From Despair Grows Order: The Broken Billionaire Series Book 3
Page 15
“What is it?”
“I did a Toulouse sausage casserole. I got the recipe off the internet.”
“Sounds wonderful. It’s a real bug that I can't be there to eat it with you.”
“Your work’s more important. Have you managed to find your way to getting the City to hand over their paperwork yet?”
“Not yet, but we’re real close. We’ve been combing through some of the complaints that weren’t dealt with by the City when they did the inspection. We’re hoping we can find a complaint serious enough that would require them to perform another inspection and—as it would include one of our official complaints—they’d be legally obliged to let us see the paperwork regarding the new examination, as well as allow us to be present when it’s performed.”
“Sounds good, sweetie. Well, I won’t keep you, the people need you more. You're their crusader. Super Sarah!”
His remark made me smile and I felt so cherished.
“I love you,” floated from my mouth.
“I love you too. More than I think you’ll ever know.”
More delight lit the bonfires in my heart and by the time I returned back to my office, to Dad and Karl, I was grinning all over. They both looked up from the paperwork as I entered, and I quickly dropped my smile, taking on a more serious expression. My father was prudent enough not to ask how Josh was in the presence of Karl, and nobody said anything as I reseated myself between them and began going over things, making a case for forcing the city to comply with a new inspection.
“Did you speak to Paul Holcher today?” I asked Karl.
“Yeah, he said that they’ve found a few in their complaints, but the same as us; not enough to force a new inspection.”
“It’s like I say,” Dad put in, “we just gotta firewall these sons-a-bitches with a wave of complaints. We just need more.” And looking down at the papers, many more boxes surrounding the desk, he added, “Many more.”
We continued with work well into the night and at eight, when Josh was due in to the warehouse, I texted him good luck for the night like I always did. He sent back kisses. My pride in him was at an all-time high and I felt so very precious. So very, very precious.
JOSH
Amy wouldn’t let up. And neither would Stan. All through that week I had the double displeasure of her constant stream of messages and his snide remarks in front of the others, hinting at my rich boy status. Amy’s texts had become more outwardly threatening and she was openly admitting that if I didn’t get in contact with her, she’d contact Sarah and tell her everything. I felt the blades of two axes hanging by a thread over my head, and this thought infected everything.
In front of Sarah I hid it in kind acts. I’d begun writing her poems in her lunch, a few stanzas, nothing more. I’d cleaned the apartment every day. I’d caressed her and loved her like no other, held her in my arms while she slept in the few hours we had together when I got home, was tender in my kisses, not enflaming her passions, giving her the idea that I loved her purely and not in any animalistic sense. I’d kept my sexual frustrations at bay, I’d left off pressurizing her with them, made my touches loving rather than sensual. I’d simply loved her the way she deserved, and in this I was partially free from guilt. But at work, it was different, and every shift of Stan’s gibes and the shitty work would end with me finding another collection of menacing texts on my phone.
I’d messaged Amy back several times, explaining things, trying not to provoke her, apologizing even, going so far as to beg her to stop. But it was no good. She ignored all my supplications and merely went on. By Friday, I realized that I had to meet up with her, try to resolve it mano a mano, and hope that she would see sense. I sensed that this was all a game to her, just another thing to eat the boredom of a poor little rich girl. She didn't want me so much for the pleasure of my time, although I knew she wanted to devour me sexually. No, what Amy wanted was the fun and games she could play with me.
