Prude

by Hilaria Alexander

  I get a text from Ben while I’m on the subway.

  B: Just got home. Hurry up, I can’t wait to get you in my arms.

  M: On my way now!

  Typing fake-excited text sucks. I’m not good at lying to begin with, and I don’t want to lie to him, even if he did lie to me, more than once. I also hate that part of me loves him so much and wants to forgive whatever he did without even knowing the whole truth. Now that I’m finally here, three hours after I left this morning all prim and proper, I don’t look so put together anymore. The subway left me a sweaty mess and I haven’t had any water since I left the meeting. I check my armpits for sweat stains. Thankfully, the dress is holding up, although it’s glued to my back like a wetsuit.

  I undo my now messy chignon in the elevator and I shake my hair, letting the natural waves flow. I feel nervous, like the first time I went up to his place, but I don’t have butterflies now, just an ugly knot in my throat.

  When he opens the door, he fills my eyes like a vision. He is wearing a blue t-shirt and faded jeans. He looks tired, but then a smile lights up his face and his eyes are dancing with excitement, just for me. I let out a sigh and I smile back. Apparently, just a look from him is enough to make me feel light-headed. Yeah, that and the lack of water.

  I want to surrender and throw my arms around him and forgive and forget everything. Before I can even move though, he sweeps me in his arms, holding me tight, lifting me just a couple inches off the ground, nuzzling me on my neck.

  “How are you?” he asks me.

  “A little dizzy,” I say with a smile.

  He puts me down, a sudden expression of concern on his face. I must look worse than I think.

  He kisses my lips gently, almost timidly.

  I put my hand on his chest and look at him.

  “How are you? How was your flight?”

  “Okay. I’m glad to be back. I have something to tell you,” he says, grinning.

  I start feeling my head spinning even more and I can hardly keep my balance. I need to sit down. I need water.

  “Me too. But first, can I have a glass of water? It’s so hot outside and I didn’t have any water with me.”

  “Sure, let’s go to the kitchen and you can tell me everything,” he says, placing a hand on the small of my back.

  That’s when everything fades to black.

  When I open my eyes, I’m on Ben’s couch, my feet up on the armrest and a cold compress on my forehead. I try to get up, still taking in my surroundings.

  “Here, try to drink some water.” He is sitting on the coffee table to my side. He lifts up my head gently and holds a glass of water to my mouth. I do what he says and drink half the glass. He stops and puts the glass down.

  Our eyes meet. He looks concerned. That’s sweet, I think, and I then I suddenly remember why I came. To hand him his ass.

  “Thank you. Man that was weird.” I smile awkwardly and lay my head back on the couch.

  “You scared me there for a moment. I had to catch you to keep you from landing face-first on the floor,” he says, reaching for my hand.

  “Sorry. I got overheated,” I say, adjusting the compress on my forehead.

  “So what did the doctor say?” he asks me, sounding worried.

  “The doctor?”

  “Your doctor’s appointment, Prudence.”

  “Oh! Well . . .” Crap! I forgot all about my lie!

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “What?” My eyes open wide, I sit up suddenly and I feel the blood rush to my head.

  “Whoa!” I say, realizing it wasn’t very smart to get up from the couch.

  “You need to take it easy, sweetheart,” he says, trying to make me lie down again.

  “Wait, wait . . . I’m fine,” I say, still wrapping my head around the whole thing. “I’m not pregnant.”

  He hands me the cold compress and I hold it to my head and lie back again. Talking in this position is so awkward.

  “You aren’t?” he asks, searching my eyes.

  I shake my head no.

  “We’ve always been careful,” I add, matter-of-factly.

  “Well . . . you never know,” he says, tugging nervously on his bun.

  “I just got dehydrated.”

  “Sorry, I overreacted.”

  “You almost gave me a heart attack there. Did you . . . did you really think I was . . . pregnant?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry, it was really stupid of me to make assumptions,” he says, looking slightly uncomfortable. “But you sounded upset and distant over the phone, you said you had an OB-GYN appointment, and you just fainted in front of me,” he says, listing the reasons for the mishap. “I got ahead of myself.” He looks embarrassed and starts tugging at his bun again, and he looks cute and adorable. I almost forget what I came here for.

  I almost want to ask him if he would have been happy, but that’s beside the point. I have something else entirely to tell him.

  “Ben, I have something to tell you,” I say, sitting up on the couch.

  “I do too, but you go first,” he says, reaching out for my hands, but I pretend to be fiddling with my dress and I avoid touching him.

  “While you were gone, I got a call from Scott Martin with Bleecker Independent Press . . .”

  His eyes shoot up and lock with mine and his jaw hardens. He knows.

  “Very well, I can see that you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Prudence, let me explain . . .”

  “No, let me finish. Scott Martin told me you never called him back. He left you voicemails, sent you emails, and you never replied. All this happened about three weeks ago, when we had our fight? Why haven’t you said anything?”

  “I didn’t think they were a right fit for your book. How did the meeting go?”

  “Wonderful. He loved the book excerpt.” I tell him, keeping my eyes on him and trying to keep my composure. I’m an awful liar.

