by Ivy Smoak
"There is one more check in the check book. We're willing to pay you five million dollars total to walk away from our family. I suggest you take it."
"Or what?"
"You may think that we don't love our son, but we're willing to do anything to protect him."
"He doesn't need your protection. What he needs is your love. What is wrong with you?"
His father frowned. "We need to get back to our guests." He walked out of the room without another word. James' mother stared at me for a second before following her husband out of the office.
I sunk into one of the chairs in front of the desk and put my face in my hands, finally letting my tears free. Why hadn't I just left with James when he told me to? I hadn't believed him. I didn't think there was any way that his parents were as bad as he said. But he was right. They were absolutely horrid. And now James was out somewhere alone. I thought about earlier in the week when his mother called. He had seemed so happy that they were finally willing to meet me. He let himself get his hopes up, just to be crushed by them again. And I had put him in that situation. He was probably furious with me. The thought just made me cry even harder.
"Oh my. I'm guessing your little conversation didn't go so well?"
My whole body felt cold. I quickly wiped my tears away and looked up at Isabella. "Please, Isabella. Not right now."
She walked into the room, closing the door behind her. "I have a few things to say myself."
"Mr. and Mrs. Hunter have already filled me in on their plans to get you two back together. I don't want to hear about it."
"You poor thing. You really had no idea why Jonathan and Susan invited you here?" She looked down at the scattered pieces of the checks on the ground.
If she thought that her being on a first name basis with them bothered me, she was dead wrong. I never wanted to be that close to them. Not now that I knew what they were like.
"I believe James was thrilled to see me. It's been much too long since we were close. And I'm excited to change that."
"Why can't you just leave him alone?"
"I let him have his fling. I gave him the distance he needed. It's time for us to work things out."
"You loathe each other. What on earth are you talking about?"
"Just because he's not addicted to me doesn't mean he doesn't love me. It's a sickness. If you want what's best for him, you'll let him go. I'm the only one who knows what he needs. I can help him."
"He doesn't need your help." I stood up. "And he's not addicted to me. He loves me."
"It's a fine line. And I'm afraid it's a little blurry for him."
"All he needs from you is to be left alone. Please, just leave us both alone."
"I'm trying to help you. I'm giving you the chance to walk away from all of this. You still have your whole life ahead of you. You don't want to spend time taking care of..."
"He doesn't need to be taken care of. We've been together for two and a half years and I've seen nothing. He's fine. He's over whatever it is you're talking about. We're both fine."
"He's not fine. He's addicted to you."
"Stop saying that." I knew she was just trying to make me paranoid. But James was fine. He wasn't like that anymore.
"You're rewarding his behavior."
"Are you so blind that you can't see the difference? Just because no one has ever loved you doesn't mean you have to take it out on me."
"You don't think James loved me? He really does like to keep you in the dark, doesn't he? His affection lasted for a few years and then it was gone. The same thing will happen to you."
"Stop living in the past. It's pathetic."
"Stop living in denial."
"Don't you ever come near him again, Isabella. Leave us alone."
"Or what?"
"You don't want to find out."
She laughed. "I'm so unbelievably scared." She smiled at me. "There's two weeks until your wedding. Which means I have two weeks to make James see the light. It's plenty of time. I just have to remind him about what he's missing. I'll only need a few minutes alone with him. Until he's screaming my name instead of yours."
"You bitch."
She slapped me hard across the face.
I grabbed my cheek. No one had ever slapped me before. I hadn't been expecting that at all. She was wearing a few rings on her hand and I could feel the small bruises already forming on my face.
She put her hand on her cheek and made a fake shocked look. "Sorry, did I hurt you?" She removed her hand from her own cheek and smiled. "I didn't think you'd mind. I know how aggressive James can be. I figured you liked to be smacked around."
"You don't know him, Isabella. I know you wish you did. I know you're upset that he left you. But it's not my fault. Stop blaming me for your shortcomings."
"My shortcomings? He slept with you while he was still married to me. You're a slut."
"Look, you can keep his parents. I know you have them wrapped around your finger. And I want nothing to do with them. But you can't have him. He's mine." I walked past her and out of the room. I looked to the right toward the party. There was still light classical music pouring through the hallway. I turned to the left and walked as quickly as I could away from everyone else.
I pulled out my phone and called James. There was still no answer. I stopped in the middle of the foyer, unsure of where to go. I heard voices outside and the front door started to open. I couldn't face anyone else right now. I turned and ran up the stairs.
Chapter 10
Friday
I felt like I was trespassing as I made my way down the corridor. I just needed to find a bathroom to hide in until James picked up his phone. When I turned the corner, I saw a door with a nameplate on it. Robert. My heart skipped a beat and I looked farther down the hall. A door with James' name was on the opposite side of the corridor. I looked behind me. It didn't matter if I was sneaking around. There was never going to be another opportunity to see James' childhood room.
