by Claire Adams
I glanced at Zayden, who looked slightly uncomfortable and unsure how to answer. “It’s…it’s a special kind of wine that I got directly from the Vineyard. Limited edition, they only make it this time of the year and you have to be a member to—”
“Wow, that sounds really fancy,” my mom said, looking at me quizzically.
“It’s no big deal.” Zayden shrugged. “I can get you a whole case. It might take a couple of weeks though. I was going to bring a case tonight, but wasn’t sure if you would like it.”
“Just out of curiosity, Zayden,” my mom said, still looking at me as though searching for some kind of an answer. “What exactly do you do for a living?”
Zayden opened his mouth to answer, but before he could produce a sound, I chimed in, “He works with me, mom. I told you remember?” I smiled nervously and then looked at Zayden, hoping he could pick up on my cues.
“Yes, of course I remember,” my mom chuckled. “But don’t be silly, Aria. You work in a pretty large branch of a huge bank chain. There are certainly many, many things to be done there. I am just curious as to what exactly working with you entails here?”
Grabbing the opportunity of Zayden chewing, his mouth too full to speak, I immediately jumped to answer, “He’s a loan officer!”
From the look of perplexed curiosity in Zayden’s face, to that of looming anger in my mother, I realized that this dinner was starting to get closer to what I had imagined it would be like in the first place. I wanted to carve a hole under the table and disappear forever.
“Since when do we lie to each other, Aria?” my mom asked after a few minutes of maddening silence.
“I’m not lying! He works with me at the bank.”
“I believe that. But somebody who rides over here in a limousine with a driver and talks of exclusive memberships to fancy Vineyards and can produce an entire case of better wine than I had ever tasted in my life, is not a loan officer. It would be nice if you gave me the slightest bit of credit, Aria. I know I got us into a big pile of mess financially, but I am not stupid.”
“You didn’t,” I said, starting to feel guilty. “You were not the one who got us into this big pile of mess, mom. And I don’t think you’re stupid. In my defense…you weren’t supposed to see the limo,” I finished lamely.
“Why don’t you answer this time,” she said looking away from me and smiling at Zayden. “What exactly do you do for a living, Zayden?”
He finished chewing and swallowed, as I felt my heart thump faster and faster across my chest.
“I am the CEO of South National Bank,” he said simply.
I did not dare look at my mother. Or him. Or anybody. I simply continued to stuff mashed potatoes into my mouth, hoping that nobody expected me to speak for a long time, unable to quite think of anything rational to say.
“I see,” my mom said in a voice that did not sound entirely like her own. “So you’re her boss, then? You’re everybody’s boss?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s really not a big deal, though,” he added hastily. “I have and always will, consider Aria an equal. Your daughter is brilliant, Molly. Especially for her age.”
“I know she is,” I heard my mom say mechanically. I was still glaring at the table in front of me. “But when you say ‘for her age’ I do wonder, are you much older, then?”
“I will turn thirty-three in February.”
“Wow, I am surprised you aren’t married then. A handsome young man like yourself. Surely somebody rather suitable must have grabbed your interest before our little Aria did?”
“I was married once, but she wasn’t the right woman for me,” he said, beginning to sound increasingly more uncomfortable. “And I am glad it didn’t work out or I would have never met Aria. She lacked your daughter’s intelligence. Most women do, Molly.”
“How about children? Did you father any with this unintelligent woman you speak of?”
“None that I know of,” he said in an attempt at humor, but it had obviously been the wrong move because I chose that moment to look up at mom’s face and it was glowing red hot.
“I’m sorry, Zayden – Mr. Zayden Sinclair, I mean – would you mind excusing us for just a little bit? I need to have a word with Aria. Family matters to discuss, you know? Why don’t you help yourself to more of that pie and ice cream in the meanwhile?”
Say no, Zayden, say no, say no, say no. I looked at him and nodded, hoping he would understand but he remained completely clueless. “Sure, go ahead. I don’t mind at all.”
Shit. As my mom lead me towards her bedroom, my heart started thumping even louder than before. What was she going to do? I wish I hadn’t lied to her! The thing was, there was no way she could exactly back off the deal now, so she had to learn to be okay with whatever was happening. If only I hadn’t lied to her to begin with, perhaps this whole thing wouldn’t have turned into the scary ordeal that it had become.
When we entered the room and my mom closed the door behind her, I crossed my fingers, even though I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish.
“Your boss?” my mom asked, not in an angry but disappointed tone. “Your boss, Aria? Of all the people in the whole world, you decided that you were going to sleep with the owner and CEO of South National Bank!”
“What does the bank have anything to do with it?” I asked, confused by where her focus was geared.
“Shhhh,” she hissed immediately. “Let’s keep our voices down, shall we?”
“Okay,” I whispered. “But mom, seriously, this is not what it must look like.”
“I love you Aria and I really appreciate all the things you have done in order to help me out. It’s just…I feel like I let you stoop too low for my sake and right now I can’t help feel like I’ve done an altogether terrible job of being a mother by letting you do this for me. Your boss has been paying my medical bills! I can’t imagine the kind of requests he must have in return. He is so much older than you too and you’re so young and naïve.”
