Flawless

by JD Hawkins

  So I decide to tell him one last story. I did come home after seeing my friend, but I had a migraine and passed out in bed for a couple hours, so that’s why I didn’t hear him when he came to the door. My phone must have died at some point while I was out, and by the time I got his text messages and voicemail, it was already this morning—and so I figured I’d just talk to him when I got into work.

  But when I go to Liam’s office, he’s not there. And I don’t see him in the break room either. After that I spend most of the morning with Shanice and the marketing team, finalizing the exact timeline of what needs to happen on the day of the launch, and debating a few nit-picky issues about phrasing in the press release packet.

  We meet in the main conference room and Liam occasionally ducks in to grab a particular person or slip someone a file. I know that we’re keeping our relationship on the down-low while I’m still working at LoveLife, but it’s like he doesn’t even see me, like he can only make eye contact with the folks on either side of me. With me, he’s looking over my shoulder into nothingness as if I don’t exist. When I do finally manage to catch his eye, he gives me a curt nod and then turns on his heel and leaves the room. What the hell is going on?

  Later when we break for lunch, I run over to Liam’s office to see if I can catch him at his desk. But when I poke my head around the door, I can see he’s in the middle of a call, the phone is wedged between his ear and shoulder as he rapidly types something on his laptop.

  “Of course,” Liam says cordially, nodding as he types. He looks up at me and it’s like a wall suddenly goes up, his smile dropping and his gaze going cold.

  I point at the phone, then motion to my watch as I mouth, “Almost done?”

  Instead of answering me he gestures me back out the door, and after I close it behind me I hear the lock click. My stomach drops, and my heart pounds. Something is really wrong.

  I catch Lanie in the hallway a few minutes later and pull her aside. “Do you know what’s going on with Liam?” I whisper. “He’s acting…off.”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she whispers back. “He’s been on a warpath all day. It’s really stressing everybody out and that’s the last thing we need before the launch. The team’s morale is tanking.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks, Lanie.”

  “Sure.” She shoots me a worried look. “And good luck.”

  I don’t see Liam again until our afternoon meeting with the Austin-based investors, but every time I try to talk, he cuts me off. “Sorry, I’ll address that—it’s not actually within the marketing department’s area of expertise,” or, “I’m not sure where our Director got that idea from, but LoveLife won’t be approaching this challenge quite like that.” Finally, as the investors file out of the room, I close the door behind them so it’s just me and Liam.

  “Liam, please, can we talk? I know something’s up.”

  He pushes past me. “I don’t have time for this, and neither do you. We have work to do.”

  Bewildered, but starting to worry that he’s somehow caught wind of my meet-up with Jonathan, I spend the rest of the day answering emails, reaching out to the media, and making calls to speak directly with my contacts in the beauty industry. I pop up to the Tech Lair to brainstorm how we can troubleshoot any technical issues that could potentially come up on launch day. Finally, when there’s nothing left to do but wait on reply emails and returned calls, I gather my stuff to leave for the day.

  I pause outside of Liam’s office, knowing this is my last chance to straighten things out before I set myself up for another long, awkward, hostile day tomorrow. Then I take a deep breath, push open the door, and step inside.

  Liam looks up at me from his desk chair, that same frigid iciness in his glare that I saw earlier, that I didn’t even know he was capable of.

  “Liam—”

  “You need to leave.”

  I close the door behind me and fold my arms.

  “I’m not leaving this room until you talk to me. Tell me what’s going in that head of yours.”

  “You want to know what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes, please tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Liam slams his hands down on his desk. “You think you have any right to just barge in here and start making demands? God, Zoe. You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You know, you just might be the most callous, manipulative, selfish person I have ever met, and that’s saying a lot. I can’t believe I trusted you.”

  “What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything wrong—”

  “You’re really just going to stand there and tell me more lies? I’m done, Zoe. We’re done. After this app launches, you’re finished. With LoveLife and with me.”

