by Lily Paradis
He’s fighting with Majumdar in the lobby, and I want to shrink into oblivion.
“It’s okay,” I tell Majumdar. “He’s my guest.”
“Guests cannot have guests,” he says matter-of-factly.
I think that if he could, he’d physically shove those words down my throat.
It’s not like I’ve ever had a guest before, so I’m not sure why he’s acting this way. Secretly, I think it’s because he recognizes Hayden, and he makes Majumdar nervous. Hayden makes everyone nervous. We haven’t even greeted one another yet, and my palms are already sweaty inside the air-conditioned lobby.
Hayden.
It’s strange. I don’t feel grappling hooks in my stomach when I’m around Hayden like I did with Jesse, but I’m not entirely numb either.
I feel something.
That’s new.
I don’t hate it.
At all.
Majumdar isn’t going to let him come up, and to be honest, I don’t want him to come up either.
“Let’s just go,” I tell him. I tug on his arm.
He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans again, which doesn’t seem right. I have yet to see him playing the part of an imperialist.
I want to see this side of Hayden.
“Don’t you have a job?”
He laughs, and it’s beautiful.
“Luckily, my job is flexible. Catherine says you’re house-hunting today.”
Catherine.
“I wouldn’t exactly use the term house. I think cardboard box is more appropriate.”
“Oh,” he says more quickly than I expect, “I saw one outside. Do you want me to grab it for you?”
He makes jokes. Hades help me.
Speaking of Hades, Hayden is now gesturing for me to go through the revolving door, and I don’t want what’s on the other side of that. Why did I move to New York City in the middle of summer? Whose idea was this?
I stop on the other side and abruptly stand in the middle of the sidewalk.
Hayden follows me. “What are we doing?”
“I need to go to the bank.”
I text Colin.
If you ever put a cigarette out on my floor again, you’re dead.
He responds almost immediately, and I start to wonder what he really does at the CDC if he can text me back this fast and take so much time off of work to be here with Catherine.
Colin: You’re buying the clock tower apartment?
Yes. I need a massive loan.
Now
MEGAN MIRANDA, THE realtor, is more than happy to help me buy the clock tower apartment. It turns out that my legacy as a Hale still secures me an enormous line of credit even if it won’t provide me with the money I would have had in my trust fund.
Hayden waits patiently with me at the bank, which might also have something to do with it. I can’t see any banker rejecting a loan when a Rockefeller is sitting across the desk.
It’s still midafternoon when I have a place to live but nothing to put in it. I know Catherine will help me with that later, considering I have the interior design ability of a teaspoon.
Megan Miranda gives me the keys to my new kingdom, and I ask Hayden if he wants to see it.
He does.
It’s a short walk from Catherine’s apartment, but I’m melting by the time we make it to the door.
I now have a doorman. I introduce myself and Hayden, and he gets the response I’m growing used to. He’s impeccable. Everyone he meets is awed by him because he’s regal in a way that isn’t normal anymore. He’s otherworldly. He’s too charming. He’s volatile because he’s exactly what every other man in the world is not.
He scares the living daylights out of me.
I think I like it.
I know I like it.
The doorman shows us over to the elevator, and then we’re enclosed in a tiny box together. It’s a terrible idea. I can feel the air all around us vibrating and crackling and popping, but neither of us does anything about it. It’s so palpable I’m surprised my eardrums haven’t shattered yet.
The second the elevator door opens, I’m out. I can’t stay in that box with him any longer. In fact, I may never allow myself to be in an elevator with Hayden Rockefeller ever again.
I take a breath of fresh air and look over my newly purchased home. There’s not a scrap of furniture. Everything is pure white—the walls, the cabinets, the window coverings. It’s a new start. White is not a color I would pick for myself normally, but somehow, I’m excited.
Hayden doesn’t say anything to me as he takes a lap around the rooms, looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows with his hands in his pockets. He belongs in this space, even more than I do.
So much more than I do.
I’m still standing at the entranceway, and I lean down to touch the dark wooden floor where Colin stomped out his cigarette. I’ll always love this little hole in the floor, but if he does it again, I’ll throw him out the window.
When Hayden finally turns around to look at me, I feel so utterly domestic with him that I start to question everything I’ve ever known to be true in my life.
It’s then—while he’s staring at me and I’m staring back, and then I’m looking out at the city behind him—that I realize something. I want him to be the ache in my heart. He just isn’t.
I close my eyes and try to forget Jesse. I wonder if I can consciously replace him with someone else. I can’t. I know I can’t, but this is the first moment in my life that I want to try.
I want it so badly.
I want it more than anything.
Hayden is looking into my eyes, but he’s seeing so much more.
I think I’m Hayden’s Jesse.
I know I’m Hayden’s Jesse.
I think he knows it, too. He’s known it since I was drunk on the plane because that’s how this works.
