Persuaded

by Rachel Schurig

  I held Emma’s gaze, unblinking. I knew, deep down, that if she didn’t back me up here, we were done. I had put up with a lot over the years, but this would be something I couldn’t come back from. If she couldn’t trust me, couldn’t stand up for me now, I would walk out of that door and be done.

  But, to my surprise, it was Rick who spoke up first.

  “I think it’s a good plan.”

  I turned to him, more than a little shocked. “You do?”

  He nodded. Was that a smile? “I helped come up with it, didn’t I?”

  I grinned back, suddenly feeling much better. Like I would be okay, no matter what the others said. I would be able to leave here with my head held high.

  But I still wanted to win. And to win, I needed Emma.

  I turned my attention back to her. “What about you?” I asked, my voice soft. “What do you think?”

  For a split second, I thought she might say no. But then she smiled—a small smile, but a smile all the same. “It’s fantastic.”

  The relief that rushed through me literally knocked my legs out from under me, and I had to sit. “It is fantastic,” I said faintly. “Good call.”

  Emma laughed. “I wish you would have come up with it a month ago. Then we could have helped you with all this.” She swept her hand across the table. “This is some presentation.”

  “Just wait until the chef gets here,” Lucy piped up from the door.

  “That’s right,” I grinned, feeling giddy. “Lucy knows a chef from the neighborhood. He’s going to join us and prepare a locally sourced breakfast for them to really drive home our restaurant idea.”

  “Good,” Charlie said. “I’m starving.”

  I smiled across the table with you. “You’re on board, too?”

  He nodded, tapping the pamphlet with his hands. “This is really good, Annabelle. Much better than what we had.”

  “Excuse me,” Liz said, standing. “What we had was a hell of a lot of work. And a good idea!”

  “Just because it was your idea doesn’t mean you need to be married to it,” Mary said, shocking me more than anything else that morning. “If we want to win, we need to put our egos aside and go with the best plan.”

  She smiled across the table at me, almost shy. “This is good work. I’m sorry I doubted you, Annabelle.”

  “That’s okay,” I told her. “I just hope you trust me from now on.”

  “All right,” Emma said, standing. “That’s enough of the sappy stuff. We have work to do.”

  “But, Annabelle and Jim already did the work,” Mary argued, and I laughed, happy to see that she hadn’t actually changed that much.

  “We need to study these plans,” Emma went on, ignoring her. “We need to be as knowledgeable as Jim and Annabelle.” She turned to me. “Why don’t you go to your office and relax for a few minutes. Put on your makeup. Close your eyes.” Her face clouded over. “You probably have a killer migraine.”

  I shook my head, realizing, to my great surprise, that I hadn’t had a migraine since before my dad got to town. But a short rest would still be nice. “I’ll be back in plenty of time to head over,” I told her, standing. As I passed her chair, she reached out her hand and took mine, her eyes looking up at me, pleading. I could read the guilt there, the regret. My immediate instinct was to tell her that it was fine, that we were fine. But I couldn’t. Her refusal to trust me yesterday had cut deep. Would we be able to come back from that? “We’ll talk later,” I told her. “After we win this thing.”

  I could feel Rick’s eyes on me as I passed, but I ignored him. I still had work to do. And, just like Emma, I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready to forgive him yet.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “All right, everyone,” Emma called, her strong, confident voice carrying clearly over the din in the club. “Everybody put your glasses up for Annabelle, without whom we would have gotten our asses kicked today.”

  “To Annabelle,” Jim called, raising his glass.

  “Here, here,” Charlie echoed.

  I grinned around at them, happy enough with the success to let them praise me for a minute.

  “And to Jim,” I said, clinking his glass. “And Lucy.”

  “And Rick for the great design,” Jim added.

  “To all of us,” I replied. “To a job damn well done.”

  We clinked our glasses, even Liz, though she looked decidedly less enthusiastic than anyone else. I wondered if she and I would even pretend to be friends after all this. For the first time in my life, I decided that I couldn’t care less.

  “I wish I wasn’t still in this stupid wheelchair,” Lucy muttered, sipping her champagne as she looked out over the dance floor. We had decided to have our celebration in the first club that Emma and I had developed together. What better place to celebrate securing the biggest win of our careers?

  “Why?” Mary asked. “I wouldn’t mind having someone roll me around in a comfy chair all day.”

  I rolled my eyes down at Lucy, but she merely laughed. “It is nice sometimes. But I want to dance.”

  “Well,” Jim told her, reaching down to swoop her up. “I can help you with that.”

  He carried her out onto the dance floor where he held her up, barely allowing her casted foot to touch the ground so there wouldn’t be pressure on it. Emma sighed beside me. “How fair is it that she got a guy before us? She’s a child.”

  I laughed, clicking her champagne glass with my own.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered, looking down into her glass. “I’m empty.”

  “I’ll go get another bottle for the table,” Rick said. “Then I need to get going.”

  “You’re going?” Mary asked, pouting a little. I had a feeling she hadn’t really gotten over the fact that Rick wasn’t going to end up with Lucy. I was sure she found Jim unworthy as an in-law prospect, a pale comparison to the more sophisticated half of their partnership.