  The worst part of all of this is the way his face betrays no emotion, no reason, like there’s nothing I can say or do to talk him out of this. My cheeks are burning, my stomach tied in knots. I hold up a hand, taking a step forward. “What lies? Please, Liam. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh no?” he asks. I shake my head but he only laughs again, bitter and cold. “Well, I’ll explain it to you then. You straight up lied to me yesterday when you broke our date last night and said your friend’s mother is sick—the lie is awful enough by itself, but the fact that you did it because you had other plans lined up? That’s worse. Of course at the time, I didn’t know that, so I stopped by your place hours later to check on you, only to find you’re still out. Fair enough, your friend needed you, it made sense. But then, driving home, I pass by this cozy little pie shop. About a mile or so away. Cute place. Looked like your speed, so I pulled up to get a closer look.”

  My hand flies up to my mouth as I realize what he must have seen last night. “Liam—”

  “And what do I see in the window? It’s you, Zoe. Only you’re not with your friend. You’re not even with a woman at all. You’re standing there, literally in the arms of another man, holding on to this guy like it’s the end of the world, and then I see him kiss you. So it turns out that the truth is, you blew me off. With a blatant lie—an awful lie—so that you could see someone else. How long has this been going on, Zoe? Are you sleeping with him? Are there others? How many guys are you fucking behind my back?”

  He’s still cool as ice, but I feel like I’ve been slapped. I clench my jaw. “There’s no one else, Liam. That was Jonathan you saw—”

  “Ah, so you’re still fucking your ex! Eureka.” He nods. “It all makes sense now.”

  “No! My friend with the sick mom—that part was true. But it’s Jonathan’s mother who’s sick. She has cancer, and she only has a few weeks left, and he reached out to me and…it just made sense that I could be there for him, because of my mom.”

  “So it’s a pity fuck?”

  “How. Dare. You,” I hiss, pulling myself up to my full height. “I know I made a mistake when I lied to you, but you are wrong about this. And I will not let you accuse me of—”

  “Let me? Who do you think you are, Zoe? Queen of the fucking world? You don’t get to lie to me, cheat on me, destroy our relationship and then just waltz in here and make demands.”

  I lift my chin, speaking calmly and slowly. “Just let me explain.”

  “You know what? I don’t want your explanation. It doesn’t matter, anyway. There’s nothing you can say or do to fix this, so why don’t you just turn that tight little ass around and get the hell out of my office.”

  For a moment I’m too stunned to do anything. The silence is overwhelming as Liam leans back in his desk chair again, returning his gaze to his computer and completely ignoring my presence. Tears start to sting my eyes as I pull open the door to the hallway and then walk out of his life.

  23

  Zoe

  I call Savannah on the way home. I try to tell her what happened, but as my words thicken and lurch with sobs, she instructs me to just focus on the road.

  “I’ll meet you at your
place,” she says. “Whatever happened, we’ll figure it out.”

  By the time I make it back through rush hour traffic, Savannah is sitting on my porch with a bottle of sparkling rosé, a bunch of those mini packs of Kleenex, and a quart of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

  “No whiskey?” I joke, except my delivery is terrible, especially with my voice all scratchy from crying.

  “I thought about that. At your crisis level, rosé will get you buzzed, but whiskey would get you hammered and you don’t need a wreck of hangover to deal with on top of everything else. Or a fucking drunk dial. I definitely don’t want to see you come out swinging when you’re all whiskeyed up and I’m trying to pull that phone out of your hand. Now let’s get you cleaned up and comfy and then we’ll talk about everything.”

  “I love you,” I say, sniffling.

  “I know you do. Come on in.”

  Savannah leads me into my bathroom and I glance at myself in the mirror just before she catches me and turns me around. “Sweetie, no, just sit down, close your eyes, and let me get all that makeup off.”

