The False Flat

CHAPTER 4

LIFE REALIZATION #2: GETTING RID OF A MARRIED MAN IS HARDER THAN YOU THINK

Two days later, I was on my way home from my new, pristine workspace with one hand on my steering wheel and the other in a crinkly Doritos bag on my lap, an appetizer before my frozen pizza dinner. Today, I’d met my new “coworkers”: Michelle, a very innovative, easy-to-talk-to graphic designer, a massage therapist, a husband-and-wife talent agency who booked gigs for country music singers, and an eccentric social media star, Lady Mama, who needed an office space because ...

Michelle hadn’t minced words; she’d immediately insisted I needed a brand to go along with my platform, something edgy. Then she’d jumped in to designing a logo wherein my pantsuited silhouette would lead to razor-sharp high heels, which would end in the point of a pen actively writing my name, Pen Auberge. I wasn’t exactly sure what that looked like, but she was excited about it, and her confidence gave me a boost. Her card coupled nicely with my history of advising large corporations and my market hunches, which I strategically called “expertise,” and—this might work.

I pulled a perfectly triangular Dorito out of the bag as I turned in to my driveway.

The Nose was sitting on her front porch drinking from a ridged glass that caught the light from the rusty lantern sconce on her house. There was something about that woman that made me curious.

She waved and pointed to my house. I nodded. Yes, that’s where I live. As I tried to figure out what she was attempting to communicate, a face popped up in my window. I screamed, flailed, and knocked the Doritos into the passenger floorboard.

Once I realized who it was, I closed my eyes, waited for my heart to stop racing, and tried to pretend my ex wasn’t standing in my driveway. Maybe I could run him over. How many years would I get for accidental manslaughter? Would it even be accidental manslaughter? No, The Nose would tell the authorities I’d put the car in reverse before “accidentally” gunning it forward.

This was my place. My new life. I dusted crumbs from my hands, gripped the handle, and shoved the door directly into Chad’s unexpectant legs. He jerked back.

“What are you doing here?” I barked. His expensive sweater and jeans, styled dark-blond hair, and perfectly proportioned face (he had to be of Scandinavian descent) didn’t belong in this old, quiet neighborhood.

“Shh. The whole neighborhood’s going to hear you.” He held his finger to my lips. “Can we please go inside and talk?”

I slammed the car door shut, dropped my bag, and crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s cute you think we have something to talk about.” I glanced toward my neighbor’s house, but The Nose wasn’t morbidly fascinated by the near-promise of drama like other people would be. One of her eyebrows rose and her mouth pursed, as if concerned more than interested.

Caring what people thought had been ingrained in me since birth. I didn’t want to care, but I did. I needed people to like me, to think I was capable, strong, and worthy of praise. Like Chad, I wanted to go inside so my neighbors wouldn’t suspect I had some sort of problem, which I most certainly did. Truth be told, I cared about appearances just as much as Chad did.

“I’m still your client,” he said, calmly, logically.

On some level, I’d known I’d have to either let him go as a client or program him back into my phone and establish a purely business relationship. Messy either way, which was why I’d been ignoring this little, gigantic problem.

“You came here to talk about your finances?” I kept my voice low.

“Maybe.”

I stared at him, trying to decide which Chad was in my driveway: Client Chad or Cheating Chad. My approach would be wildly different, depending on which one.

“Your mother, she told me to come.” The regret on his face was real. “I made a mistake. Please let me explain.”

Damn my Chad-adoring mother. She knew I didn’t want this man anywhere near me. But what should I expect from a woman who didn’t seem to think his wife was a problem? “A little obstacle,” she’d said. “People are complicated. In a lot of cases, there’s more than meets the eye. Chad isn’t a bad person.” But that was probably because she’d lived so many years with a cheating husband herself. She was used to it.

Thiswas Cheating Chad. I calmly picked up my backpack and strode to the back of my house.

Myhouse.

He grabbed my arm, but I yanked it away and kept moving forward.

He ran a hand through his a-little-longer-on-top hair, a gesture I used to love, tried not to love right now. “Pen, please.”