  “I have to catch a red-eye tonight.”

  That got my attention. I had been doing my best to avoid him all day. I had no idea what to say to him. Part of me wanted to apologize for everything that had happened while an equally loud part of me wanted to deck him for being so cruel on Tuesday. It hadn’t missed my notice that this entire thing could have been avoided if he would have just talked to me before going back to the office and telling everyone about Will.

  “A red-eye?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t quite meet my eye. “I have some business in New York this week, so I’m flying out tonight.” He looked down at his empty glass. “I’ll be back in plenty of time for the permit applications.”

  I smiled weakly at him and turned away. So he was leaving for at least the next two weeks. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that. Probably for the best, I thought to myself as he slipped out into the crowd in search of more champagne. Still, it would have been nice to have ended things on a more pleasant note.

  “That’s it,” Charlie said suddenly, setting his beer down and grabbing Mary’s hand. “You’re dancing with me, woman.”

  “I am?”

  “You are. We’re celebrating.”

  To my shock, she giggled and slipped her arms through his, letting him lead her out to the dance floor. Liz muttered something about the lack of prospects in the club and stomped off in the direction of the bathrooms.

  And then Emma and I were alone.

  “Annabelle…” she started, before shaking her head. “Shit. I don’t even know what to say.”

  I wished we would have gotten more champagne before starting this conversation. It would have been nice to have something to do with my hands.

  She didn’t follow up her comment with any other insight. Was she expecting me to just say that it was okay, that we were fine? “I don’t know what to say, either,” I told her instead, hearing the sharp note in my voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted, grabbing my hand. “I should have believed you. I should
have stood up for you to the others.”

  “Yes. You should have. I’ve never done anything to make you doubt me, Emma.”

  “Except for almost drop out of school and sneak away to Europe without telling me.”

  My breath caught, and I pulled my hand away. “But I didn’t go,” I said, my voice low and shaky. “That’s the point, Emma. I didn’t go. Because you didn’t want me to.”

  “Annabelle—”

  “No, you don’t understand, do you? I always go along with what you want. Always. Do you not see that?”

  “I’ve only ever wanted what was best for you!” She sounded close to tears, but I didn’t care. I suddenly felt like an explosion was coming, like I had been bottling something up for years without even realizing it and it was about to break everything whether I wanted it to or not.

  “You never knew what was best for me!” I cried. “God, Emma! How could you think this was best for me?” I gestured at myself, wanting her to understand.

  “What? What was best—”

  “This! Me! Don’t you see me?” I was crying, and it pissed me off. I was tired of crying. I wanted to be strong, for once. The way my dad had told me I could be. “I’m miserable, Emma! I’ve been miserable for years! I don’t eat and I don’t sleep and I get these headaches—Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you look at me and see someone who’s doing okay?”

  “I know,” she whispered, covering her face. “I know, Annabelle. I just didn’t know why or what to do to help you.”

  “How could you have not seen it?” I asked, whispering now, too, tears streaming down my face. “My heart was broken. It’s been broken for ten years.”

  “I should have let you go.” Her voice from behind her hands was muffled, but I was pretty sure she was crying. “I shouldn’t have stood in your way.”

  “No. You shouldn’t have.”

  She finally removed her hands, and I could see that she had indeed been crying. Her perfectly applied, expensive mascara running down her cheeks. Emma Russell, looking short of perfect. It was shocking.

  “I’m sorry, Annabelle. I really am. I’ve regretted it so many times, but I kept telling myself it was for the best, that you needed your education, that he could have screwed it all up for you.” She shook her head. “How stupid. I mean, look at him. Look at what he’s done for himself. Look at how successful he turned out to be. I shouldn’t have gotten in the way.”

  She still didn’t get it. But then again, maybe I hadn’t gotten it, either.

  “Emma, I wouldn’t have cared if he never found this success. I just wanted him. He could have stayed a mechanic in my dad’s shop our whole lives, and I still would have been happier than I am now.”

  She winced.

  “It wasn’t all your fault,” I told her, reaching out for her hand. She clutched mine so tightly that it hurt. “I should have been stronger. I should have stood up for myself—stood up for what I wanted. I’m the one who went along with it. I always just went along with it.” I sighed. “It wasn’t fair to either of us. I should have been stronger.”

  “Annabelle,” she breathed, squeezing my hand even tighter. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

  I looked at her, my oldest friend, and I knew that she truly believed it. She loved me, for all my faults. Just like I loved her in spite of hers. The only faults she had that could hurt me were the ones that I let hurt me.

  “I love you, you sappy old bitch.”

  She threw back her head and laughed in a most un-Russell-like manner. I joined her, letting her wrap an arm around my shoulders and pull me in for a hug.

  “That’s enough of this,” she said, wiping under her eyes. “We’re supposed to be celebrating. Where in the hell is that champagne?”

  I looked around, but there was no Rick in sight. “Screw the champagne. Let’s dance.”

  Emma grinned at me. “Dancing sounds great.”