  “They are never going to agree to publish it with the music,” he says coldly.

  “He’s thinking about it,” I reply, shrugging.

  “They don’t have the money to do that. They are too small.”

  God, he is unnerving sometimes. How does he know that?

  “When I got a call from him, I did some research. I found out they are a fairly new company. They need something new that would give them a big boost. Getting involved with a project that might require a little more press and promotion would really not be a smart move. I should have called him back, I know. That was unprofessional. But I knew they would not be the right fit for you.”

  I fold my arms across my chest and sigh, exasperated.

  “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” I stare at him coldly.

  “You don’t believe me.” He stares at me and looks hurt.

  “I don’t. Whether or not this is the truth, I cannot believe you chose not to contact a possibly suitable editor . . . and more importantly, you decide to never mention it to me!”

  “It’s complicated.” He runs a hand through his hair and stares down, letting out a sigh.

  “Your behavior is completely unprofessional with me too! I trusted you! I knew we should have never gotten involved. This was a bad idea,” I say, raising my voice.

  He looks at me with a shocked expression.

  “Don’t say that. You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. Our relationship probably influenced you to disregard Bleecker, whereas if I were just your client, you probably would have told me and just reasoned with me that they were not a good option. Instead,” I say, getting up, “you thought that us being together meant you could make decisions for me. I can just see you saying something like you have my best interest at heart. I’m so mad at you,” I say, my voice going up several octaves. “Expect to be fired.”

  “Wait. I made a mistake. Can’t we just get past it?” he says, grabbing my hand, the rest of my body still turned away from him.

  He stands up and turns me around in
his arms, searching my eyes. I try to avoid looking at him, until he lifts my chin with a finger and makes me look at him. I’m still dizzy from being dehydrated and passing out. The last thing I want to do is get lost in his eyes and lose my resolve.

  “This is your second strike, buddy. Remember last month?” I counter.

  “Well, do I have a third?” he asks smiling, his charm in full swing.

  I glare at him.

  “And yes, you can fire me. I should have been honest with you. I deserve to be fired,” he says, chuckling.

  This is not the time to be funny, I think.

  “What I want to know is,” he says, cupping my cheek with his hand, “are we okay?” I remove his hand from my face and hold it.

  “I don’t know. I love you, but I can’t think straight right now. I need some time.” I’m actually shocked at how resolute I sound, because I feel like a frazzled mess inside.

  “Can you just wait a minute? Remember I told you I had something to say too?”

  “Oh. That’s right.”

  “Can you sit down please? It’s kind of a long story, and you are clearly still dizzy,” he says, gesturing toward the couch. I do as he asks. He sits back on the coffee table across from me. He glances toward me, before looking down and exhaling.

  “I never told you exactly what I had to go to London for.”

  “No, you were purposely vague about it and I could have been a total bitch about the whole thing, but I tried not to be intrusive and let you handle your business,” I say firmly.

  He smiles, and it does things to my willpower. I want to be mad at him, but I also want to kiss him.

  “And I love you for that. See, this trip was partly business, partly family related,” he says, hesitant.

  “Family? What family?”

  “I met a family member while I was in London.”

  I stare at him, stunned and confused. I can’t recall him mentioning any family in England. He doesn’t know his dad, and his mom is from Sweden . . . I don’t understand. Family? Does he have a family? Like a secret family? Does he have a kid?

  “Please stop being so vague. Spit it out, just spit it out! Is there someone else?”

  He holds my hands, despite me trying to resist him, and looks at me, confused.

  “Someone else? No, no, nothing like that. God, I think I might be better off just saying it, or it will take me forever.”

  “You know, for a book agent, you really suck at storytelling,” I tell him flatly.

  That makes him laugh and he seems to loosen up a little.

  “Yeah, I guess I do. That’s why I’m not a writer, clearly. Okay, where to start . . .” he hesitates.

  “Don’t do that again. Just say it.” Now I’m the one holding his hands.

  “I met my father in London.”

  “What? Woah, talk about a twist of events. Your father, father?”

  “Yes,” he says shyly.

  “The one you never met before. Your biological one?”

  “The only one I have. Anyway, it’s not a story with a happy ending. Turns out he is a real jerk.”

  “Oh.” I’m still shocked, but I force myself to say something. “I’m sorry, that sounds terrible. Did you know he was a jerk before you went all the way over there? How did you two even get in touch? Did you call him? Did he find you?” I ask him.

  This is starting to get interesting and make more sense.

  “One thing at the time,” he says, trying to make me slow down.

  “Sorry. I have a lot of questions.”

  “Believe me, I did too. Let me see if I can try to make this less complicated. Remember when I told you I didn’t know who my father was?” I nod and let him continue. “I actually have known for several years. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t tell you that yet,” he says.

  “Understandable. It’s a delicate situation. Please continue.”

