by Cynthia Dane
She slightly turned in our direction when we approached, but did not bother to feign surprise. She had been expecting us. Eventually, I would know what she had done, and I would come after her.
Was that what she wanted?
“Brooke.”
She stood up when I said her name. “Took you long enough to find me,” she said with a meager smile. “Was wondering if I should have another rumor started at the office.”
“There are apparently a lot of rumors about you.” The tangible discomfort between us was enough to make me shiver. I shoved my hands into my pockets. She tightened the scarf around her neck. “Like that you were in Singapore with me. And that you were poisoned by more than your food.”
Brooke shrugged. “I needed a break. Lot easier to have a medical reason than ask for some time off at the last minute. I’m supposed to be planning a wedding, right?”
I couldn’t bite back the truth I had harbored behind my lips since the moment I heard she had run away. “You poisoned yourself, didn’t you?”
“Not like it’s hard.” Brooke’s eyes remained fixated on the ripples of the water. She wasn’t even going to deny it.
“Jesus, Brooke. Why would you do something like that? If you needed time off, you should’ve asked. Poisoning yourself… that’s above and beyond.”
“It wasn’t going to kill me. Although I might have overdone it a bit.”
“You should’ve told me…”
“When?” One hand white-knuckled against the railing while the rest of her turned toward me. “When should I have spoken up and said that I couldn’t do this anymore? When you were too distracted with your new woman to… never mind.”
“Is that what this is about?” The distance between us grew shorter with every step I took. “Natalie?”
Brooke didn’t bristle. It was like she wanted this confrontation. “I knew she was trouble that first day of work. I should have seen it during the interviews. The way you look at her… fuck you, Eric.”
My face must have been red. It was the only way to explain how hot it became when she dared to say such a thing. “You don’t get to say shit like that and not explain yourself, Brooke.” I would have spat her name if I could get away with it. “Excuse me if I’m standing here confused out of my mind. Between a giant helping of jetlag and hearing that you’ve poisoned yourself… I should be the one telling you to go fuck yourself.”
“Don’t even start with me.” She spun around, and I knew that this went deeper than any insecurities or hard feelings remaining between us.
I hadn’t seen Brooke this upset since the aftermath of revealing my body to her.
“You know, for really being a woman, you sure are shit at reading how other women are feeling!” She knew how to feed me vitriol for breakfast. That… I will always give Brooke Pentecost. Many times, I’ve thanked her for her honesty, especially as a woman dealing with someone like me. I get a lot of shit wrong, even though I try. If it weren’t for the patience and determination of people who cared about me – like her, I thought – I would have floundered through life even more than I have. “You’re such a man like that.”
“Funny,” I muttered. “You always did prefer when I acted more like your idea of a man than anything else.”
“Stop it.” Brooke held up a hand, as if that would save us. “God. This is so like you, though. I’m trying to live my fucking life and you come stalking me across the globe and tracking me down like a bloodhound. Who gave me up? Adam? Or my mom?”
“He’s worried about you too.”
“Fucking Adam. I’m breaking up with his ass when I get home. I told him not to tell anyone, including you!”
“Well, he did tell us where you were! You know why? Because we’re worried about you. Who the fuck poisons themselves and runs off to Paris? To the Seine Hotel? Who hangs out on the Ponts de Art every fucking day?”
Brooke looked longingly out across the river. “Me.”
I needed a different approache. I needed to calm down and remind her that I was someone who cared about her, not someone who got angry at her for the sake of the thrill. “What’s going on? Is it jealousy? Are you mad I’m finally allowed to move on? Or is it because it’s someone like Natalie? You were never bothered by my other girlfriends.”
“You call those escorts girlfriends?” Brooke snorted. “Of course I wasn’t bothered by them. I spent more time making sure they kept their mouths shut once they left your bedroom than being bothered by them.”
I didn’t tell her that Janelle was apparently feeding information to Aiden Webb. That wasn’t even his real name. God, I had been so blinded by my attraction to Natalie that I let both those things go undetected for weeks.
“You moved on with Adam.” I said. “Do I not get to have a life too?”
“Come on, Eric! The intern? Really? If I hadn’t seen her cover letter for myself, I would have assumed you hired her so you could fuck her.” Her mocking tone punched me in the gut. I had to stand tall, though. Not just because she was taller than me – because I wouldn’t allow myself to be weak in one of her weakest moments. If we survived this verbal altercation, she would need me. Just like I always needed her. “Which came first, though? Your personal interest in her, or you checking off the diversity boxes because HR was on your ass about hiring more minorities?”
I glanced at Natalie, who kept her distance behind us. Sherman was even farther away. Yet I knew Natalie witnessed every moment, every word, and every tightening of my shoulders as I struggled to find the words to convey to Brooke. Her strength was mine in that instance.
“It’s because you see yourself in her, don’t you?”
Brooke scoffed. “We’re nothing alike.”
