As if he could hear my thoughts, he turned and his eyes stopped on me. He closed his lips. I wanted to scream, to yell, What are you thinking?
But I didn’t, of course. Mira three or even four years ago wouldn’t have kept her thoughts to herself. She was destructive and impulsive–Six was right about these things. But she still lived in me, still taunted me with memories and truth. She asked me, via the voices, for release. But she asked in vain.
“Are you seeing someone?” he asked abruptly.
You, I thought. I’m seeing you. Are you seeing me? “No.”
He nodded and walked away from my painting to the ones leaning against the wall. The swirl painting was among them, but it was turned away from being seen. I jumped up from the table and blocked the paintings, my body just inches from him.
He looked confused by my interruption. “Are you okay?”
I could never answer that. Whatever my answer, it wouldn’t be true.
“I don’t know.” I paused. “What are we doing?” I asked him, an echo of what he’d asked me in the alley.
“I don’t know.”
It was if all the background noise had been sucked up then. There was nothing in that moment, nothing at all. Just two hearts beating and a thousand words unsaid. Just a man who was angry and a woman who was a mess.
With Six in Brooke’s house, I felt a hundred things. My mind raced.
Why do you want to hurt me?
Why are you here?
Do you love me?
Do you think of me?
When you’re with Victoria, do you see me?
Do you see me now?
“In the car, you asked me if Victoria loved me as much as you did.” Breathless, I waited for him to continue. “I don’t think anyone can love me that much.”
“But you love her,” I said, my voice scratchy. “She’s your ten.”
He took a step toward me, shaking his head. It was harder to have this conversation in the lighted room than it’d been in the alley. Shadows made it easy to hide, but the light showed everything. “She’s not my ten.”
I held my breath.
“I never called you my ten, Mira.”
I let the breath go. “I know.”
He stepped closer. His eyes met mine and they held me still. “Because if I reached ten, I would’ve have reached the max, with no more room for love to grow.” He stepped closer still, until our breaths mixed in the air suspended between us. “You’d never be my ten. Because I’d never reach the peak of loving you.”
I was bleeding. I was raw. Mentally, I was battling a losing war. Every atom of my skin and muscle wanted to lunge for his, to see if he was still there somewhere inside, the Six who had loved me. But my brain battled against it, reminding me of who I was now. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t be a woman in control of myself. I wanted to run, I wanted to hurt, I wanted to forget—for a moment—that there was more here between us than just what existed in the past.
And I wasn’t a woman to steal a man, not anymore. I wasn’t in control of myself with him near me, so I did the only thing I could.
“Can you leave?”
He waited a beat, eyes narrowed on me. He was looking at me the way I remembered, as if I was a question and he didn’t know the answer. I supposed we’d forever be that way, a woman with a question and a man without an answer.
When he walked out the door and closed it, I released the breath I’d been holding to keep from touching him and then, as I inhaled, I breathed him in.
Leather and spice and that other scent that was purely Six. Greedily, I sucked in the air. It was probably selfish, and it was definitely crazy, but I wanted that to live in my lungs. If I couldn’t touch him, I’d breathe him in.
I slid down the wall, pooling in a heap on the floor beside the paintings I’d created with him in mind. My eyes looked at my wrists, looked at the two tattoos that were for me, the only ink on my body dedicated to myself.
I realized then, and only then, that I was still wearing the lemniscate necklace, the one he’d given to me. Surely, he’d seen me wearing it. That fucking eight.
The number haunted me every single day. And yet I wore the necklace nearly every day over the last four years. Not to remind me of how I’d loved, but to remind me of how I’d healed.
Because that was the truth. Six was my disease. He was the reason I’d succumbed a dozen times. But he was also the reason I faced every day, the reason I cared to. He was the reason I ever tried to be sober in the first place.
17
When I went back to work the following morning, Marco had taped a note for me.
Victoria is coming in. I’ll be late. Meet with her, be nice. – MARCO
Once again, I crumpled the note and tossed it, but with much less enthusiasm this time. I was weak, spent from the emotional overload of the last few days.
I started work on the purchase orders, starting with cupcakes and then moving onto tree-shaped cookies with yellow stars at their tops.
Christmas was coming soon. In a month, the restaurant would be slammed with catered events and in-house Christmas parties. It was the busy season for us, so I was surprised Marco would even take on another client.
As the hours ticked away, I tried to summon even a modicum of enthusiasm for this meeting with Victoria, but I had nothing. I wondered if Six had told her he’d taken me home. I doubted he’d told her what he said to me about love on a scale from one to ten, but instantly, I wanted to know if he used the same scale with her.
When the sun rose and the restaurant opened, I wished that Brooke wasn’t out of town so she’d be here to take Victoria’s order. She was way better with people anyway.
I waited for Victoria at the restaurant, in the front room. I had a clipboard with the general cake and icing flavors listed and would turn it over to Marco for actual menus once the cake had been decided.
In my chicken scratch, I scribbled her name at the top of the page, taking particular discontent with her four-syllabled name. I supposed hers fit her to a T, but that didn’t mean I still didn’t object to the amount of room that name took up inside my mouth and the various ways my lips had to contort to say it.
