Big girl panty time. “I know you did. I don’t want you to think I don’t trust you. It was just so hard to understand.”
He pulls the car into a space outside the hotel. “You can ask me anything, Emma. I’m never going to lie to you.”
This knowledge doesn’t make me feel better like I had expected it to. Of course he won’t…but I feel like I have been play-acting so much.
I am not the least bit consoled. All I am is one big lie with him.
9:25 p.m.
* Location: Hotel ballroom.
* Dress: Last one. Blue silk.
CHRISTMAS EVE OFFICE PARTY.
I’m at least one “party” over quota for the year. I’ve begun to think no one at this company has children. Then Lance Rowe sidles up to a tipsy woman. He is a prime argument for asexual reproduction.
Dinner was hours ago, and now almost everyone is pretending they still want to talk to the other people here. As if everyone doesn’t get enough of their co-workers during the week.
On the way here, I tried to talk more with Canon about the report I had made. His phone kept ringing. Then he needed to make a call. Then another. When we arrived, we were late and had to rush in.
Alaric went missing shortly after we arrived. I took up residence in the corner, holding up the wall, as that seems to be all I do lately.
After well over an hour, maybe two, I have actually begun to partake of the open bar. I have made a sizeable dent. If one considers the Grand Canyon a dent.
Blessedly, the occasions for small talk have diminished as the night wears on.
Now my primary companionship is in the form of a white poinsettia pyramid.
They actually are better conversationalists than Lawrence Peters. Plus, as an added bonus: poinsettias do not have prostates.
I weave through the masses but cannot find him.
Eyeing the crowd, I catch Mitchell’s attention. He seems to understand who I’m looking for and nods toward a set of side doors near a champagne glass tower.
I smile in thanks and head that way.
1:15 a.m.
CANON, DIANA, AND THE OWNER, Mr. Samuel Dowry, stand huddled in the hallway outside the ballroom.
Hold back and wait. Do not draw attention. That is the name of the game. My role.
“Congratulations, Alaric,” Diana purrs, placing her hand on his arm. He stiffens, moves, but continues to speak with Dowry until they shake hands.
“Closing this deal early is the ideal Christmas gift, don’t you think?” Dowry booms as he leaves.
Wait, what? No. Not yet, this is too soon.
I didn’t tell him. I didn’t convince him.
I have been so busy worrying about my plans and my hormones and my concern with what it is about me that he likes, that I have ultimately failed. I have failed him.
I did not do my job.
“Closed? We’re already done?” I steady my voice. Eyes turn to me.
“Oh, you didn’t tell Emma our good news yet?” Diana giggles and rolls her eyes.
Alaric smiles at me and beckons me over, obviously counting on me to save him from her clutches.
I step forward.
“I’m out of champagne.” Diana pouts toward her glass. The stem dangles and sways between her fingers.
“There’s more inside,” I say.
She rolls her eyes and walks past.
“Thank you for saving me.” He pulls me to him once we’re alone. “It is becoming increasingly hard to keep her at bay without resorting to tossing her off the roof.” He punctuates his joke with a kiss to my temple.
I start to push away, refusing to let myself enjoy it. I need to tell him how thoroughly I have fucked up all that he has worked so hard for.
History repeats itself. He may not be married, and I may not be the other woman, but I have most likely just cost him everything.
Before I can form the words, glass shatters in a small explosion near our feet.
My legs are splattered in champagne. The broken pieces of a bottle lay swirled around our feet. Foam glugs from the broken neck like a thick, white tongue.
“What the hell, Diana?” Alaric glares at her.
I looked up to see him just as soaked as I am.
“Toss me off the roof?” Diana fumes and spins to march away. “Don’t think I will be waiting be around for you when you finally get tired of screwing the help.”
Yeah, that’s how I like my bitches: Angry and butt-hurt.
Alaric starts after her to, I assume, confront her.
“Wait.” I stop him. He turns and looks at me. Surprised.
“I need to leave.” Liquid has already soaked through my shoes. My feet feel slippery, sticky.
Brow knitted, he returns with me to the ballroom. Diana is there. Livid.
There are so many things I want to say to her. Things I want to do. Things like punch her right in her Mary Poppins’ bags.
Instead, I slide right by her and grab a final champagne glass from the tower. Liquid courage.
Alaric stops beside me. “Are you okay, Emma? You’re not acting like yourself.”
Too true.
Until now.
Diana appears. “You know, Emma, it is truly pathet—”
Her words are cut off when I suddenly toss the remainder of my drink in her face. All eyes on us.
“Let’s go,” Alaric says through clenched teeth.
Well, there now. I have embarrassed him. Nicely done, Emma. Jeopardized an entire company, his career, and embarrassed him in a single evening. Stellar job.
By the time I return the empty glass to the table, Diana has found her bearings. She grabs a full glass and starts to toss it at me. Everything is a blur, but it seems Alaric knocks her hand away as I duck to avoid it and irony descends in full force. My slippery feet give just enough that, instead of avoiding the splash of one glass, I bump the tower and everything rains down on us.
Covered. Soaked. To the bone.
