by Mia Wolf
“Whatever do you mean?” I ask him.
“Your nose is red from laughing,” he observes then lays his head back down on the bench in defeat.
Once my laughter calms down, I lay back down, too. “It works on me, don’t worry.”
Warren nudges my shoulder with his, and I tell him that I mean it. He still doesn’t believe me.
“We have changed, Warren,” I say in a serious tone. “I am not the same as I once was, and I can see that neither are you. We don’t need to keep chasing the vision of our old selves. I can’t keep looking for the man you once were. I already did that for a decade, foolishly enough. I want to know who you are now.” When Warren doesn’t reply for a while, I speak again. “What do you think? You don’t want to tell me?”
He sighs. “You’re asking me to stop being a shadow.”
I don’t know what he means, but I also know that pushing it won’t help. Asking him to stop being a shadow? His words are so cryptic that I don’t have the first clue about how to decipher them. I let it rest. All that matters is that we’re looking at the night sky again. Together.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that night a lot. That night at the Hilton’s restaurant, I mean, when we met and I was panicking. I was having a dinner meeting with someone and suddenly everything spiraled out of control. Yes, Steve was inappropriate, he crossed boundaries he shouldn’t have, I’m not justifying his behavior, but I still couldn’t understand my own reaction. Why was I so shaken?” I pause and take a deep breath, feeling a sense of calmness that escaped me that night. “I think I know why I was panicking. Ever since I stopped hurting myself, ever since I stopped cutting myself and started to treat my body like it’s sacred and precious and not to be damaged, I’ve become—” I pause to find a less incriminating word but can’t come up with one, “soft. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I’ve become cautious about my body and that night, Steve caught me off guard. I lost all sense of control and perhaps the old, sad, dark memories resurfaced. Anyway, the reason why I’m telling you this is to say thanks. I really needed someone to take care of me that night because I couldn’t have done it myself.”
Warren doesn’t say anything, he simply stares at me with reverence in his eyes and then we go back to appreciating the night sky.
The next day, Rose and I are working in A3 as we have been doing for a couple of days now. I am constantly surprised by how good she is at her job. Yes, she has some habits that are befitting of an amateur, but the girl has only been working for a year now. No matter what background she may have, she has what it takes. When she comes up to me today and gives me feedback on the designs I sent her last night, I am suddenly thinking of the day I told Andrew Brehm to hire her instead of me. That day, I probably still had some inhibitions about her talent. Today, I am certain my judgment was spot on.
“How’s it going with you and Mr. Brehm?” I ask Rose while we sit across from each other, frantically working on our computers.
She doesn’t look up from her screen to reply, “Good.”
“Did he ever ask you to be the lead designer for his company’s apparel department?” I ask and look at her, seeing that she’s looking back at me. “I still think you’d be up for the task.”
She gently nods her head. “We’ve discussed it. He offered me a position which I politely declined because I don’t think fitness apparel would work out for me.” She chuckles.
“What’s funny?” I ask, smiling at her.
“The pun,” she replies. I laugh when I finally understand it.
Still chuckling, I get up from my seat to look at the sketches again. This time, I kept them locked in a cupboard for safety. I retrieve the papers and look through them, and I feel the smile leaving my face. Could it be…? I check the sketches again while my heart starts racing.
“More sketches are missing,” I mumble to Rose. She swears as the icy feeling settles into my stomach again.
I’m shocked and yell out in frustration. Next moment, I’m on a call with Violet. “I need all CCTV footage from yesterday and today. In my office, stat.” I shout the last word in anger.
I go back to my seat and slump into the chair, shoulders sagging in fatigue and disappointment. This morning, the security team gave us the CCTV footage that we asked for the other day. They showed me any suspicious episodes, but there was nothing that could help us find out who took the sketches. I rub my temples. What on earth is going on? This has never happened before.
“Do you have any idea who it could be?” Rose asks while I keep my head buried in my hands.
I shake my head in response. I have no idea. I have made many enemies over the years, but that’s just how things are in this industry. I’m constantly surrounded by hungry sharks and I don’t know which one could have decided to raise its ugly head. Perhaps someone who’s close, someone who knew about this. For the briefest second my lashes rise and I take a fleeting glance at Rose. I immediately regret it. I trust her.
A tiny voice in my head asks me if it could have anything to do with Warren’s sudden re-appearance in my life, but luckily another voice in my head answers no.
Violet bursts into the room while I’m sitting on my chair with my eyes shut.
“I asked security to send over the footage, but they said it will take another two days for them to process it for us,” she says. “I also talked to the guards. They haven’t reported anything unusual. They said things are always calm around here.” I am filling to the brim with rage.
“Calm, my ass,” I spit out. “Does anyone do their job properly around here?” I stop and take two deep breaths to wash down the bitterness. When my eyes open, they are soft and kind. I can see the relief in both Violet’s and Rose’s eyes and I feel a pang of guilt for yelling and stressing them out.
“I’ll get you some coffee, Ashley,” Violet says.
“Thanks, Violet, that would make my day right about now,” I reply as Violet leaves the room.
