by Lucy Eden
“Yeah, if I wanted a relationship, which I didn’t.”
“Ah! A romantic loophole. Dr. Bradley is really going to earn that twenty dollar co-pay this week.” She fed herself a forkful of mac and cheese and looked away.
God, I was a prick. I remembered that conversation. Renee was going to stop sleeping with me unless we got serious and I said whatever I could to buy myself some time because I liked fucking her. After a while I did get bored and ghosted her, which was quite the feat considering we worked on the same floor. I remembered how many times I’d told Kimberly that she loved me, ignoring the fact that she’d never told me herself, because I wanted so badly for it to be true. I cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry.”
Renee stopped chewing and looked at me.
“I knew exactly how you felt about me and I knew I didn’t feel the same way. I was selfish and was careless with your feelings. You deserved better.”
“Adam, what is this?” She put her fork down and stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time.
“I also knew about the shit that was going around the office about us. I didn’t participate in it.” I raised my hands defensively. “But I didn’t do anything to stop it and I should’ve.”
She tucked her lips between her teeth, her jaw was working back and forth and she was blinking up at the ceiling. She made the same face Kimberly made when she was trying not to cry yesterday. After a few moments, she looked at me.
“Well.” She cleared her throat and nodded. “Thank you for saying that. I mean it.” She took a deep breath and added, “I still hate you.”
I nodded. That seemed about right.
“And I’m ordering three desserts to go.”
“Fair enough.”
I wasn’t any happier when I got back to the office. I was definitely poorer, but I felt lighter. I decided to look up Chloe and Nicole. Chloe was easy to find since she was still with the company. She was a structural engineer in the London office. I fired off a quick email that I probably should have read once or twice before sending, but fuck it.
Nicole was harder to track down. She’d changed her last name and left the corporate world but I found her through social media. She’d become a sculptor, was married with a kid and by the look of things had another on the way. I found her website and sent off another email.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I gave Eric strict instructions to screen my calls, only interrupting me if someone was dying, on fire or if Kimberly called. I immersed myself in work and the hours flew by and I barely thought about her, only every time I blinked or breathed.
Right before I left the office I got an email:
Nicki Peterson
To Me
Dearest Adam,
It was so wonderful and surprising to hear from you today. Thank you for your thoughts and lovely message, but you should know my days at WP are a distant memory and I hold no ill will against you. We simply weren’t meant to be. You sound well and seem to be working on yourself spiritually. Good for you. I’m doing very well, thank you for asking. I’ve married my soul’s true mate and the love of my life and we are parents to an amazing little boy named, Bodhi and are expecting a girl we plan to name, Lotus, any day now! Lol! I’ve rediscovered my passion for art and if you’re ever in western Pennsylvania please come visit my sculpture garden.
Peace & blessings to you!
With every good wish,
Nicki
I got off on the 125th street stop, even though the 116th street stop was closer to my apartment, so I’d have to walk past Kimberly’s house. I considered ringing her bell or sitting outside her door until she got home but I kept walking.
I dropped my bag at the door and stripped, making a trail of clothing across my apartment from the door to my bed where I flopped down in my boxer briefs and fell asleep.
I woke up to my phone chiming and vibrating off of my nightstand. I snatched it Karate Kid style before it hit the floor and swiped to answer without looking at the screen.
“Kimberly?”
“No, Dickbag. It’s Chloe!” I pulled the phone away from my ear. The caller ID displayed a long ass phone number starting with a 44. I also noticed it was 4:37 in the morning.
“Chloe? Why are you calling me at 4:30 in the morning?”
“Well, it’s nice to hear from you too and it’s 8:30 here.” She sounded way too cheerful. “I’m responding to that bat shit crazy email you sent me. What the actual fuck, dude?”
“It wasn’t crazy.”
“Adam,” she laughed. “That email sounded like it was written by Ebenezer Scrooge after he was visited by the Ghost of Pussy Past.”
“What?” I laughed. I was glad to hear Chloe’s sense of humor hadn’t changed.
“So, something big must have happened. What was it and who is Kimberly?”
I sat up, rubbed my eyes and started telling Chloe the whole story from meeting Kimberly on the plane until she kicked me out of her house on Monday. She was always easy to talk to and was the closest thing I had to best friend, besides Nate, until shit got weird between us.
“Wow. That’s fucked up. And you haven’t talked to her since.”
“Nope.”
“Hold on, Kimberly…works at Wolfe…” I could hear the keys of a keyboard clicking. “Is her last name Simmons?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’m googling her, obviously… Damn! Wow! Yeah. I would risk it all for that. You know, she kind of reminds me of that girl we met at Jones Beach three summers ago. Do you remember that night?”
I’ll never forget that night. I planned on telling my adult sons about that night.
“Kimberly looks nothing like that chick.”
“No, she doesn’t, but now you’re thinking about that night, aren’t you?”
I laughed again. Same old Chloe.
