“Crap!” Kate said, “Damn it. I wanted to get in front of this.”
Lulu walked closer to Kate’s desk. She rubbed her hands together and said, “Kate, did you and Mac break up? Because if you did, this brings a whole new layer to Mac leaving.”
Kate nodded as she turned towards Lu. “We did. Mac and I are no longer together. I don’t want to address it, though. I don’t want to discuss the reasons, and if anyone asks we have no comment.”
“Got it.” Lulu nodded, “Kate, I’m sorry about this and all of it.”
Kate forced a smile, “I am, too Lu. And don’t worry about this article. It must be one helluva slow news day if they’re running pieces on publishing drama. Once some celebrity does something stupid, we’ll drop off the radar screen.”
As Kate heard herself say the words, she really hoped it was true.
CHAPTER 87
Kate had every intention of not going to see Dr. Ruth. However, given how the last few days had been, she decided to keep the appointment. There was something about these visits that was starting to make sense. After a handful of appointments, Kate could see why Andrew spoke so enthusiastically about her. There was a backdoor method to her madness in that she could see where the weaknesses were before anyone else could. Her singular (and often annoying) focus on them suddenly made sense to Kate. Ruth Ann had seen Mac’s flaws long before Kate had and knew this day was coming.
Kate arrived at the offices a few minutes prior to her appointment. She nodded to the doctor’s assistant, who knew her by now, and then took her seat in Ruth Ann’s quiet waiting area. Suddenly, the door flung open and Ruth Ann stood there in her polyester-suited glory, hands on her hips and said, “That damned Mac! Come on in, Sugar, and let’s talk about it.”
Of course Ruth Ann missed nothing. Clearly she’d seen the piece online.
Kate walked into her office and noticed there was a very stocked drink cart by the window. Kate saw the martini shakers, vodka, and jar of olives. She half-expected Don Draper to walk up and pour himself a tall one. It was, after all, two o’clock and happy hour somewhere.
“Oh, a patient gave that to me. She just quit drinking and wasn’t sure what to do with the cart.” Ruth Ann walked over to it and touched the smooth metal frame. “It’s vintage, you know, so I figured it would work well in this office. Also, she can visit it while she’s in session.” The doctor winked at her. “Visit only—nothing conjugal, mind you.”
Kate frowned. God, this woman was odd. How she’d ever managed to get her Ph.D. was confounding, at best.
Ruth Ann waved for her to sit down. “Kate, I was reading my favorite gossip column and your story popped up. I’m sorry you and Mac fought. What’s going on?”
Kate dropped herself on the couch and realized that likely by now anyone trolling gossip blogs had seen the horrible picture of them fighting as well as the not-too-far-off-the-truth write-up that accompanied it.
“Mac and I split up,” Kate said, trying to keep her voice steady. Day three since the infidelity bomb and she was doing pretty well. She wasn’t sleeping, but sleep was overrated anyway. She used the time to work and catch up on her reading. And although the breakup was excruciating, she’d managed to stay productive and not totally fall apart. Well, except for that first night, but that was to be expected. One foot in front of the other, keep moving forward. The more she kept moving, the less she had to feel. If she was lucky, one day she’d wake up and it would be fall and she’d be knee-deep in book launches and more things to keep her busy than she could even count.
Ruth Ann sighed, “I’m sorry, Kate. Did he cheat?”
Kate nodded. Of course the doctor knew. She’s practically predicted he would.
“With his ex-wife,” Kate almost choked saying it.
“Well, that was sort of coming for a long time, Kate. Are you truly surprised?”
Was she? Well, of course she was, right?
Almost reading her mind, Ruth Ann said, “He’s been bowing to her their entire marriage. Even when he cheated, he was painstakingly careful about it—despite the fact that she clearly didn’t give a crap about the man.”
Kate shrugged, “I can’t think about that—about them together, or anything.”
Ruth Ann leaned forward, “You want to know why. Don’t you?”