  I perch on the edge of the tub but can’t stop seeing the reflection imprinted in my mind, my red, swollen face, black mascara streaks down my cheeks, eyes puffy and bloodshot. I sniffle quietly as Savannah cleans me up with makeup removal wipes, then tilts my chin back and places a cool washcloth over my eyes.

  I can’t stop thinking back to what Liam said in his office, and despite his accusations, he’s right about one thing: I betrayed him. I blew it. And now he’ll never give me another chance.

  Savannah removes the washcloth and takes my hand. She rifles through my drawers and then hands me my softest t-shirt and favorite pair of sweatpants, the ones with the holes in them.

  “You get changed out of those work clothes. I’ll go get the couch set up. Holler if you need me, okay?”

  I nod. After I’m dressed, I go out to the living room and curl up in a ball on the couch, going through tissue after tissue, surrounding myself with white crumpled wads. Garfield jumps into my lap and sprawls across me. He seems to sense I could use some extra love tonight.

  I explain the basics to Savannah—how I panicked in the heat of the moment and lied to Liam about meeting up with Jonathan, how Liam drove by my apartment to check on me and ended up seeing me and Jonathan in the window at Sweet Little Thing, how furious Liam is and how he never wants to see me again after we launch the app on Monday.

  “The thing is, he’s right,” I choke out, blowing my nose on yet another tissue. Savannah has opened the rosé and I take another long sip. “I knew he had trust issues to begin with, and then what do I do but lie to him and blow off our dinner plans so that I could get pie with my ex? In a way, I did cheat. And I can’t take it back. What the hell was I thinking? I ruined everything.”

  “You did not ruin everything.” Savannah puts her hand on my shoulder. “You can fix this, Zoe. Not right at this moment, but Liam will cool off, just give him some time.”

  I shake my head. “He thinks I slept with Jonathan. And that I’m running around behind his back with other guys! Even if I can convince him it’s not true, he’ll never trust me again.”

  “Of course he will.” Savannah smiles gently. “Look, you told a little white lie to protect him, and it was a mistake. It happens. Then he got freaked out by what he saw, he jumped to conclusions, and emotions were running so high afterward that I bet you he couldn’t even process the words that were coming out of your mouth when you tried to explain.”

  I shrug. “Maybe. He did seem to have a hard time listening to me.”

  “Of course he had a hard time. He adores you, Zoe, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. He wants to be with you. But this’ll blow over soon enough, and he’ll realize he blew things out of proportion. I’d bet anything that deep down, he knows you’d never cheat on him.”

  “You didn’t see his face, though. He was so cold. Like he had no feelings anymore.”

  Savannah snorts and takes a long drink from her glass. “That’s just a defensive mechanism. Men do it all the time to hide their vulnerability. Trust me on this—it’ll be okay. You made a mistake. You didn’t commit an unforgivable sin. He’ll come to his senses.”

  I give Garfield an extra squeeze. He doesn’t seem to mind. “What if he moves on to someone else first?”

  Savannah laughs, not unkindly, and takes a big spoonful of ice cream. “Zoe, let me break it down for you. You’re one of a kind. You’re irreplaceable. Look at me.”

  I look up at Savannah.

  “The thing with guys like Liam is, there may be plenty of women lining up for him, but he’s the kind of person where it’s very difficult for him to find someone he’s actually interested in. Yeah, he has a lot going for him, but he wants to be with a woman who challenges him, who has just as much going for her as he does, who’s his equal—and that’s a tall order.”

  I shake my head. “I still can’t believe Liam feels threatened by Jonathan. I know it’s really about the lies and his feelings of betrayal, but I wish Liam could see inside my head. Then he would know that I would never pick Jonathan—or anyone else—over him.”

  Savannah passes me the ice cream and sighs. “Look, I can’t see into the future, and I can’t say for sure that you and Liam are going to end up living happily ever after. But I can tell you that Jonathan is not going to be the reason you break up on any sort of permanent basis.”