“Look, Adam, I wanted to call you and tell you that my leaving New York had nothing to do with you. You weren’t the only person I hooked up with at the office.”
“What? Who else?”
“Adam Price, jealousy does not become you.”
“Not jealous, just curious.”
“Chris Brockton, Marc Anders, and Amber Smith from accounting.”
“Damn, I had no idea.”
“Of course, you didn’t. The difference was when you fucked around at the office, you got promoted. I got my desk drawer filled with condoms and a caricature of me blowing the CFO hung up in the break room.”
“Did you and Jeff—”
“No, and that’s not the point, you ass. I documented everything and went to HR. They said they’d launch an investigation and I said if I didn’t get a raise and a transfer to London I would sue. Luckily for me, I was one of the best structural engineers at the firm and they couldn’t afford to lose me.”
“Well, I learned my lesson about sleeping with people at work.”
“Wow. Congratulations. When’s the parade?”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“When you got promoted, you hired your team. How many women are on your team, Adam?”
I didn’t answer her. She knew there were no women on my team and it felt like I was walking into a trap.
“That’s what I thought. You’re not fucking women at work but you’re also not hiring them. Is that any better?”
I wisely kept silent, because I didn’t have a good answer.
“When I was eight, I asked my dad for a Barbie dream house. Instead, he gave me a tool box, plywood, and told me to build one. I’ve been a structural engineer ever since. I didn’t work my ass off to be one of the best in my field to worry about my tits distracting the men at the office.”
“What do you want me to say, Chloe? I work better with men.”
She started laughing and I was overcome by the urge to throw my phone across the room.
“That’s bullshit because we made a great team and New York still calls
me to consult. And based on what you just told me, it sounds like Kimberly did the heavy lifting in that presentation. Adam, what if someone told your supermodel girlfriend that she couldn’t have the job she deserved because she didn’t have a dick?”
twenty six
Adam
The days began to bleed together. I stopped running in the morning. I woke up, showered, went to the office, held my calls, worked on assignments all day, ordered lunches then forgot to eat them, stayed at work as late as possible, came home, stripped off my clothes, went to bed, woke up at 3:30 am, stared at my phone for an hour and went back to sleep.
One day I woke up, headed for the shower, realized it was Saturday, turned around and went back to bed. I woke up a few hours later to hear keys jingling in my lock, the door creaking and my brother’s voice booming through my apartment.
“What the fuck?” he said. I rolled over and covered my head with the blanket. Nate ripped it off a second later. “Adam, what the fuck is going on in here?”
“Nate, what are you doing here?” I said, feeling around for the blanket but he must have torn it completely off of the bed.
“You didn’t come to brunch and you haven’t been answering your phone. Mom sent me over here to make sure you weren’t dead.”
Brunch? It wasn’t Sunday. Was it?
“This place is a fucking wreck and it stinks,” he continued. “There are clothes everywhere and there’s a box of rotting cucumbers on your counter.”
“They’re zucchini,” I mumbled. I felt around for my phone. It was Sunday. How the fuck did I manage to lose a whole fucking day? I opened it to check to see if I missed any messages from Kimberly. I didn’t. I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back Nate was sitting on my bed.
“I don’t give a fuck what they are. They gotta go.” He pulled out his phone and began tapping on the screen. “I’m sending someone over to clean, but you have to get up and get your stinky ass in the shower.”
I picked up the blanket, flung it around my back like a cape and flopped back onto the bed. I grabbed the tiny remote off of my nightstand and clicked the power button. “I’m Not in Love” by 10cc flooded the room.
“You came here. You saw me. Tell Mom I’m alive. Get out.”
“No, I’m not leaving you like this. Did you know that Aviva is six weeks old? Do you know what happens six weeks after your wife has a baby?”
No, I didn’t and I’d probably never find out.
“You can have sex again. I should be having sex with my wife but instead I’m here. So you are going to turn off this sad shit—”
“Cameras/Good Ones Go” by Drake was playing and he snatched the remote out of my hand and turned off the music.
“—and get your ass up and talk to me. When’s the last time you ate?”
I shrugged, because I couldn’t remember the last time I had food. Since I wasn’t dead, I assumed I’d eaten something lately. He disappeared into my kitchen, came back with a bottle of water and tossed it to me.
“Start from the beginning.”
For the second time this week, I recounted the events of the most confusing, frustrating and amazing week of my life. Nate listened with rapt attention, nodding and smiling at the right places. When I finished speaking he put his hands on his knees and stood pulling a yellow wooden cube from his pocket.
“Well, that explains this.” He held up the jewelry box. “Abby sent this over. It’s really beautiful, man. She said you helped design it over text messages? She’s been working on it all week. Now, she wants you to collaborate with her on a line of architecture inspired jewelry.” He smiled and held it out to me. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t even want to touch it.
“Can you just put in the drawer?” I took a sip of water and didn’t realize how dehydrated I was until I downed the whole bottle in a few seconds.