I stand there, plastered to the floor, feeling like I’m about to have a psychotic break because life isn’t fair.
“So…” Hayden strides toward me like he owns the place. But he doesn’t. I do. “What are your plans now?”
I try to fill my lungs with air again, so I can respond.
“I don’t have any,” I tell him, looking around my space. I don’t know how to decorate this. I don’t want to sleep here alone.
He’s by my side now. He’s walking more slowly than before, and he’s taking each step with purpose. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. It’s like he’s walking so achingly slow that I can feel his meticulous steps on the floor.
Snap.
Crackle.
Pop.
I’m not thinking about the cereal.
It’s the air again.
“Will you spend the day with me?”
“It’s almost over.”
“It’s only afternoon.”
“I know.”
“Will you spend what’s left of it with me?”
Ache, heart. Ache.
“Until 11:59, I’m yours.”
“Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”
“I might.” I say the last words softly, expelling all the air from my lungs. Maybe if I start fresh again, I can breathe him in for good this time.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Where will you take me?”
He reaches down for my hand, and I swear, his movements are going to kill me because they’re all so slow that it gives me time to think about what he’s doing. His fingers lace through mine, and I have to make sure we’re out of this apartment in the next sixty seconds, or I’m going to have another agenda. He’s touching my hand and setting fire to my mind.
“Rice Krispies,” I say out loud.
“Are you hungry?” Hayden’s smiling at me now because he thinks I’m crazy, but he loves it.
“No. Can we leave?”
I’m biting my lip and pulling him out the door now. The door locks itself, and thank God because I’m flinging us down the stairwell before it even shuts.
His hand leaves min
e in the process and I can hear his shoes on the concrete steps as he calls for me to wait.
I’m nearly down to the next floor.
“Tate, we’re seventy flights up.”
“I know.”
I can’t be in an elevator with him.
“I need the fresh air,” I say.
“This isn’t fresh. This is month-old air.”
He’s caught on. I know he has. I think he wants the Rice Krispies in the elevator because I’m his Jesse.
Ache, heart. Ache.
Churn, stomach. Churn.
I want to feel those hooks and ropes lashing me to him, but I don’t. I stop on the stairs and grip the railing as I turn to look up with him. He’s a few steps above me, and I can’t stand the look on his face.
Those lips.
Those eyes.
“I’m afraid of elevators,” I tell him. I turn and follow the steps down to the next landing.
I don’t hear his footfalls behind me, and I look to see he’s still standing where I left him.
Rice Krispies.
“Tate McKenna,” he says. He’s laughing to himself because he knows exactly what I’m up to. “I do believe you just lied to me on our second date.”
Then
“PRESENTING TATE EVALINE Hale, escorted by James Landau.”
Hale.
James was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me to descend, and he had no idea that I was ready to mass murder the announcer, Cece, and Lara. Any one of them might have been responsible for changing my last name from McKenna to Hale on the card.
I saw red.
I wanted to go correct my last name, but Catherine stepped on the back of my dress, pinning me to the floor. She gave me a moment and then released me to walk down to James.
James Landau.
Not Casper. Casper had been banned from this event. I wished he hadn’t. I needed him.
Colin winked at me as I took James’s arm, and he moved up to escort Catherine.
“Catherine Roslyn Khalsa, escorted by Colin Conrad.”
James was leading me somewhere, but I wasn’t paying attention. I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up. As I looked back over my shoulder at Colin and Catherine parading behind us, both of their faces were sheet white.
I craned my neck even more to look up at the line at the top of the stairs. Jasmine was next.
“Jasmine Marie Saro,” the announcer said. I realized what was happening at the same time she said her next words, “Escorted by Jesse Elliott.”
Now
WE’RE FORTY FLOORS down out of seventy.
“Tate”—Hayden is behind me, and I can feel the blisters forming on my feet—“as much as I’m one for exercise, can we just take the elevator?”
I don’t want to be close to him again, but I also do.
I can’t make up my mind.
I take another step, and I know I’m going to hate myself if I keep going because we’re not even close to the bottom.
I consent.
I let him take my hand and lead me through the door in the stairwell. Then he pulls me to the hallway that goes to the elevator.
I don’t understand where all this is going to go because I can’t have Hayden. I have Jesse. But I can’t have Jesse.
I don’t want any of this. That plane was supposed to take me to freedom, not straight into another mess that I can’t dig myself out of.
He lets me enter the elevator first, and I stand smugly to one side, so I’m not too close to him. As soon as we’re on the ground floor, I run out of the air-conditioned building and past my new doorman without a good-bye.
Hayden remembers his manners and says something, but I’m too busy outside, trying to breathe in something that isn’t him.
Enjoy this, Tate. Enjoy being with him even if you can’t have him.
Then
MY HEART FELL on the floor behind me. James was leading me to the dance floor, but the organ that was supposed to be in my chest was right there on the marble. Jesse stomped on it, and Jasmine dragged it along on the floor with her dress. It became a bloody piece of pulp, but no one noticed.
