by Lee, Corri
I shrugged helplessly in response to his raised eyebrow and apologised in advance. "You shouldn't have, Cecelia." He took a small sip and breathed through the bitter taste and scorching temperature of the mud brown liquid. "You really shouldn't have."
"Sorry, but in the absence of some geezer peddling Rolex watches in the waiting room, this was the best I could pull out of the hat at short notice. I'll make it up to you."
"No, you won't." I frowned at him while he leaned over to put the cup down on the wheel-mounted tray next to his bed, supporting his cracked ribs with his free hand. "Go to Nathaniel."
"What?" I shook my head in confusion and sunk down into the bulky visitor’s chair. "We're over. Finished. Finito. I asked him to wait until you tired of me and he walked out and left me in his office. He doesn't want me anymore."
"Sure," Cole snorted, "because all men seek revenge for women they don't want."
"Revenge- what?" I should have guessed that the attack would be immediately seen as some sort of vendetta. "He wasn't there, Cole, I would have known." I would have known the eyes and I definitely would have felt him there. "Besides, he wouldn't hurt a fly." Too kind, too beautiful, too gentle. The more I thought about him, the more I missed him.
"Not him personally, Cecelia. But they came on his behalf, and I don't blame them." He scratched at the fine layer of stubble beginning to cover his jaw. It seemed as though the attack had been some sort of wakeup call and he was finally thinking clearly again. The man who sat there all wrapped up in bandages and the man who had told me that I was 'too easily pleased' hardly seemed like the same person. Why couldn't I have had him this way for the entire duration of our relationship? "He was crazy about you from the moment he saw you. When he walked in on our date and you went to the bathroom after telling him to basically fuck off, he gave me a look that said 'she's mine' and hovered around waiting for you. The moment you two looked at each other after you bumped into him, everyone could see that you two were perfect for each other. I saw it- I couldn't ignore it. It was like someone shone a spotlight on you. I saw the same thing every time you two were standing together, even when you hated him, and it drove me nuts. Being with you stopped being about wanting to romance you and became about principle and nursing my bruised ego. I shouldn't have needed Adam to point that out to me."
I leaned back in the chair and dangled my arms over the sides. Cole was saying something incredibly deep and honest, and I dealt with it the only way I knew how. "Cole, are you breaking up with me?" Sarcasm was the only crutch I had to not crumble into tears or run away when I was forced into a conversation that forced me to talk about 'feelings'. Bethany probably had a list as long as her arm of all the poor jokes I'd made at my parent's funeral, because it was just easier to guard myself with black humour than to lay myself open and admit that yes, I was hurting and that yes, the pain was unbearable. Anything said out loud was a burden on everyone who heard it, and I didn't like anyone to feel responsible for my emotional well-being. The only person other than Bethany to be afflicted with that duty had ended up jobless and chastised because 'feelings' scared me, even when they weren't my own. I remembered watching Equilibrium and being jealous of the monotony.
He grinned at me and nodded. "Absolutely. On the condition that I get a wedding invitation and that there's an open bar."
"Ouch, strangled, beaten up and dumped by two men in as many days. I must have been a real bitch in a past life."
"Nathaniel didn't dump you."
"Oh really?" I stared down at my hands and flexed my fingers. I had seen two emotionally significant rings pass my digits over the past week and now both were gone. One, I'd pushed away. The other- the claddagh ring- would always be symbolic in its absence. It would always remind me that, even though I'd taken it off of my own free will, I couldn't just pick it back up whenever I'd wanted to. It was lost, and so was my connection to Nathaniel. "So why did he just walk out on me?"
"Because it drives men crazy when you push them away." Cole swung his legs around to the floor and scooted over to the edge of the bed, retrieving his shoes from the floor. "The minute you told him that he had to wait his turn, he stopped thinking about fireworks and fairy-tales, and started focusing on what he had to do to get you sooner. I guarantee that the minute he wakes up, he'll be looking for a way to claw back into your life." Everyone always made me out to be so amazing, such a big deal. I hated the implication that I could drive any man to becoming a miscreant. I didn't want that kind of blood on my hands.