“That’s not true. Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m ultimately attracted to women who are smarter than me and know more about my life than I do?” I wasn’t lying, either. Those were the sorts of things I thought about as I drifted off to sleep. Powerful women, who know what they’re about and what they want from life… those are the most attractive. They are the people I want to wrap my arms around and ask a million questions. They’re the ones I want to become. “Looks sweeten the deal. I didn’t fall for Natalie until I saw that other side of her.”
“So you say.”
“What right do you even have to judge? You’re the one who broke up with me!”
Brooke trembled against the railing. Seconds later, tears erupted from her eyes.
“I spend every day wondering if I made a huge mistake.” Brooke used the back of her sleeve to wipe away the tears. “Do you know how hard it is to look at you two and remember that used to be me?”
“I don’t understand.” This was not what I had been expecting. Brooke, crying in public? Having a meltdown in the middle of Paris? And it wasn’t because she was kicking my ass?
No. Was it possible?
“Do you still love me?”
Brooke sniffed up the last of her tears. Somehow, the vision of a woman who has just been crying is more tragic than one drowning in her own tears. “Yes.” She shook her head. “No. We’re never going to have something like that again.”
“Because of you.”
Only I could have caught that chill running down her spine. “I suppose it is my fault. I’m the one who couldn’t deal.”
“So you said when you broke up with me.” I threw my hands up in frustration. “But that was years ago! Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I didn’t know it was still a problem until a few weeks ago.”
Everyone, including Brooke, heaved sighs of relief around me. It was out. The truth, the lies, the in-between… but it wasn’t good enough for me. Brooke had just dropped a two-ton bomb on my head. All this time, I thought she had moved on. She had a new fiancé. A new home. Goals and desires that were independent of mine. We laughed at dumb shit we did as a couple before I announced I had a date with an escort. This, though? Was she truly in love with me? Still?
When I had finally moved on from my romantic love for her?
“How the fuck could you not have known?” I demanded. “You’re either still in love with me or not, Brooke. I don’t have time for these games. I didn’t have time for them back when we were together, and I definitely don’t have time for them now! We’re both adults here. We know how to fucking communicate and air our grievances!”
Brooke pointed her chin down, shoulders shaking and fingers curling into her palms. The torrential rains were about to begin, and I had nobody but myself to blame.
“If you really have a problem with being around my relationships, then it might be time for you to leave,” I continued in my enraged folly. “Permanently. I can…”
“You can what?” Brooke was in my face, fists pounding the air behind her and teeth threatening to rip off my nose. “You can lie to her some more? How long were you going to keep lying to her, huh? She only found out the truth because you slipped up! Were you going to string her along for three years, too? Were you going to make her fall in love with a man who never existed? God!” Brooke strung her fingers through her hair and let out a curdled yet constrained scream of defiance. “You’re the one who says there are monsters in your closet. Maybe it’s you who is the monster!”
She might as well have cut my heart open.
Sherman pulled Brooke back. Too late. The emotional damage was done.
She was right.
I was a monster. My life only had one mission, and that was to destroy everyone who came close to me. Sherman had sold his soul to protect my secrets, at the expense of any relationships beyond him and me. Brooke had her whole world turned upside down when she realized she hadn’t caught on to my physiology for three years. Natalie?
I looked to her. How was I destroying her life?
“Calm down!” Sherman bellowed. “Don’t cause a scene. The only thing worse than Singaporean police are Parisian police. At least the former is willing to work with Americans.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brooke spat. “He’s got all this money to throw at anything. Must be nice to be able to afford locking away your most destructive secrets, Eric. But you don’t have enough money or love in the world to undo the damage you cause people!”
Her words were like blows to my body. Each one made me take another step back, until I was tripping over my own feet and ready to fall over the railing. I might as well, honestly. Like she said – I was a monster. I ruined lives. I used my money, the only truly powerful thing I had, to cover up the worst of it and to get through another day.
I was no better than my father, the very first monster I had ever known.
“Stop it!”
Natalie barreled between us. I had never seen her so determined before, a true feat when I consider what it took for her to even meet me.
But that was what was so powerful about her, an outsider. She may not have known what she threw herself into when she applied to be my intern, but she had the wherewithal to survive it. To crush it. To rip back our veneers and show us what toxic manifestations we had created because of one man’s awful decision twenty-five years before.
“This is ridiculous,” she shouted. “You three don’t understand each other at all!”
“Excuse me?” Brooke pulled herself out of Sherman’s grasp and advanced on my girlfriend. “What the fuck do you know?”
“I know that you can’t let go.”
Brooke almost slapped her. Sherman was the only one quick enough to hold her back.
“You’re still in love with that man who never existed,” Natalie continued, only a flutter of fear showing on her face. “I’m sorry. I really am. Because I fell in love with him, too. I fell in love with the most unique man I had ever met, and the thought that he wanted me like that was unfathomable. I was only with him a week when I found out he didn’t really exist. I can only imagine what three years feels like. But he doesn’t exist. Erica’s not really that person outside of the office. She’s not even Eric. She’s a woman.”
My chest swelled in renewed perspective. Natalie was right. She may not have meant it that way, but a crux of my monsterhood came from my inability to distinguish who I was. Eric. Erica. Two sides, one me.
