by JD Hawkins
I watch her fix me a glass for a moment and take my time trying to find a thread to begin with. She hands me the cold glass and then sits back on the bench against the wall with her own. She’s got a look like she’s determined to enjoy whatever I’m about to tell her.
“Well…” I say with a sigh, “it began right after you called me that day I was lounging by the pool. I went to the bar there to top my drink off, and I heard these guys talking on the other side…”
I proceed to give Mia a pretty full version of events, skimping over some details (the specifics of the two nights Nate and I spent together) and giving her some excruciating details on others (Nate’s colleagues, and the conversations we had alone together). Mia doesn’t ask any questions, as if she wouldn’t even know what to ask, but the way her expression mirrors mine at points, and seems stuck between awe and intense curiosity, lets me know she’s more than interested.
“And that was it?” Mia asks, once I’ve run out of story.
“That was it,” I reply. “Just that big goodbye kiss, and he was gone. I did text him my number a bit later—only because I said I would, and I didn’t really say anything in the text that would make him think anything. At least…I think I didn’t.”
“Wow…” Mia says, finally breaking her gaze away from my face for the first time since I began, and suddenly remembering she has a full glass of iced tea in her hands. She sips slowly, looking out at the garden, and I do the same.
“So…yeah…” I mumble into the dazed, post-story quiet. “That’s that. A nice little vacation romance…a story I can tell you. It was fun,” I say, sounding more formal than usual, then laughing when I realize that. I raise my glass to Mia and say, “Thanks for the vacation!”
I laugh and take a big swig but Mia just smiles. “Is it?”
“Is what?” I reply, wincing as I swallow an ice cube.
Mia takes a moment before answering, then forces herself to laugh and act jovial.
“Nothing,” she says. “You’re right. It’s awesome—and you’re welcome.”
She raises her glass too but I can tell what she’s thinking. Mia’s such a bad liar she can’t even lie by omission.
“You were going to mention Theo, weren’t you?” I say, sighing but smiling to show I don’t hate her for it.
“No…” Mia says, her voice two octaves higher than it should be. She relaxes a bit, then continues. “I…I mean…well, you know…”
I laugh gently, the birdsong in the citrus trees and the feeling of being so comfortable on her porch making it easy to open up a little. “You were going to say I got so burned when I was with Theo that I’m avoiding the idea of anything more that could have happened.”
Mia shrugs guiltily. “Kind of?”
I stare down at my drink and jog the glass a little to hear the ice clink. “You want to hear something funny?” I say without looking up.
“Okay?”
I take another few seconds of sighing into my clinking ice before I can even say it. “When I got back…back to my shitty apartment…the first thing I saw—I mean, after walking through the door and flopping onto my bed,” I say, starting to smile at the ridiculousness of it, “was this thick envelope with this fancy gold lettering…an invitation to Theo’s wedding.”
I don’t need to look up to know what Mia’s face is doing, but I look anyway. Her jaw’s gone so slack I can see her tonsils, and her eyes look like they’re reaching for me. She mouths the word wedding, as if she doesn’t even have enough breath to utter it. I nod to confirm it.
“But…” she splutters, looking around like there’s an answer somewhere. “But it’s only been…”
“Three months. Four, kind of.”
“And he’s already getting—”
“Yep,” I say, cutting her off, relishing Mia’s astonishment because it reflects my own, maybe validates it a little.
“To who?”
I look away a little shamefully and speak in a lowered voice. “I hate myself for even doing this but…I looked up her name as soon as I saw it. She’s like some big-shot Hollywood producer. Has her name all over some huge movies…”
“Ugh…” Mia says with disgust. “So the wannabe Zuckerberg bagged himself a helper.”
“Another one,” I quip, though the joke hurts a little too much still to laugh at.
“Oh, Hazel,” Mia says, and I can sense she’s about to get up and come over to me, probably to give me a hug, so I quickly raise my palm and smile at her to show I’m all right.