“I’m not stupid,” I snapped, starting to get annoyed. “Yes, I am younger than him but I am not an idiot, mom. And I will admit that yes, this whole thing kind of started in a manner that might seem less than classy. He made me sign a contract that said he would make monthly payments to your bills for as long as I dated him. That was it though, just dating! There was nothing crude on there. I can show you the contract!”
She sighed. “I believe you, sweetheart. But obviously it seems that this has gone beyond the contract now, has it?”
“I love him, mom,” I said earnestly, hoping she would understand. “It started out as all games and tricks, but we just grew to really care for one another. Everything you have seen tonight between me and Zayden, it was all real. He is my boyfriend. Yes he is older and he is also my boss, but I have honestly never felt this way about anybody in my life before and that’s not something you ought to be ashamed of!”
I was quite surprised with the eloquence I had just employed in a situation where I was almost too afraid to function. My mom’s reaction, however, wasn’t quite what I expected. She looked neither mad nor happy nor please. She looked horrified.
“What’s wrong, mom?”
“Oh Aria, I am sorry,” she said covering her face in both her hands.
“What are you sorry about? You have nothing to apologize for!” The atmosphere in the room had suddenly gotten bizarre as though I had walked in the middle of a very dramatic scene in a soap opera. “What’s going on, mom? Why are you so upset?” She was crying, trying hard to hush her sniffs - so that Zayden wouldn’t hear, I presumed - leaving me completely perplexed. I walked over to her uncertainly and placed a hand on her right shoulder. “Mom, talk to me, is everything okay? Is it the house? You know you can always come live with me.”
“No, Aria,” she said, finally looking up. Her face was red and blotchy, her eyes swollen to almost twice their size. “Are you sure you love this guy?” she asked in even softer tones than before.
&nb
sp; “Yes,” I said without even considering it for a second.
“Then I really do owe you an apology. You know when your dad filed for bankruptcy?”
“How could I ever forget?” I shrugged.
“Well before he filed that, he was obviously in a lot of debt. He owed huge sums of money to a lot of different people, but most of all, he owed five hundred thousand dollars to a particular bank.”
My heart started shaking again as I was beginning to understand where my mom was going with this. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be that my father—
“The bank was South National Bank,” my mom finished.
I threw my body on to her bed in shock.
“So you’re telling me,” I said very slowly so that there would be absolutely no confusion on this matter. “That this man is paying sixty thousand dollars to help out our family, after our family robbed his company of eight times that amount already?”
“Don’t put it like that, sweetheart!” my mom gasped. “You couldn’t have known now, could you? When you first took a job there, I felt a little uncomfortable given our shaky history with the company, but I didn’t want to say anything because it was just a job. What could go wrong? As I learned in the span of the past hour, apparently a whole lot.”
I covered my whole face with a pillow and tried to let this sink in. I had to think straight here. There was no way Zayden would ever find out about this connection, was there? Unless I told him, of course. And while a voice in my head was egging at me to do so, I did feel that it was not necessary for him to know everything about my family history.
However, I knew what the right thing to do was and it was to tell him. If he ever found out any other way and knew that I had known all along, it would be much harder for him to forgive me.
Would he really take it so badly? After all, I had no idea my dad was responsible for such a big loss to him and if I came clean and told him as much, he was bound to believe me. What my dad did was not my fault and I knew Zayden, he was better than to hold it against me. After everything we had been through together, he wasn’t going to use a fact from a distant past as a weapon against a relationship we had worked so hard to build.
“Honey, are you okay?” my mom asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. Perhaps tonight wasn’t the best time to tell you about this. I was just so shocked when you told me who he really was. At first I was just mad that you were selling yourself to your boss, but then when you told me how you felt, I just could not bear the guilt.”
“It’s okay, mom,” I said sitting up. “It’s all okay. I am glad you told me because I am going to go out there and tell him all of this myself. That’s the only way to have a healthy relationship.”
My mom’s eyes were still teary, but she extended the palm of her hands to my face and rubbed my cheek. “You’ll do the right thing, Aria,” she said endearingly. “You always do.”
Chapter 5
Zayden
At first I wasn’t too concerned by what they were talking about. Some mother-daughter quips about dating the boss, I supposed, which seemed like a legitimate thing for a mother to worry about. Especially considering the fact that she knew I was making a financial investment in this relationship, it was only natural for her to feel concerned for her daughter. Therefore, I did not press too hard in my attempts to listen in on the talks.
But as their voices started getting louder, something caught my attention. They were speaking of South National Bank – which could very well mean they were discussing Aria’s job – but then I heard something about five hundred thousand dollars and that piqued my curiosity, so I leaned closer to the door of the room.
When I finally heard what was going on, a rush of annoyance spread through my whole body as I remembered the very case they were now discussing. A couple of years ago a man named Mike Roberts – Roberts, of course! Why hadn’t I tried to make the connection sooner? It was a fairly common last name, so I couldn’t exactly blame myself here.