Humiliation. Shock. Regret.
“I’m so sorry.” I sniffle and look up at him.
Champagne runs in rivulets down his face. “It’s okay. We just need to go.”
That is just it. There is no “we.”
There is him and me and someone who doesn’t even exist. Someone who does his bidding and gets his drinks.
Someone nobody takes seriously enough to read a report that she’s written. This mouse that I have become. This mouse that roars at night.
I am the other woman in my own relationship.
“I…I can’t do this. I can’t be with you. You don’t really want me, and I have jeopardized everything you have worked for.” My voice shakes as nerves and cool liquid wrack my body. “I will get a ride from Mitchell and pack up. I quit.”
He tries to hold my arm, but I snatch it away.
“I won’t always chase after you, Emma.”
You won’t have to. This is different. This is me leaving for you, not for myself.
The ride is quiet. Mitchell pulls up next to the hotel lobby door and nods twice in silent understanding that there are no words.
In the room, pale petals are strewn about the bed, the carpet. A bouquet of mixed, pastel colored roses sits on the dresser.
A single word written on the card: Everything.
Day of Employment: 372…381…maybe 495…something. They all run together.
2:00 a.m.
* Champagne: I’m covered in it.
* Petals: Litter my entire room.
* Balcony Door: Open.
* Room: Effing freezing.
* Nipples: Probably hard enough to puncture this silk camisole.
* My Heart: Who the hell knows at this point?
THE CURTAINS FLUTTER OPEN. It’s not the breeze. It’s him. He steps into the room, watching his own feet move.
He barely resembles the man who makes grown men cry, who barters lives and livelihoods like wares at a flea market, who I have fantasized about for over a year.
His hair
is slick and dark and drips champagne. A single, thick lock escapes, flipping forward as he rakes his fingers through it. His gaze never leaves the floor.
“Just tell me why,” he whispers, barely audible over the street below.
Every instinct in me screams to run to him, to wrap my hands around him, to lose myself in his touch…in him.
But I would do just that. Lose myself.
It’s all been make-believe.
“You don’t know me,” I say as softly as I can, as if for the first time I consider that I need to be soft, that he might actually be breakable.
His head snaps up, and his eyes—oh, God, his eyes!—they swim, an unfocused torment swirling in their depths.
“How can you say that? After all…after everything?”
“This is not me. I’m not what you think I am.”
“You are everything I want.” He moves to me. I move twice as far away.
“Alaric, I’m not who you think I am. I’m a liar. And I can’t be what you want.”
“Liar?”
“Yes.”
“You have lied to me…”
“Yes.”
“Lied…”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” I would like to run my hands through my hair right about now—seems to be the thing to do in these instances—but the ol’ hands are otherwise engaged in a rumba-like series of gestures about my head. Or maybe I’m knitting a caftan. “Yes. Lies. All lies.”
“What is it you think you have lied to me about?”
“Think?” Frustrating! As if I don’t even comprehend when I’m not telling the truth…which may actually be a fair assessment given my conduct of late…but I’m not feeling generous enough to not be mad at him for thinking as much. My hands find their way to my soaked hair this time, threaten to uproot it…until I realize this maneuver has pulled the sodden camisole tight across my breasts. Nothing left to the imagination.
They are practically staring at him. He hasn’t noticed. I may be insulted.
“I don’t think I have…never mind.” Like weights, my hands drop. “These are lies.” I point to the bland clothes I’d been packing until I heard him at the door. He had gone straight to the balcony. I suppose he was giving me space.
“This.” I find a broken crescent of a button and hold it between my fingers. “I broke this lying. I don’t get aggressive in bed.”
He doesn’t hide his surprise at these particular words.
“I have pretended to be the sort of person who will hold my tongue. Who will follow, and take orders, and keep her opinions to herself, and play nice—far nicer than the people we’re dealing with deserve. I have made it so I can’t be taken seriously.”
“That is not lying,” he says. “That is deception. An attempt to deceive.”
“They’re practically synonymous.”
“For someone so together and determined, you certainly are being obtuse.” He rests against the wall. “Emma, that is the only thing you didn’t do perfectly. You did not deceive me.”
He moves. Just a step. Then turns only his eyes in my direction. “Considering I have been nothing but forthright about my intentions, my affections…at the very least, you might trouble yourself to explain your decision.”
“Explain…my…decision?” I ask, each word slower than the one before.
His agitation grows exponentially with each syllable. He is closer now. I don’t know when he moved.
He searches my face for something. It is not there.
“You know…you must know how I feel about you.” His words barely carry.
I nod. Yes. Yes, I know. Pretty sure anyway. I know how he feels because it is in every touch, in every look, in each breath and moment together and every ache when apart. I know it. I know it because whatever I feel leaving him, coming from him, it affects me in the same way or more.
“Answer. Me.”
There is a broken thread in the comforter. Just a few pulled stitches, a tiny frayed bit at the end. That is my focus.
This is so much more than I was prepared for. I just wanted him to notice me. I still want it. I want it all. But I have made him fall in love with someone else. Made him want someone else. Someone who doesn’t exist.