In reality, if she hugged me, I’d probably break down.
“Anyway,” I say, clearing my throat and lifting my tone, “that’s probably why he sent it in the first place—just so I’d search her name and ‘see how well he’s done.’” I raise my glass and smile sarcastically. “Well, good for him.”
“Screw him,” Mia says, matching my sudden optimism. “I wanna hear more about your one-week lover anyway. What did he—”
Mia’s interrupted by a shout from the front gate, and we both jump a little even though it’s a familiar voice, a familiar kind of energetic call.
“Toby?” Mia calls out to her brother, as he ambles up the path with a big smile and his incredible wife beside him.
“Well, look who it is!” Toby says, immediately focusing on me as he steps up onto the porch.
We hug each other warmly. After all, we’ve got a pretty good bond—I’d like to think I played my part in helping him get together with Maeve.
“You’ve hardly got a tan! Where the hell did you go on vacation, a nuclear bunker?”
“Oh leave her alone, Toby,” Maeve says, shoving him aside so she can give me a hug of her own. “She’s got the perfect skin tone. Not everyone wants to look like they’ve just walked through a desert,” she says, obviously referring to Toby’s “always-outside” tan.
As usual, Toby looks like he’s ready for a party that might break out at any minute, with his short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and charmingly messy hair. Maeve looks like she just stepped off a catwalk. Her long red summer dress on a figure and posture any less perfect would seem ridiculous, but on her is utterly mesmerizing.
Maeve sits next to me on the bench while Mia and Toby fuss over the iced tea, Toby pouring plenty out and suggesting adding some alcohol while Mia brings out more glasses and ice and tells them to be quiet because Alison is still sleeping.
“Sorry for not calling, sweetie,” Maeve tells Mia. “Unfortunately, I’m living life on Toby-time today.”
“If you can’t suddenly drop in on your own sister, what can you do? And besides,” Toby says, gesturing at me with the pitcher of tea, “we got two for the price of one. I didn’t even know you were back, Hazel. You gotta tell me all about it.”
I smile and look at Mia, who looks back at me. She obviously didn’t tell them anything about Nate, and I don’t even know if I should. As I’m considering how much to tell, it turns out not to matter.
Maeve looks at me, picking up on my shared glance with Mia like a hawk spotting a moment of weakness. Her eyes narrow, and she starts to smile like she’s reading something on my face.
“Something happened, didn’t it?” Maeve says, and I turn to her, but it only confirms her half suspicions. “Don’t tell me…you met someone, didn’t you?”
“How did you…” I stutter, but Maeve just smiles with satisfaction.
“She’s a fucking mind reader,” Toby says, sitting next to his sister to gulp his drink. “The longer we’re married, the more convinced I am she’s got witch blood in her.”
Maeve turns her wry smile to him and says, “I wish. I’m still trying to turn my frog into a prince.” Maeve turns back to me and nudges me gently. “Go on then—remind us married women of what we’re missing, darling.”
I smile and take a deep breath before repeating a heavily edited version of the story I gave Mia. Just like with Mia, they’re too interested to interrupt, too curious to hurry me.
As I tell them, I’m starting to
realize that with each repetition the story seems even more fantastical. More like some crazy tale that’s been altered by being passed along numerous people. It’s starting to sound almost unbelievable to myself—all but the most physical parts, which are still so visceral in my memory that even skipping over them brings shivers to my skin. I even tell them about Theo’s wedding invitation, but only for a moment, and reverse back to telling them about sending Nate the text so that we don’t end up talking about Theo instead.
“Wow…” Toby gasps, once I’m done, and I laugh at his incredulity. “That’s wild.”
“I don’t think it’s wild at all,” Maeve says, sipping her drink like I just told them the story of driving here.
“You don’t?” Mia asks, disbelievingly.
“Not really.”
“A guy asks her to pretend to be his fiancée and you think that’s normal?” Toby asks.