This whole thing is throwing us completely off schedule. I feel defeated. It doesn’t make much sense to continue working on the designs when I have no idea whether or not we’re heading towards a crisis.
My phone buzzes. It’s a message from Warren and I feel eternally grateful for his renewed presence in my life. Just seeing his message makes me want to go and hang out with him instead of running Regal.
“We should go to the village some time,” the text reads. I have no idea what village he’s referring to. I re-read his message to see if it makes more sense this time, but I give up quickly because I feel incapable of anything at the moment.
“Rose,” I say. She looks at me, her eyes leaving her screen. “Warren just asked me to go to a village with him. Do you by any chance know what he’s talking about?”
Rose’s mouth falls open at first, but she shuts it quickly. I realize that Warren probably hasn’t filled her in on what’s been going on between us, something that I feel thankful for. “That’s where our home is,” she says.
My heart skips a beat at the thought of seeing where Warren grew up. In our three-year relationship, he never talked much about his family for some reason. I barely even knew about Rose’s existence when I signed her for Regal fashion week.
“What’s it like?” I ask her, keeping my voice even.
Rose shrugs. The girl’s face just refuses to give anything away. “Actually, it’s a beautiful place. There are woods in the back, it’s built on a mountain, and it’s almost always decorated for one festival or the other. If you wanted to take a break for a day or two,” she pauses, “well, it would be a nice place for you to spend some time. I’m staying at Andrew’s apartment so you and Warren can have the house to yourself.” Before I can contest that Rose clarifies, “I don’t mean anything specific by that. Just that you won’t have to deal with any more people around the house.”
For some reason, I have the urge to tell her that there’s nothing going on between Warren and me. Yeah, right, nothing at all. We just ha
d casual sex, but that doesn't count. Before I can embarrass myself more, I thank Rose and leave the room.
“I think I could really use a getaway right now,” I text Warren back. “Can we go after I finish work today?”
Chapter 23 – Warren
I cannot believe that Ashley agreed to go to the village with me. My brain wants to know what I’ve done to deserve this. I feel a sense of excitement, but also fear. Bringing Ashley to the village means that she’ll see a bear village. Not that she knows what bear shifters are, and I’ve sworn to myself that I’ll never tell her about that part of me. But still. What if she found out?
“Come over to my hotel, we can leave from here,” I text Ashley. I start looking for last minute flights. But once I’ve booked, it’s not happiness that fills my heart. Instead, a painful memory starts pulsing through my veins. The memory of the day that changed everything.
I’m sitting on the bed, hopelessly looking out of the window at the skyscrapers of New York as they try to pull me up, to a happier time. But it’s not working. Is it weird that Ashley doesn’t know anything about my family? I’ve known her for ten years, been in an intimate relationship with her for three, and yet she doesn’t know what my life has amounted to. She doesn’t know the ruinous truth. It’s all on me— I’m the one who never talked about my family despite her questions. A shadow has no business having a truthful existence. The realization is funny; I used to think my parents’ death was what turned me into a shadow, or perhaps my ex-girlfriend’s death right after we broke up. But no, I was always the shadow. Those events simply turned my heart to stone.
I bet Ashley wants to know about my family now that we’re going in the village. She would, right? That’s what you do when you care about people, right? You show interest in their families, in the things that they are interested in. I should tell her. I want to.
Ashley shows up an hour later with a black luggage bag. She’s dressed in a black skirt and a white top that sticks to her curves. Her hair is tied in a bun with a chopstick stuck in it; her Chinese roots really show when she keeps her hair like that. There’s a sharpness to her eyes like they observe everything that’s going on.
“You don’t look so well,” she says to me, sitting down on the bed. She smells like lavender, her signature fragrance. Some things don’t change, I chuckle to myself. No matter how much Ashley might want to claim that we're not the same people, some things never change. Like the past.
“There’s something I have to tell you.” I take in a sharp breath—talking about that day throws my body into overdrive. I only ever talked about it once, in front of Rose. That time, I could not lose control. I couldn’t fall apart in front of my sister who I abandoned at the worst time of her life. I needed to be strong that day. But I don’t know how my body will react today, whether or not it will collapse under the weight of what I’m about to tell Ashley.
“You’re not gay, right?” Ashley asks curiously. “Because if you are, you should’ve told me before I showed up here.”
I shake my head and sit next to her.
“Did you know I was in a relationship after we broke up?” I ask her. I don’t think I ever told her—she was the very thing I was trying to stay away from. I had left New York to put some distance between us, and Moira lived not too far from the village.
Ashley shakes her head after some thinking—she looks hurt. “I was trying to get over you, Ashley,” I say to soothe her, but it only seems to make things worse. She looks away from me, and I can’t find the words that will make her feel better.
“What was her name?” Ashley asks still looking away from me, out of the window, at the New York skyscrapers.
“Moira. We were together for maybe six months,” I tell her. I pause and take another deep breath. “The day I broke up with her, she was upset with me. We got into an argument and things escalated. Moira left the house, crying and sobbing. I tried to stop her, tried to plead with her to get back into the house and talk things over. But she wouldn’t listen. She got into my car and drove away. I had no way to follow after her, so I texted her, called her, begged her to come back home so we could talk about it calmly. I wanted to explain to her why I was breaking up with her—we didn’t make each other happy. If we had stayed together, we would’ve eventually lost ourselves.” My voice cracks a little. Every muscle in my body is screaming, asking me to stop. How many more times do I have to relive that day?