Besides, I wasn't convinced that Nathaniel was responsible for the attack. He stood to lose too much if it was ever discovered, I doubted that he would risk his career over anything, least not ruin his reputation by sending out men to beat a man to death.
"You saved my life, Cecelia. You're a wonderful, beautiful person."
I pointed at my face panda eyed face and laughed, pulling myself up from my seat to stand in front of him. "You think?"
Cole rolled his eyes and took my hands in his. "Beautiful inside and out. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that more often."
"You're telling me now." I loved this side of Cole- the side I'd seen so rarely during our short but excessively eventful relationship. I knew that this side of him was real and honest, and the part of him that I fell for on Monday morning, before Nathaniel had thrown me out to the wolves with his declaration of love.
Cupping his face in my hands, I stooped down to his level and paused for a moment before moving in to kiss him. If that glimmer of hope still shone, then I knew that I couldn't turn my back on him. My hands slid down to his chest at the moment of impact and we simultaneously yelped with pain- I from my split lip and him from his bruises. If we were together, we were just hurting each other and it had just been proven in literal form.
We both laughed when I straightened and Cole rose to his feet with my help. "Something has been bothering me since Cherry Vine though, Cecelia." I eyed him cautiously and leaned over to collect his shirt from the back of the chair. "What did I do wrong that meant you had to fake it? " My cheeks flooded with blood and I turned away in embarrassment. "No, please! Was it a lack of fireworks, poor technique?"
"Uh uh." I bit the unwounded side of my lip and giggled in a surprisingly girlish way that would have rivalled even Bethany's laugh. "You're too big."
"Seriously." I nodded and rolled my eyes when his chest swelled with pride. "Oh, well then. I think that makes up for the coffee."
Adam, Bethany, Cole and I ended up back at my townhouse around three in the morning, all of us looking worse for wear, some obviously worse than the others. The night marked a new era in our friendships. Cole and I realised that, after sixty-eight Thursdays of him pushing me for 'more', we weren't compatible but worked very well as friends. And somewhere along the way, Adam and Bethany had reached the same conclusion. She decided that to some degree, she liked being the girl next door and wasn't grown up enough for a serious relationship, and Adam was just proud of himself for proving that he wasn't the usual type of man who thought she was disposable. There was a new wave of calm over us and, despite all of the hurt and injuries we'd on inflicted on each other, we were all stronger and more firmly tied by our willingness to overcome it all and turn a new page.
We sat in front of the television and drank cheap wine until, one by one, we all drifted off on the lounge floor, covered in the quilts that Bethany and I had pulled from our beds. We were all intermingled with each other in some way, be it an arm wrapped around a leg or an elbow in a face, and it was an unexpected closeness that I was sure that we all treasured.
We agreed to a horror film in a very dimly lit cinema and a night of excessive drinking to celebrate Cole's birthday. Exaggerations were made to the college principle over his injuries so both men could take a day off work, and Bethany bowled us all over with her insistence that she'd still be going into work herself, if only to tell Nathaniel to not torture me over my final draft. Cole reminded me persistently that my time with the Alexand
er clan was not over, and I must have been concussed, because part of me believed him.
I woke up face down on something soft- someone's chest. Without thinking or opening my eyes, I smiled and nuzzled the ridge between their pectorals with a light moan. "Hmm, good morning, hot shot." I murmured and sighed, relishing the joyous experience.
"S'up." I frowned and opened one eye, then jumped up with a hand over my mouth.
"Oh my god, Adam! I'm so sorry!"
He beamed up at me and slapped Cole around the leg with a laugh. "Affectionate, this one!"
Rosy cheeked, I fled into the kitchen, battling to contain a laugh. I was sure that if I'd have done that yesterday, I would have ended up pinned to the lounge floor again, and not in a good way. Cole stuck his tongue out at me through the service window and reached behind him for the television remote. My lounge had gone from being a forum for negativity in all mediums to a bloody hostel. "Coffee- black, two sugars if you're asking." Cheeky git.