Nate opened the top drawer of my dresser just enough to slide the box in and shut it. He sat on the bed next me, put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Do you think she’s right? I mean about Mom. Do you have unresolved issues with her?” I asked.
Nate let out a mirthless chuckle and stood. “How much time do you have?” He started pacing around my room. “I know Mom has been through a lot of shit with our father that I couldn’t even begin to understand until she moved in with us, but at least Richard was consistent. You always knew what you were getting. It was never good but it was steady. You were prepared. With Mom? She was just all over the place. Most days she was cold and indifferent, just following with whatever our father wanted. But some days I would see a glimpse of the woman we used to know and I hated her for it. I know she feels bad and she working hard to change but sometimes I have a hard time sympathizing with her and I hate myself for that. She chose her life, but we didn’t have a choice. So to answer your question, yes. I have twenty years of unresolved shit and a year of therapy has barely scratched the surface.”
“You have a therapist?”
“You don’t? Didn’t Dr. Walters give you a referral list last year?”
Dr. Diane Walters was Mom’s treatment coordinator. She suggested Nate and I go to therapy to aid in Mom’s recovery but I never went. We went to a family therapy session once a month and I thought that was enough, too much sometimes.
“Yeah, but I didn’t need it. I’m fine.”
“Clearly,” he said indicating my apartment. “You have everything under control.”
“Fuck you.”
“If you were my wife, who I’m finally allowed to have sex with again, I’d take you up on that.” He pulled out his phone again. “But instead I’m gonna text Dr. Walters and have her send that list again. Then you’re going to shower, get dressed and we’re going get some food in you.”
“Nate, I don’t want to think about this shit. I really want to listen to sad Drake music and go back to sleep.”
My brother sighed, rose to his feet again and left my bedroom.
Disappointingly, he came back a minute later with a picture frame from my living room and handed it to me. It was from my high school graduation in Germany. Nate took a picture of me walking across the stage. I looked at him, shrugged and shook my head. He rolled his eyes and pointed at a hand on the left side of the picture.
“Look at the watch.”
I looked closer at the photo then I looked at Nate’s wrist.
“That’s your hand.”
He nodded as if he was waiting patiently for me to add one plus one.
“So, then who took this picture?” He looked at me pointedly waiting for the light bulb to go off.
“Mom? She was there?”
“She told Richard she was shopping in Milan for a week. Then she had one of her friends charter a jet to Munich.” I stared at the photo and my eyes started to burn.
“Why didn’t she say anything?” I whispered. He shrugged in response.
“And where do you think a nineteen year old kid got eighty-two grand so you could go to Pratt?”
I jerked my head up to meet his steady gaze. He nodded again.
“When I went to the town house to get your stuff she gave me a bunch of her jewelry to sell.”
I stared at the photo again almost hoping if I stared hard enough she would appear. “Did she come to either of my graduations from Pratt?” I looked up at him and I suddenly felt eight years old.
“No, she wanted to. Richard would’ve definitely noticed if she tried, but she pored over the pictures and hounded me for details for hours.”
She could fly half way around the world to watch me graduate from high school, but my college graduations were a short car ride away and she was trapped in that townhouse like a prisoner.
“I know she also wrote a letter to Edward Will.”
The first tears spilled. She was the reason I got that interview at Will and Peking. I knew Will wasn’t fond of my father, but taking the chance of alienating Price/Covington was a big risk for any firm. I quickly wiped away the te
ars and Nate patted my shoulder.
“You know you were always her favorite, right?”
I wiped my eyes more furiously and cleared my throat. I didn’t know why all this shit Nate was saying was affecting me this way. If I had to guess I would say it was because Kimberly was right. I had some old shit to fix. All this time, no matter how fucked up life was for my mother, she was somehow always there for me.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this shit?”
“She asked me not to.” He shrugged and he was preoccupied with tapping on his phone again.
“Do you think I have a chance to fix things with Kimberly?”
He shook his head. I looked at him in shock. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Nope,” he said not looking up from his phone. “A woman that graduated from Wellesley with honors, has a master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and speaks French, Spanish and Italian—”
“And a little bit of Latin,” I mumbled.
“—definitely wouldn’t want to have anything to with whatever the fuck this is.” His eyes flicked up to meet mine before returning to his screen. “My brother might have a chance, though.”
I knew he was right. I needed to get my shit together. I don’t know what Kimberly would think if she saw me right now.
“First, stop sitting there looking like your dog died —wait, you didn’t have a dog that died, did you?”
I smiled for the first time in a long time. Wait, how did Nate know all that shit about Kimberly? I reached up and snatched his phone. He was scrolling through her LinkedIn profile. I flicked to the top of the page and saw the Kimberly Simmons from the airplane smiling back at me.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, but are you Adam Price?”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said as Nate snatched his phone back.
“What? You told me what she did in that presentation and about her proposal. She might be leaving Wolfe…” He shrugged innocently. He was unbelievable.