“You said he works in investments?” Maeve asks me. I nod and she turns to the others to shrug as if it’s obvious. “Investment is all about risk, darling. And that’s what it was—a smartly taken risk.”
“Yeah, sure…” Mia says. “But some random woman at the bar?”
“Not a random woman, sweetie—Hazel.”
“If he’d asked you,” Toby tells Mia, “you’d want a full character sheet, birth chart, and blood type before even thinking of doing it.”
Mia sticks her tongue playfully out at Toby, then Maeve continues.
“He’s got good instincts, clearly. He has to if he’s handling other people’s money. And his instincts led him well on this occasion.”
“It was kind of weird,” I say, looking down as I remember that day at the bar. “There was this gorgeous blonde at the bar as well as me, also on her own. Really stunning. And more like the kind of woman who’d be married to a guy like him…I guess. She was even giving him eyes… She would have been a more believable fit—I would have thought, anyway…and he still chose to ask me instead.”
Maeve nods as if this proves her point.
There’s a strange pause, as if everyone is turning their thoughts inwards for a moment to process this, something which I find pretty amusing, though eventually Toby winces and smacks his knee before speaking his mind.
“You know what?” he announces. “I’m not sure I like this guy.”
Mia laughs and says, “What?”
“It all sounds…I dunno…it all sounds a little phony to me,” Toby explains roughly. “Some super rich guy needing you to pretend to be his wife…eh. Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“I was on a yacht and everything, Toby.”
“I work in the jewelry business,” Toby says to me, “and trust me—I know how many people out there are faking their entire lives.”
I laugh and say, “I literally had dinner with Warren Brown—I mean, I had to look up who he was before I did, but I guarantee you he wasn’t an impersonator.”
Toby’s still wincing and shaking his head, but he can’t find words for his reservations anymore. I smile warmly at him, understanding that it’s just his protective instincts coming out.
“To me, darling, it all seems rather simple,” Maeve says. “This Nate guy is clearly a broken man, with his ‘murky past’ and obsession over this job. And you…you’ve got that whole ‘helping people’ pathology. Of course it went the way it did.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?” I ask her.
“Oh honey, I can call the shots but I wouldn’t bet on the game,” Maeve replies. “Does it matter? I thought you said it was over? Are you hoping for a second bite of the cherry?”
“She does still need to get her ‘reward,’” Mia says, though she sounds like she’s joking.
“He really said he’d give you anything?” Toby says.
“How much would she even ask for? Ten grand?” Mia asks.
Maeve laughs, a derisive snort. “Ten grand? This man is an investment banker—or will be. And it’s entirely because of Hazel. Think a million.”
“A million dollars?” Mia exclaims.
“That’s just an end-of-quarter bonus for guys like that,” Toby adds, sounding like he’s warming to the idea. “And Maeve’s right—Hazel’s the whole reason he has the job.”
I laugh at all of them and wave my hand to stop them from going any further.
“I’m not going to ask for money,” I say. “I honestly don’t even think what I did was that special. Maybe…I dunno…I was thinking maybe I’d take him up on a trip to Chicago? But then he might think I’m doing it like a ‘date’ or something, when I really wouldn’t. I’ve just never been there…I dunno…I probably won’t ask for anything.”
There’s another silence and I can tell everyone is thinking about what they’d ask for in my situation. Toby tops everyone off and Mia runs in quickly to check on Alison. When she emerges again and takes her seat it’s Maeve who speaks, and with characteristic weight.
“I know exactly what you should ask for in return.”
We all look at her, but she waits for my replyan answer before going on.
“What?” I ask.
“Theo’s wedding,” Maeve says slowly, looking at me like I’m the only one there. “You should turn up to it—and you should have this tall, dark, handsome investment banker on your arm when you do so, darling.”
“Maeve, are you serious?” Mia asks, her face torn between laughter and disbelief.
“Deadly,” Maeve responds, her face fixed in a statuesque glare.
“What would be the point of that?” Toby asks.