  I finally go in for a spoonful of ice cream, letting the cool sweetness soothe me. “How do you manage to have so much confidence about this?” I ask.

  “Guess I’m just smart like that,” she grins. “The resident man guru. Just look at Thomas. Took me a lot of hard-earned wisdom and know-how to find a man who could snore that loud.”

  We both laugh and I nuzzle up against her shoulder. She puts her arm around me. “I’m so lucky to have you as a friend,” I tell her.

  “Me too,” she says.

  “I still feel really, really sad.”

  “I know.”

  She puts a pillow on her lap and I slide my head down, feeling like a young child being comforted by her mother. My eyes well up with tears again and I close them, take deep breaths, and try to trust that just like Savannah said, this will all pass soon.

  24

  Liam

  I lock myself in my office for the last couple days of the work week, arriving before everyone else, then waiting to leave until I’m certain the only person left on our floor is me. It’s just easier this way, and with the app launch swiftly approaching, nobody thinks much of my seclusion.

  I bury myself in the minutia of the app, creating infinitely long to-do lists so that I’m always busy and never finished. In the evenings, instead of hitting the gym to run laps or lift weights, I drive home and then walk a mile to a local dive bar with flickering neon lights, taciturn regulars, and a clunky TV mounted above the liquor that alternates between MMA fighting, boxing matches, and cop show procedurals. I drink cheap, shitty beer and shots of tequila and eventually stumble home wasted without talking to a single person other than the bartender. I can’t sleep at night. I just dream about Zoe. By Friday I have deep purple circles under my eyes and patchy stubble that would never pass muster at a business meeting.

  Over the weekend, I meet up with Darren to play basketball at the gym, full-court, five on five. At one point, another guy—probably 6’5”, near 300 pounds—drives down the court. Superhero levels of adrenaline race through my veins as I sprint after him. Just as he’s about to dunk, I jump up and deflect the shot, pinning the ball against the backboard. It drops down into my hands and I dribble full speed in the other direction. Another dude tries to defend against me but rather than trying to dribble around, I just run directly at him. I can tell from his face that he’s not expecting it and he slides out of the way to avoid getting trampled. Then I plant my feet and launch a three-pointer from the left wing. Swish. Pure net.

  Then things start to go downhill. I plow my shoulder
into a guy on the other team and he goes flying to the floor. Robby, a guy on the other team, shakes his head and marches over.

  “Stop playing like an asshole, Liam. Tone it down,” he demands.

  “Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it if I don’t?”

  Darren jogs over. “What Liam means to say is that he’ll chill out, alright? We all want to have a good time here. Right, Liam?”

  I step back. “Sure. Yeah.”

  I manage to keep it under control for a few more points, but then I get an elbow in the side from Robby as he steals the ball and passes it to one of his teammates upcourt. A rage overtakes me like I’ve never felt before. I whirl on Robby and sock him in the gut, knocking the air out of him. He topples to the ground and one of his teammates comes at me, chest puffed out, ready to slaughter me. Another of the guys steps in front of him, trying to calm him down.

  “You want to fight?” I say. “Let’s go.”

  Darren latches his arms around mine and pulls me back. I push against him, straining to escape. “Liam!” he yells at me. “The hell is wrong with you today?”

  I pull away and stomp off the court, sitting down in the bleachers and chugging a sports drink. After Darren checks to make sure Robby is okay, he apologizes to the other team for my behavior. Play resumes as Darren comes over to me.

  “We’re gonna take a little walk. Now,” he says. I shrug and follow him out of the gym. It’s a cloudy day out, the sky a dull gray color. There’s a small track and field area behind a fence and we head over there and start circling the perimeter.

  “Look,” Darren starts, “I know you’re upset. I know you feel like shit, and frankly, you look like shit too. But you can’t bring that onto the court the way you did. If you do that again, they’ll void our gym memberships. Not only that, but I can’t promise I’ll be there to hold back the guy who wants to punch you out next time. And that dude was big.”