After All I've Done

by Mina Hardy

  “I texted you,” she says. An accusation. “You didn’t answer.”

  “I answered you. You didn’t reply.”

  She pulls her phone from her jacket pocket and swipes in the code, then brings up the text thread between us. After a moment, I do the same. She stares at it, then at me. Then at her phone. The screen is cracked.

  “I didn’t get those messages.” She taps the screen, pulling up her settings. Scrolls. She closes her eyes and tosses the phone onto the table. “You’re blocked. So is Val. I didn’t block either one of you.”

  Before I can answer, Diana reaches into her jacket’s inside pocket and pulls out a different phone. She slides it across the table toward me. We both look at it. Then at each other.

  “I found this,” she says, “buried in a box in my back yard.”

  I don’t understand. “You put it there?”

  “If I didn’t, who did?” Her voice grates. “I don’t remember doing it, but I have video footage that proves I did. Can you imagine what that’s like, Cole? To see yourself doing something you not only can’t remember doing but can’t imagine why you’d do it in the first place?”

  I don’t have an answer for her. The night of the accident, she’d been acting erratically. She’d told me a lot of things that were going on, but burying a bunch of stuff in the back yard wasn’t one of them. I shrug.

  “Do you recognize this phone, Cole?”

  Of course I do, but I hesitate. There were times I stopped myself from telling Diana the truth because I thought it was the right thing to do. For her. There were times when I knew it was just for me. I’m not sure what the right choice is now.

  I go with truth.

  “Yeah, I do. It’s your phone. You got it because you were worried Jonathan was snooping through yours.”

  “Why was it buried in my back yard?”

  I shake my head. I don’t have to lie. “I swear to you, I don’t know.”

  Diana gets up from the table to shrug out of her jacket and put it on the back of her chair. Wincing and groaning, she pulls an elastic band from around her wrist and ties her hair on top of her head in a messy tangle that I know she would think looks like shit, but breaks my heart with how casually sexy and beautiful it is. She leans on the back of the chair, her fingers gripping the sparkly blue vinyl.

  “There are pictures of us on that phone. Together. I don’t remember taking them. I don’t remember anything about that. But you do,” she says, “don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Diana mutters a string of curses under her breath, nothing I can totally catch. When she looks back at me, her eyes have gone narrow and furious. I can’t blame her.

  “Why?” she demands. “How? Why wouldn’t you tell me? All this time? Months! Were you stalking me?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  We need something stronger than hot cocoa. I get up from my chair and cross to the fridge to pull out the bottle of white wine and pour her a glass, without asking if she wants it. I hand it to her, and I think she takes it because she’s surprised, not because she does want it. But she takes it, and I lift my glass of red from where I left it on the counter and tip it toward her before taking a long, deep swallow. I find my voice. Steadier now. I give Diana a hard, intense look.

  “The day you walked into the coffee shop was the first time I’d seen you in weeks. My heart stopped. I hoped you were there because you were looking for me. But your eyes slid right across me like we’d never met. It was so clear that you had no idea who I was or what we’d … what had happened … with us.”

  “What did happen with us?” Diana’s voice breaks. The wine splashes from her glass. She doesn’t drink any.

  “We fell in love, Diana.”

  I drain my glass and set it on the counter. I don’t make the mistake of approaching her. I give her space. “It happened crazy fast. You used to say to me it was like lightning had struck both of us, and that’s exactly how I felt about it too. It wasn’t something either of us expected.”

  “I don’t understand.” She shakes her head again. “How?”

  That’s the truth, although not all of it, and as I watch her try to process it, I vow inside I will never, ever lie to Diana again. So I take a deep breath and man the fuck up. And I tell her the rest of it.

  “You hired me to prove your husband was fucking your best friend.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Diana

  For a long minute, I can only stare at him. My head tilts, like that little dog who used to listen to the Victrola. A strangled, confused sound slips out of me, and I start to laugh. A small chuckle at first, but it becomes a choking guffaw seconds after that. I laugh so hard I sound like I’m screaming, and when I clap my hands over my mouth to stifle it, the sound becomes a groan, only half of physical pain. More laughter. I’m shaking with it.

  Cole takes me in his arms, and although I’ve thought about him doing that over and over again all these days without hearing from him, I squirm out of his grip and take a couple unsteady steps away from him. I hold up the hand not covering my mouth. He frowns but stays put.

  “I hired you,” I say finally, through clenched jaws, trying to hold back another flood of hysterical giggles, “to collect proof of my husband’s affair. And then we had one, the two of us.”

  Cole’s dark golden brows knit. The brackets around his mouth deepen. He nods.

  I’m still laughing, but now I’m also crying and gasping and everything around me is spinning, and this time when I end up in Cole’s arms, I cling to him like I’m drowning and he’s the life raft. I press my face to his chest. He smells good. Like laundry detergent and a little bit of sweat, and it’s familiar. I know this scent. I know this man. I’ve known him for a long time, I think, even when I didn’t understand how or why.

  It all hurts so much, and again, it’s more than just a physical pain. All of this hurts me, inside and out. Up and down.

