I tore my gaze from the camera feeds. “What? No, I’m sorry.”
“About the proportion of the towers and suspender cables?” said David. “I don’t question the viability of the structure, but the design is so...spare.”
“I want it to be spare. It’s the Un-bridge. That’s the whole point.”
We’d been over this already. Vancouver wanted a bridge, and I wanted to try something new, an homage to Chere’s spare and delicate jewelry designs, only scaled to massive size.
“I’ve done the math,” I said. David, the fucking upstart. “Praneesh has looked at it too. The numbers work.”
“I’m sure the math works, but you’ll have to light the towers and the main cables. Otherwise, no one will see them.”
“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Bridges don’t have to be solid, inflexible behemoths. This one can move with the earth.”
Jennifer and Hannah were on David’s side, even though the City of Vancouver was on board with the visionary design.
“They want something new,” said Praneesh. “Vancouver’s a progressive city.”
“It’s barely there,” David persisted. “People won’t feel secure when they’re on it. It’s not appropriate bridge design.”
“Not appropriate?” I wanted to follow that up by shouting “Fuck you and what’s appropriate,” but I kept the words inside, because this was a business meeting and I was the boss, and I had to present a composed and capable front. That way, when my associates told me something wasn’t appropriate, that a design wouldn’t work, I could stand my ground and say, yes, it fucking will.
Because there was always a way to make things work, if you looked hard enough. I’d done the math and calculated countless distances and angles. I’d designed the safest, most understated, environmentally friendly, weatherproof, and elegant bridge anyone had ever seen, and fuck me if some MIT grad with a hard-on for girders and concrete was going to tell me it wasn’t appropriate.
“The cost of the lights will be offset by the durability of the materials,” I said. “If you start adding more bulk to the cables and towers merely for visibility—”
“Visibility is an important part of bridge design.”
“So is innovation,” I snapped.
“It’s just...” Hannah the peacemaker spoke up. “It’s just a real departure from our usual designs. I think it’s beautiful and viable, just...really different.”
“It’s growth. It’s expanding our portfolio. It’s changing with the times, moving from amplification and ostentation to refined simplicity. In that setting, in that geographical location, it will work.”
The voices at the table went quiet as I showed them the renderings again. This wasn’t just about the bridge; it was about the bridge’s place in the world. Funny how it had taken Chere’s unconventional aesthetic to teach me that.
God, Chere. It still fucking hurt to think about her. I stared back at the camera feeds while my associates debated the merits and drawbacks of the Vancouver bridge. Through the haze of my disaffected pain, I could hear David and Hannah coming around and admitting it was a visionary project. That should have made me happy, but it was an empty victory. The woman who had inspired this elegant vision was gone.
We put the Vancouver plans aside and moved on to other projects on the docket. Chere was gone, but life went on. Cities expanded, skylines changed, and structures came into existence through deep and thoughtful planning. There was more work to do. There would always be work to do, even if there was no one to share it with in my personal life.
Jesus, I was so fucking lonely without her. I still loved her, that was the fucked up thing. I’d always love her, just as she’d always loved Simon, even though their whole thing was a train wreck. Sometimes there were just bonds between people. Not manacles or leather cuffs or rope, but bonds deep inside you, because someone understood you and accepted you despite all your pathetic flaws.
But whatever. I could still work. I could go home and eat, and read, and drink wine now and again to remind me there was some good in life, even if I didn’t have Chere kneeling at my feet. I was on my second glass of wine Thursday night, deep in the poems of Percy Shelley, when my phone pinged with a text from Vinod. Because of his association with Chere, we’d become something more than business acquaintances.
I’m leaving for India soon, he wrote. Need anything?
I thought a moment, then texted, Saffron from Kashmir. And Kismi Bars. Hundreds of them.
He texted a line of pig emojis, then the words As you wish.
I frowned at the screen, wondering if Vinod had been in contact with Chere since she left me. They used to speak by phone at least once a week. I could ask him if he’d been in contact with her, but it was none of my business, since Chere and I weren’t together anymore.
Safe travels, I typed instead, hoping to draw the conversation to a close before I said something I shouldn’t.
All is well with you? he texted. And Chere?
I didn’t know what to reply. Nothing was well with me these days. Work was a hassle, home was an awful, empty place, and strangers were living in Chere’s apartment. Everything’s fine, I typed, just to give an answer.
Is it? I only wonder why you’re letting someone so dear to you live in a hotel. A nice hotel, the Gramercy, but still.
I stared down at the message. The Gramercy. The place I’d left her.
You saw her there? I texted.
Just today.
A pause, and then another text popped up on my screen.
Why is she there, I wonder? He inserted a few goggle-eyed emojis. None of my business. I’ll bring you saffron and chocolate.
I typed two words in response. Thank you.
I wasn’t thanking him for saffron and chocolate. I was thanking him because I finally knew where she was.
Fuck.
I finally knew where she was.
Chapter Fifteen: All the Wrong, Bad Things
I was lingering over coffee, staring out the window on Saturday morning, when a loud, pounding knock jolted me from my thoughts. I didn’t mind, because they were shitty thoughts, unfocused and conflicted even after a week of cowardly huddling in this room.