I missed him. Being alone, starting something new ... it was scary. I wanted to fall against him, cling to his familiar, clean scent (a bar of soap in a briefcase). Instead of giving in, I let the anger build inside me now. I rode that anger like my bicycle, let it put distance between us.

“If you don’t want to talk about your money, then ...” I looked back over at The Nose, who’d moved closer. Her arms were folded in front of her, and she was actively scowling. My stomach flipped. Was her disapproval because she didn’t want a daytime talk show scene in her quiet neighborhood? But then when she looked at me, her eyes softened, and she nodded. And I didn’t know how to feel. On one hand, she was inserting herself into my business, but on another, it was almost like she was on my side. I was probably reading too much into it. I aimed for Chad instead. “Just go.”

“I don’t care about the money.” His loafers tapped on the pavement behind me as he jogged to keep pace. “But I’m not leaving until we at least talk.”

Did I owe him words?

“You’re not—” I whirled around, pressed a finger into his chest, started to shout, remembered Mrs. Snoe, then pulled the front of his sweater toward my door.

“Five minutes,” I growled, shoving him into my small, untidy kitchen.

I flicked on the light switch, illuminating a domed pendant lamp with blue-and-yellow flowers painted on it, then slammed my leather satchel down where a table should’ve been—would’ve been if I cared enough.

We stood in the mostly empty space, me waiting for him to say what he’d traveled 889 miles to say.

Instead of talking, he walked around my kitchen much like the home inspector who’d turned his nose up and then recommended a bunch of repairs. “You’re living lean.”

My heart played a game in my chest: Do I want him here or not?

He slid his hands in the pockets of his designer jeans, jeans that hugged his butt like he’d had them tailored for the sole purpose of making his backside something people wanted to bite. “I guess I’m stalling.”

I reminded myself that his was a cheating backside. “Well, you’ve already wasted two of your minutes looking around. You have three left. I’d suggest you start talking before time’s up and you’re leaving with only a tour of my ‘lean’ kitchen.”

He wasn’t bothered by my threats, which fueled my anger. Good, I wanted to stay angry. Though I couldn’t decide who I was angrier at: him for coming here or me for letting him inside.

“Are you really happy here?” He attempted to shut a cabinet that defiantly popped back open. “This place isn’t your usual ...”

He was used to my—Aurora’s—apartment in Minneapolis. In general, I had enough energy to pour into my appearance and job, which left nothing for the interior of my home or body. Since Aurora wasn’t in Nashville—thank goodness—my living space reflected me instead of her.

“I’m ecstatic.” The words fell flat.

He walked into the living room, past the closet under the stairs that held, like a shrine, a box of my brother’s old things. “You’ve been in Nashville three weeks.” Then he looked down at the rumpled blankets splayed out on the brownish carpet and back at me as if I owed him an explanation for having nothing cushy to rest his sculpted ass on. “And there’s nothing here.”

Three weeks, two days, and twelve hours.

“There’s a TV.” I pointed to the fifty-inch on the floor opposite the blankets.

I smiled, satisfaction warming me as I noticed the Dorito-dust stain on the front of his shirt. He wouldn’t like that when he realized.

“Your five minutes is up. Thanks for coming to insult my first home purchase. Let me show you to my favorite part of the house.” I moved to the front door, just off the living room. “You’ll notice the paint is peeling here, too, but the blinds are new; be sure to admire those on your way out.”

“Come on. Please don’t be like this.” He stood close enough for me to smell the clean yet rugged notes in his cologne, close enough to see real pain in his eyes.

That look extinguished a few flames of the fire I’d been stoking ever since I’d found him in my driveway. It reminded me of the night we’d met; that animal magnetism had drawn us together and made my body react whether I’d wanted it to or not.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Vicki, but I was afraid of losing you. I never should’ve married her.”

“But you did.” An uncomfortable coil tightened in my chest. I had to remember to be angry.

He ran his hand through his hair again, and I was momentarily taken aback by the turmoil brewing on his chiseled face.

He grabbed my hand, led me to the blankets, and pulled me down onto them, taking my hands in his.

I ripped my arms back. I might be foolish enough to give him a chance to say his piece, but there would be no physical contact.