"I wasn't. What time is it?"
"A little past noon. Your phone has been ringing since nine- change your ringtone, it's sadistic."
"What?" Make Me Wanna Die rang out right on cue. Yeah okay, Cole made a point. The ringtone was sadistic.
"You gonna answer that?" Adam raised an eyebrow at me and I scoffed in response. "Okey dokey then." He promptly snatched my phone from the coffee table and smirked as he answered.
"Adam, you are so d-..."
"Nathaniel, hey. It's Adam. Um... She's just woken up and is looking at me like I'm about to lose my manhood. Hang on." I put my tongue in my cheek and shook my head slowly while he started messing around with the call settings. He was right, he was about to lose his manhood. Permanently and fucking irrevocably. "Okay, so what were you saying?" Adam spoke without raising the handset back to his ear and I knew exactly what was coming.
"Can you please urge her to come into the office? It's imperative that I speak to her." I rubbed my chest over my heart as it clenched painfully at the sound of that voice. The other hand whipped out against the wall to steady me, my head spinning for a moment. His mind-blowing affect to knock me sideways was fortified by my verboten desire to touch the untouchable. I narrowed my eyes at Adam and mouthed 'no', but he just grinned coyly and winked at Cole.
"She'll be there."
"Great," Nathaniel exhaled slowly, "good. When she's ready." Never, then.
Adam held up his hands in surrender as I paced over to him and held a saucepan of cold water over his head. There was nothing misinterpretable about my expression, I was pissed with a capital P. "Before you drown me," he laughed, slowly climbing to his feet and taking the pan from my hand, "Don't you think that it must be important for him to have spent the past three hours calling you every five minutes?"
I took a swipe at his backside before pointing to the television, where a brief story of Cole's attack ran across the screen. "He's just checking that I'm alive. Protecting his investment."
"Wasn't he ignoring your calls yesterday?"
"Yes, but I hadn't just been in the middle of an attack ye-... Oh." I was damned if I was saying those three sacrilegious words- 'you were right', but he did make a valid point. Still, I didn't want to build myself up just to get shot down the minute I'd walked into the office.
Adam sat me down on the couch and I found myself suddenly sandwiched between the two men. If I'd been in that situation at any other time, I would have been flicking my hair around and flirting. But these were the wrong two men and I was far too disfigured to enjoy it. "Cecelia, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but what the hell is wrong with you? He's showered you with gifts, taken you to fancy charity balls, put you up in an expensive hotel, proposed," I ignored Cole's inquisitive grunt at the word 'proposed', "and put out a hit on his rival-..."
"He is not responsible for last night."
"But it's still not enough for you. How much more extravagance and romance do you want? You've been called the new age Mother Teresa and you saved the life of a man who nearly took yours. Go and get your fairytale."
But I couldn't. I couldn't bear the way that we only seemed so perfect for such a short time before it all fell apart. There was always another hurdle to jump and another barrier to break down. I didn't know that either of us had the kind of strength it would take to keep fighting like that- like nothing else mattered when one day it would. Sure, we had so many similarities, but we were also so different. I would never truly fit in with his glamorous lifestyle in the limelight and he would never be able to just slope away with me without being hounded by cameras and journalists. He enjoyed the attention and I didn't. Our lifestyles weren't compatible, and when neither of us were willing to compromise, neither were we.
Cole reached for my hand and pressed it to his lips. "Did you know that every time you break a billionaire's heart, a sack of puppies gets drowned in the canal? Take a calculated risk, Cecelia. The worst that can happen is that he laughs you out of his office." Considering the misfortune that had befallen me already that week, Cole's worst case scenario didn't sound all so terrible, but it was still something that I wasn't keen to experience. Every time I'd seen Nathaniel since Wonderland and I'd had to leave his company, it felt like I'd lost him all over again. I was too tired to keep running around in circles, and every time I lost him it became a little harder to recover. Too weak to live with him, too weak to live without him.
