Why would they? The chess master never asks the pawn her feelings before he moves her.
I felt like I’d been played… that things were spiraling out of my control.
But that was my life now – as a pawn.
I thought of the opposing player, and wondered why the hell he’d made the move he had.
So I decided to ask him.
109
I called Domenico’s private number. He’d given it to me at dinner, before the Epic Cock-Block.
He answered on the second ring. “Monica.”
“Why are you signing with the Cortelians?”
He chuckled. “Are you always so direct?”
“No, not usually, but today’s an exception. Why are you signing the deal?”
“It makes sense financially. I’ve been looking for a Silicon Valley partner for some time now.”
“But after what happened last night with me – ”
“Nothing happened last night with you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call our little exchange ‘nothing.’ Other people have been fired for less.”
“Yes, well, they were working for idiotic employers, then.”
“So why do you still want to work with me?”
“I was impressed with you. I like working with people who cannot be bought.”
That was strange, since I felt like I’d been bought, processed, and thrown in the corral with the rest of the herd. I might have a higher salary, yes, but I sure as hell didn’t have any freedom.
I wondered if maybe he was just doing this to infuriate Vic.
Or maybe he had some other grand plan that involved a long game against the Cortelians.
Or maybe he really had no ulterior motives at all. (Haha – yeah, right.)
But the pawn doesn’t get to ask any questions as it’s moved from square to square.
“I look forward to working with you, Monica.”
“Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘Same here.’
“Ciao.”
And then the line went dead.
110
I checked out of the hotel and walked outside in a daze. A hell of a lot had happened in the last 24 hours, and it didn’t seem like it was going to slow down anytime soon.
There was a black Lincoln Town Car out front with a stocky guy in a suit waiting by the passenger door.
“You Monica Ames?” he asked as soon as I walked out of the lobby. “Cortelian Capital?”
“Yes. Are you with the car service?”
“Yeah. I’m takin’ you to JFK, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Lemme get that for you.”
He put my suitcase in the trunk, then opened the back door for me. As he walked around the front of the car, I noticed he texted briefly on his cell phone before he got in. I didn’t think anything of it.
As we started driving, though, I noticed he was taking us the wrong way. Well, at least not the most direct route.
“Isn’t there a better way to get to JFK?” I asked.
“You local?” he asked as he looked in his rearview mirror.
“Newark.”
He smirked patronizingly. “This is the best way.”
Now I was annoyed. I pointed to the left down a one-way street. “JFK’s THAT way.”
“Traffic’s bad that way. Massive pileup.”
I settled back in my seat, irritated as hell. “It better be.”
“Trust me.”
In case you need translation, that’s New Yorker taxi driver-ese for Fuck off, I know what I’m doing.
I was about to tell him what he could do with all that trust when my cell phone rang.
Vic.
I answered.
“Miss me?”
“How can I when you keep calling me every few hours?” I said sarcastically, though I had a smile on my face.
“You’re still in New York, right?”
“I’m flying out in two hours.”
“That’s abrupt, isn’t it?”
“I guess. But I got the job, so I have to go back and get my affairs in order.”
“You got the job? Permanently?! Congratulations!”
He was more excited than I was.
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t you sound happier?”
Why DIDN’T I sound happier?
Probably because I felt out of control.
And because I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a pawn on a chessboard.
And because of a certain conversation I’d had at 3AM last night that had thrown me for a loop.
And because we were headed right into gridlocked traffic.
“HEY!” I yelled at the driver as he rolled to a stop.
“Too late,” he shrugged.
“Damn it! ”
“What’s wrong?” Vic asked.
“The driver claims he knows the best way to the airport, and then he drives straight through Times Square on a Saturday afternoon,” I griped, more than loud enough for the driver to hear. “Genius.”
“Ah, don’t be so hard on him. I hear there’s a massive pileup.”
“Yeah, that’s what… he said…”
In fact, ‘massive pileup’ was exactly what the driver had said.
It was just a little too much of a coincidence.
“Vic,” I said, a warning in my voice.
“What?”
“What are you up to?”
“Hey, check it out,” the driver said as he pointed out the windshield.
I looked where he was pointing.
All the gigantic electronic screens that lined Times Square – the ones normally touting Sony, McDonald’s, and L’Oreal products – were black.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
Then the first words appeared, white letters against the black background, on every screen all the way down the city block.
Monica, I know we’ve had our differences…
“Oh no,” I murmured.
But I’ve never met anyone else like you.
The screens went black again, only to be replaced a few seconds later with another sentence:
I don’t want to spend another day without you – one was enough.
Somewhere outside the cab, I could hear Bruno Mars’s “I Think I Wanna Marry You” playing over a loudspeaker.
