Be What Love Is

by Malouff, Ellie

  That’s a good thing.

  That thought doesn’t last long. In a moment of no self-control, I slip into a memory of her. We’re in the bathtub, chest-to-chest, her tight nipples sliding up and down me as I learn that I’m the love of her life. In my memory, she actually says the words, and for a moment there is a jolt of twisted joy within me and a longing to see her dazzling green eyes staring up into mine.

  I shake my head once, twice, and back away from my desk and go to the window.

  “Mr. Lewis?”

  “Walk away,” I tell Philip, and he shuts the door as he goes.

  The grey skies drain the vivid memory of her, as do the deep breaths I’m taking. With each rise and fall of my chest, I chastise myself. I cannot do this at work again. It’s getting worse every day. Memories hit me harder and unbidden feelings flood me to the point where I’m practically choking on them.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I welcome the distraction. It’s Evan.

  “Lewis,” I answer.

  “Lunch today?” he asks through some road noise.

  “I’ve got a call from noon to one.”

  “Meet at one-thirty at the club?”

  “Fine. See you then,” I say and end the call.

  I hope he’s got news on Canterwood Manor. The buyers are playing hardball.

  The rest of my morning goes as planned. I take calls. I set strategies. I manage affairs. Victoria hasn’t been by, caught up in her own work, and I’m grateful for the break. She’s been overbearing lately.

  When one-thirty rolls around, I meet Evan at a private club that goes back centuries. I’m not even certain how far back my family’s membership goes, but they treat Evan and me like bloody royalty. Only England’s best belong, but best is a relative term. It’s aristocracy at its finest. The dark paneled walls, gold sconces, and antique furniture might impress someone new, but to me, it’s utterly drab. This place is the antithesis of progress. It’s especially irritating to me today.

  We’re seated at a table by the window and before our drinks are even delivered Evan gets right to the business at hand. I’m listening, or at least trying to, but my head isn’t in it.

  “So what do you think about their counteroffer?” he asks.

  “It’s fine,” I answer.

  Evan’s eyebrow arches. “You want to accept this?”

  “I just want it over with,” I answer and take the glass of scotch from the waiter’s hand before he can set it on the table.

  Evan observes me as I take a long drink. “I think we can do better.”

  “How much better?”

  “At least three hundred thousand more.”

  “It’s not worth it,” I tell him.

  “It’s not worth it?” Evan says rhetorically and rubs his forehead with his hand. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I told you, I want it over with.”

  “Have you talked to Cara about the offer?”

  I take another drink and stare into the bottom of the glass. “She’s not interested.”

  “I heard she went back to California. No wonder you look bloody miserable.”

  My eyes flick to his face. “Who told you that?”

  “Multiple people. You know how London gossip is.”

  A heavy sigh slips out. “Yes. I do.”

  “What happened? Was it the incident at Renascent?”

  “I’m not interested in talking to you about her.”

  “Listen, mate,” he leans forward and whispers, “I’m sorry that I snogged her. You didn’t bagsy her when I gave you every opportunity. It was obvious, even to me, that she wanted you from the get-go.”

  Relief unfurls in my chest. It’s an unwelcome emotion, even if it feels nice.

  “So, what happened?” he asks again.

  I’m about to tell him to fuck off, but the earnest expression on his face makes me pause. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on the estate and then she left.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, she didn’t care for London or this whole scene,” I say and wave my hand around at our surroundings.

  “Bollocks. London is fantastic.”

  My instinct is to agree, after all, London seems like the center of the universe, but I don’t respond. I try to picture that same girl I fell in love with, the one that jumped over puddles in a pair of tattered canvas shoes, dining in a place like this. The image doesn’t render at all.

  He goes on. “Cara certainly lacks some of the social qualities we’re accustomed to, but surely she could adapt. After all, she is a Montgomery.”

  Adapt? The idea of Cara adapting makes my stomach tense. In fact, it’s absolutely frightful to imagine her as a posh socialite.

  “That’s not Cara. She doesn’t fit in, nor does she want to.”

  “Pity,” he says and looks away.

  Jealousy stings me. “Because you fancy her?”

  “No, because you obviously do.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know Evan cared so much about me.

  “Why did you let her go?”

  “I’ve made that quite clear, she didn’t want to stay here.”

  “Let me rephrase, why didn’t you follow her?”

  I give him a stern look. No one has asked me questions like this about Cara. I’m not sure how I’ll respond out loud or internally. “I’m finished talking about this. Let’s order.”

  Evan doesn’t budge. “You’ve lost a lot in your life, why lose her?”

  Panic rises in my chest, and before I can stop myself, I shout, “Stop,” and slap the table hard. The sound echoes through the club and the glasses on our table shake.

  “Reid,” Evan chides. “Consider where we are.”

  All eyes are on me while the whispers start. My eyes shut as I block it all out.

  “Listen,” Evan goes on. “You’re clearly in quite a state. Maybe you need a break, a holiday away.”