Before I could change my mind, I walked over to the door and went inside, quickly closing it behind me. Moonlight shown in through the sides of the closed blinds, casting eerie shadows along the floor. I ran my hand along the wall until my fingers found the light, and I quickly switched it on.
Everything in the room was a pale blue. The walls, the carpet in the center of the room, the comforter on the bed. His parent's must have been thrilled to have a boy. There were a few posters pinned to the walls of who I assumed were old quarterbacks for the Giants. The only one I had ever known of was Eli Manning, and neither poster was of him. Besides for those, there was nothing that seemed very personal in the room. Actually, there wasn't much in the room at all except for the extensive library along one wall. I walked over to the shelves and let my eyes wander the titles. There were tons of classics that had been on my school reading lists growing up, like Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huckleberry Finn.
It was almost like he had put them in order of when he had read them. The later shelves seemed to be filled with books from college. Books about website coding, marketing, management, and any kind of business imaginable. I only recognized one title in the marketing section, and I was glad that my education shared at least one similarity with his at Harvard. Unless he had just read Marketing Principles in Foreign Markets on a whim one summer.
I smiled when my eyes fell on all the books in the Harry Potter series. When he had seen my room, he had teased me about Harry Potter. I thought he had been joking when he said he read the series, that he was just trying to make me feel less immature for having children's things in my room. It was sometimes so hard to tell whether or not he was serious. Either way, I was glad he liked Harry Potter as much as I did. I tilted my head as my eyes wandered across the titles in the series. He didn't have all of them, actually. He was missing the first one. I scanned the rest of the shelves to try and find it.
I laughed to myself as I ran my finger along the spine of a Boy Scouts handbook. For the l
ife of me, I couldn't quite picture him in one of those cute little uniforms. Actually, I couldn't really picture him as a child at all. And there hadn't been any pictures of him on the walls downstairs like I'd hope there'd be either. I turned away from the bookshelf and saw a picture tucked into the side of the mirror above his dresser. But it wasn't of him. I walked over, staring at the girl in the picture, and pulled it off the mirror.
I didn't need to turn it over to know who it was. It had to be his high school girlfriend, Rachel. Young love. It was something I knew nothing about. James was my first real boyfriend. I guess I was young when I first met him. I didn't feel young anymore though. And compared to the girl in the picture, I doubted I looked young either.
James must have kept her picture hanging here all through college too. The only reason that they had broken up was because his parents thought she wasn't suitable for him. If they had liked her, would they still be together? Would he have had a happier life?
When I had first met Isabella, she had told me I wasn't his type. Rachel had brunette hair like Isabella and brown eyes like her too. Isabella and James weren't compatible, but he must have been attracted to her if she looked like Rachel. Maybe they really were his type. Which meant I wasn't.
I turned the picture over. There was just one line scrawled on the back: Forever and always.
I had the eerie feeling that Rachel had given this to him after they had broken up. Maybe she thought he'd go back to her after college when he no longer needed his parents money. Maybe she was still waiting for him.
I tried to shake the thought away as I stuck the image back on the mirror. She was part of James' past, just like Isabella. I was his present and future. There was no reason to dwell over either of them. I pulled out my phone and saw that there were still no messages from James. Hopefully Rob would find him soon.
As I sat down on James' bed to wait for him, I noticed the copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that had been missing from his bookshelf. It was sitting on his night stand. I pulled it onto my lap and let it fall open to a random page. The copy was really worn and felt oddly comforting in my hands, similar to my own copy. I skimmed the words that I had read half a dozen times and froze.
James hadn't read these books for the cute little redheaded girl. That part had been a tease. He read them because he needed an escape. He felt trapped here. I looked up at the very blue room. Living up to his parents' expectations must have been stifling. He dumped the girl that he loved and married a girl he never would. But that's all I really knew. And that wasn't his childhood. What horrible things had they made him do before that?
I loved the man that I knew. But I didn't know everything about him. All I knew about his childhood now was that he escaped to this very blue room to read. He must have felt so alone. There were hundreds of books on those shelves. I had told him I was nerdy growing up, preferring a book over socializing, but he had never told me that he was the same. Maybe we had more in common than I ever realized.
I started flipping through the book and saw a folded piece of paper laying between the pages. I pulled it out and unfolded it. The writing was faint, either faded from age or he hadn't had as sure of a hand back then. But I could make out the words. It was a list of criteria for emancipation. James had crossed out each line, probably because none of them applied to him. A permanent escape was unattainable.
So where had this boy gone? Why had he tried to become independent from his family only to do whatever they wanted for the next ten years of his life? What had changed? It couldn't have just been the issue of money. His parents were plenty generous with that. Offering me five million dollars to disappear to supposedly protect their son. They never would have really cut him off, would they? It didn't make any sense. There must have been something James hadn't told me.
I put the piece of paper back and closed the book. I didn't need to ask myself all those questions. His parents had taken away the love of his life, and I knew better than anyone how strongly James loved. So he had given up on life. He realized he was destined to be miserable and just seemed to accept it. James wasn't weak. He was the exact opposite. He was stoic. His parents repeatedly tried to break him and he just took it. Anyone would have needed an escape. A book, a bottle of scotch, sex. His escapes had matured with him.