Kate nodded. A tear slipped down her cheek. Then another. The doctor got up and sat down beside her.
She took her hand and said, “Kate, you’ll never know. Even if you do, it doesn’t matter. Mac cheated. Men who cheat generally don’t have a valid reason for cheating because there is none. If they’re too chicken shit to do things the right way, they certainly can’t be counted on for a reasonable explanation.”
Kate started crying and Ruth Ann, in an oddly comforting and motherly gesture, put her arm around Kate’s shoulder.
“You will not get your answers, Kate. I’m sorry to say. He’ll come up with some convoluted reason he did it that only makes sense to him, and he’ll try to burden you with that reasoning and leave you wondering if you ever knew him at all.”
Kate thought back to that morning when Mac had shown up with his odd, fragmented explanation of what had happened. Ruth Ann was right; none of it made sense.
“I-I turned my life upside down for him. I gave up…” Kate stopped to catch her breath. “I gave up so much.”
Ruth Ann kept an arm around her. Although Kate had never been to therapy before Ruth Ann, she was fairly sure hugging your patient was frowned upon. But this doctor didn’t care about rules or stand on ceremony. In some odd way, it felt comforting to be in this office with a woman she’d initially written off as batshit crazy.
“Tell me about what you gave up, Kate.”
Kate sat up straight and reached for the Kleenex. Ruth Ann took her cue and went back to her chair. Kate wiped her eyes and pulled off whatever was left of her mascara.
“I, I just, you know, I turned my life inside out for that man, and I, I broke Nick’s heart.” The room was quiet and Ruth Ann just watched her. Finally, the doctor said, “There is no such thing as a blameless ending, Kate. First and foremost, you need to know that.”
Kate frowned, “You mean this is my fault, too?”
Ruth Ann reached for her notepad and pen. “No, not directly. But the problem most women have is they leave a relationship, or it ends for whatever reason—often badly—and they sit on my couch or on a friend’s couch and they demonize the man who broke their heart. Now, don’t get me wrong, what Mac did was stupid and thoughtless, but what we as women so rarely look at is how we contributed to this. Now, mind you the ‘contribution’ isn’t always a contribution, per se—meaning we sought it out or antagonized a wife-beater or something, but there are always signs.”
Ruth Ann paused for a moment and then continued, “When a shooter goes on a killing spree, in almost every case the people around him say ‘yeah, I saw such and such but didn’t think anything of it.’ The problem with that is that some kid who decides to wear all black to school is just a kid who prefers black, but when you add all of the tiny signs together, the picture becomes clearer. The problem is that we talk ourselves out of seeing the signs, because we don’t want to seem paranoid or quick to blame or be the troublemaker in the relationship. As women, most of us don’t listen with better ears or look with clearer eyes. We are in love, and we think we’re caught up in some Disney-movie fantasy where the prince kisses us and we live happily ever after because princes don’t change—not really, anyway.”
“He did it with me, so he would do it to me.”
Ruth Ann nodded, “Well, yes, there’s that. It’s a behavior pattern. Sure, people can change patterns, but it takes great effort. We are all aligned by an internal GPS. Unless we reprogram it, we may take a different route with all new scenery but the GPS program hasn’t changed and we’ll always wind up in the same place.”
Kate reached for the Kleenex again. She had wanted to cry since this morning but she’d stuffed it down.<
br />
Now the floodgate had opened.
“Kate, I believe that Mac loved you, but I don’t think that whatever is wrong with him can be fixed by falling in love. It’s just not enough to bridge whatever issues he’s facing. Maybe he was always meant to be with his wife. Maybe the other women were just guideposts leading him back to her. Or, maybe he cheats to feed some inner need. Perhaps the worst thing a woman can do is love that man. But the point is, our fate is determined by our actions. Day in and day out, we determine where our life will lead. Often we don’t even realize we are doing it. Our issues or baggage are like that GPS, which is why cheaters always go back to cheating. If it’s not dealt with and reprogrammed, the GPS leads us back to the only path we know.”