Last Sunday, when I’d woken up in her room, Amy had seen the guilt draped all over my face, the way I looked at her with loathing, at both myself and her. She was super smart, Amy. She knew in a second, from my reaction, that I loved Sarah with all my heart, and now she had me by the balls and wanted her fun. I surmised beforehand that she would want to begin an affair with me—that was what she was essentially proposing in her lecherous texts. She would start this affair and, once she had me in her web, she would reel me in, wrap me up in her gossamer fibers and bite. My relationship with Sarah would then be sucked dry. A deeply regretted one night stand was one thing, but an ongoing affair? Because that’s what Amy would want, she’d want to destroy Sarah just as much as me, because she was ultimately jealous of her. She’d keep the affair going until she got bored, the whole time the maggots of my guilt eating me away and tearing apart my relationship with Sarah, then she’d expose it all. Like I said a long time ago to you, me and Amy were two sides of the same bad penny; I knew her as well as she knew herself. There was no way I was going to start an affair with her. I would see her this once and try to talk sense into her, try to show her that she wouldn’t get her fun and that this particular fly was escaping early. I just prayed she’d agree not to tell Sarah before I got the chance to do it myself.
That Saturday morning when I left off, instead of heading home, like I was supposed to, I headed to Amy’s. I’d texted her the day before to tell her that I’d be round early in the morning, making it explicit that I wanted to talk and that this was most definitely not a booty-call.
I buzzed on the main door to her dorm and the moment she answered, I could tell that she hadn’t slept all night either. But for wholly different reasons from the ones that had kept me from sleep.
“Hey, beautiful.” She answered the intercom in a drawl.
“Well, I’m here.”
“Well, you are.”
The lock clicked open on the front doors and I swung them open. Stepping inside, I was full of trepidation for what would happen next. I hoped that I could speak sense into her, make her see that she was wasting her time and should move on to the next poor fly caught in her trap. However, her slurred speech made it clear she was both drunk and high, and this made her a wholly different proposition. A part of me screamed out that I should turn and leave, come back later on, when she’d slept it off. But as fearful as I was, I was also filled with an angered determination to break the web she was attempting to weave around me.
By the time I turned into her corridor, she was already hanging out the door. My heart sank when I saw that she was wearing nothing but white stockings and suspenders, bra, panties and white high-heels. She was expecting me to fall into her arms.
Reaching the door, she flung herself awkwardly forward and into my arms, plunging her lipsticked mouth at my neck and digging her teeth into the sinuous flesh. I instantly pushed her off and into the room.
“Hey!” she let out as she stumbled backward.
I closed the door behind us and told her in a firm voice to sit on the bed.
“Oh! It’s your turn to play the bad-ass tonight,” she said looking at me with her big eyes all painted up with black mascara.
“No, it’s my turn to explain things to you. And it’s your turn to sit the fuck down and listen.”
She clapped her hands together in false glee.
“Oh, goody!” she pronounced. Then grabbing her phone, she added, “Let me just give Sarah a call and we’ll put her on speaker phone so she can listen. We can have a conference call about you and your cock and where it’s been lately.”
“You have her number!?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, duh! You fell asleep first the other night and I took the liberty of going through your phone. It’s so sweet that she’s down in your phone simply as ‘love.’ So very sweet. But then tragic too…Yes tragic. Because if you loved her so much, then why did you spend a night in this room nailing me?”
“You know what’s tragic, Amy?”
“What?”
“You. You’re tragic.” Then, nodding my head toward her, I added, “What is this, huh? Throwing yourself at people. Since when did you ever do this?”
“I’m not throwing myself at you at all.”
“Really!? Because it looks like it. You know, I came round here to talk things through with you, to try to get you to see sense that I love Sarah and that what we did the other night, I’ve regretted ever since.”
“You don’t love her! And you certainly don't regret the other night. I’ll show you.”
Here she made a move forward and attempted to place her arms around me, but I shoved her back so that she tumbled onto her bed. She immediately sprang into a seating position, her legs dangling from the bed’s edge.
“Into the act already?” she luridly joked, and I cringed from her humor. “I thought we’d at least kiss a little, but if this is where you want me, then I shall be obliging.”
She threw herself onto her back.
“You wish me to play dead?” she inquired. “I was fucking a friend of my father’s—well, I’ve fucked several friends of Daddy’s. Anyway, this particular chum liked me to play dead. He’d get me to dress up in a school uniform, one of those English boarding types, pigtails in my hair, the whole thing, and he’d get me to lie in bed and act motionless while he did what he wanted. I often thought if he was reenacting some part of his—”
“Shut up, Amy,” I snapped, seething so much from her act. “Just shut up and listen.”
