by Bec Linder
“Wait,” I said. “Back up. What do you mean, after Sasha leaves?”
“You know,” he said. “When she moves back to Virginia.”
“When she what,” I said, my heart dropping like a stone.
On the other end of the line, Will was silent for a moment. “She didn’t tell you,” he said.
“No,” I said. I felt numb. Dizzy. “I haven’t heard anything about this.”
Another pause, and then Will, giant coward that he was, said, “Okay, gotta go! Talk to you later!”
He hung up before I could respond.
I set my phone down and turned to stare blankly out the window.
Sasha was leaving?
I didn’t get much work done for the rest of the day. I tried, but my mind was elsewhere. After a meeting in which I took copious notes without actually hearing or processing a single word, my mother pulled me aside and said, “Darling, is everything okay?”
“Fine,” I said. I had the sensation of observing myself from a distance. My body moved and spoke without my intervention. I was simply a witness.
“Well, you didn’t say a word in that meeting,” she said, “and I was under the impression that you had fairly strong feelings about the Ironbound merger.”
“I’m still in the fact-gathering stage,” I said. A total lie: I had long since done my homework. “I’ll discuss my findings when I’ve reached a meaningful conclusion.”
“All right,” she said, still looking doubtful. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? You can bring Sasha, if you’d like.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. My mouth moved. I smiled reassuringly. “I may work late, though.”
After a few more attempts to get me to spill my guts, my mother gave up and went back to her office. Nothing I had told her was the truth. I wouldn’t be working late that night, and there was absolutely no chance of me going to my parents’ for dinner, with Sasha or without her. Sasha and I had made plans to try a new Vietnamese place near my apartment, but I had every intention of jettisoning those plans in favor of getting Sasha to explain to me what in God’s name Will had been talking about.
The afternoon dragged by until 5, when I finally felt that I could justify cutting out. Sasha was coming over at 6:30. I texted her from the subway platform and told her to come by as soon as she could. I didn’t see the point in delaying the inevitable.
My doorbell rang a few minutes after I got home, and then Sasha was at my door, smiling, wearing a sundress, her hair tumbling loose over her shoulders. She was lovely, and already leaving me.
“Hey!” she said. “Are you starving? Do you want an early dinner? I’m not super hungry yet, but I can just have some spring rolls and maybe eat a snack later. How was your day? We had the weirdest dude come in today. He spent like fifteen minutes trying to get Clara’s number…” She chattered happily as she moved around the apartment, setting her purse down on the sofa, opening the fridge to take out the water pitcher.
There was no good way to bring it up. When she paused at the end of a sentence, I said, “Will tells me you’re leaving New York.”
She stopped, holding a glass in her hand. The guilty expression on her face told me everything I needed to know.
I said, “Were you planning on telling me?”
“Alex,” she said.
I wasn’t finished. “Or was it going to be a surprise? One day you’re here, and the next—”
“It isn’t like that,” she said. She set the glass on the counter and wrapped her arms around her waist, the way she always did when she was feeling defensive. “I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I just… forgot to mention it.”
“You forgot,” I said flatly.
“Look, everything’s happened so fast,” she said. “I promised my sister—but then I didn’t know how to tell Yolanda, but then after you—and I just—” She stopped, a stricken look on her face.
“Why don’t we sit down,” I said, “and you can start from the beginning.”
And so we sat together on the sofa while she told me the whole story: the conversation with her sister that led to her accepting my offer; her dreams of buying her mother a new house; her increasingly mixed feelings about moving. “It just didn’t seem real to me at first, you know? I didn’t even tell Yolanda until that night you yelled at me at the club, when you found me with Altman. My lease is up at the beginning of September, so I guess she talked to Will about it. I didn’t think he would say anything to you.”
“I’m glad he did,” I said, “because otherwise I would still be in the dark.”
“Don’t be angry,” she pleaded. “I promise I really didn’t mean to lie to you. Everything seemed so straightforward, but then you were—then I started—well, it was easier to just avoid thinking about it. It’s really stupid, but I was sort of hoping the problem would just go away if I ignored it. Like, the universe would make the decision for me so that I wouldn’t have to.” She sighed. “I promised Cece that I would come home. But now…”
“Now,” I prompted, when she didn’t continue.
She looked at me with her gray eyes so full of longing and sorrow that if she had asked me, in that moment, to lie down and die, I would have done it for her. “Now I’m not so sure I want to.”
“Oh, Sasha,” I said, and gave in to the urge to hold her. She fit in my arms like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I couldn’t imagine living the rest of my life without her.
“There was nothing keeping me in New York, before,” she said. “But now… But I can’t stay. My mom needs me. I promised Cece. My brothers are growing up, and I’ve already missed so much of their lives.”
“Sasha, I will keep you here if I have to lock you in my bathroom and bring you water twice a day,” I said, and felt her shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Sweetheart, listen. I won’t say that I’m in love with you, not yet, because that would be crazy. That would be over-the-top, sixteen-year-old, first-romance, Will levels of crazy. I’ve only known you for a month. But I will be in love with you pretty soon. I don’t want you to leave. Stay here with me.”