“No,” I moaned. “No, no, no, no – ”
Will you marry me?
“Vic – Vic, are you there?” I said into the phone, only to be met with silence.
Then all of a sudden I saw him.
He was about fifty feet away, walking in the gap between the gridlocked cars, wearing a black t-shirt, camo pants, and a gigantic smile on his face.
He had something in his hand.
It looked like a small box.
“Oh no,” I whispered – then turned angrily on the driver. “Did you set this up with him?! Did you take me this way because he paid you off?!”
“Come on, lady!” the driver complained. “He’s tryna be romantic!”
Oh God…
I got out of the Town Car and stood there waiting for my would-be fiancé.
He got to within three feet of me, then knelt down on one bended knee.
“Babe, it’s been a hell of a crazy ride… and I know I haven’t exactly been the best boyfriend imaginable… but you make me want to be a better man. And I’m gonna be. The last 24 hours since we’ve been apart has been the longest day of my entire life. I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”
He opened the box. Sure enough, there was a ring with a rock on it big enough to knock out somebody’s teeth.
“You complete me, Monica. So please – make me the happiest man on earth and say you’ll marry me.”
He knelt there, a big goofy grin on his face as he waited expectantly.
There must have been two or three hundred people all around us, watching expectantly.
People had rolled down their car windows and were craning their
heads out to watch.
My heart was thumping two hundred beats per minute.
My palms were sweating.
I felt lightheaded.
“No,” I said.
111
At first I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. That grin just stayed fixed to his face.
Then his eyebrows slowly rose, though he kept smiling, like he knew this was all some big joke, and I was about to say Just kidding any second now.
“…no?” he finally asked.
“No,” I said.
There were gasps out on the street among the onlookers.
I didn’t bother looking at any of them. All I could look at was Vic.
His grin faded and he looked at me dumbfounded. “Why not?”
“‘Why not?’ How about WHY?”
He stood up from the ground. “We’re perfect for each other!”
“No we’re not!”
“You can’t tell me the sex isn’t incredible!”
“It was, but there’s more to getting married than great sex!”
“I know that!” he protested. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! I was miserable without you – this was the worst couple days of my life!”
“Yeah, but I noticed it didn’t stop you from throwing a party with a bunch of naked bimbos!”
Now he was getting angry. “I did that because you broke up with me!”
“You were talking about doing that before I even left! In fact, that was the REASON I broke up with you!”
“That was just – that was – forget about that!” he blustered, then waved his arm around at Times Square and all the video screens. “What about all this?! This has got to count for something! Do you know how hard this was to set up on short notice? Do you know how much it cost?!”
“That’s the problem, Vic – you think you can just buy people off,” I fumed. “You think you can be an asshole, then do some huge gesture, and they’ll forget everything you did, and that’ll get you what you want. Well, not me. Not this time.”
“I thought you’d want this!”
“I don’t want this at all! I want something small, and intimate, and beautiful, and meaningful – not cheesy quotes from As Good As It Gets and Jerry Maguire!”
“Well, I didn’t know that!” he said defensively.
“That’s the whole point – you didn’t know because you don’t know me! You haven’t known me long enough to know what I want, and you never asked! This – this is like something you’d stage for your Instagram page!” As I said it, dreadful certainty filled my insides. “Is there a social media guy around here? Is there somebody waiting to take a video of us so you can put it on your fucking account?!”
He looked vaguely guilty. “I was just trying to, you know… document it…”
“Jesus, Vic! Seriously?!”
“I was just trying to win you back! Is that so bad?”
“I’m not a thing you can win! I’m not going to say yes just because you put on a concert to impress me, or because you did some big stunt in Times Square!”
“You said you wanted me to grow up – well, this is what it looks like!” he said, flinging his arms out. “This is me growing up and taking the next step!”
“No, this is you freaking out because I said ‘goodbye’ and you just had to win me back – because you don’t lose. This isn’t growing up. This is just another episode of the Vic Show, with all the bright lights and drama. And I don’t want that.” I turned back to the driver. “Pop the trunk.”
When the driver hesitated and glanced at Vic for what he should do, I yelled, “NOW!”
He popped the trunk.
“What are you doing?” Vic asked, stunned.
“Getting the hell out of here,” I said as I hoisted my suitcase out onto the street.
“You’re going to walk?!”
“Far enough to catch a cab, anyway,” I said as I extended the suitcase’s handle and started rolling it through Times Square behind me.
“She’s crazy,” the driver marveled, loud enough for me to hear him.
“I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME THIS WAY!” I shouted over my shoulder.
