Heartache

by Danielle Allen

  Meredith wasn’t at her desk so I was able to slip by without Monroe having any warning.

  Humming the classical song from Swan Lake, Monroe was focused on the computer screen. Her red hair was pulled into a tight bun.

  Ballet dancers wear their hair like that.

  I knocked on the door and Monroe looked up quickly.

  “Hey Roman, come on in!” She stood up and pointed to the seat across from her desk.

  I sat down, watching her the entire time. She gave me a peculiar look and giggled.

  “You never come to my office to visit. Usually I have to chase you across the lobby. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Uh…”

  Shit I should’ve thought this through.

  “Um, well I wanted to know if you know anything more about Mr. Draken.”

  “Oh!” She looked genuinely pleased. “I’m honored you would ask my opinion. Here’s what I know…”

  As she rattled off facts about the man who called and his gallery, I tried as discreetly as possibly to look for clues in her office. Nothing seemed to stand out, but I did notice her email was open on her computer.

  If I could just lean forward a little more…

  “What are you doing?” Monroe asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

  “Listening to you.”

  “Then what did I say?”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket.

  Saved by the bell!

  “Give me one second,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket and looking at the screen.

  Thank God! Malik!

  “Hey, man,” I answered, standing up, but still keeping an eye on Monroe. She was scanning my body in such a way that I couldn’t tell if she was checking me out or judging my clothes.

  “So there were two different IP addresses. One was private so those emails must have been from a private computer or maybe even a phone. The other one was public.”

  “What do you have?” I asked, careful not to say anything to let Monroe know I was on to her.

  “Proof that the email originated at Art House. I’m about to pull into the parking lot. I’ll be inside in a second. Meet me in the lobby.”

  What the fuck?!

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I looked away from Monroe. “I’m already downstairs so when you get here, I’m in Monroe’s office.”

  “Okay, see you in a minute,” he said before disconnecting the call.

  I took a deep breath before putting the phone back in my pocket.

  “Everything okay?” Monroe asked, standing.

  “It will be in a minute.”

  When the front door to Art House opened and heavy steps moved across the floor, I stuck my head out of Monroe’s office door.

  “Malik! Over here!”

  I felt like I was losing my shit because I was so anxious.

  It’s about to be over.

  When Malik walked in, Monroe’s smile and voice changed immediately. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve formally met before. I’d see you every now and again, but Roman has never introduced us,” Monroe rambled. “I’m Monroe Daniels. And you are?”

  Malik and I looked at each other with furrowed brows.

  “Uh, I’m Malik.” The confusion on his face and in his voice was priceless. “I’m pretty sure we met at Roman’s party last weekend.”

  “But we were never formally introduced,” Monroe replied, sitting back down in her chair. She crossed her legs and stared at him. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of having you two handsome men in my office?”

  My gut was telling me something was off, but I proceeded anyway.

  “That song you were humming, where was that from again?”

  “I think Swan Lake,” she answered, looking between me and Malik. Her eyes lingered on him long enough for me to notice.

  Malik turned his head and looked at me, his eyes wide. “She was humming that song from Swan Lake?”

  I nodded. Looking back at Monroe, I smiled confidently. “Have you been sending me emails and gifts?”

  She looked at us quizzically. “No,” she said slowly. “Emails about what? Gifts for what?”

  “One of the packages had that song from Swan Lake in it that you were humming. That was my first clue it could be you. What Malik found was the other clue.”

  “I’m seriously lost right now,” Monroe admitted, standing up. “What happened?”

  “I want to give you an opportunity to confess.”

  “Confess to what?!”

  Malik folded his arms across his chest. “We have proof that at least some of the emails came from here.”

  Monroe looked irritated and confused. “What are you talking about? I swear I have no idea.”

  Malik and I looked at each other. She looked like she was telling the truth.

  If she hadn’t been singing that song, would I have thought it was her? And if it’s not her, that only leaves one person it could be.

  I sighed, “If it’s not her, then it has to be—”

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, Monroe,” Meredith’s voice yelled out from the lobby, followed by a loud thud. As her footsteps got closer, she loudly explained herself. “The date lasted longer than expected. I told him you wanted to meet him, but he couldn’t today. He promises he’ll stop in next time…”

  She trailed off when she walked through the office door and saw me and Malik.

  The look on her face told me everything I needed to know and I felt a strange mixture of relief and anger. I was relieved that it was over and I was angry that I had to deal with it in the first place.

  “I’m sorry, Monroe,” I apologized, staring at Meredith. “I had the wrong Art House employee.”

  Monroe walked around her desk and sat on the edge of it. She positioned herself directly in the middle of me, Malik, and Meredith. “What are you talking about?”

  Tucking her hair behind her ears, Meredith looked down, cowering under my glare. “I should get going,” she said, backing away.

  “No, hold on! What’s going on?” Monroe put her hands on her hips and looked back and forth, waiting for someone to speak.