She clung to me, her face buried against my neck. She shook her head mutely.
“I know you promised your sister,” I said. “But plans change. Be selfish, for once.”
She drew in a deep breath, and then let it out all at once and relaxed against me. She turned her head to the side and looked up at me. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” I asked, not sure I had heard her correctly.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “For now. For a few more months. No guarantees.”
“Sure,” I said, and grinned, my heart opening from its tight, terrified knot. A few months was better than nothing. Sasha was stubborn, but I was more stubborn yet.
I had faith that I could turn for now into for good.
Epilogue
One Year Later
“That’s the last of it,” Alex said.
I looked up, raising my right arm to wipe my forehead on the sleeve of my t-shirt. We had picked the wrong weekend to move: the air conditioning was broken, and thanks to an end-of-summer heat wave, it was at least a million degrees in the apartment. Maybe ten million. Hotter than Satan’s asshole, my dad would have said, although he never could explain why he had any knowledge about the devil’s nether regions.
Alex stood in the bathroom doorway, holding a lampshade and a reusable grocery bag with two pillows sticking out the top. He looked about as sweaty as I felt. “What are you doing?” he asked me.
“Scrubbing the grout,” I said. “Don’t you ever clean? It looks like you’ve been peeing on the floor for fifteen years without ever picking up a mop.”
He snorted. “You’re disgusting. Trust me, sweetheart, I mop on a regular basis. That’s just what it looks like.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. There was nothing wrong with the floor that a little elbow grease couldn’t fix. I dumped the scrub brush back in the bucket and stood
up, wiping my hands on my shorts.
Alex bent to give me a kiss, slow and lingering. “Care to explain to me why you shoved two pillows in a totebag?”
“I’m sure there was a reason,” I said. I took the bag from him and stuck my hand in it, searching. My fingers encountered a hard edge, a corner, and then glass. I smiled. “It’s my diploma. I didn’t want it to get broken.” After months of studying, I had taken the GED last month and passed on the first try. I was thinking about enrolling for a two-year degree, and then maybe transferring somewhere to finish my Bachelor’s, and from there—who knew? Maybe med school.
He curled his hand around the back of my neck and planted a kiss on my forehead. “We’ll hang it in the living room.”
“Nah,” I said, “I want it in your office, right next to your MBA. We’ll have our very own trophy wall. I’m going to have more diplomas than you by the time I’m done.”
“Is that right?” he asked. “Will I have to call you Dr. Sasha?”
“That’s Dr. Kilgore to you, asshole,” I said, and he laughed and kissed my face again before he let me go.
“Are you getting hungry?” he asked, moving into the living room. “I’ll order pizza.”
“Let’s go out,” I said. “It’s too hot. At least outside there’s a breeze.”
He set the lampshade on the coffee table and looked around at the piles of boxes. “We can go to my parents’. They’ll take pity on us and offer to let us stay the night. Then we’ll refuse to leave, and that way we don’t have to unpack any of these boxes. For Christ’s sake, Sasha. If I’d known how much crap you have, I would have gotten rid of you months ago.”
“We’ll just have to get rid of some of your crap to make room for mine,” I said, coming up beside him and tucking my hand in the crook of his elbow. “Maybe some of your books. You’ve already read them, so you won’t mind if I sell them online, right?”
The dark look he gave me was so dramatic that I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it: he was like an angry teddy bear when he tried to act menacing.
Not that I would ever tell him that.
“You don’t respect me the way you should,” he said. “I’ll have to take you to bed and teach you a lesson.”
“Mm, are you going to spank me?” I asked. “I promise I’ve been very, very bad.”
He seized me around the waist and kissed me, and things probably would have escalated pretty quickly if the doorbell didn’t ring.
He muttered something against my lips and then pulled away, brushing imaginary lint off his t-shirt the way he always did when he was flustered.
“Are we expecting someone?” I asked.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Actually, yes,” he said, and then refused to explain any further, not even when I whined.
So I just had to wait and see. It didn’t take long. A few minutes later, there was a soft tap at the door, and then it swung open and Yolanda poked her head in. “Hello?”
“Yolanda?” I asked, confused. I had just seen her an hour ago, when I made a final trip to the old apartment to pick up some odds and ends.
“Surprise,” she said, coming fully into the apartment, and I saw that she had Teddy with her, in his little travel cage.
“Teddy!” I cried, and then looked at Alex and frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t want him underfoot while we were unpacking.”
He shrugged, and tucked his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “I changed my mind. A house isn’t a home without a parrot.”
“What a good boy,” Teddy squawked, and I was surprised to feel my eyes filling with tears. Everything was changing. They were good and happy changes, but still a little bittersweet.
Yolanda set the cage down, and I crossed the room and flung my arms around her. “I’m going to miss living with you so much,” I sobbed.
“Oh, honey,” Yolanda said, patting my back. “I’ll miss you, too. You know you can come visit anytime. Just make sure you call first, because Will doesn’t like wearing pants indoors.”