  And just like that, the Italy holiday pops into my mind and makes me flinch. There’s no way I can go there without her. For a split second, I let myself remember the love she felt for me. What did she say when I asked her why she got it for me? I wanted to make you happy.

  I shove out all the feelings that are flooding me and compose myself. “Work is hectic.”

  “Victoria has a handle on it,” Evan says. He’s quite confident that is the case. I know they talk, but I wonder just how much she’s talking to him lately about me, about the business, about what happened with Cara. I’m confident he’ll report back to her about my outburst.

  We get through the rest of our lunch, and I have an additional drink. I tell Evan to accept the offer, and he reluctantly agrees.

  As we part ways, he shakes my hand with that tight grip Cara found so funny and says, “I also heard you were happy with her. I haven’t known you to be a happy man, and you’re especially not happy now. Consider what I said. Good luck, mate.”

  Before I can respond, he slips into his Aston Martin and takes off.

  “Bloody bastard,” I mutter under my breath and get into the town car that’s waiting for me. The drive to the auction house is painfully slow, and it gives me too much time to think. No matter how I try to distract myself with emails and texts, Evans words rattle around my brain. The truth of what he said seeps into my pores. It’s like I’m drowning from the inside out.

  Victoria calls moments before I get to my destination.

  “Where are you?”

  “Headed to the auction house.”

  “I know, that’s where I am. Where are you? You’re late.”

  “Stuck in traffic. We just pulled up,” I answer and end the call. Victoria is waiting just inside the entryway.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Helping.”

  “I don’t need your help,” I snip.

  She doesn’t respond to that, and I don’t have time to tell her to go, because Damien approaches us.

  “Mr. Lewis, it’s so good to see you again.”

  “
Likewise. This is Victoria Spencer, my business partner. Victoria, this is Damien Rosenthal.”

  “Your reputation precedes you,” she says.

  “Yours as well,” he says, and the two shake hands. “Right this way.”

  “Why are you really here?” I whisper to Victoria as we follow Damien.

  “I’m making sure you go through with this.”

  “You don’t think I will?”

  “Your mood bewilders me more and more. I’m not sure where your head is at.”

  Cara.

  “Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. My ability to block Cara out is slipping. “I don’t need you to be my nanny.”

  “No? I heard about what happened at the club.”

  “Bloody hell. Evan?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Not just Evan.”

  “I’m really beginning to hate this city,” I mumble.

  Victoria doesn’t get a chance to respond, because we’ve entered the showroom and the sight makes it nearly impossible to form words. There, on display like a bloody museum, are Trevor and Anna’s most exquisite pieces of furniture, sculptures, and collectibles. And there is art. So much art.

  “It’s not everything of course,” Damien says. “But it’s the best pieces. Everything else is in the warehouse, but is included in the catalog.”

  “This isn’t right,” I blurt out, not even understanding my own meaning.

  Damien’s face drops. “You have a problem?”

  “Yes,” I answer, but I don’t know how to explain that seeing all of their things on display makes me sick to my stomach.

  “We can fix whatever the problem is,” Damien assures me.

  “Reid, what is going on?” Victoria asks.

  Instead of responding, I start walking around the room, looking at the things that were once theirs and then mine. And Cara’s too. The art from the dining room, the vase from the foyer, and so much more. Memories of my aunt and uncle wash over me and the hollowness tugs at me. Tears spring to my eyes and I do everything in my power to hold it back. To hold everything back.

  I stumble upon the couch from the sitting room off the kitchen, and I stop in my tracks. It’s the furniture I was sitting on when Cara straddled my lap that one drunken evening. The memory of her lips, so close to mine, strikes me hard, and for the first time in two weeks, my cock stirs.

  “Fuck,” I say once more and run my hand through my hair.

  “Mr. Lewis?” Damien says as he crosses the room to meet me, but I don’t wait for him. When I turn to go, I see it, and of course, it’s the one thing that can actually break me. Cara’s ballerina painting, the Degas, is mounted on the wall, a velvet rope separates it from the world.

  My breath is as out of control as my mind and my heart. The dam breaks, and all the feelings I denied after Cara left, pour right into me.

  Victoria is now next to me, and she grabs me by the shoulders. “Reid. What is going on?” she shouts.

  “I can’t do this. I won’t do this.”

  “Pardon?” Damien asks.

  “Shut it down. Shut. It. Down. ” I demand.

  “Reid! No,” Victoria says.

  “You want all of this back?” Damien asks and waves his hand around at the showroom.

  Some form of rationality returns. “No, I don’t want all of this, but I can’t let the Degas go. And, I can’t let that couch go, or that armchair over there, or. . .”

  “Slow down, sir.”

  “Reid, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m not. For the first time in many years, I’m actually being a human. These things mean something to me.”

  Victoria scoffs. “I think what you’re saying is that it means something to that bloody awful woman.”

  Her words knock me back as I absorb them. Everything in me slows down, and a deep sense of peace finally settles within me, because Victoria has been tremendously helpful. I take a step closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders.

  “Victoria,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

  She gives me a bewildered look. “For what exactly?”

  “Because I finally get it. You’re absolutely right. You couldn’t be more right.”