  “Meredith, why don’t you tell your supervisor how you’ve been spending company time harassing me?”

  “You’ve been doing what?” Monroe’s voice came out shrill as she hopped to her feet.

  “No, it’s not like that,” she argued, shaking her head profusely.

  “You snuck into my house and wrote a creepy ass message on my mirror. You’ve sent me emails, packages, and gifts after I told you to stop. So how is it not like that?”

  “It sounds bad when you say it, but I really meant no harm.” Meredith looked at me, her eyes wet with tears. “I—I just wanted you to finally see me. I thought that if you got to know me, you’d fall for me.”

  “So you went snooping through my life, trying to scare me into feeling something that I don’t?” I spat back. “And what was with the damn songs?”

  “You told me I looked beautiful when Monroe said I looked like a blue ballerina. You told me I was beautiful. I thought you were interested.” Meredith started crying, letting her body go slack against the door frame.

  You can’t even be polite to people anymore!

  I was fuming. All the unnecessary stress I’d been under for the last week was due to Meredith not knowing basic communication skills.

  “Where did you even get the information you had about me? That wouldn’t be listed anywhere.”

  Meredith looked at me for a second and then looked down, her face getting redder. She looked at Monroe for support, but Monroe’s face was twisted into a disappointed grimace.

  “Answer the question, Meredith,” Monroe said in a tone of voice I’d never heard before.

  “I don’t… I don’t know,” she cried, putting her face in her hands.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You got the information from somewhere, where did you get it?” I questioned her.

  The office fell sil
ent except for the sound of her sniffling.

  “If you value your job or your credibility in the art world, you’ll answer the question,” Monroe snapped in frustration.

  “I just wanted you to like me and you weren’t going to like me if you didn’t know me,” she wailed. “I saw your work and I just knew that something tragic must have happened to you too. Most guys I meet don’t understand that about me, but I saw your artwork and I knew you would understand. I knew you had been through something tragic too, I just didn’t know what.”

  No one said anything. I watched her as she wiped the tears from her face. She removed her glasses, cleaned them, and then put them back on. She looked like a sad, scared little girl, not the twenty-one year old woman who had been harassing me.

  Meredith continued, “That’s why I fell in love with you. I knew that you weren’t seeing anyone and I thought maybe you would be interested in me, so when Monroe told me to go find you and you were outside by yourself, I just watched you. You’re such a private person, but everybody needs somebody. When you told me I looked beautiful, I thought that maybe I could actually be your somebody. At the very least, I knew I had to try. So I tried. I’m sorry I went about it the wrong way, but I just had to try.”

  Her shoulders shook as she cried into her hands. The three of us just stood there looking at her.

  “Who gave you the information about me, Meredith?”

  She cried harder in response.

  The front door to Art House opened and I barely heard it over Meredith’s crying. I wasn’t sure someone had come in until I heard the heavy footsteps walking toward Monroe’s office.

  Getting up and peeking out of the door, Monroe looked over at us.

  “It’s Meredith’s boyfriend,” she mouthed to us.

  How could she send those messages to me and have a boyfriend at the same time? Some people don’t give a damn about loyalty.

  “What’s wrong, Mere?” the deep voice asked as it got closer to the door.

  She looked up quickly and shook her head. She glanced at me and then tried to shake her head imperceptibly, but I noticed and a chill ran down my spine.

  The footsteps got closer and Meredith just collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  She was still crying so I knew she hadn’t passed out, but I still moved toward her. All three of us reflexively took a step to see if she needed help, but her boyfriend got there first.

  “Meredith,” he said, shaking her gently. “Meredith, get up.”

  When he looked up, we made eye contact, and everything made sense.

  I felt the fury building up inside of me and making its way through my body. The anger, the frustration, and the stress culminated in that one moment. Everything made sense. I balled my hands into fists and got ready to beat his ass.

  His eyes flashed, but when Meredith’s sobbing got louder, he looked down at her and started to panic. “Roman, don’t just stand there, do something!”

  “Fuck you, Benjamin.”

  _____

  Chapter Twenty

  “I take it you know him,” Malik mumbled under his breath as we watched Benjamin pick Meredith up and sit her in a chair.

  Monroe had gotten a bottle of orange juice and was trying to get Meredith to drink it.

  “Yeah, you know that brother of mine you’ve never met?” I muttered before gesturing to Benjamin.

  “What?” Malik said out loud, not caring who heard at that point.

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised you’d stoop so low, Benjamin,” I commented. “You’ve been a problem all of my life so I’m not surprised you’d help your girlfriend harass me. But if you told her the Tia story, I hope you told her the true version of events and not the bullshit you came to my house with.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Why the hell does everyone keep acting like they don’t know what I’m talking about when I ask them direct questions?

  I ran my hands down my face in frustration and then I just started laughing. The short, dry burst of laughter that erupted out of me was humorless.