As I looked back, the last image I had was of Vic standing there, alone and dejected in the middle of the street, his face in utter shock.
I felt horrible.
I did, I truly did.
But I wasn’t going to marry him. It would have been surrendering to one more chess player who wanted to move me around the board at his whim, without any regard for my wants and needs.
And I sure as hell wasn’t going to turn around and take back anything I’d said.
So I just kept on walking.
112
By the time my plane taxied into San Francisco, I felt absolutely awful.
The entire flight, I raked myself over the coals for being a cold-hearted bitch. I’d really hurt him, and I hated myself for doing it.
But when everything in you feels dread when a guy pops the question, are you going to say no?
Of course not.
But… I missed him. A lot. In fact, the more I thought about him, the worse I hurt.
In retrospect, the whole Times Square thing – while being absolutely ridiculous – was incredibly sweet. Too sweet, like something that makes you want to gag. And kind of hackneyed. I mean, it was like the end of every Hollywood chick flick ever.
But he’d meant well.
And I’d basically humiliated him in front of the entire world.
As soon as I landed and had phone service again, I called him to apologize.
No answer.
I left a voicemail. “Hey… look… I’m sorry. I flew off the handle because I wasn’t expecting… what you did. But I could’ve handled it a lot better, and I’m sorry. Call me, okay?”
I hung up the phone.
Didn’t hear back from him.
Suddenly texts started pinging in – hundreds of them that had built up during the flight.
They were all from friends and family members.
Wow – brutal, Monica.
Daaaaamn, girl, you know how to kick a guy when he’s down.
Seriously? What’s a dude got to do to propose to you, huh?
I was bewildered. How the hell did they all know what had happened?
Then I realized: there had been hundreds (if not thousands) of people standing around us when he proposed.
Somebody had probably filmed it on their iPhone.
Shit.
I googled ‘Vic Cortelian Times Square’ and quickly found out that ‘somebody’ hadn’t filmed it.
LOTS of somebodies had filmed it.
Like three or four hundred.
The top video on Youtube was footage of me and Vic intercut, so you could see the shock and hurt on his face while I yelled at him.
I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to puke.
Had I really done that to him?
I remembered the video of me yelling at him in the desert.
Had I really done that to him AGAIN?
I called him a second time.
No answer, so I left another voicemail. “I saw the video. Uh, videos. I am so, so sorry, Vic. Seriously. I… I feel horrible about what happened. Please call me.”
Nothing.
113
When he didn’t get back to me, I called the next morning. Voicemail again.
“Hey, can you call me back? I want to talk. We need to talk, okay?”
No answer.
I started to get obsessed.
When he’d gotten all up in my face, I couldn’t stand it and pushed him away. But now that he was really gone – now that it felt like I was going to lose him for good – I couldn’t bear it.
I started calling him three or four times a day, and texting more than that.
No answer.
I also experienced a delightful side effect of living in the internet age: hundreds of thousands of social media posts and video comments calling me a heartless bitch, an evil whore, a v
icious skank, and worse. After the twentieth post calling for my death, I just stopped reading them.
Funny – I was apparently the only person alive who could turn Vic into the perfect, heartstring-tugging victim.
114
I kept calling and texting him. He kept ignoring me.
I more or less sleepwalked through my meetings in San Francisco, thinking more about Vic than my impending cross-country move.
I tried calling his friends to see if they knew anything about him.
Katie was the first on my list.
“Wow,” was the first word she said when she picked up.
“You saw the video,” I said morosely.
“Well, yeah – I haven’t been living under a rock.”
I sighed. “Have you heard from him?”
“No – have you called him?”
“Only about a hundred times.”
She murmured sympathetically. “I’ll ask Ian if he’ll call.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
I felt sick with dread. I pretty much knew what was coming. “What?”
“Why did you say ‘no’?”
“Because I couldn’t say ‘yes.’”
“Yeah, but… you could have said it a little more gently.”
“I know that,” I snapped.
Silence on the other end.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s okay. I know this has probably been really tough on you – ”
“‘Probably’?” I said with a sarcastic laugh. “It’s been hell.”
“Why, are people bothering you?”
“No – I mean, yes, they are, but that’s not why it’s been hell.”
“Why, then?”
“Because I miss him!”
“…in the video, you didn’t sound like a woman who would miss him too much,” she said gently.
“I know, I know. I freaked.”
“He was just trying to be a good guy.”
I sighed. “Maybe that was the problem. Maybe you were right – maybe I am into assholes.”
“Bad boys,” she said, trying to soften the ‘I told you so’ factor.
Then we both said one word at the same time, like we were admitting the obvious:
Strip Poker: Bad Boys Club Romance #2 Page 29