  “Finally, you see reason,” she says and cups my face with her hand. “I’m so glad you’ve snapped out of this foolishness.”

  “That I have, Vickie. I’ve been incredibly foolish.” She smiles up at me while I smile down at her. “Because I’ve realized that if something means a lot to her, then it means a lot to me.”

  “Reid?”

  “And by the way, her name is Cara Montgomery. Get that right, because I’m not telling you again.”

  She takes two steps back, and with dragon’s breath, she says, “Come off it, you’re being absurd. You’re obviously exhausted and not thinking straight. The Degas, Reid? We need it for the business. You know this. You are blowing your obligations.”

  “Obligation is a funny word. It can work in so many ways. Am I letting down the business? Yes. But I let her down more, and I can’t live with that. She means so much more to me than any of this ever will, and if she wants this painting back, she’s getting it.”

  Victoria growls but is cut off by Damien, who has never looked so upset.

  “Mr. Lewis, the Degas is the featured piece in this collection. Surely, you understand that we will lose high profile bidders if we lose the piece.”

  That makes me laugh. I really must be mad, because I mean it with my whole heart when I tell him, “I honestly don’t care about the auction. There’s only one thing I care about, and I’ve let it go.”

  Cara

  The Fitzwilliam Library is pleased to offer you an intern position in the rare collections department.

  It has felt the same each time I’ve read the offer letter over the last few days. Every time I open it, I hope for a different response, because I should be exhilarated. Honored. Proud. Instead, my feelings are muted. It’s like reading the electric bill or the note I got from my professor about some missing assignments. It’s just one more thing I have to deal with.

  I toss my phone onto the end table and bury my face into the pillow. The smell of espresso lingers on my hands from my morning shift at the coffee house, and as I lay here, curled up on the futon, it brings back such vivid memories of my mornings with Reid. Memories that I can’t escape, like the morning I taught him how to make a “perfect latte.” My heart lurches, and the pain returns, so quickly, so intensely. I curl into one of the pillows on the futon while the tide rises within me. The swell of sadness crashes over my body, taking the air and hope right out of me.

  “Cara?” Julie asks from across the living room.

  I use the pillow to wipe the tears off my face and turn toward her. “Hey.”

  Her face falls at the sight of me. I sit up, embarrassed that she caught me in the middle of a crying fit. I thought she’d be on her business call for much longer. She crosses the room and takes a seat on the papasan chair beside me. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be,” I say, determined to stop having these conversations.

  “I’m not sure I believe you. It’s been over a month,” Julie says as if I didn’t know. “I haven’t pressed much on the topic, but I’m wondering if maybe it would be good to talk to Reid. Maybe you need some sort of closure.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I rush to say.

  “Has he tried to contact you?” she asks.

  “No,” I say and look down at my hands. And the truth of that statement rips me apart.

  “Has your mom seen or heard from him, since she’s been over there.”

  “No.”

  Julie chews on the inside of her cheek. “Don’t you think he misses you?”

  A flash of him down on his knees, begging me not to go, comes to mind, but just as quickly I’m struck by the memory of how he turned so cold right after.

  “I doubt it,” I spit out.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be? You’re going to bark at me?” she
asks.

  “No, I’m sorry.” I regret being so sharp with her. “Sure, he loved me, but he simply loved money more.” And for the millionth time, I regret getting so crazy about a painting. One I didn’t even get to keep in the end. It’s only when I remind myself that the painting was indicative of a much larger rift between us, that I remember how I got here.

  She crosses one leg over the other and stays quiet. The wheels in her head are turning as if there’s a solution to this problem, but we haven’t thought of it yet.

  “Listen,” I start, “there is no magical way to make it all better. Sometimes relationships end. I’ll be all right, I promise. I just need to get a few things straightened out.”

  “Like what?” she asks me cautiously.

  “Well, for one, I’m not going to quit my job,” I say, unable to meet her glare.

  “Why not?”

  Here’s the hard part. The part she’s going to hate. “I’m turning down the internship at the Fitzwilliam Library.”

  “Cara,” she says. The weight of her disapproval is like a cinderblock on my chest. “That’s been your dream.”

  “I’m just not in the right headspace for it. I was going to turn it down anyway if I stayed in London.”

  “Yeah, but you were trading it for the British Library. Quitting is not the same.”

  “I’m not quitting! I’ll find something else when the time is right.”

  She’s not relieved in the least bit. “So you’re just going to work at the coffee house the rest of your life?”

  “No. I don’t know. I just need time.”

  Julie bites her bottom lip and nods. I know she’s holding back and I know it’s only a matter of time before she lays it all out for me. “Go ahead, Julie, just tell me off. I know you want to.”

  She stands up and starts pacing around in front of me. I brace myself for an onslaught of righteousness.

  “I’m moving to Ireland,” she blurts out.

  I sit up on my haunches. “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was on the phone about,” she says as she starts cleaning up clutter around the living room. “My boss, Aiden, asked me to move to Ireland, Cork specifically, and well, it’s a great opportunity.”