  “The night I came back here with you, the night we …” I begin, but I can’t say anything else.

  Cole strokes my hair. “I wanted to tell you everything the first time I saw you at the coffee shop, Diana. And every time after that, all those weeks. But I couldn’t.”

  “How long?” I can see I haven’t been clear enough, so I continue before he can fumble an answer. “How long were we fucking?”

  “You found me in June. We agreed to meet up for regular reports once a week.”

  “How many weeks?”

  Cole hesitates, clearing his throat. “Uh … it was the third time we met up.”

  More laughter spits out of me in hacking spasms. I choke on it. Cole hugs me tighter, then eases up, clearly making sure to be careful of my injuries. He presses his lips to the top of my head. I want to bury myself in this embrace, close my eyes, and let Cole comfort me until I wake up from this. Because surely this has to be a nightmare. Right? I dreamed about digging up the box in the back yard, and I just kept dreaming. None of this can be real. It’s too much.

  “Maybe we should sit down,” he says. “C’mere to the couch. You’re shivering. Let me get you something warm to put on.”

  I withdraw. I don’t feel calmer, but my voice is steady. “Sure. Right. You want me to what, strip out of these wet things? That’s not suspicious at all.”

  “If all I wanted was to fuck you, Diana, I’d have done it and been finished with you.” Cole snaps these words at me. He looks immediately ashamed. “I’m sorry.”

  We stare at each other. I am shivering. My teeth are trying to chatter, and I clench my jaw to stop them. I’m making fists too, but I relax my fingers. The vibrating, humming pain in my collarbones eases.

  “Come sit with me,” he says finally. “I’ll get you a blanket at least.”

  On the couch, Cole pulls a thick, knitted afghan from the back of the recliner and hands it to me. I wrap it around my shoulders and tuck my hands beneath it. I’m still shivering, but I’m not sure it’s still from being cold.

>   “Tell me everything,” I say.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Cole

  BEFORE

  The woman sitting across from me was in her mid-forties. Dark hair with some sexy streaks of silver at her forehead. Blue eyes with lines in the corners. Her lips smiled, but her eyes didn’t.

  “I’ll want pictures. Screenshots, whatever it takes.” she told me. “Video, if you can get it.”

  “I can do that.”

  “How much?” Her expression was neutral, but the wobble in her voice gave her away.

  We talked price. Of all the things I’d ever been paid to do, surveillance work paid the worst and was the biggest pain in the ass. That’s why I usually tacked on a “convenience” fee and always, always got paid up front. I outlined it for her. Cash in an unmarked envelope. Small, spendable bills.

  This didn’t seem to faze her. “I’ll need a day or so to get that much in cash.”

  People usually did. I nodded and pulled the platter of fries toward me. She’d ordered a club sandwich but hadn’t taken a single bite. The diner where she’d agreed to meet was an hour from the town where we both lived, but she still looked around every time someone new walked in the door.

  “I need it to be indisputable,” she said as I dragged a fry through the ketchup and stuffed it in my mouth. Her gaze lifted to meet mine.

  “Pictures and video are usually pretty damning.”

  She shook her head. “It has to be proof of an affair, not just a fling. It has to be proof that it’s been going on at least a few months. There has to be actual talk of an emotional connection. Love. Like, he actually has to say it.”

  Some people have a real boner for getting kicked in the teeth. When I pointed out that putting herself through that level of torture isn’t necessary; that unless her husband hired a shark of a lawyer, pictures and video would be enough; and that Pennsylvania is a no-fault divorce state anyway, she looked faintly surprised. Then frowned. Her fine dark brows knitted.

  “Are you a lawyer?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I just deal with a lot of people who want to get divorced.”

  “Pennsylvania is an equitable distribution state,” she said. “That does not mean fifty–fifty. And my dumb ass signed a very, very detailed prenup.”

  I shouldn’t have laughed at that, but I did. She joined me after a moment. Her head tilted as she looked me over, up and down. I wished I’d shaved. Or something. Under her sharp assessment, I wanted suddenly to impress her.

  “We should meet in person. Once a week. I can give you whatever I’ve collected in hard copy and a USB drive. It’s safer that way. Less worry of corrupting the materials.” None of this was exactly a lie, but I really didn’t need to meet her once a week in person. I just wanted to.

  “Once a week, then,” she agreed and stood to offer me her hand across the table. “Until then.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Diana

  Cole runs a hand through his hair, then sits on the edge of the recliner so he can put his elbows on his knees. He put his head in his hands for about half a minute. I’m okay with the silence. I need some time to process all of this.

  I can’t remember meeting Cole before the coffee shop. I can’t remember kissing him or touching him or having him inside me, except the two times we’ve been together since then. The pictures on the phone don’t lie, though. I have to believe him.

  “My skin is crawling,” I say. “I can’t remember any of this. I feel so violated.”

  He’s on his feet in a second. “No, please, Diana. Don’t say that. Then or now, nothing that ever happened between us was forced. It was all consensual. I swear to you.”

