33. Cali
CALI
Another week goes by. It's a good week, like all the ones before it.
The company is doing well. The Jersey firm is happy.
Two more clients signed. The kids are deep in the swing of summer camps, and Hayden has moved on from deep-sea creatures to a new fixation on volcanoes.
Isabella still has Doctor Fuzz, though I have a feeling that caterpillar isn't long for this world in its current form.
Every morning, before ten, my phone lights up with the same four words.
You're beautiful, Calista Meadows.
Tonight, the kids are with my mom again. She didn't even give me the fishing-for-details look this time. She just took them and told me to have fun. I think she's decided she likes whoever it is that's making me smile like this.
So here I am, in Ronan's penthouse, in Ronan's bed, in the tangle of Ronan's sheets. It's date number eight.
The eighth date.
I count them off in my head while I lie there listening to the shower run in the other room. Eight. My lucky number, the one that's been trailing me around this whole time like a dog that won't go home.
Eight pounds eight ounces.
Eight brains in an octopus.
Eight receipts on Todd.
And now, eight dates with a man I told myself I'd give one.
I roll onto my side. The bed is huge and soft and smells like him. Through the wall, I can hear the water going, and under it, faintly, Ronan humming. He's started singing when he thinks no one can hear him. It's unbelievably cute.
I reach over to the nightstand.
I keep the thing in my bag now, but I took it out earlier, before we—uh, got distracted. Now, I pull it out and set it down so I can look at it.
The cocktail napkin.
It's strange to see, sitting there on the wood, a little worn at the corners, a little soft from being handled.
You needed eight receipts to deem your husband a liar and a cheat. Give me eight chances to show you that I'm anything but that. And if at any time you decide I'm just as bad as him… hand me this and I'll walk away.
Well. Here we are.
I pick it up and hold it between two fingers.
It's such a stupid little thing. Two cents' worth of paper.
But it's come to mean so much. It's the whole record of Ronan Akov, in a way.
The proof that he was paying attention when nobody else was, that he built his entire pitch around the idea that I can't leave an incomplete dataset alone.
He was right about that. He's been right about a lot of things.
I get up, wrapping one of his shirts around me, and pad barefoot toward the bathroom. Steam is leaking out from under the door. I push it open and lean in the doorway. He can't see me through the glass, all fogged up as it is.
I look down at the napkin in my hand.
The toilet's right there.
I could do it. I could drop it in, hit the handle, and watch it swirl away. Eight dates have passed. The experiment's over. I've got my conclusion.
He's not Todd. He was never Todd. Every piece of data I gathered on him points the same direction.
That he's the best man I've ever known.
Flushing it would mean the trial is done. It would mean I've made up my mind. It would mean I'm keeping him.
I hold it over the water and just look at it.
Then I pull my hand back. No. That feels wrong somehow. Melodramatic, kind of. Flushing it feels like something Old Cali would do, some grand gesture. New Cali doesn't need the gesture. I'll just… I'll just put it back in my bag.
Or maybe I'll frame it. God, that's embarrassing. I'm gonna pretend that thought never occurred to me.
I'm still standing there, half laughing at myself and my ridiculousness, when a phone starts ringing.
It's coming from somewhere out in the bedroom. Not my ringtone, and not Ronan's usual one, or at least not one I recognize, but I've heard his phone ring a hundred times and I don't pay that much attention to which is which.
"Ronan," I call over my shoulder. "Your phone."
The water keeps running. "What?"
"Your phone's ringing!"
The shower doesn't stop. "Can you grab it?" he calls back, his voice muffled and easy. "Tell whoever it is I'll call them back."
"Sure."
I fold the napkin and tuck it into the breast pocket of the shirt I'm wearing. Then I go back out into the bedroom to find the phone.
It takes me a minute to track it down.
It's not on the nightstand. It's not on the dresser. The ringing is coming from the far side, near where Ronan dropped his clothes earlier, in a heap by the chair, which is not like him at all. I follow the sound and find it in the pocket of his slacks.
Then I stop.
It's a phone, yes. But it's not the one I usually see him with.