I set the book back down on the nightstand. He wasn't addicted to me. We were both an escape for each other from our normal lives. We were each other's happy endings. The fairytales in the books that lined his shelves really did exist. It wasn't an addiction. It was our reality. We were the lucky ones because we had found each other. No one could ever convince me otherwise.
The door squeaked but I didn't turn around. I could feel that it was him. "You really did like Harry Potter?" I put my palm down on top of the book on the nightstand.
"I've been looking everywhere for you," he said, ignoring my comment. He sounded on edge, like he really had searched through the whole house for me.
"I texted you to tell you I was in your room." I stood up but kept my face turned to the ground. I knew there was a bruise forming on my cheek and I didn't want him to see it. Not until we were far away from this awful party.
"There's no cell reception in this stupid house."
"Oh. Is it okay if I take this?" I asked and picked up the book. "We don't have a copy at our place."
"No." He cleared his throat. "We'll buy a new copy for us."
He hadn't wanted me to see the paper inside. I shouldn't have come in here. I had invaded his privacy. I put the book back down. "Okay, let's go then." I pretended to scratch my cheek and I walked past him so that he wouldn't be able to see my face.
"Penny?" He grabbed my wrist, moving my hand away from my face. "What the hell happened?" His words were harsh, but his thumb tracing over the bruise on my cheekbone was soft and delicate. "Are you okay?" His touch felt even gentler than it had a second ago. It made me feel like crying. But I didn't want him to think it was worse than it was.
"Nothing." I didn't look up at him. "It's fine."
"Baby?" He kept his hand on the side of my face. "Who did this?"
"No one. I was upset and I made a wrong turn. This house is enormous, I just ran into..."
"Why are you lying to me?" He sounded hurt. I still hadn't made eye contact with him.
Why was I lying? We didn't lie to each other. Not anymore. And it didn't matter if he knew the truth. Making him hate Isabella even more was only for the best. I never wanted to see any of these people ever again.
"Penny, tell me."
"Isabella slapped me. It's not a big deal. Can we please just go?"
His hand fell from my face and he grabbed the door handle.
"Don't. Don't you dare walk away from me again."
He let go of the handle and turned back to me. "I didn't walk away from you earlier. I told you it was time to go and you refused to come with me."
"Exactly, James. You told me it was time to go. You didn't ask if I was ready to leave."
"Penny, I couldn't stand there and pretend that everything was alright."
"I know, I'm sorry. Please don't leave me alone in this house again, though. Can't we just leave? You were right about everything. Talking to your parents was pointless."
"You talked to them?"
"They think I just want your money. They offered me five million dollars to walk away from you. They wouldn't even entertain the idea that I actually loved you." I shook my head. They were so disgusting.
"They tried to pay you off?" He lowered his eyebrows slightly and then ran both his hands down his face. It looked like he was understanding something for the first time. Like how evil his parents truly were. "Did you take it?" It came out as a barely audible whisper.
"What?"
He stared at me. He looked defeated and tired. Normally I couldn't see the age difference between us. But as he looked at me now, I could see the small crinkles around the corners of his eyes. They probably weren't laugh lines. The th
ought made my chest feel tight.
"James..." my throat caught. "How could you think that?" The rollercoaster of emotions from the night suddenly seemed to catch up to me and tears started running down my cheeks. The salty water stung as it slid down my left cheek. One of Isabella's rings must have left a small cut on my face.
He just stood there looking stunned. I quickly wrapped my arms around him. I winced when I pressed the side of my face into his chest. Hug me back. His body seemed to stiffen instead. "James?"
He wrapped his arms around me in response. "I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry." He put his chin on the top of my head. "I knew better than to bring you here. I don't know what's wrong with me. Nothing's changed. They'll never change. I'm so sorry, Penny."
"Don't apologize, this is what I wanted. You knew I wanted to meet them, so you made it happen. And now I have. It's done. We don't have to see them ever again."
He sighed. "Except for the wedding in two weeks."
"I uninvited them."
He laughed. "What?"
"Oh." I leaned back to look up at him. "Sorry, I mean, it was just in the heat of the moment. Obviously if you want them there..."
"No." He put his hand on the side of my face, gently rubbing his thumb over the bruise on my cheek. "No, I don't want them there. I'm done with them."
"I'm sorry that I forced all this. I just thought if they met me, maybe I could change their minds, you know? I was just trying to help."
"You can't change my parents' minds. Trust me, I've tried my whole life."
I wanted to ask him about the paper in his book, about his relationship with Rachel, about his whole childhood. I wanted him to fill in all the blanks. But right now all I wanted was for him to take me home. I needed to get out of this house, away from all the memories that seemed to upset him.
"But it was really sweet of you to try."
"Or foolish. What a disaster of an engagement party. Can we go home now?"