The only way I could escape from Adam and Cole's incessant probing was to seek refuge in the shower. The heat lulled me into a tranquil daze and I sank back against the cool ceramic tiles while my memory swam with a montage of still images from the shower I'd shared with Nathaniel on Wednesday morning, shortly after he'd given me his mother's ring. Too much had happened since then for me to remember it clearly, only fragments remained, and the loss of those moments made my body heavy and languid. Standing was too much- living was too much. The only direction I could travel was down and I knelt down on the bottom of the shower unit, releasing the lock on the Pandora's box that held all my emotions.
The wealthy man who fell for all that I lacked as well as all that I could offer was no longer mine, all because I'd ignored my survival instincts and indulged my morals, and because I couldn't be selfish. The devil who had spoken to me in that nightmare had been right- my love had killed him, or at least the part of him that chased fireworks. I would never forgive myself for destroying that dream of his.
"Hey." Cole stood in the doorway of the bathroom and cocked his head at me as I heaved a sob and leaned back to rest my forehead on my knees. The shower stung the gash on the back of my head but I barely felt it. My grief was bigger, much bigger. "Get out of the shower, get dressed and go to him, Cecelia. If you don't, I'll make sure he comes here."
"Why are you doing this, Cole?" I sighed as I gripped the metal handrail to pull myself up and turned off the water. "Why are you sending me to a man who you're convinced tried to kill you?" He wrapped a towel around my shoulders and led me into my bedroom, sitting me down on the bed and patting me dry. He did so with utmost care and consideration, not stopping for a single moment to leer at my naked body. It seemed almost like he was proving to both of us that he could be gentle and that he wasn't a monster. He didn't need to show that to me, but I think he found solace in it, so I didn't object.
When I was dry, he wrapped the towel around my head and smiled. "Because, Cecelia, happiness is selfish and I'm not happy unless you're happy, and you're not happy unless you're writing books and telling Nathaniel Alexander that he's an idiot." He stood up and turned around to open my armoire, checking himself out in the mirror. "I'm playing the 'it's my birthday' card, and I'm going to be fairly annoyed if you drag it out so long that we're late for the cinema."
"I could just not go to the publishing house," I suggested casually, picking at my nails. I looked up at his don't-even-try-it face and growled in defeat. "You're going to owe me when I come home in tears, not that you don't owe me anyway for all your trouble making." I w
asn't really sure that a cinema ticket and a few drinks would ever even out the karmic balance between us, but it was a good start.
I knew that I would turn some heads when I walked into the publishing house looking like I'd just done a handful of rounds with Muhammed Ali, but I certainly wasn't expecting the uncomfortable silence and stillness as everyone stopped in their tracks and stepped back when I passed them, like I was parting the Red Sea. It was horrendous to sense all of the pity that was so tainted with disgust, people took great offence at the fact that I made minimal effort to cover my discoloured skin and that I could still walk with my head held high. What good would hiding have done me in the midst of so much speculation? The wisest thing to do, in my mind, was to be seen out and about as normal and maintain a level of honesty. I had told too many lies under Nathaniel's influence, and that had to end.
Bethany smiled up at me weakly, eyes heavily bagged with grey. She waved a hand for me to sit and ran her hands over her sleekly up-doed hair. "I'm being worked like a bitch today, I'm starting to wonder if I should consider it penance for you know what. Please tell me you're here to grant me absolution?"
"Hmm no, sorry." I pouted sympathetically and winced at her enormous stack of paperwork. "Manuscripts?"
"Eight of the fuckers. All about the seven deadly sins thanks to your posters. Congratulations, nobody has read your novel yet but you've created a new literary trend."
"Does that mean you're free of erotic fiction?"
She wrinkled her nose in the direction of her in-tray and nodded towards it. "Not on your life. Read the sheet on the top." I grumbled at her suspiciously and did as requested, only to find myself confronted with an entirely too graphic description of a woman being savagely raped by a priest.