“Speeches! Yay!” she said shooting back up again and clapping her hands together.
“Please, just be serious for a second.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” she said, giggling and then placing her hand over her mouth. “I promise,” she added in a whisper.
“This”—and I signaled the room with a wave of my hand—“isn’t going to happen. Not now; not ever. Do you hear? I was hoping that you’d understand, that as someone who claimed to be my friend, who claimed to care about me, I thought that you’d be better than this. That you wouldn’t want to play games, that you’d let me go and enjoy my life.”
Her face suddenly went dark, her eyes narrowing at me, as though a storm cloud just swept over her sunny day.
“Why should you get to enjoy your life?” she furiously spat at me.
“Because I want to live, Amy. I want real life, I want to have a family, to go to church on a Sunday, to have the in-laws over on the weekend, to have a career, to go on holiday with my family, teach my kids to ride a bike, or a horse, fish, swim, be happy people. Because I want to be in love and be loved by that person, to want to be with them always, and not just for sex, but because I want to be within that person's vicinity. I want to be with someone and share everything with them, hold no secrets between us, share each other as one be—”
“Then I should call Sarah after all, huh?” she said spitefully. “If you're all for holding no secrets. We’ll start with the other night.”
“I’m going to tell her.”
“Bullshit!”
“I promise on my very life that I am. I will tell her and I will beg for her forgiveness.”
“Then why haven’t you told her already, huh? Waiting for Thanksgiving? Gonna tell her over turkey and pecan pie!?”
“I want to time it right.”
“Huh! That’s just another shitty excuse. You men are full of shitty, hypocritical excuses. I used to think you were different, that you weren’t full of shit—an asshole, yes—but at least you were for real. But now you’ve just become another one of them. If you want, you can fuck me and we’ll pretend that you’ll do the decent thing and tell your girl. We’ll pretend that you’re decent. If that’s the role you want to play.”
“I want to be decent, Amy. And isn’t that the point?”
“No. The point is: why should you and this frigid bitch get to live all happily ever after? Where’s my fun in that, huh? And an even bigger point is: why the fuck should I care?”
“You should care. You should care for your own happiness, Amy. What the fuck’s happened to you? What went wrong? You never wanted me to stay over before.”
“Well this time I do.”
“I never thought you were this messed up, this vindictive,” I said to her, my soft look attempting to ease her scornful fury. “Maybe I was too fucked up to notice before. You know, you can have any guy in this city—”
“I don't want any guy, Josh. I want you.”
“But I told you, I’m not available.”
“Then maybe that’s why I want you.”
I shook my head at this. It was just as I’d suspected; she wanted to play a game and wanted what she couldn't have. My vexed reaction upon leaving the other day had spurred her on, had made her vengeful. I had given her the impression that I was no longer available, that there would be no repeat of our passionate liaison.
“Just leave Sarah alone,” I demanded, but this only infuriated her more.
“Is that a threat?”
“No. It’s a supplication. I’m begging you not to tell her and to let me do it.”
“Then do it now; I’ll call her for you.”
She grabbed her phone which had dropped on the floor, thrusting it toward me. I merely waved it away with my hand, incensed at her games.
“Nope. Just what I thought,” she said in a condescending tone. “Then it’ll have to be Plan B. So you better get your clothes off. Or would you prefer me to rip them off you instead?”
“What happened to you?” I repeated, before walking out of the room.
As per her style, she shouted after me as I left the building.
“What happened to me!?” she was screaming. “What happened to you? You’ve lost yourself, Josh Kelly. No wonder your old man kicked you out. You’ve become one of them. One of those gray little creatures that shuffles around doing as they’re told. You’ve turned from a tiger into a cow, just another part of the herd. You used to be someone. Someone original, someone—”
I heard no more as the front door closed behind me, shutting her out. With a terrible strain on my heart and my intestines turning inside out, I knew there and then what I had to do. I had to go this minute to Sarah and tell her everything.
