of in the opposite direction, I hadn’t. When he had asked me to trust him—in us—wholly, I hadn’t been capable of doing it, even when I thought I had. And that had pushed him to walk away.
I pushed him away. I was the only one responsible for that.
Fuck. I wanted him here. With me, mending the broken pieces of this mess together. I wanted him to tell me that he believed we could still be fixed. Glued back together and good as new.
But that was so selfish and so very naive of me. Stupidly so. Sometimes, as much as we wanted something, we weren’t meant to have it. To keep it. Not when it complicated everything else. And this thing—love because that was exactly what it was—between us did. It complicated both our lives, the promises of both careers.
We were tripping each other, making each other fall, just how Daniel had said all that time ago.
We’d have grown to resent each other. Because that was what the poison born of malicious mouths did. It infected everything. And I knew just how much.
So, yeah, after Moulin Rouge–crying-gate, the following day obviously sucked. It was probably one of the worst, most miserable days I remembered, and I knew a fair bit about those. I dragged my feet the whole day, somehow managing to get through the eight to midnight Open Day for a bunch of faceless suits. Names and faces bounced right off me, and I presented topic after topic as if every word were being ripped out of me. If Jeff had been around to witness that lame attempt at being welcoming, accommodating, and approachable, he’d have fired me on the spot.