“Everything about me is a façade,” I begin, and he starts to say something but, as it seems there is little point in pretending any longer, I talk right over the top of him. “I do not take orders, I give them. I’d never even brewed a proper cup of coffee before this trip. My hair is curly. My clothes are colorful. I have been neglecting the things I need to do for myself—the things I need to do to improve my life—for this trip. Contrary…” I laugh dryly at my word choice; he has rubbed off on me. “Despite what it seems, I do not generally shove men around or rip their clothes or…”
I stop again. Straighten. Deep breath.
“None of that really matters.” I stand firm. “What matters is that today, when I needed to be myself, when you were on the verge of closing a big deal and making an even bigger mistake, I played my role. I sat quietly next to some flowers. Earlier, I didn’t insist you speak with me before we got to the point of closure. I played my role, and now you’re going to get hurt because I was so busy pretending to be this person that I’m not that I couldn’t even step up.”
“You think I have misjudged all that’s been happening.” He finally pushes wet hair out of his eyes.
“You have misjudged their practices. I have mislead you about me.”
“So this is what you think,” he says.
What I think is that I’m crying now. The room is blurry, and my cheeks are wet. “Please know…you are the last person—” I choke out, then sniff in a wholly unappealing way. “You are the last person I would have wanted to hurt.”
He’s quiet for a moment. I’m still fixated on the now very fuzzy thread.
“Why is that?”
He’s going to make me admit it, label it. I knew since he stepped into the room. I knew since he first looked up at me from beneath those wet bangs. I dared to hope differently, but it is going to happen. Canon always closes.
My words are less than whispers: “Because…really…because I really, truly care for you.”
He kisses me. Fierce and free. I rejoice in it. Memorize it.
Possessive and promising. I revel in it. And break it.
He looks unbelievably happy. Like there really is a tree and lights and that train set he always wanted but never got. Like someone knew what he wanted, exactly what he wanted, and gave it to him.
Then they took it away.
“Alaric,” I say. “You don’t really care about me.”
He shakes his head, his laugh sounding like relief, and pulls me in. I’m greedy; I take this last hug.
“Don’t attempt to tell me how I feel.” His hands run along my arms, warming me.
“You care about a lie. I am a lie.”
Pulling back, he runs a hand through my wet hair. Then steps away. Business mode.
“Ms. Baker, it’s time for your review.”
“Um, Al—sir, I tendered my resignation.”
“Fine. Exit interview. Suit yourself.” He waves a hand toward the bed, and I sit in spite of myself.
“As I was saying, Ms. Baker, we need to discuss the matter of your employment.”
“Yes, that is what you said.” And welcome to the weirdest break-up ever for a couple that never actually was.
Exaggerating each move slightly, he begins to pace the room with his hands behind his back.
“You did not apply for the PA position, correct?” Alaric asks, and I nod, taken aback by this question, but then I tell myself that he would probably do a check on any new assistant.
“Your primary reason for tendering your resignation?”
“Inability to perform my job effectively.” I fidget. He continues to pace. “Also…impact on my personal life.”
“Impacted—adversely or positively?”
“Um…just impacted. I have too many obligation
s…I don’t have room fo—”
He cuts me off. “Were you given a poor performance review by your supervisor?”
“Well, no.”
“Wouldn’t your supervisor be the one to determine whether or not your job was performed satisfactorily?”
He stops in front of me, eyes bearing down, hands still behind his back.
I do my best to level my puffy eyes at his from my place on the mattress. “Failing to prevent a problem by sitting idly by is the same as creating the problem. I am guilty by omission.”
“You put a great deal of stock in your ability to influence.” He resumes his movements, slower this time. “Do you think so little of your supervisor? That he is incompetent at evaluating information? Unable to take precautionary measures? That he doesn’t know exactly what his assistant is working on at all times?”
“No!” This is not what I meant at all. Does he mean…? Could he have…? “Did you alter the contract last night?”
He pivots and looks over his shoulder. “I’m not at liberty to discuss these matters with non-employees.”
Oh, fine. Play that way. My arms fold across my chest.
“Did you receive a raise in the past year?”
“No.”
“No, you say. But you seem to have had an outside source of income,” he says and touches his chin.
I feel my head pull back. I’m not sure where he’s going with this line of questioning.
“During your time with us, would you say that you were a dedicated employee?”
I nod. He must not conduct very many exit interviews.
“Consider your answer carefully, Ms. Baker.”
“Alaric, I don’t want to play this game any more.” I start to stand. He stops short in front of me.
“Fair enough,” he says. “No games.”
I start to stand, but now he’s directly in front of me.
“I know you. Don’t tell me I don’t.” Serious. He looks dead serious. “Your name is Emma Jacklyn Baker. You attended OU for undergrad and had a three-point-nine-eight GPA. You retook chemistry only to improve your grade. You have worked for our company for—” Alaric looks at his watch, pauses for effect “—three hundred and eighty-five days. You took your current position as a favor to your supervisor, Rebecca, who is also the only person whom you have told of your return to school.” He puts his hands in his pockets and leans back on the dresser.
The Plan Page 18