And, not to mention, the fact that I had to say it at all.
So, when she flounced into the room in her stupid gold dress and her hair perfectly free of fly-aways, looking like the ethereal goddess she was, I decided to continue calling her Vicky.
In that instant, I realized that I’d called her ethereal. She was, with her light hair and eyes. Ethereal, as if she belonged in the light.
Six had called me a sea serpent. A sea witch. The kind that lived in the deepest, darkest parts of the oceans.
Victoria and I couldn’t be further apart. An angel and a sea serpent, separated by sea and land and sky. And brought together by the man whose heart was vast enough to have love for us both.
“Vicky!” I greeted in the fakest sing-song voice, pulling myself to standing to be kissed on my cheek as if we were old friends. Her face contorted slightly at me calling her Vicky again, but she recovered quickly and slid elegantly into the seat opposite me.
She lifted her purse and set it delicately on the table beside the papers I’d set out for her. I recognized the monogram all over the cream bag and thought how much better that bag would look with some color. A shame to pay thousands of dollars on a bag that didn’t look like art.
She tilted her head, smiling sheepishly at me. “Sorry, I just need to reply to this message super quick.”
I waved a hand, indicating to her to go for it. I wasn’t in a hurry; Marco was paying me extra for this. I watched as the curtain of blonde hair fell over half her face, hiding everything but her long lashes and perfect pink lips as she seemed to be mouthing what she was typing on her screen.
After a few moments of my staring, she plopped the phone onto the table and smiled genuinely at me, white teeth blinding. “I’m so excited!”
I couldn’t echo
her enthusiasm, not even in the slightest. Something about Victoria made me feel dirty, tainted. There was no doubt I was both of those things, but I didn’t often come in contact with people who made it starkly obvious. I couldn’t let a smile spread my lips as readily as she could.
“Okay.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a salmon-colored folder, opening it up and placing a perfectly-manicured French tip against the first thing she’d written in perfect penmanship. Was there anything about this woman that wasn’t put together, that wasn’t completely and perfectly whole?
I doubted it.
“I guess I first need to find out if you have our date open.”
I was taken aback slightly, not expecting her to be so ready to take charge and steer the direction of this appointment.
“Okay…” I said uneasily. Why did it feel like anxiety was dragging its finger up the nape of my neck?
“December twenty-fourth.”
If I had been drinking or chewing anything, I knew I’d have choked. My shock must have shown on my face because she waved a hand in front of me swiftly. “I know!” she exclaimed.
My eyes grew wider as it soaked in. I shrugged, needing the tension to roll off. I felt that craving then, for a cigarette. Something stronger would be preferred, but I was supposed to be sober, supposed to get over these urges.
I was supposed to be avoiding Six, and here I was meeting with his fiancée–his fiancée!–to discuss their upcoming nuptials.
“December twenty-fourth,” I finally said, my voice hoarse and shock still spreading all over my body. His favorite holiday.
“I know,” she replied dramatically. “Such short notice.”
With lips numb from shock, I fumbled over my words and pulled the collar of my shirt away from my neck, needing breathing room. “Why December twenty-fourth?”
Her shrug was more delicate than I could have done. “William picked it last night. He didn’t want to wait until next year. Something with insurance and…”
Her voice trailed off as I thought. Six hadn’t told her about us. What a fucking liar. He was lying to his bride-to-be. But why?
No man would choose Christmas Eve to marry someone as neurotic as Victoria likely was if there wasn’t a reason. I looked at my paper, at the date I’d written down.
Today’s date: November 23, 2013. Their wedding date was less than five weeks away. No way would Marco go for such short notice.
“Why would he pick that date?” I asked her, wondering how much Six had told her about me, about us. Wondering if she even knew what we meant to one another, wondering if she knew how tightly wound his soul once was with mine.
Victoria leaned over the table as if she was going to tell me a secret. “Christmas is his least favorite holiday, so he wanted to make it a better one.” Her words bottomed out in my stomach.
Motherfucker. Rage tore through me, a hundred stabs. He was trying to hurt me. He had prepped Victoria, with her unknowingly being the bearer of fucking awful news. He wanted to hurt me.
I pushed my hands into my lap and crushed the pen in my fists, transferring my rage to the pen to keep from lashing out. I looked up at Victoria, forced a smile to relieve my pursed lips. “That’s very short notice,” I said, forcing as much regret into my voice as possible.
I was subtly placing the ball in her court. She could take it and toss it for the basket or she could retreat, walk away with the ball slowing its bounce.
“I know.” She sipped the water I offered her and her head bobbed back and forth. One more bob and I was sure it’d fall off her neck. “But I love Il Tavolino. Did you know that means ‘the little table’ in Italian?”
Oh, I wanted to bark back at her. Of course, you idiot. I work here. The little table. Six had built me a little table. It was now my bedside table—the last thing I fell asleep looking at and the first thing I awoke to. It was the table we had begun our relationship on, the table that had been the catalyst to many of our fights.