I knew Vinod was supposed to leave for India today, which was probably why Jino was pounding on my door at this hour. I threw the lock and opened it, expecting to find my silver-haired friend and his towering sidekick. I remembered too late that Price also had an aggressive knock, one he wasn’t afraid to use in the quiet hallways of luxury hotels.
My ex-Master looked beautiful and tired, his jaw scruffy with a day’s worth of stubble. He wore a gray coat with an ivory sweater, and flawlessly pressed pants that highlighted his muscular physique. His gaze was as blue and deep as it had ever been. A bundle of white tulips peeked from beneath his arm.
I stared at him, not ready for this moment. “How did you know where—”
“Vinod.”
He didn’t make a move to come in. I studied his expression as I had so many times, trying to decipher what he felt. As usual, he gave me nothing. Irritation washed over me. I focused it on the tulips. I’d always hated tulips.
“Flowers aren’t going to fix us,” I said.
“I know. These aren’t for you, they’re for Simon.” He finally reached toward me, but didn’t quite touch me. “I’m taking you to the cemetery. Do you need a coat?”
“The cemetery? Why?”
“So you can have your fucking closure.”
I frowned at him in exasperation. “This is all a little too late, don’t you think?”
I finally saw something in his face, some human emotion. Panic. “Will you please just come?” He reached out again, and this time he took my hand. “Please come with me, Chere. We need to talk.”
I sighed and went for a coat. Price stood at the door, looking around the hotel room. Wondering where to install the cameras? Or was he remembering the last time he’d come here, to leave that note that destroyed my life?
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And then rebuilt your life, Chere. Don’t forget that.
Simon’s final resting place was in Fair Lawn, a half hour outside the city. Price had said we needed to talk, but we rode in the back of his chauffeured sedan in total silence most of the way. Price was in scary self-control mode. He wouldn’t even look at me. The tulips trembled on his lap, their delicate white petals too blatant in design for my tastes. I liked the mystery of roses, the frivolity of carnations.
Flowers for Simon. Did he think that would win me back?
But I’d missed Simon’s funeral, and I hadn’t had the heart to visit his grave on my own, so I might as well visit it with Price, even if everything felt weird. Maybe this was his idea of closure, but closure for whom? For him, for his guilt in making me miss Simon’s funeral? Even if it was for me, this trip to the cemetery was only necessary because of what he’d done.
“It has to be on your terms, doesn’t it?”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Price looked over at me. “What? What has to be on my terms?”
“Simon. His death. This final goodbye, or whatever you have planned.”
He was silent a moment, then he shrugged. “You’re probably right.”
“Forget it, then. I want to go back to the hotel.”
“We’re not going back. We’re going to Simon’s fucking grave and we’re going to put these fucking flowers on it.”
I let out a huff and pressed back against the seat, and stared out the window. “Tulips are my least favorite flower.”
“I don’t care.”
Ah, how I’d missed his bright, sunny personality. I wished I was on a plane to India instead. Vinod had invited me to go with him, but I’d refused because it seemed too far to go when my life was a mess.
You didn’t go because you would have been too far away from Price.
Ugh, I hated that I still loved him. I hated that I was fighting off tears because he was so close to me, holding those ugly, floppy flowers in his lap. I hated that I’d been waiting for him to come for me, even while I hid and told myself I was gathering strength to move on. I had no strength. I was an idiot, and always had been.
When we got to the cemetery, I jumped out before he could come around and open my door. I scanned the expanse of lawn and weathered memorials. It was easy to find Simon’s grave. There was no headstone yet, but there were piles of flowers and beribboned reproductions of his work. A couple art school kids hovered nearby, poking through the bouquets and cards. Price’s scowl sent them scurrying back to their car.
Once they left, he turned to me, holding out the tulips. I didn’t take them. I couldn’t take them. I was too preoccupied with the dirt. All the flowers and notes people had left didn’t cover the bare rectangle of turned earth packed down over Simon’s remains. The man who’d pleaded with me at my studio mere days ago was under that dirt now, in the ground, forever. Shit. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry.
Price leaned down and put the tulips near the other piles of potted plants and bouquets. I wondered if Simon’s family came here every day to look at them. His parents had moved here from Florida years ago to try to help him. I wondered if they could bear to visit with all that dirt staring them in the face. Why couldn’t I help him? Even before Price’s interference, I couldn’t help. For years and years, I couldn’t help.
For years and years, I’d known it would end this way.
Still, I said, “I can’t believe he’s dead,” like an idiot. It was more that I couldn’t believe he was under that dirt, buried in some box. He was dead, and he wasn’t coming back, and that was why I finally started bawling, because there was I guess this is the end of us and then there was fucking death.
Price came to stand beside me, a pillar to steady me as I wept. “You must be happy,” I said bitterly between sobs. “Your rival is gone.”
“Why does it matter?”
He didn’t say it in a mean way, the way I’d sounded. He said it like he was stating a fact. Yes, why did it matter? Price was out of my life the same way Simon was out of my life, with one big difference. Price wasn’t dead, buried under six feet of dirt in a quiet New Jersey cemetery. The idea of Price and death made me clutch at him like he needed saving, like the earth might open up and take him too.