“What do I do now?” The tremble in Kate’s voice was evident again. She hated feeling like this—bare and vulnerable and hurting.
God, this hurt.
“Well, first you focus on you and let yourself mourn this. Take some time off; go do whatever you need to do. Cry for days. Whatever. Are you sleeping?”
Kate shook her head, “Not really. But I don’t have time for a breakdown. I mean, I have a company to run and books that are coming out.”
Ruth Ann leaned forward. “Kate, you’ve been through a devastating loss. You need to take time to recover or you’ll snap in an unexpected and likely inopportune way. In fact, you have two things to mourn.”
Kate looked up. “Two things?” she asked. Was there was more than Mac throwing their relationship under the bus? Great, her life was in even worse shape than she thought.
“You also need to mourn Nick, because you gave him up in pursuit of Mac.”
“I mourned Nick a long time ago,” Kate defended.
Ruth Ann shook her head. “No you didn’t or you wouldn’t have said that you gave up so much. Which might I add, was one of the first things you said after you told me Mac cheated. You thought of how much you gave up. You thought of Nick.”
Kate was silent. Of course Ruth Ann was mistaken. There was nothing wrong with assessing decisions this way. Of course she’d think about what she gave up, because she’d devastated Nick in the process.
“The whole idea of losing Mac is devastating to you, Kate. I get that. But what is even more devastating to you is that you had a great love, and you threw it away for someone who was going to discard you anyway. That, in the end, is what you are mourning.”
Kate stood up, “Can we please not do this?”
Ruth Ann blinked, “Do what, Kate?”
“Make everything about Nick!”
“As soon as you agree that, in fact, everything is about Nick. From the moment you begrudgingly walked into my office, everything has been about Nick. What pisses you off even more even than Mac cheating is that you chose poorly.”
CHAPTER 88
Kate arrived in Mexico a week later. By the time she’d gotten around to calling the hotel for a reservation she found out that the conference hotel and every other reputable hotel in the area was booked up, which left Kate with no other choice than to stay in the home Mac had rented for their wedding and honeymoon. Kate realized that her life was starting to resemble one of those tragic Shakespearean plays where everyone dies or commits suicide or walks around sightless. In her case it was a bit more like the relationship gods punishing her for choosing poorly.
“Because you made bad choices, you’re going to have to live with your own piss-poor decision making every single day.” Kate had a feeling the Mexican tequila she’d heard so much about would taste very, very good.
San Miguel was two hours from the Leon airport, and it was a long, slow, dusty ride through some pretty barren Mexican countryside. It was a far cry from bustling, thriving New York. Kate couldn’t imagine living in some of these small, roadside towns that consisted of a bar, a broken down garage, and if you were lucky, a small grocery store. The sun was setting, which threw a warm, orange glow across the towns. People were gathering in colorful bars while children played outside. Elderly men and women sat in chairs, watching the kids and no doubt talking about how things used to be.
The van shook as it drove across the cobblestone streets of San Miguel and then finally pulled up to the house Mac rented for them. Kate paid the driver, grabbed her bag, and stepped inside. The colorful exterior door opened up to a courtyard that was lush and green and had dozens of colorful tropical flowers in flowerbeds and pots scattered through the interior area. The house was built in a horseshoe shape around the courtyard with various doors and entry points. A short, thick woman walked out of one of the doors and smiled at her.
“Señorita!” she began and talked quickly in Spanish. Thankfully, Kate spoke it reasonably well since she’d grown up in Arizona and had spent many happy hours with her friends and their very large, very loud Mexican families. The woman told Kate she was the housekeeper. She’d be back in a few days to see what Kate needed. She handed her the key and her eyes happily crinkled as she said, “Happy wedding.”
Kate threw on her best smile, not wanting to tell the woman there would be no wedding.