  “So you’re trying to tell me that you don’t know what’s going on?”

  Malik and Monroe gave me baffled looks as they watched us go back and forth.

  “Going on with what?”

  My anger was starting to boil over. “Let me ask you a question, when you and Meredith met, did you tell her that you knew me?”

  “I came here and told her I was looking for you. So?”

  Meredith started crying again.

  “Did you tell her about Tia?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  “Yes, that’s the reason I’m here.”

  “So you expect me to believe you didn’t supply her with the information she used to harass me?” I looked at him with disgust.

  Benjamin looked at me for a long time before he got off of his knees where he was kneeling beside Meredith.

  “What are you saying?” Benjamin asked, looking from me to Meredith and then back to me.

  I glared at him threateningly. “That bullshit you were talking at my house about forgiveness and apologizing, that’s not you,” I sneered with a quiet rage that rumbled through my chest. “That’s not you at all. That’s the heart condition talking, not you. That’s not who you are. You’re the type of person whose jealousy and pettiness caused a girl to commit suicide. You’re the type to then not take responsibility for your hand in it. You don’t take accountability for any of the fucked up choices you’ve made. You’re a menace. That’s the type of person you are. So, fuck you.”

  By the end of my tirade, Malik was holding me back, ushering me out of Monroe’s office. My entire body was tense and I could feel my muscles flexing in anticipation of a fight. Malik had pushed me far enough away from Benjamin and Meredith that I started to calm down.

  “Come on, let’s go. Let’s walk it off,” Malik instructed, pushing me toward the front door.

  “You know what, Roman,” Benjamin yelled from across the lobby. “Okay, fine! I’ll take that. I’ll accept that. If you accept the fact that you’re scared of the role you played in her suicide! You had as much to do with it as I did. She didn’t kill herself over me, Roman.”

  Malik had to ram his shoulder into my chest like a linebacker and remove me from Art House altogether. My heart pounded in my chest as adrenaline pumped through me. The taste of blood was in my mouth. I bit my tongue trying to restrain myself from fighting Malik off of me so I could get to Benjamin.

  “Roman, come on. Let’s go. Now!” Malik barked, struggling to keep me from going back in there.

  “Let me go!” The aggression and anger that had been simmering toward Benjamin for eight long years was causing me not to see clearly. Malik had gotten me to the parking lot and I was still tussling with him to get back inside and kick Benjamin’s ass.

  “What is that going to do? What is that going to solve?” Malik shouted in my face as he pinned me against the concrete wall with his forearm against my chest. “You go in there and you fight him and then what? You go to jail. You lose your deal with SoHoCo. You lose your deal with Charlotte Spence. You lose everything. And what does he lose? Nothing! He’s not going to lose a fucking thing. You have everything to lose. I’ve known you for a long time now and I’m not going to watch you fuck up your success because of that asshole. Now get in your fucking car and I will follow you home.”

  The tension in my body started to slowly seep out as I thought about what Malik was saying.

  He’s right. I’m not going to ruin everything because of Benjamin. I worked too hard to get to where I am.

  I took a deep breath and looked at Malik for the first time since he’d pushed me outside. “Thanks, man. You’re right.”

  We did our handshake and then I got in my car. Once I saw that he was in his, I pulled out and made the quick drive to my place. Malik sat at the kitchen table and I stood near the sink, both of us drinking a beer. Neither of us had said any
thing since we arrived. Once we were done, Malik got up to leave and I walked with him to the front porch. We stared straight ahead at the cars parked on the street.

  “Are you good?” Malik asked. I heard his keys jingling as he tossed them up in the air and then caught them.

  “I’m good. I lost my cool back there. I don’t like going to that place, but…” I shook my head.

  “I know we were just becoming buddies when all of that happened, but I remember that situation. There was nothing you did wrong. There was nothing you could do and Benjamin’s an asshole for trying to put that on you.”

  I didn’t say anything in response. I wasn’t surprised that Benjamin said Tia killed herself for me. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. Every time I had a nightmare about it that was the bottom line. She did it because of me, for me, whatever. But to have the person who basically put the pill bottle in her hand accuse me of being just as guilty as he was, that pissed me off.

  We both stood in silence, staring at our parked cars.

  “You have to let it go though, man. You have to make peace with it. I don’t want to see you lose everything because you’re still holding on to something that you had no control over.”

  “Tonight was a slip up. I refuse to lose anything over some bullshit.”

  “You already have though.”

  “What?”

  “Bianca.”

  My heart ached at the mention of her name. I didn’t say anything in response.

  He has no idea.

  Malik slapped me on the back before he descended the stairs. When he got to the sidewalk, he turned and started walking backward.

  “If B wants more and you don’t…” He shrugged. “It is what it is. But if B wants more and you want more, but you’re still holding on to something that wasn’t your fault, you lose.”

  I wanted to tell him that we were just friends, but I didn’t have the energy to deny it.