I made eye contact with Catherine and Colin briefly, but neither of them could help me. I couldn’t understand why Jesse was escorting Jasmine. In all our practice runs, she’d been escorted by Brady Everett. Brady. Not Jesse. Not my Jesse.
In the practice runs, they had also called me Tate Evaline McKenna.
I had a horrifying realization that I had to do this. I had to dance with James right now and stand on ceremony and not let everyone know that I was about to lose it. It was an out-of-body experience. James was leading me, but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. My body moved along exactly how it was supposed to, but I was up on the ceiling, looking down, because for some reason, this was much worse than I ever anticipated it would be. I never thought I would have to be in this situation.
I realized in that moment that I made Jesse watch me with Casper all the time, and I expected him to be okay with it. I expected Jesse to be okay with it because I knew that although Casper was my boyfriend, nothing would ever happen with Casper.
Casper wasn’t my soul mate.
Jesse was.
But right then, Jasmine was looking at him like he was hers.
He wasn’t.
I wanted to run over and pull Jasmine’s dress apart and then toss the shreds over her head like rain. I hoped the shreds would go down her throat and suffocate her.
I finished the dance with James, and everyone clapped. I reached up to my face and wiped a tear with my gloved hand. I had just ruined it with mascara, but I didn’t care. I would never wear these again. I would never wear white again because I would never marry Jesse.
My heart couldn’t understand why, after everything we’ve been through, he had never said a word to me about how he felt.
It was all in my head and my heart.
I was possessive over this boy, and I didn’t even know if he felt it back.
It was then that the panic gripped me, and I knew I couldn’t stay for dinner. If it meant that I wouldn’t get my Hale trust fund, I didn’t care.
Fuck the trust fund.
I ran.
I knocked into a waiter carrying a tray of champagne glasses and listened as they clattered to the floor.
I knew everyone was watching me based on the gasps I heard as I left the room.
I ran all the way outside.
I ran like Cinderella ran at 11:59 when her life was about to expire.
That was what was happening to me.
I tripped over a step I didn’t see through my tears as I frantically ran down the back entrance and around to the parking lot.
I came here with Colin and Catherine, so I had no way to run away.
I sank down into the grass, and my white dress was immediately soiled with mud and grass and tears.
I wasn’t upset because Jesse was here with Jasmine. Well, I was. But I was more upset because I’d just realized that although Jesse was my soul mate, I would never have him. Something inside me told me it wasn’t right. It was so right, but it was so, so wrong.
He was never going to love me the way I loved him. Our lives would never work together.
It was a horrifying gut feeling that I knew I would never be able to shake from that moment forward. I would only be able to learn to live with it.
I wiped my tears again and spotted his car out of the corner of my eye.
Salvation.
I picked up the hem of my dress and ran toward it. Both of my shoes came off in the grass, and I left them there.
I pulled the spare key from underneath his tire and shoved myself into the car and the key into the ignition. The car breathed to life. It smelled like him, and the tears came even more heavily down my cheeks.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I drove.
I just drove.
It was hours later when my tears had dried. I was with Denny and Maggie. I had cried all the te
ars that I had, and I wondered if I could ever cry again or if that was it. Maybe there was a certain amount of tears that you were allowed to cry in your lifetime, and I’d just used them all up crying over a boy who would never care about me. He would never tell me he loved me or hold me in his arms or kiss me. He wouldn’t do any of those things, and I didn’t want them from anyone else but him. I wouldn’t be happy with anyone else but him.
I wished I were like everyone else. I wished I felt like I had a choice, but I didn’t. He was given to me like a gift I didn’t ask for, but he didn’t want me back.
It was pitch-black outside, and the only lights in the night air came from the Hale Plantation, which was quite far off from the cemetery even though it was on the same property.
My only clue that someone was there with me was the clang of the gate.
No.
That wasn’t my only clue.
My other clue was that I felt panic and peace at the same time, and my head and my heart didn’t know what to do with it.
He was here.
I felt him lie down next to me, but I didn’t budge. I wanted to be right in between Denny and Maggie. He was more on Denny’s side, and he could stay there. I was sure Maggie would be mad at him with me, so I imagined that she was.
“How did you get back?” I asked him finally. My voice was so rough and scratchy from crying that I barely recognized it when it came out of me.
He sighed audibly. “Your friend Colin drove me back.”
I scoffed. Colin would never drive Jesse anywhere voluntarily.
“Catherine convinced him since my car was a victim of grand theft auto, courtesy of Tate McKenna.”
I wasn’t sorry, so I didn’t say I was.
He sat up and brushed the dirt off his hands and his clothes, and he wandered over to a tree stump across from Denny and Margaret.
As if my body was not controlled by my brain, it followed him.
“How long has this been here?” I asked, amazed that I hadn’t noticed it before.