by Tasha Jones
“How could you think that I wouldn’t want to know everything about you from your pains and your struggles? How could you think that I wouldn’t want to know about Valerie?”
I took that as my cue to stand up and close the distance between the two of us. “I was stuck in a fake world. I hated it. I hated myself… I still do.”
He finally turned to face me again, taking my face in both of his hands. “But I love you. I love everything about you. I want to live this life with you: yours, mine…”
I hopped onto my tiptoes, kissing him to avoid bursting out into tears right in front of him. I couldn’t imagine I was lucky enough to have another man, Edward of all people, say this to me.
“I love you too, Ed,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I love you so fucking much.” After about a hundred more “I love yous,” he reluctantly declared that he really did need to get back to work. The primary was looming just ahead.
I nodded and left him to his work, feeling like a whole person again. As I entered the elevator, the doors were just about to shut when Peter scurried towards me. By the time he stepped inside, he was panting from that little bit of exertion and I was feeling considerably uncomfortable being alone in an enclosed space with him. “Oh hello you,” he said in a breathless voice.
I gave him a nod and a half smile.
“Making an office call?”
I wanted to punch the smirk right off of his face. “No, I was just seeing Ed.”
He gave a hasty nod. “So tell me, does he know about your… occupation?” he asked, wagging his eyebrows.
My heart sunk right into my gut where it throbbed, making me want to hurl my croissant right out of me. “I don’t think that is any of your concern.” As soon as the doors opened to the lobby, I dodged out of the elevator, feeling as if I had fallen from one disaster right into another. I had set myself on a path I could not escape, one that could never end well.
Chapter 14 – Edward
I woke up that morning with an odd taste in my mouth. Fights with Nisha had been won and I had succeeded in preventing myself from losing something I hadn’t even realized I had. As I stood up and made my way to my bathroom, my head became engorged with the thoughts of a daughter I didn’t even realize I would have.
Valerie.
It was a pretty name and from what I could remember, it belonged to a pretty girl. I thought back to that awkward morning in Nisha’s kitchen after the only night I had spent in her house. The girl had stared at me with those eyes just like Nisha’s: wide and inquisitive. As I stuck my brush covered in toothpaste into my mouth, I found myself preoccupied with thoughts of what could possibly be in her head. I wanted to get to know everything about her from her favorite color to her favorite TV show. Did she like reading? Did she have an irrational aversion to shrimp like her mother did? I just wanted to know her.
It was as I occupied my mind with these thoughts that I made my way to my kitchen and started a pot of coffee. As the sound of beans being ground and the scent filled my kitchen, I made my way to the front door, opened it and picked up the newspaper on the other side of the door. I turned on my telly, eager to hear another voice and see what the latest polls were saying. I grabbed my first cup of coffee for the day and sat down in front of my telly, flipping to the politics section of the newspaper.
“Parliamentary Candidate is now wrestling with accusations of a bastard child…”
My eyes flashed wide open as I choked on my coffee and nearly spilled the contents of my mug all over the newspaper. After putting it down, I grabbed my remote and turned the volume up. There he was, George Trenton, standing in the midst of what looked like a brutal press conference. His wife was nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that she was always at his side for any and all kinds of public appearances. “You’ve got to be fucking joking.” Sure enough, when I finally got a chance to glance at the politics section of the newspaper, there we were, standing side by side. An image of me speaking at some charity thing or another, and one of him, looking as angry as ever, as he gave what looked like a motivational speech at some sort of venue. I read the headline out loud because I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe what I was looking at. “A source has confirmed that George Trenton does have a child outside of his marriage. It is unclear if his wife had any previous knowledge of this fact, but from the looks of it, something is on the rocks.”
I couldn’t believe Peter and Felix had done it. Not only had this most likely ruined his campaign, but his marriage as well. How could he and his wife recover from this? In watching reporters make conjectures about what was in the rest of the story, I couldn’t help but feel a little exposed myself. I sat with my foot crossed over my knee, certain that they would hit back, hard, with a vengeance, and when they did, it would be crippling. Yet as I sat there, contemplating my entire life, I could think of nothing they could possibly uncover, at least, not anything I wasn’t already prepared for.
As I looked back up at the telly, I saw that I had more than overslept. I had planned to meet Nisha and Valerie at the bridal store. Now that we were going steady again, we thought it would be a good idea to start putting some of the wedding preparations in place and picking out the dress was one of them. When she brought it up to me, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to spend time with her daughter. Although she was reluctant about it at first, I was eventually able to convince her that she would have no reason to regret this.
So exactly one hour later, I found myself staring at Nisha and Valerie, mother and daughter. They both wore track suits, Nisha in a black one and Valerie in a bright pink one. Her mother had drawn her hair up into a bun at the top of her head and even gone through the pains of applying eyeliner on her face.