He brushed away my tears as I clung to his elbows, like I had any power to rescue either one of us.
“Just tell me you understand that this isn’t your fault,” he said gruffly, as more tears replaced the ones he wiped away. “That’s the reason I was so stubborn about all this. About his funeral. I should have let you go to the damn thing, but I...” He made a vicious face, staring down at the flowers, all colors, all kinds. “I was right about not letting you help Simon, because he was beyond saving. He would have turned you inside out again, and he’d already hurt you enough. But I was wrong about the funeral. After all those years, everything you suffered, you earned the right to say goodbye.”
“It’s a little late to realize that now.”
“I know. When it comes to you, I always figure things out too late.”
“What does that mean?”
He shook his head, wisely refusing to talk about us. It was too dangerous at the moment, with him apologizing and me in tears. We looked down at the grave instead, and I realized I really had nothing left to say to Simon Baldwin or the dirt that covered him. I’d said goodbye years ago, whether Price believed me or not. As for my guilt in the saga of Simon’s terrible choices, I’d have to find a way to let that go.
I turned back toward the car, drawing our visit to a close. Goodbye, Simon. Goodbye, Chere’s fucked-up past life. It was time to move on.
Price opened the door and I slid across the seat, mopping at my eyes. They stung from crying, and I had a headache. I used to deal with pain and discomfort all the time at Price’s hands. I loved that kind of pain, but the pain I brought on myself was unbearable.
He climbed in beside me and shut the door. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want to get something to eat?” He studied me in consternation. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I’m fine,” I said too quickly. I wasn’t fine at all. I was lying to him again. Dishonesty. Jealousy. Lack of trust. Those were the things that had doomed our relationship from the start.
“No,” I said instead. “I’m not okay. I haven’t been eating, or sleeping. I’m barely surviving without you. Even now...” I couldn’t admit all the specifics. I couldn’t say how magnificent he seemed to me with his stern, tightly controlled emotions, or how drawn I felt to the pain he held inside. “Even now, I still have feelings for you.”
“Then why are you at the Gramercy?” A glimmer of raw vulnerability flashed in his eyes. “Why aren’t you with me?”
“Because you’re an asshole. Because you wouldn’t let me safeword out of your cage.”
“I wouldn’t let you out because you wouldn’t listen to me. You wouldn’t trust me. You’ve never trusted me.”
“You’ve never proven yourself worthy of my trust!”
My voice sounded loud in the sedan. The driver remained stone-faced, pretending not to hear our tortured conversation. I wished I didn’t have to hear it. My emotional nerve endings felt scraped raw.
“Chere,” he said, reaching to stroke my face. Damn, I was crying again. My eyes were killing me. He was killing me.
“Don’t,” I said, pushing his hand away. “Just don’t.”
“Everything I’ve done to you, all the wrong, bad things...” he murmured sorrowfully. “It was all because I love you. I told you, I don’t know how to love the right way.”
“Then I guess there’s no hope for us.” My voice sounded bitchy, but my soul was bleeding. “I can’t survive like this. My heart can’t take this anymore.”
“Mine can’t either. Something has to change.”
We rode in silence for a few minutes with those words between us. Something has to change. But what could we change? He couldn’t turn sweet and gentee
l. I needed his rough edges, and he wouldn’t be able to pull off the genteel thing anyway. I wanted him to be who he was, and I wanted to be who I was, a surrendered submissive who still needed to fight every now and then.
Were we impossible? Were we hopeless?
“I miss you so much,” I said. “But I don’t know how to live with you.”
“I don’t know how to live with you, either. I don’t know how to find that line between having you and letting you go. Not letting you go from my life, but letting you go enough to let you live your life.” He rubbed his eyes and growled in frustration. “I’m too afraid of losing you. I’ve been looking... Fuck. I’ve been looking so long for love, for acceptance. My parents were absent, my nannies hated me because I was a shit. My grandmother...she died when I was young. The women I dated loved my money, my body, but none of them loved me. None of them accepted me. Only you. And I feel like if I don’t...” His hands clenched in his lap. “I worry if I don’t hold you tightly enough...”
I stared at his whitening knuckles, searching the spaces between his words to find some way to fix us.
“You don’t have to lock me away to make me love you,” I said. “Don’t you understand that? I loved you before. Your passion, your poetry, all of it changed me. God, I’ve loved you for so long.”
“You loved me until I put you in my dungeon.”
I placed a hand over his. “Even then, I loved you. You were the one who fell apart. You were the one who wouldn’t trust me, who came up with all these controlling rules that were more about suspicion and jealousy than keeping me safe.”
He made another frustrated sound. “I thought you liked control and rules.”
“I do. I love them, but I wish they came from a place of love rather than fear.” I studied his profile, his strong, thoughtful brow. “You’re right,” I said softly. “Something has to change. But it’s not you, or me. It’s this constant fear we live with, this fear that our relationship’s going to end.”
“But we did end,” he said. “Many times.”
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