“Sad, but all too true,” Alex said. “Come on, sweetheart, don’t cry.” He came over and stroked my hair, and I stood there sandwiched between the two of them, whimpering pathetically, safe, cared for, sad and happy all at once. I knew they were probably making eye contact above my head and grimacing at each other about how silly and emotional I was, but I didn’t give a shit. Sometimes a girl just needed a good cry.
Finally, Yolanda pulled away and said, “I have to go home, honey. Will and I are going over to Tanya’s for dinner tonight.”
I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. Alex was right: I was disgusting. “Tell her hi for me,” I said.
“I will,” Yolanda said, and then, in a rare display of physical affection, she kissed me on the cheek. “You’re going to be fine, you know that? This man is crazy about you. Even the stupid bird is crazy about you. You’re going to have a good life.”
Behind me, Alex squeezed my shoulder, a steady and comforting presence.
“I know,” I said. “Sorry I cried on you.”
“Worse things have happened,” Yolanda said. She gave me another brief hug, and then she was gone.
I sighed, and turned to face Alex, leaning my head against his shoulder. He put his arms around me, and we stood there in silence for a few moments. He smoothed his hands up and down my back, soothing me.
“Moving sucks,” I said.
“I agree,” he said. “Although I hope you aren’t having second thoughts about the end product of moving.”
I looked up at him. His hair was getting long. I would have to buzz it for him soon. “You mean living with you?”
“Living with me, staying in New York. The whole package,” he said.
“I will never,” I said firmly, “regret anything about you.”
He smiled at me. “Well, in that case. We should let Teddy out of his cage. He looks unhappy.”
I glanced down. Teddy was muttering to himself and probing at the latch with his beak. “Poor Teddy,” I said. “Do you want a tour of your new home?”
“Want juice,” Teddy said, spreading his wings as much as he could in the small cage.
“Poor Teddy indeed,” Alex said, and squatted down to open the cage. “Yolanda must have given some poor cab driver a real fright.”
I laughed, and wiped my nose again. “Can you even imagine? He’s been in cabs before, but I usually warn the dispatch when I call. You don’t want to give someone a heart attack with a surprise parrot.”
“Mm, that sounds like a euphemism,” he said, and held his arm in front of the cage. “You can surprise my parrot whenever you want. Step up, Teddy.”
“You’re really weird,” I said, watching Teddy clamber awkwardly out of the cage to perch on Alex’s arm. “I don’t think you should talk like that around Teddy. He’ll get bad manners.”
“His manners are already appalling,” Alex said. He waited while Teddy arrange himself, mantling his wings to keep his balance, and then he stood up and said, “Should we leave him out to explore?”
I shook my head. “Let’s just put him in his cage for now. He’ll be overstimulated enough just being in a different room. Baby steps.”
We went into the office, where Alex had set up the new, enormous cage he insisted on buying for Teddy. After a rocky start, Alex’s shameless bribery—treats, toys, endless head scratches—had overcome Teddy’s suspicious nature, and now they were, as Yolanda put it, BFFs.
Teddy took one look at the new cage and hunched down on Alex’s arm. “Go home,” he said.
“Aw, he’s afraid,” I said. “I told you it was too big.”
“He just needs to take a look around,” Alex said. He opened the cage and held Teddy in front of it. “See, Teddy? All of your favorite toys. There’s your perch, and I sliced up some papaya for you.”
I laughed. “How did you do all of this?”
“Stealthily,” he said. Teddy, looking very suspicious and reluctant, flutt
ered up to perch on the stripped branch spanning the width of the cage. He bent to test the wood with his beak, and Alex smiled, clearly pleased with himself. “There, see? He likes it.”
“You’re shameless,” I said.
“You aren’t happy unless Teddy’s happy,” he said, “and you know what they say: happy wife, happy life.” He got a strange look on his face, and then said, “Speaking of which.” As I watched, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black box.
Then he dropped down onto one knee.
My heart started racing. I clapped both hands over my mouth.
“Sasha,” he said, “this past year with you has been the best year of my life. I want to bicker with you every day until I die. Will you marry me?” He opened the box, and there was a ring inside, small and shining.
I couldn’t think. My head felt like it was floating three feet above my body. “I don’t understand,” I wailed.
“I love you,” he said, so patient with me, the way he always was when the chips were down. “I love the way you let the dishes pile up in the sink until Yolanda gets fed up and does them for you. I love the way you never put the cap back on the toothpaste. I even love your stupid bird. And now that I’ve managed to con you into moving in with me, I don’t intend to ever let you leave. I hope that sounded exactly as creepy as I intended it to. Please marry me.”
“Oh, Alex,” I said, and started crying again, so overjoyed and overwhelmed that I thought I would explode. “Yes. Of course I will. Yes.”
He slid the ring onto my shaking finger, and then he stood and took me in his arms, holding me tight. “I hope these are happy tears,” he said.
I nodded, my face moving against his shoulder. After a moment, I got myself under control enough to speak. “Definitely happy,” I said.
“I even love your snot,” he said. “You’re perfect.”
“No,” I said. “We’re perfect.”
And we were.
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Thank you for reading The Billionaire’s Command! I hope you enjoyed it.