  “Remember the surfing accident I had years ago? When I was still in high school? I told you I went through a bit of a rebel phase. I gave my mother hell. Surfing was my only outlet and I hadn’t realized, until then, that it was the way I channeled my frustrations. My mother would never tell me who my father was. When I was little, she told me he was dead, and as I grew older, she just changed her story and said I really didn’t want to get to know him. She said I wasn’t missing anything. But, at seventeen, some days that’s all I could think about. Phillip was not even in the picture yet at the time. I had no father figure, and I wanted to know who my father was. I wanted him to look at me and have to acknowledge I existed,” he says looking at me, and I squeeze his hands in mine, because I can tell he is trying to hold it together, but I hear the pain in his voice.

  “My mother did not know what to do with me after the surfing accident. I was a raging bull, mad at the world. She thought that if she finally told me the truth, it would help me regain focus of my life. She told me my father was Rick Hunter. She didn’t know much about him, but he was CEO of some company at the time, and the son of a prominent publisher.”

  Rick Hunter. Ezra Hunter. Benjamin Hunter Hallstrom.

  I’m just doing the math in my head when he says, “Ezra Hunter is my grandfather, Prudence.”

  Chapter 26

  HOLY SHIT. This is some soap opera twist. It’s hard to wrap my head around it. I’m not even sure I can even comprehend the whole thing. I feel like I’m still missing a lot of the pieces of the puzzle.

  “How long have you known this?”

  “Since my senior year of high school. I mean, I have known since then, but obviously that’s not when I was able to do anything about it. I promised my mom I wouldn’t obsess over it, but you know, I had to do my research. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out much else about my dad. I tried to find out something about him on my own and discovered he had moved to England. He had inherited a manufacturing company that belonged to his mother’s side of the family. Apparently, he didn’t want to be involved in his father’s business whatsoever. I also found out he never married, never had kids. That did make me feel better, in a way. The man seemed to be a loner, not cut out for family life. I still wanted to meet him, though. But I was only a college student then and I had no chances of getting access to this man, who lived in London, on top of everything else.”

  “Is that why you got into publishing? To find out more about your grandfather?”

  “Well actually, I really did love books and if anything, it finally made sense to me to learn more about publishing. If I couldn’t meet my father, I was going to introduce myself to my grandfather. And I did. Unsuccessfully, I might add. When I got the internship at Biblio.

  I wanted to tell him as soon as I started, but I didn’t factor in that it was going to be so hard to approach him. Then I got assigned to be his assistant’s intern and got to learn more about him. Every day I just wanted to blurt out the truth, what I knew at least. So I bided my time. I was actually offered Cora’s job first, and I thought it would be the right time to tell Mr. Hunter who I was. And of course I had no DNA test, no proof whatsoever. My mother did have a picture of her and my father when they were together, and she finally gave it to me. I gave him the whole speech, showed him the picture. I thought it would be like one of those TV movies where the old man is moved to tears by finding out he has a grandson. He didn’t react that way. He kicked me out, accused me of being a manipulative little prick,” he says, biting his lip.

  “Those were his words. I tried to explain to him I only wanted to get in touch with my father. He didn’t believe me. He fired me on the spot. So that’s when I left Biblio. To say that my ego and my spirit were crushed is an understatement. I was really hurt. But, at the same time, I appreciated everything I was able to learn in my time there. I really did love publishing and I could see myself in the field. Maybe it was in my blood, maybe it was just a coincidence. So I decided to become a book agent. I stayed the hell away from Ezra Hunter though. He made himself crystal clear. It didn’t make me happy, but at least
he knew. I was still hoping that maybe one day he would reach out to his son and tell him about me,” he says.

  He gets up, sits next to me on the couch, and puts his head in his hands.

  “But that’s not how it went, is it?”

  He looks up and continues.

  “No. Actually, I didn’t talk to him for a couple of years at least. I think he probably knew about me still working in the industry, but he never tried to approach me.”

  “When did he change his mind? I gather he had a change of heart about you?” I ask.

  “Maybe it was because so much time had gone by and I had not hired an attorney or tried to extort money from him. I guess he finally realized I wasn’t after the company or anything, but that I just really wanted a chance to meet my father,” he says, looking at me wearily, as if he’s waiting for me to flip out or something, but I just listen and nod, encouraging him to go on.

  “We ran into each other at this party and he talked to me briefly. This was about . . . four years ago. He said he wanted to meet with me and talk in a more private setting. He and my father have a terrible relationship, go figure. According to him, he was always a difficult child, but as he grew and had some financial success taking over a company belonging to his mother, he became even more distant. My grandfather blames himself. He told me when my grandmother died, he didn’t know how to handle it, and it only pushed the two of them apart. He never went too much into detail, but it’s easy to imagine it’s hard to mend a relationship when it’s that broken. Eventually, I think something changed in him. His only son is not married, and to this day lives the life of a bachelor. He doesn’t have any children, and he’s made it clear he doesn’t care about taking over the family business.”

  “And all these years, he only believed you on your word? I mean . . . you said yourself you had nothing but a picture.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head, a lopsided grin on his face. “We had a DNA test soon after meeting at that party. Until we got the results, I could tell he was still skeptical. I mean, I look nothing like him or my father. Anyway, his change of heart meant that he wanted me in his life, and at first, I really didn’t understand in what capacity. We started spending a lot of time together at social and charity events. You know, you have seen the pictures of the two of us,” he says, glancing at me.