Nisha, knowing exactly what I was staring at, laughed at me. “She begged me to do it. She wanted to look good for you, I suppose.”
I nodded. “Right of course.”
She looked down at her daughter, giving her a knowing look. “Make sure you act like a lady,” she warned.
A smile played at the corners of my lips at the sight of my future wife disciplining her child.
Valerie nodded as she wrapped her little arms around Nisha’s legs. “Bye, Mum!”
Nisha rubbed her back then looked up to wink at me.
I wanted to hop in front of her daughter and kiss her right then and there, but I figured good behavior was best in her present. “All right, love. I’ll see you for dinner?”
Nisha nodded. “Yes, Ed. That’s perfect.” She then looked down at Valerie one last time. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t approve of.”
Valerie rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mum.”
I chuckled at this, as I placed my hand on Valerie’s tiny shoulder and turned her around. One glance behind me showed me that Nisha was still watching us. I had only travelled two or three steps before I started to feel hopelessly awkward. Should I have been holding her hand or was it a good thing that I was giving her this space. I cleared my throat, instinctively reaching for her arm when we got to the next street corner. She flinched away from me then as if thinking twice about it, clasped her tiny hand around mine.
As we crossed the street, me looking in each direction over and over again because of the precious cargo in tow, I couldn’t help but feel a little accomplished, like I had been granted entry into an extremely exclusive club. “This is my favorite ice cream shop,” I said as I led her into the small boutique.
She nodded, a smile stretching across her face. “Strawberry?” I asked, as I stepped up to the woman behind the counter.
Valerie gave an eager nod.
“Oh my. Edward Worthington?” the woman behind the counter said.
This was the worst thing about running for public office. “Uh yes. I would like a strawberry cone for the little lady and just plain vanilla for me.”
She nodded eagerly and went to work on the order.
With that accomplished, I turned back to Valerie. I kneeled next to her, feel
ing compelled to get on her level. “So,” I said, holding on to her shoulders. It was a curious thing, looking into the eyes of mini-Nisha. “You like dressing up?”
She nodded. “Yes. Mum is good at that. She dresses like a princess every night.”
I cocked my head to the side. Every night? “What do you mean?”
She shrugged, “You know? Dresses.” She lifted her hand up to her head, twirling her hair in her hands. “She curls it, like this.”
“Where does she go?”
It was only a child’s statement. It couldn’t have been a cause for alarm. No. I knew Valerie had to be embellishing because… well because… I… I didn’t know anything. Suddenly, that odd, sickening sensation that had gripped me the first time I saw Valerie had washed over me all over again. “Valerie, where does she go? What does she do?” Suddenly, the image of her in her ball gown on Peter’s arm popped into my head. It was my first memory of her. Why was she at that party in the first place? Why did she never talk about her career? Her goals? “Valerie?”
It was the scowl on her face that told me I had been holding on far too tight.
“Mr. Worthington?”
I turned around to find the woman holding the ice creams I had ordered.
***
That night, we had dinner in Nisha’s flat. She cooked a marvelous meal of pot roast and steak fries. There was a bottle of wine as well, but we didn’t open it until Valerie went to bed. Then, I couldn’t do it any longer. I couldn’t ignore whatever it was that Nisha wasn’t telling me. “I can’t. Love, I have to ask you this.”
Nisha took a sip of her wine and rested her legs on my lap before she answered me. “What is it that you have to do?”
“While I was with your daughter, she said something about you going out at night…” I watched her. I watched the way she took that generous gulp of wine. I watched her lips quiver when she put her glass down.
“Valerie is a little… she has an imagination.”
I gently pushed her legs off of me and leaned forward. “So, what you’re saying is, one of you is lying.”
Nisha scoffed and shook her head, but she wouldn’t look at me. “You know I’m in parties, Ed. You know that’s what I do.”
“No, Nisha. I have no idea what you actually do,” I said, setting my jaw. How could she keep this from me yet again? But I could see her clenching her fists.
“Do not disrespect me by interrogating me this way,” she hissed.
I narrowed my eyes at her, but my heart fluttered with fear. A small voice in the back of my head told me to err on the side of caution.
Chapter 15 – Nisha
I was a sham.
I put on my face and I did my hair and I made myself smile. I told myself that I was here because Edward chose, because he saw some sort of value in me, but I could not shake the truth: that he didn’t know what he was looking at. Everywhere I turned there was another man I had been out with. They bobbed around the ball room in their dinner jackets and their glasses of champagne. It was another function; another moment for Edward to show me off to the world all the while showing himself off. The polls were rising on his end. Their stab at the Trenton campaign had really taken a toll and changed things. At this point, Edward was winning by default. The stocks on his company were up. He was on top of the world.