This one is different. Older-looking. Plain. About a decade out of date, too, the kind of phone you'd buy at a gas station if you were desperate—or trying to hide something.
I don't think anything of it. Sure, Ronan has a bunch of phones. But rich people are weird. Lawyers are weird. I've stopped trying to figure out every strange thing about this man, because that way lies madness, and he's earned the benefit of the doubt.
The screen just says a name. Navi.
Oh, I know Navi. Well, I don't know him, but I know of him. The cousin. A goober, apparently, but a loveable one. I've never met him, but I've heard enough stories that I feel like I have.
I answer it, already smiling and halfway to introducing myself.
"Hi," I start to say, "it's—"
But a voice is already talking over me, fast and breezy, a man mid-thought who's been waiting to say something and doesn't hear me at all.
"Everything's good to go," Navi interrupts. "We can seize the Bradshaw woman's shares whenever you're ready."
I stop.
"… What?"
There's a silence on the other end. A different kind of silence than the friendly, mid-sentence pause I was expecting. This one is a man realizing he's said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
"I—" Navi starts.
"Who is this?" I say, even though I know. I'm not sure why I'm asking, because it doesn't really matter. It just feels like the kind of thing you say in this situation. "Say that again. What did you just say?"
The shower is still running behind me.
Ronan is still humming.
The steam is still leaking under the door.
"I think," Navi says slowly, "that I've got the wrong… Is Ronan there?"
"You said 'the Bradshaw woman,'" I hear myself mumble. It feels like deja vu. I'm in a Phoenix hotel room all over again, as an unexpected horror rears its nasty head and takes a bite out of the life I thought I had. "You said 'we can seize her shares.'"
Nothing. Just breathing.
"I am the Bradshaw woman," I say. "And that's my company you're talking about. Isn't it?"
"Ma'am…" But he doesn't say anything for a few moments after that. I think we both recognize that too much has been said, and it cannot possibly be taken back.
I drop onto the bed, feeling like my legs were just cut out from under me. Breathing is suddenly a chore. Just living hurts. It's like I have to pump my heart manually, reminding it every beat to go, go, go.
"Put Ronan on," Navi requests finally. "Please."
I look at the bathroom door. I can still make out the shape of him behind the frosted glass, and he's still humming.
He has no idea yet that the phone in my hand is the wrong phone, the one I wasn't supposed to touch, and the person on the other end of it just said something that I was almost certainly not meant to hear.
When I double over to force another breath into my lungs, I hear a crinkle. That's when I remember the napkin is in my shirt pocket. I can feel the little square of it against my chest, where I tucked it two minutes ago when I was standing in the bathroom deciding to keep Ronan Akov for good.
"How long have you been working on this?" I rasp out.
"I'm not going to have this conversation with you," Navi says. "That's not because I'm trying to hide anything. It's just not mine to have. You need to talk to him."
I can't breathe. I feel sick. Am I dying? This must be what dying feels like.
"Talk to Ronan," Navi says again. And then, quieter, so sincere that it's almost like he means it: "I'm sorry it happened like this."
The line goes dead.
I stand there in the middle of Ronan Akov's enormous, beautiful bedroom, forty stories over Central Park, holding a cheap gas-station phone, and do the thing I do. The only thing I've ever really been good at.
I take the scattered pieces and I put them together into a picture.
The filing against my company. Ronan said it was Todd regrouping. Was that true?
The power of attorney I signed. Limited, narrow, revocable, he promised. Only so he could act quickly on my behalf. Was that true?
Full access to my corporate filings. So I know the scope of what must be done. Was that true?
I feel the picture assemble itself, cold and clean and horrible, click, click, click, one piece snapping into the next until the whole thing becomes undeniable.
He doesn't want me.
He never did.
I was only ever a means to an end.
The water shuts off in the bathroom. The humming stops. Through the fogged glass, I see the shape of the man I thought I loved reach for a towel. He's easy and relaxed, post-coital and happy. He thinks I'm clueless.
I take the napkin out of my pocket.
Then I take my things and I leave.
Before Ronan Akov can do any more damage to my heart.