“Then what happened?” Ashley asks, still staring out of the window. Her voice sounds emotionless.
“She got into an accident. The hospital called me, saying that she had—” I choke on my words. But I need to continue. Ashley needs to know, so I clear my throat. “They wanted me to identify her. I was her emergency contact. When I reached the hospital, they took me to her—her face was covered in blood, her eyes were shut, and the entire left side of her body was scratched, bruised, and still bleeding. I remember that all sounds stopped. The only thing I could hear was my own heart pounding in my chest, and I couldn’t stop that noise. It made me acutely aware of the fact that Moira’s heart had stopped beating. That we wouldn’t ever bicker again.” I pause when I feel Ashley’s hand gently resting on my back, caressing me as if trying to smooth out the wrinkles and make the hurt go away. I clear my throat again. I need to finish the story. “The doctor told me that the couple in the other car had also died. But I didn’t want to see any more dead bodies that day so I left. I ran out.”
Ashley slowly turns to face me and I feel hot tears coming to my eyes. This is the first time that I’m not alone while crying over this.
“It was my mom and dad’s car that Moira hit that night,” I say and the tears start falling down my cheeks in silence. Ashley wraps me into a hug, softly rubbing and patting my back, but the tears won’t stop coming. I make no sound, just like I did that night when everything went silent. I just let them fall.
When I have calmed down a little, Ashley looks me in the eye.
“You know it’s not your fault, right?” is the first thing she says. It’s as if I have been waiting for someone to say those words to me for an eternity. For a brief moment, the hurt boils hot in me like fire, but then its intensity reduces. I feel exorcized of my demons.
“Can I ever really stop blaming myself?” I mumble and engulf her in a hug again because I don’t want her to see me cry.
“There’s nothing to blame yourself for. You were hurt, Warren. It must’ve been so hard, you must’ve been so lonely.” It’s as if water engulfs me—fresh water that extinguishes all the fire within me. Ashley says just the right words, the words I’ve been needing to hear for all those years.
For the first time, I let myself believe that I’m not the underlying cause of all the destruction and catastrophe that I always thought I caused. It’s a scary thought, and I have to hang onto Ashley as it hits me with full force. But it calms me and I gulp it down like an antacid after a bad case of acid reflux. I feel like I’m being purged of my sins or exorcised of my demons, whatever the metaphor may be. I want to believe for just a little bit longer that I deserve the happiness that’s set at my table right now.
Chapter 24 - Ashley
I feel like Warren and I are close to a break-through, like we’re finally getting somewhere. He’s taking me to the home he grew up in and shared with me his darkest secret. I have waited and longed for him for a decade. Still, all those years, I’ve felt like I never got to see the true Warren. Even when we were together, he never felt close to me, even though I couldn’t pinpoint what it was or put my finger on it. He was closed off and never confided in me. I can’t count the number of times we argued because he never truly talked about himself. It put a huge strain on our relationship; it broke when it broke, but it needed some deep fixing from the beginning. I have regretted breaking up with Warren many times in the past because I have been unable to find anyone to replace him. No one has ever come even close. But I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t trust me enough to share the
ir life with me either.
But today I finally caught a glimpse of who Warren really is. I don’t know what changed, but I like this new development.
“You’re asking me to not be a shadow.” Isn’t that what he said? Makes much more sense now.
We make our way to the village in our rental car, and I ask Warren what I can expect to see.
“Expect caves,” Warren tells me while he drives as crazily as ever. It’s crazy not in the rash or dangerous sense, but in its precision. His turns and pacing are uncannily accurate.
“Caves? You’re joking, right?”
He shakes his head and smiles, then turns cryptic again. “You’ve never seen architecture like in the village.”
I don’t know what to make of that information so I stomach my curiosity for the time being. When we arrive, Warren parks the car at the base of the settlement. I exit the car and stare at the landscape in front of me, my mouth dropping open.
“This is unreal,” I say, absent-mindedly walking towards a circular platform that’s surrounded by yellow fairy lights and lanterns. In the backdrop, houses are crawling up a winding pathway, the pavement lit from the lamps on the porches. From a distance, it looks like a quiet, sleeping carnival that comes alive at midnight. The breeze that passes through my hair smells peculiarly. It’s earthy, and it reminds me of Warren.
“What’s the occasion?” I ask, gesturing at the lights.
“It’s your first time here. That’s something to celebrate,” Warren tells me. I feel like he’s joking again so I turn around and stare into his eyes; they’re burning in the amber glow all around him and they show that he means it. I instantly feel my heart warming although I scoff a little at the cheesiness of the situation.
“Maibach,” a man calls out as he walks towards us, crossing the circular platform.
“The rotunda’s a nice touch,” Warren says to him. “Ashley, this is Joshua,” he pauses then adds, “Rose’s friend.”