And I was a sham.
I smiled at everyone who came our way. I thanked them for their compliments on my black dress and the silver jewelry… and the engagement ring. I pretended I was happy to be by his side and not the least bit ashamed of myself. I lied to myself so that I could lie to him.
Because I was a sham.
My eyes burned and the appetizers were making a fuss in my stomach. I knew that I didn’t have a lot of time. I was worried my body might rebel against my lies and it hurt. My feet hurt, my eyes hurt. My body hurt. My everything hurt. “I can’t do this,” I whispered.
Edward didn’t hear me. He was engaged in a conversation with a stock broker I didn’t recognize. He said something about my dress, but I wasn’t listening to him. I wasn’t listening, but I said, “thank you,” anyway.
Edward’s smile grew wider as he wrapped his arm a little tighter around my waist.
I felt like I was suffocating.
Just when he left, I turned to Edward with the full intention of telling him that I needed to take a moment to myself and go on to vomit out my insides so that my stomach would feel as empty as my mind did, but then Peter made eye contact with him.
By the time he stumbled over to us, it was obvious to us that he was drunk. So drunk. His face was flushed and his skin looked like pink wax. There was a thin film of sweat on his face. He looked just like he did the night when I first met him; the night when I first met Edward.
I was scared.
“Ed!” he said, jutting his hand out to him.
Edward raised an eyebrow of annoyance, but anyone could tell that he would let Peter, or anyone else, bring him down. “Don’t call me that, Pete,” he said as he took his hand.
Then Peter shifted his gaze to me. “You look good, Nisha. Almost like...”
“Yes. Thank you.” I placed my hand in his, hoping he wouldn’t make the connection in his head that I had been making all evening.
He drew my hand up to his face and placed a very slobbery kiss on it. I bit my tongue and swallowed my bile and did my best to pretend I wasn’t disgusted with being touched this way. The thing was that ordinarily, this wouldn’t have bothered me at all. But for some reason, it did.
I wasn’t good at my job anymore. I wasn’t me.
“So tell me,” Peter said, looking back at Edward. “Tell me, because I’ve always wondered how do you, you know, deal with Nisha?”
My blood ran cold. “What?”
“I’m not sure I understand you?”
Peter just let out a rambunctious laugh. “Well at a party like this,” he swung his arms around him, “You’ve got to have at least more than one time conflict. I mean, how can you attend this, and not be working?”
My lies were catching up to me.
Edward laughed again, but the sound was a little hysterical; a little desperate. “You’re pissed, Pete. Go home.”
Peter had only just opened his mouth to say one more thing when I busted out of Edward’s grip. The whole room was spinning, but it wasn’t because of the champagne. “I think I’m going to be sick,” was what I managed to say before I jetted out of that ballroom and out of the front door. I had barely gotten off of the velvet carpet in front of the front door when my entire dinner, along with dessert and the after dinner snacks flew out of my mouth. My stomach heaved out all of my insides and my body trembled with the exertion. Bitter bile coated the inside of my mouth.
Then it was done. I had expelled everything that I could. But it hadn’t helped anything. I would have to go inside and face them again. There was no running from this moment. It was happening right now.
There were footsteps behind me.
***
Edward
Something was very wrong with Nisha. The entire night she had been distant. She refused to engage with the others like I’ve known her to do. This was the real turning point in the election, in my career, in my life’s work and she couldn’t be more nonchalant. Except, she wasn’t nonchalant. She was distracted. As I approached her that night on the side of the sidewalk with her hair hanging over her right side, her arms covering her torso and food falling out of her mouth, I couldn’t remember ever seeing her this low; this human.
I placed a tentative hand on her back.
She jumped at my touch, moving as far away from me as she could. There were feet between us. “Nisha, what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes were wide with fear and yet she resembled a deer caught in headlights.
I started searching for answers. “Was it the food? Did you feel sick or whatever?” I darted towards her with the intention of feeling her forehead for a fever.
> But she wouldn’t let me touch her.
I began to grow hysterical. There was something wrong with my princess, with my Nisha. I could feel her crumbling in front of me and I just wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to stop. “Tell me what’s wrong with you.”
She gulped and looked down at her shoes. “It’s Pete. I don’t like him when he’s drunk, I don’t...”
“Was he like that the night we met? Is that why you’re behaving this way?”
She shook her head.
The uncertainty was driving me insane. “Will you not tell me what happened?” I demanded.
“I can’t!” she screamed. Thin tears ran down her cheeks.
What had I done? “Why not?” I demanded as I approached her, putting my hands on her arms.