My blood ran hot under my skin, my arms tense and my legs aching to stand and push her out of her chair.
Fuck. I needed to regain control over myself, over the situation. And bless him, Marco swooped in the front door just in time.
“Ms. Christie, I need you in the kitchen for a moment.”
I spun at the his formal use of my name. Nodding, I turned to Victoria with what should have been a smile but was probably just bared teeth, clenched in a peculiar smiling shape.
“Excuse me a minute, Victoria.” Calmly, I slid out of the chair and walked briskly to the kitchen, through the doors and into the supply pantry.
Marco was hot on my heels, murmuring something to the chefs we’d passed before joining me in the pantry and closing the door behind us. “What was that?” he asked, his cartoonish, large eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead.
“What was what?”
He thrust a hand towards me. “Your face. You looked like you were about to stab that woman in the eye with your pen.”
I shook my head, leaning against a rack of pots. “She’s marrying my ex,” I reminded him.
“But he’s your ex. What’s the problem?”
“We were together ten years.”
Marco scoffed, anger coloring his face. “Get out, Mira.”
I pushed away from the rack. “What?”
He opened the door hard enough that it slammed against the wall on the side. I saw a chef jump nearly out of his skin. “Get. Out.” A few people in the kitchen stopped in place to watch the exchange.
Embarrassed, I did exactly as he’d ordered, busting out the back door into the cool air.
I thought I’d had a handle on my emotions, but apparently not. If Marco thought he was punishing me by forcing me to not talk to Victoria, he was absolutely fucking wrong. As the embarrassment faded, relief took its place. That relief had coated me so thick that I finally answered my phone when my mother called, for the third time in the last twelve hours.
“Finally,” she said, not trifling with a ‘hello.’ “I’m leaving town,” she said. “Would you like to meet with me before I do?”
I thought about it for a long moment. Would that even be necessary?
For years, I’d avoided speaking to my mom and even avoided seeing her every time she’d come to visit. I’d feared my anger would get the best of me, make me destructive, cause me to hurt her or even me. But when I thought of the moment she’d come into the gallery, I was more overwhelmed by the revelation about Six’s one-time business agreement with my mom than I was her. When I thought of my mom, there was annoyance—yes. There was anger—definitely. But I didn’t fear her, and I didn’t wish her ill—both were massive improvements for me. I just wished she’d get the fuck out of my life.
“I think we’ve said all we need to say,” I told her, and I meant more than just our in-person meeting. I meant forever. My mom delighted in watching me fall apart, as if it was a way for her to swoop in and atone for the sins of my childhood. So she could rub in my face how similar I was to her.
But I was done.
“Is that how you really feel?”
There was the venom. “Yes,” I said, and without saying goodbye—because it wasn’t necessary—I hung up.
Almost immediately, my phone rang and I expected it to be her, for her to berate me for hanging up. But it wasn’t her. I didn’t recognize the number, and that was why I hesitated answering.
“Hello?”
“Mira. It’s so good to hear your voice. Six told me about your show. Would you like to come over?”
Six’s mom. Elaine. I hadn’t spoken to her since I’d left her home with Griffin in tow. But she wanted to talk to me, now.
“To your house?” I asked dumbly.
“Yes. For some tea. I’d love to catch up.”
Six told her about me? Why? I found myself agreeing, but even as I climbed into the car to go to her house, I tried to figure out a way to decline. She’d sounded good on the phone. But the juxtaposition of letting g
o of my mom and going to Six’s mom’s home was not lost on me.
When Six’s mom opened the door, her smile was quick and welcoming. She stepped aside and brought me into the kitchen where she had tea warming.
I shrugged off my coat and draped it over the chair before sitting down.
Elaine poured our tea and splashed a dollop of whiskey in one cup … hers. She held up the bottle in invitation and I shook my head. It was surreal, to be sitting in her home without Six lurking somewhere, and in another life I would’ve taken that whiskey if only to dull my nerves. But I was better. Maybe, if I kept telling myself that, I’d actually believe it.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, setting boxed brownies on the table. “It’s been so long, and you look so good. Wow.”
Unless Six had told her, Elaine had known little about my life. Maybe vague mentions, here and there, but we’d never talked about anything other than art. She herself looked good, sunkissed somehow despite the cloudy winter weather. Her house smelled of patchouli and paint, a combination that worked for her.
I ran my finger over the grain in her table when I couldn’t quite meet her eyes. I was at a disadvantage; I didn’t know how much or how little Six had told her about us.
“Six is engaged,” I finally said.
She placed the tea cup on its saucer and twisted it slightly. “Yes.”
I clenched my jaw, wishing I had the nerve to ask her if she liked Victoria. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
She laughed lightly. “Oh, why ever not? It’s not an offensive thing, Mira.”
But it was. I was personally offended that Six had chosen her to make that type of forever promise to. Maybe that’s another reason everything had bothered me so much. He’d talked about eight, as if we wouldn’t have an ending ourselves. But we had, hadn’t we? It was hard to be sure of that, however, considering that he’d never really left me. “He told me you two ran into one another recently. What luck!”
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