SARAH
I was woken up by my phone ringing incessantly on the bedside cabinet. I roused, flicked the lamp on and took it. I didn't recognize the number, but answered anyway. Whoever it was was desperate to get hold of me, because I’d already partially slept through, partially ignored, three calls.
“Hello?” came my weary voice.
“Do you ever wonder why they tell us they love us and then go off with other women?” a female’s rather indignant voice came back at me on the other end.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Amy Houston, an old friend of Josh’s. He may have mentioned me. He hasn’t? Well, not to worry, you’ll know all about me soon enough.”
“Why are you calling me at five o’clock on a Saturday morning?”
“Why does anyone call someone up at this sort of hour? Bad news, I’m afraid.”
“What bad news?” I asked sharply, sitting up in bed and becoming more awake. “Is Josh okay?”
“Oh, my God! You’re actually concerned for his welfare. You think he’s hurt in someway. That is so very quant, Sarah. So very, very quant. You’re a true oddity. I can see why he thinks so much of you. You see, Sarah, the normal response would be what has he done—that’s the typical approach of the cynic, of which the planet is dominated. But you’re scared he’s hurt in someway.”
“And I take it by your sardonic tone that he is okay?”
“Of course, fit as a fiddle. He’ll be with you shortly. Only this minute left.”
A bolt of horror struck me and my next words were stuttered:
“He’s been…with you?”
“My my! You really are sweet. Or extremely naive, which, as a cynic, I’m more inclined to go for. Anyway, to the point at hand. The other night—last Saturday, I believe, th
ough my days have been a little hazy of late, merging altogether. Anyway, the night you and he argued and he went out all night, he met up with me and we fucked…”
I felt as though I were falling through the mattress, my head going numb, her acerbic voice dissolving in my ears. I tried to get it together, tried to pull myself back up.
“I don't believe you,” I trembled into the phone.
“Really!?”
“No.”
“You do,” she insisted in a smirking voice. “I can hear it in you. Has he been extra dutiful this past week?”
The bottom fell out of me and warm tears began to drop from my eyes.
“Yes,” I said in a whisper.
“Has he worn a sorry expression on his face when he didn't think you were looking? Quickly turned away when he spotted your look?”
“Yes.”
“Then now you know why. Because he cheated on you. He feels guilty. But don’t think that guilt will last. It’ll never last. Plus, just in case you still believe in his innocence and allow him to needle out of it with words, I’m sending you a video message. You see, I’m a bit freaky and like to record my sexual misadventures, so—”
I placed the phone down on her acidic, barbed-wire tongue, before falling into a pit of wailing tears. In the back of my mind all week, scratching away, had been the glimmer of doubt. His instant acceptance of everything when I’d returned last Sunday, the way he fell into tears when I apologized, how he’d gotten rid of the money, gave it away, how he’d behaved since, making me dinner, doing all the housework, being Josh the Sacred Saint of Boyfriends all fucking week. Yes, I was swearing. Because once my melancholia had dripped out through my tears, anger replaced it, a terrible anger that made me grip the phone tightly in my hand, and if I had owned the strength, I would have clamped it into a million pieces within my furious fist.
It was then that cruelty dealt me a fresh blow. In my tightened grip, the phone vibrated. I opened up my hand and saw that she’d done as she’d said; sent me a video message. My finger hovered above the screen, over the top of the play symbol. Part of me didn’t dare, didn't want to see. But something, some furiously curious and jealous voice, impelled me to do it—impelled me to break apart the last pieces of my heart. I pressed play and within seconds choked on a fresh surge of tears as I saw, without doubt, Josh having frenzied sex with a brunette woman, clearly this Amy girl. As though it were a burning coal in my palm, I threw the phone against the wall, smashing it.