But I was Erica, wasn’t I? That’s how I was born. That’s who I clung to in my formidable years. That’s who I kept going back to in the dead of night, and when I felt like I was all alone in a room full of talkative people.
“I don’t care that he’s… she’s… whatever!” Brooke said. “I don’t care about that. I never gave a fuck.”
“Really?” I said. “You sure made a big deal about it when you dumped me.”
“Of course I did! How would you have felt if I concealed my identity from you for three years? Do you know how stupid I felt? How could I be with someone for so long and not notice that they were female!”
She shrieked that word for all of Paris to hear. Two other bodyguards held back a pair of tourists trying to capture video on their phones. Just what we needed. Brooke screaming at me about being female.
“I didn’t care that you were a woman, Eric.” Something in Brooke changed. Perhaps it was fatigue, but I wanted to believe that it was her own realizations crowning her judgment. “I cared that you lied to me for so long. By the time you finally told me, it was too late. Maybe you thought I would be less likely to leave by the time we were engaged, but that only made it worse. You fucked me up. I couldn’t handle the thought of lying to both myself and the world every single day. If I were going to help you lie, I had to distance myself from you romantically.”
“So then what’s the problem?” I gestured to Natalie.
“You don’t get it? Here comes this woman who doesn’t know anything about you other than what we strategically publish in magazine articles and in that stupid book I helped you write. Within two weeks you’re looking at her as if she’s the only woman you’ve ever fallen for. Within a month you’re taking her to bed… and then she gets to know the truth before you’ve really had the chance to sink your teeth into her? How fucking fair is that? Whether you meant to or not, you gave her a choice to invest her life with yours!” Brooke pounded her fists against her thighs. “I didn’t get that luxury!”
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “I’m sorry. Really.”
“Whatever.” Brooke rubbed her brow, still stained with tears. “I know you’re not a bad person, Eric… a.” She shook her head. My real name didn’t sound natural on her tongue. “But I’m never going to get over what happened. I can move on, but it will always be a part of who I am now. Don’t you get that?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“C’mon.” Sherman gently yanked on Brooke’s arm. “Let’s get out of here. We can continue this discussion elsewhere. Maybe somewhere with fewer people around.”
“Why?” Natalie said, defiantly in his way. “Do you think this shit has nothing to do with you? You’re almost as bad as her!”
“Excuse me?”
“Natalie, don’t.” Natalie shook me off when I attempted to take her hand. “Please.” Now was not the time to confront Sherman with his own ugly truths. Not like that!
“Please is right. I don’t have the countenance to deal with this guy’s bullshit anymore. He’s got the opposite problem from Brooke.”
“What are you talking about?” Brooke asked.
Natalie scoffed. “Seriously? You’ve never seen it?” She glanced between us as if we were too stupid for her to fathom. “Your problem is that you won’t see Erica as anything but the image she presents to the world for her own safety.” Brooke guffawed. “His problem is that he’s so in love with Erica that he doesn’t get what the fuck is going on in her head! He doesn’t get that it’s not as simple as her really being a woman beneath those clothes, because he’s never had to question what being a woman even fucking is!”
Sherman rounded on Natalie. “You have a big fucking mouth on you.”
Natalie did not lose a hint of her countenance un
der Sherman’s intimidating stance. Her strength, passion, and determination exploded from her with one narrow look.
I fell in love with her all over again.
“You’ve got a mighty big head on that fat neck of yours,” Natalie spat back. “So I understand that it might take a bit longer for concepts to sink through your thick skull. Like how Erica ain’t ever gettin’ with you again, so you better give it up and realize that not every woman she shacks up with is a threat to her fucking security! Jesus Christ almighty!” She turned to me. “How do you say that in French?”
“Uh…” I cleared my throat. “Mon dieu works.”
“Well mon fucking dieu, assholes! You’re all dumb!” Natalie hoisted up her purse and jerked her thumb toward our car. “Let’s go. I’m hungry and want a nap.”
She walked off by herself. I turned to Brooke and Sherman, unfettered by the weight pressing upon me.
We had much to discuss.
***
“Do you know why I came here?”
Brooke had lost most of her edge now that we were alone and the scars exposed to our eyes. Sherman had stalked the length of the bridge after I relieved him of his duty for the time being. He and Natalie stood by the car, neither talking to the other.
“Because you realized you still hadn’t let us go,” I said to Brooke.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out an old, broken padlock. “I came back and got this after I heard they were going to cut them all off. Can you believe it? It was still here after all these years.” The padlock fumbled in her palm. “The key is somewhere in the bottom of this river. It was supposed to symbolize that we could never be broken apart. By the time I came and got this, our relationship was already over, but…” She clasped her hand over the padlock again. “Like you said, I couldn’t let go.”
How could she, when she stood in the place where it all happened? We were standing in the exact spot I asked her to be my wife. Even if our relationship was over by the time she returned, those feelings, that atmosphere was still here. It almost tore me apart as well. “I proposed to you right here.”