“Fair,” he said, nodding and clasping his hands together in front of him. “And you’re right. I did marry her. But it was a mistake. And I know that’s not an excuse. Can I just ... can I tell you how we got here?”

“I know how we got here. You pretended you weren’t married and started a relationship with me. Then you continued that relationship for six months! For six months you made me and your wife a statistic. You did that. No one forced you.”

He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry.” His words were slightly muffled and edged with emotion. “I made a mistake, a horrible one. But I’m doing everything I can to fix it.”

“You can’t fix it.”

His head snapped up, his storm-coming-over-the-horizon eyes shiny in the dim light. I’d never seen him cry, not that he was crying now, but his regret felt real, not the attorney determined to get his way in a courtroom, but a screwed-up human who was suffering because of his own asinine choices. I knew that feeling, and so I had to close my own eyes and shove away the sympathy that was ridiculously rising on his behalf. Because this was different.

“You know how I am,” he said. “I’m competitive, and if someone says I can’t have something, I consider it my personal duty to prove them wrong. It’s stupid, but that’s why I married Vicki. We grew up together. She said our families’ lives were too intertwined, and we’d ruin things by dating. And of course, I saw that as a challenge. We were attracted to each other, and we had fun together, but I was blinded by the conquest and didn’t see that we had nothing in common until we had rings on our fingers.”

He paused and took several deep breaths, his jaw shifting, like admitting this about himself and his life was hard.

I said nothing, torn between feeling sorry for him and feeling delighted that he was suffering, because he deserved all the pain, didn’t he?

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and then turned back toward me. “When I met you, I saw what I was missing with Vicki. You and I are on the same page. We’re both career driven, and we have the same sense of humor, and I like that you’re unique, and the chemistry ... that’s undeniable.”

His gaze was too intense; I had to look away.

“And I know it was wrong,” he continued, “but I felt so good when I was with you, so right, that I compartmentalized. I didn’t want to admit to everyone that I’d made a mistake, and so I made the biggest mistake of all.”

My head whipped back to him, a burning anger rising in my chest. “So what was your plan? I don’t understand why you let it go on for so long, how you could be so duplicitous. That takes a special kind of person.”

His answer came more quickly than I would’ve expected. “If I’d told you I was married, what would’ve happened the night we met? If halfway through our conversation on investing, when I was having more fun talking to you about the stock market than I’d had in months with my wife, what would you have done if you’d found out I was married?”

“I would’ve left,” I whispered, picking at a loose thread at the corner of the blanket we were on.

He nodded, like I’d just answered my own question. “It wasn’t right, but letting you walk away didn’t feel right either. And then it spiraled, and I didn’t know what to do. Every time I thought about coming clean, I’d picture you bolting. Because the more I got to know you, the more I realized that’s exactly what you’d do.”

“It is what I’d do. You wanna know why? Because that’s what a decent person would do. And I have a lot of issues, but I am not a cheater. And you made me one. I watched my dad cheat on my mom when I was a teenager, and it didn’t matter what his reasons were to me. It was not okay.”

He pulled back like I’d slapped him. “I didn’t know.”

“Because I didn’t tell you.”

And there were so many other things I hadn’t told him. Because being with Chad was like being with someone and being alone at the same time. He had his life, and I had mine. He was a well-rounded version of myself. That had been the beauty of it. No commitments. But I’d been so preoccupied with how he didn’t require what other men had required of me that, blinded by our chemistry, for six months I missed all the red flags. What made our relationship perfect was that he’d spent half his time with another woman I didn’t even know about. And what did that say about me that that was my perfect relationship, half a man?

“I think you should go.”

But he didn’t move. “I’m getting a divorce. It’s what I should’ve done a long time ago.”

Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I hadn’t expected him to say that. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you back. I want this.” His hand moved between us. “I want us. I think I love you.”

I closed my eyes.

“You don’t have to give me an answer now,” he went on. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m leaving Vicki whether you take me back or not. It’s the right thing to do. But I’m not giving up on us. This feels right to me. You’re right for me. And I don’t deserve another chance. I know that. But I’m human. I made a stupid, stupid mistake that hurt a lot of people, but I can’t lose everything because of it.”