  So that’s what we did, we danced until we were sweaty and tired and the makeup was running down our faces. It wasn’t until much later that I made my way back to the table to see a single, unopened bottle of champagne there. There was no other indication that Rick had been there, no sign that he might still be around, no jacket or cellphone left behind. He must have left to catch his flight.

  I wondered if I would still be here when he got back. I hadn’t yet determined when exactly I would be exited the firm. I wondered if I would ever see him again. The thought made my heart heavy.

  No sense being sad about something you never had, I told myself, heading back to the dance floor with the bottle.

  But still, it would have been nice to have ended things on a positive note. Nice to have been able to say goodbye this time.

  ***

  The exhaustion of the sleepless night started to catch up to me around ten, and I made my excuses to go home. Emma had found a cute lawyer and seemed pretty preoccupied in trying to entice him to buy her drinks. Mary and Charlie, to my surprise, were still dancing, and Jim and Lucy were cuddled up in one of the booths, giggling like a pair of ten-year-olds. I left the club feeling fond of all of them, and thankful that my time in Vegas would be wrapping up on a good note.

  It was chilly outside for May, and my exhaustion was getting worse by the minute, so I grabbed a cab as soon as I could, giving him directions to my condo. In the quiet of the back seat, my phone beeped, and I jumped a little. I hadn’t looked at my phone in hours, something that I rarely did. I smiled as I pulled it out. Maybe I was already starting to change.

  The text was from Emma. Let me know you’re home safe. I think lawyer boy is a sure thing, so I hopefully won’t be home tonight.

  I laughed, texting her back. You should probably find out his name before you go home with him. Though lawyer boy has a nice ring to it.

  Now that my phone was in hand, I decided I should check my emails, which I had been thoroughly ignoring what with the nonstop work.

  “God,” I muttered under my breath. Ignore the phone for a day, and end up with fifty unread emails. I scrolled through them, most of them work related that could wait. But then a name at the top of the screen caught my name.

  Rick.

  I clicked on the email, feeling some strange thrill of anticipation. It was probably just something related to the bid. But then, he had sent it at eight o’clock.

  Annabelle,

  I’m sitting a table away from you and Emma, listening, and I don’t think I can keep silent anymore. I know you need to say these things to her, to get this out, but I want nothing more than to interrupt you and take you out of here. This email will have to do, for now.

  I feel like my heart is going to crawl out of my chest. It was bad enough this morning, to hear you speak to Jim about holding on with no hope, but this… I’ve never felt so bloody awful and so full of optimism at the same time. The idea that you’ve cared all these years… God, Anna, please tell me it’s not too late. You’re the only one. You’ve always been the only one. You have to know that. Don’t you see—that’s why I’ve been such an ass this last month. I’m so sorry. I know I was rude and cruel and the opposite of what you deserve from me. I can only defend myself with this: I’ve spent these past ten years every bit as heartbroken as you say you have. I convinced myself I could work with you, that I was over it, but it only took moments with you to realize that my love has never changed in all this time.

  You know you’re the reason I went to Sedona—why else? Once you were back in my life, I couldn’t stand to be away for even the weekend. I’m a mess—my fingers are shaking on the keys so much I can hardly write. Please say it’s not too late.

  I hate that I have to leave. My flight leaves at midnight. If you get this—if you can forgive me—please come to the hotel. I’ll wait until the last minute.

  I love you, Annabelle. I’ve never stopped.

  Rick

  That explosion that I had feared before was finally coming now—my entire chest felt like it was bursting. I wante
d to laugh and to cry and to scream at someone. But more than that, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to get to him. I had to get to him. I glanced at the time on the phone. 10:15. Would he have left? The airport was so close.

  “Can you go to the George Hotel instead?” I asked.

  “Whatever you want,” the driver replied lazily, apparently unaware that I was about to spontaneously combust all over the back seat of his cab. The ride, only a few blocks long, was torture. I hated every single tourist clogging the streets, slowing us down. Why did so many people have to come to Vegas, anyhow?

  When we finally reached the George, I bolted from the cab, asking the driver to please wait. There was a line at the check-in desk, and I cursed the tourists again. I looked down at my phone, uncertain. I didn’t want to have this conversation through text, or even with a phone call. But I also didn’t want him to leave. Before I could make up my mind what to do, the desk clerk was calling me forward.

  “Yes, can you please tell me if Rick Wentworth has checked out?”

  The clerk, a bored-looking teenager, tapped at her keyboard slowly. I felt like screaming—was the entire world conspiring against me?

  “Sorry,” she said, popping her gum like some stereotype of the World’s Most Annoying Teenager. “Checked out twenty minutes ago.”

  I did curse then, causing the teen’s eyes to widen. But I was already rushing back out to the cabby who had, thankfully, waited for me. “Can you take me to the airport please?” I asked. “As quick as you can.”

  “What terminal?”

  Damn it, damn it, damn it. “I need to check.”

  “Okay.” He pulled out into traffic, and I sent a text to Rick—I was out of options. But there was no reply. And the status under my text remained a stubborn Delivered, never changing to Read. Damn it. Was his phone off? I pulled up Jim’s number and called it, praying he’d be able to hear over the noise in the club.