  “You knew I didn’t remember any of it, but you … you did it again, knowing everything about before and knowing I did not. So how can you really say that it was consensual?”

  “You’re the one who came here,” he says, but his voice is gritty and broken.

  “You could have … should have turned me away. As far as I was concerned, we met in that coffee shop at the rec center a couple months after my car accident.” I stagger but keep my feet. “But you already knew about that too.”

  Cole turns away from me to pace. He drags his hands through his hair and whirls to face me. His face twists, expression fierce and frightening, but the light in his eyes is also somehow comforting because it means all of this is important to him. It means I am important to him, and my heart wants to embrace this and make it something important, but my mind can’t quite wrap around any of this.

  “Give me a minute.” I take a deep breath, then another, doing everything Dr. Levitt recommended.

  Maybe quitting my sessions with her wasn’t such a bright idea.

  Cole watches without trying to touch me, and even though I imagine, maybe a little desperately, throwing myself into his arms, I keep my distance. When I’m calmer and can focus, I sit back on the couch. I wrap the blanket around me. I clear my throat, keep my voice steady, and look up at him.

  “How much did I pay you?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I think of the envelope in his bathroom. I think of the withdrawal from the bank account I didn’t remember. “How much, Cole?”

  “We started with five grand.”

  I’m missing four times that amount. “And then what?”

  Again, Cole hesitates. “Diana … look. After we got involved—”

  “Did I pay you to have sex with me?” The idea of it is sour, a physical taste on my tongue, like bile. “Please tell me that you are not a gigolo. Oh my God, Cole, is that why?”

  “Are you insane? No man on earth would need a paycheck to go to bed with you.” Cole says this with shocked conviction, and I want to be flattered, but I just can’t.

  “The first night I was here …” I trail off with a withered, bitter laugh. “I guess it wasn’t the first time. The first night I remember being here, I found an envelope full of money in your closet. It was an accident. But it was a lot of money. Was it from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was more than five grand in there,” I say.

  “You gave me twenty altogether. To keep for you. You said that if you didn’t have it, he couldn’t make a claim to it.”

  “If I had proof he was cheating on me,” I say, “I wouldn’t have needed to hide it. He wouldn’t be entitled to any of it anyway. It was my payout from GenTech, and it came in after he and Val started sleeping together.”

  “I’m only telling you what you told me,” Cole says.

  My lips press together and I look down. “How can I possibly believe you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Because I am. That’s all. You know me,” Cole says.

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t.”

  “You know me,” he whispers and moves close enough to touch my knee with his shin.

  My instinct is to pull away, but I don’t. I close my eyes for a second or so, thinking that when I open them, I’m going to be in my own bed, that this is a dream, but I know it isn’t. This is all real, and it’s happening, and I need to keep pushing for the truth.

  “You were taking that painting class, and after you hired me, the first couple times we met at the coffee shop after it so I could drop off the stuff for you,” he began. “For our third meeting, I finally managed to get you video of them together, doing more than talking. I figured you’d want to meet at the coffee shop again, but you asked me if it was possible to meet you at my place instead.”

  “Are you in the habit of allowing your clients to see where you live?” I toss out the words like a challenge.

  Cole shakes his head. “No. Never.”

  “But you let me.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I let you.”

  There’s no use in me trying to recall any of this or to make sense of it. I might as well have put all of this into a box like the one I buried. I might as well just keep listening.

  “I invited you in and gave you the envelope with th
e USB drive in it. You looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Cole, you seem like the sort of guy who appreciates a woman who knows what she wants, and right now, I want you.’”

  “So … I seduced … you?” I shift on the couch. I’m still wet, but not as cold.

  “I kissed you, hard as you wanted, and you wanted it hard. And then we went into the bedroom and had the most amazing sex I have ever had, and when it was done, you sat up and shook my hand and thanked me for my time.”

  A bubble of confused, startled laughter slips out of me. “What?”

  Cole takes the chance to move closer. “I knew that if I let you walk out that door, I was going to regret it for the rest of my life. So I kissed you again, and you stayed for a while longer, and after we were done, we talked. For hours. You finally went home about three in the morning. I never asked you what had prompted any of it. Honestly, I didn’t care what had started it, I just knew I wanted to keep it going. I didn’t see you for three days, and I was sweating it. I was sure you’d never show up to meet me again, that you’d just give me a drop-off point or something. Then you told me to meet you after your class, at the coffee shop. You bought us both coffees and told me to get the Taktok app. And that was it. That’s how it started.”

  There’s silence now while I think about this. “When did this happen?”

  “The end of July.”

  “The accident happened October first. We were together for what—two months?”

  “About that. Yes.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not a very long time to have met someone and fallen in love.”

  “Not if you’ve both been waiting for it for so long that, when you find each other, it’s like you were in a dark room and finally learned how to turn on the light.”

  Something inside me recognizes those words. I force myself to answer him lightly, but my voice shakes. “Did you read that in a book?”

  “You’re the one who told me that.” He reaches for me gently and takes my hands in his. I move a little closer. “You said we fell in love like the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder, everything all at once.”