He had owed the bank a lot of money when he declared bankruptcy, resulting in a huge loss for us! At the time the bank was not doing as splendidly as it was now and those five hundred thousand dollars that he owed us had caused us considerable difficulties in making some investments. We got out of that tight spot easy enough and now in the grand scheme of things that amount seemed rather too small to worry about.
But I could not shake off the feeling that I was currently spending tens of thousands of dollars to help out the very same family that had already cost me quite a lot. I didn’t want to be irked by it, but when Aria and her mother reappeared from the room I felt another flash of annoyance and decided that before I did something I would regret I needed to get out of there.
“I’m sorry for taking so much of Aria’s time.” Molly smiled at me politely. “But dinner can resume now. Would you like another glass of—”
“Actually,” I said, looking at my watch as though it would indicate some sort of honesty in my story. “I have to get going. Unfortunately, something has come up at the bank and I need to rush right away.”
“But Zayden,” Aria started protesting, looking rather disappointed. “What could have possibly come up at this hour? Surely you could postpone it until the morning without any consequences?”
“And lose more money? No thank you, I think I better get ahead,” I snapped and regretted immediately as I watched Aria’s face fall.
“Did you hear us talking?” Aria asked beginning to tear up.
“I really have to go, Aria,” I said, trying to sound slightly kinder. “Ned will come pick you up after he drops me off at the bank. It won’t be very long.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said, still looking sad. “I can manage on my own.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Aria.” I frowned. “It’s too late at night for you to be…whatever… Ned will be here and he will take you home safely and I really, really have to go. Thanks a lot for dinner, Molly,” I said, trying to be polite despite the circumstances. “See you, Aria.”
I turned around and walked out without thinking twice. Had I not gotten out of there, I would have suffocated with the knowledge. To Aria’s defense, it did sound like she planned on telling me everything, so she had no poor intention. Yet, it hardly changed the facts. Whether or not Aria had been directly involved in the situation, what had happened had happened.
---
The next day, I sat in my office playing with my stress ball, still unable to shake off the feelings of betrayal from everything I had heard the past day. No matter what way I looked at it, I couldn’t help but feel like this family had scammed me. I knew that Aria didn’t know of her dad’s connection to the bank and how he had caused me such a loss before signing the contract. However, the fact remained that the Roberts owed me a lot and instead of me getting paid back, I was spending even more on their behalf. Did intentions even matter in situations such as these? I thought not, as I bitterly thought back yet again to the conversation I had overheard.
I thought of Aria and how much I cared about her. It was true. I cared for her almost more than was acceptable, which is why I hated feeling like she was some kind of a manipulative scammer. She wasn’t and I knew that, but I still could not shake off this feeling. I wondered, had she known about her dad and my bank beforehand, would it have changed how receptive she was to the contract? Would she have still agreed to take so much money from me?
She had been desperate in the situation. There was no doubt about that. The fact that she had agreed to the contract to begin with meant that she was willing to go through some lengths for her mom’s hospital bills. But would this have made things different? Changed her mind? There really was no way of knowing as it was already too late now. I had already made half the payments. Shaking my head, I sighed deeply as I saw Aria’s head wrapped around my door. How long had she been standing there?
“Do you have a minute?” she asked me nervously.
“Sure, come on in,” I
said, despite still feeling some irrational anger towards her family and Aria too. “What can I do for you?” I asked bitingly as she sat across from me. “Besides what I have already done, I mean.”
Aria looked taken aback. She opened her mouth and closed it again, as though unsure how she was going to communicate with me.
“I don’t…I mean I just came in to check if,” she paused momentarily and added, “You have been acting rather strange since last night.”
“Oh, is that right?” I asked, getting more and more annoyed. “How so?”
“Well first of all, you ran out of my mom’s house without so much as a warning and a very poor excuse,” she snapped.
“Don’t take that tone with me. Not when your family—” I stopped mid-sentence. “Nevermind.”
“You overheard us last night, didn’t you?” she asked, looking resigned all of a sudden.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. You and your mother simply weren’t as quiet as you obviously thought you were.”
Her face took on a deep shade of red as she looked away from me, breaking eye-contact. “Well, if you heard everything, you must have also heard that I had no idea that South National Bank had anything to do with my father’s bankruptcy. And that as soon as I found out, I had the full intention of telling you!”
“But you didn’t, did you?” I demanded angrily.
“Yeah, because it would have been so easy to tell you considering you stormed out of my mother’s house last night and haven’t spoken to me since!”
She was right. I hadn’t even given her a chance to come clean about the whole situation since I had been so angry. Why should I give her a chance? Why should I give her anything more when I had already given so much to her family? A fresh surge of anger began to bubble up inside me so I reached for the stress ball, hoping Aria wouldn’t notice.
“Why are you so angry with me?” she asked after a few minutes of complete silence where neither of us so much as looked at one another. “I’m sorry, Zayden! Had I known about this at any point before the contract, I would have made full disclosure before letting you…I’m just…I’m sorry that you had to suffer financial loss because of my father. As a direct victim of his shenanigans, I can safely say I understand how you must be feeling right now.”