The house was cool thanks to the thick walls and polished stone flooring that helped keep the temperature down. There were four bedrooms, but the master was right off of the courtyard with floor-to-ceiling windows and heavy privacy drapes that kept out the sun. Kate set her bag down in the master and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be here with Mac getting married and then on their honeymoon. The thought made her whole body ache.
“Disaster averted,” she said to no one as she left the vision and headed to the kitchen. Mexico, especially San Miguel, was a dichotomy of contradictions. Less than an hour outside of town she saw children begging for coins or food. Here the village was a robust expat community with thriving restaurants and enough work for anyone who wanted it.
CHAPTER 89
By the time Kate arrived, the conference was in full swing. Eager-to-learn authors were everywhere. Kate guessed there must have about three hundred people there. Kate walked through the lobby of the hotel, which doubled as the conference registration area. She took her badge from a smiling woman who manned the “Speaker Registration” table and slipped the lanyard over her head.
“Is your guest here?” the woman smiled.
Ah, Mac. Cue Shakespearean play. “No, he was not able to make it,” Kate said flatly.
The woman tipped her head. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I was looking forward to meeting Mr. Ellis. I’ve heard so much about him.”
Yes, Kate thought, no doubt she had. Kate nodded and smiled and turned away. Her heart twisted in her chest.
She hadn’t slept well last night in a strange house and a bed big enough for four people, but all she had to do was get through the next four days and then she could go home. Or she could stay. Mac had rented and paid for the house, so technically it was hers for the next two weeks. But what the hell would she do here anyway?
This was going to be a long conference. Then, as if the day wasn’t already enough to make a person want to go back to bed hugging a tequila bottle, Kate spotted Delia Brighton, an agent she’d known for years. They had been on the conference circuit before, but the last time Kate recalled seeing her was in Los Angeles. Through a series of misunderstandings, Kate had been given the false impression that the agent and Mac had slept together.
Now she wished they had. It would have saved Kate a year of her life she’d never get back.
And you’d still be with Nick. Crap. Ruth Ann’s voice reverberated through her head.
Kate made a mental note to send Ruth Ann a thank you note for her time and tell her that she would not need any more time with her. She had lost track of where she was in her prepaid time, but she was pretty certain she was at the end of the tortured hours Andrew had gifted to her.
After all, she was only a mere two weeks out from the infidelity bomb and she was doing great. Well, not great, but fine. She hadn’t had a massive breakdown or needed time to journal her thoughts or find
her happy place. Sure, there were things like the Mexican love nest Mac had rented that made her want to drink. Heavily. But all in all, she was doing pretty darned good.
Keep moving. That was the key.
The more you moved ahead, the further behind she left it. Soon Mac would be just a tiny dot in her rearview mirror. Then one day he’d fade into the road dust, and he’d be gone.
“Katie, Darling!” Delia waved over to her and Kate smiled.
Time to splash on her conference face, smile, be cordial, helpful, and listen to the authors tell you their books should be movies and they had a neighbor who knew the drycleaner who worked with a gal who once saw Oprah walking her dogs in Santa Barbara and that must be a direct connection to Oprah, right? Going to conferences over the years, she’d heard it all. Still, it was good to go to conferences, because there was real talent here—even though sometimes you had to dig for it. There was always a gem or two to be found at a conference.
Delia walked up and hugged her. “Dreadful news about you and Mac-y.”
Kate felt the hairs on her neck prickle. Delia always called him that and Kate never liked it. Now, however, it made her want to slap someone.
Kate kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’m sorry, Delia. I’m not sure what you mean.”
Delia leaned in, as if she was going to tell Kate her deepest, darkest secret. “I read the article about you two fighting and saw the press release about Mac-y leaving. Such a shame, but we all knew he wasn’t one to keep his pants zipped.” Delia’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, God. Kate, I’m so sorry.”
Climax: The Publicist, Book Three Page 31