My breath pumped in and out of my lungs too fast, and I counted. I counted the little holes in the blinds on my front door, and when that wasn’t enough, I counted all the things I didn’t have in my house, all the paintings I didn’t have on my walls, all the knickknacks on the shelves I hadn’t assembled.

“I just moved here. I just bought this house. I’m trying to build my own business.” It all sounded hollow in my own ears.

He took my hand, squeezed it slightly. I liked the warmth of his palm; I hated that I liked it. I hated myself too. “You didn’t move here for friends or a job or anything.” His fingers interlaced with mine, and he pulled me closer.

I hadn’t moved here for friends or a job. To my shame, Chad was the closest thing I had to a friend, and he knew this about me. I think he liked it about me. I fit into his life without complication. No arguments over who to spend time with. No fuss when he wanted to hang out with his guy pals. He’d lead and I’d follow, because what else did I have?

“I mean something to you. I have to,” he said. “Why else would you move across states when you found out I was married? That kind of action means something.”

Sweat stung my underarms, a sharp pinprick of guilt. He was right. That kind of action did mean something, but it didn’t mean what he thought it meant.

I hadn’t moved across the country because I’d been devastated to find out my boyfriend had been lying during our entire relationship. I’d uprooted my whole life because, looking out my crystal clear office window back in Minnesota, I’d discovered what a truly despicable human being I’d become—I should’ve known he was married. Like, why hadn’t I been at the Fletcher client meeting with him? Because he’d taken his wife, and I should’ve seen it.

But I’d never been with him for love. If you loved, you were vulnerable, and if you were vulnerable, your heart could be sucked out of your chest. If you got too attached to someone and that someone left you—I couldn’t go through that again. It was easier to do without it in the first place. Experience had told me that.

All those months ago, I’d slid onto the black short-backed barstool beside Chad the night we’d met, the night of my father’s funeral. The clean-cut, muscled bartender placed my father’s favorite drink, a scotch and soda, on the shiny, midnight blue bar top, and Chad laughed, told me he was having exactly the same thing. Conversation flowed. He’d had a rough day in the courtroom, and I told him about my job. I didn’t even need to turn him into a number. And then later, after we’d slept together and continued to meet, I didn’t question the unexplained texts he got, or his sudden need to leave when we were together, or his flimsy excuses. Because that allowed me to keep him at arm’s length, companionship without all the depth of real commitment.

But when I saw that pretty, blonde ponytail, those electric-pink earbuds, the earnestness as she stood on tiptoe and looked into Chad’s face, her husband’s face, I realized that my desire to maintain distance had turned me into a cheater. I’d done this to myself, to all of us. Because if I’d just been more suspicious or observant or if I’d cared more about him, I could’ve spared us all this pain.

Shame burned in my belly. I should’ve known.

Houston undermining me professionally had infuriated me, fueled me to do something rash. But the scene out my office window had been the catalyst for me to pack my bags. I didn’t trust myself anymore. When Erin mentioned this house, it seemed like a way out, an escape from everything I’d done wrong. I could start over and build a new life, avoiding people so I wouldn’t hurt them as much as I’d been hurt.

Now ... divorce. Had I caused this? Was I the reason some other woman’s life would soon be in shambles like my own?

He needed to go home, back to his wife, and leave me to this new life I was creating so I wouldn’t have even more guilt.

“Aren’t I now exactly what Vicki was to you then? Something you can’t have?”

He shook his head violently, a desperate gleam flickering around his cobalt irises. “No. This is different.”

He looked like he believed it was different, but I shook my head.

“I’m going to prove it to you,” he said, nodding again.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and for want of something to do with my hands, I pulled it out and looked at the screen. A text from Mrs. Crunch: Deanna, the woman from the grocery store, apologizing for the late reminder and confirming dinner this Friday night, as promised, two nights from now.

I glanced up at Chad. “You’re wrong about one thing. I have made friends here.” This wasn’t strictly true, but, as always, I had appearances to keep up, and he needed to believe there was no place for him in my life.

I quickly replied to Deanna before I could process what I was doing; I asked for her address and told her I’d be there.

“In fact,” I told him, “I have plans Friday night.”