“Revenge. Catharsis. Justice. Closure. Amusement. Need me to keep going?” Maeve says.
Mia almost snorts her tea then says, “You want her to drag that guy all the way back out here to show up at a wedding—just for revenge?”
“Call it ‘balance’ then, if you prefer,” Maeve says, sounding no less serious or convinced. She puts a hand on my knee affectionately before continuing. “Sorry to bring this up, but we all saw how badly that prick treated you. If we lived in a civilized society we could have had him hanged, drawn, and quartered, but unfortunately we have to play by the social rules. Seriously—sending you that invitation was not an accident. He knew exactly what he was doing—rubbing it in your face. Well, I say rub it right back.”
“I hate to say it, sis,” Toby says. “But I kind of agree with my wife.”
“Hazel,” Mia says, appealing directly to me now, “surely you can see that that’s a silly idea.”
I shrug, wanting to agree with Mia, knowing Mia is the most sensible and level-headed out of all of us, but also feeling comfortable enough to be honest.
“I mean…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream all the time about getting back at him,” I admit. “Seeing him hurt as badly as he hurt me. I know that’s terrible, but…”
“It’s not bad, sweetie—bad is what he did to you. This is just giving karma a little starting nudge.”
“It’s kind of neat, in a way,” Toby adds, “you’re basically asking this vacation guy to do exactly the same thing you did for him.”
Maeve leans toward me like she’s selling me something now. “The best part about it is that Theo only ever cared about status, about money, and that’s why it would strike him right in the heart. Even more delicious is that he’s probably still scrabbling around trying to raise money for his start-up, and you’ll have a guy with Microsoft money on your arm now.”
I laugh, feeling a guilty pleasure at the revenge fantasy Maeve’s conjuring. Mia’s looking over at me with a strange kind of regretful sympathy.
“Mia?” I say, once I’m done relishing the satisfying idea of payback. “Do you really think it’s that bad? I won’t do it if you really think I shouldn’t.”
She looks out at the garden, taking her time to think about it, making sure her answer is as honest as can be, as wise as she is, like I knew she would.
“You know what…” she says eventually. “Maybe it wouldn’t actually do any harm. But if you
do decide to do it, I’d only ask one thing.”
“What?”
“That you bring Nate here so we get to meet him.”
12
Nate
The offices of Montague and Brown stand more like a monument than a place where work happens.
Classic art deco signs and shapes, hundred-year-old brass and mahogany that’s been immaculately preserved, doors and windows you could drive period-appropriate steam trains through. It’s a place that exudes and imposes its own aura. Like wealth itself, it seems to repel anything cheap and disposable. It’s a place where pulling out a fountain pen or cigar feels natural, but a pair of sneakers would make you stand out like a little green alien.
It took me a long while to feel like I wasn’t faking it, to not feel the forcefield pushing me away. Hands resting on heavy oak meeting tables—mine rough and calloused from years of manual labor, everyone else’s soft and just about capable of dialing a plumber’s number. Easy laughter ringing from the marble and brass, the sound of belonging here—while I don’t laugh at all, always focusing on how I can stay just a little longer in this game. In the end, I still don’t feel like I’ve stopped faking so much as I’ve earned the right to belong here despite being so different.
Belonging…almost. But not quite.
My “temporary” office is still sparse—it’s still not my own, after all. Not that a place like this needs much decoration. Two gigantic arched windows that remind me of vampire movie sets offer a view across the lake. The mahogany desk is so big, heavy, and well-constructed that pulling out a drawer feels like performing a ritual. Even though they’re bare, the bookshelves look wise enough to teach you something, and the rug that covers the vast space between the desk and the door is no doubt more expensive than any car I’ve ever owned.
“Bullseye,” Sam cries as he marches through the open door of my office.
I quickly click away from what I was looking at on my computer screen, shove the slip of paper I’m holding under a file folder, and turn my attention to him as he smiles his way across the rug.