Bex
I have sixteen missed calls from Theo by the time I land in New Jersey. The first of them arrived at seven, UK time. Then there’s one at eight, one ten minutes later.
So he was with her for all those hours. And any logical person would assume she knew how he’d spent them, though I’m still struggling to believe it.
His texts simply repeat what he said in his voicemail, begging for a chance to explain, except…how? How could he possibly explain leaving me in Portugal to be with Wendy, the married woman he was sleeping with behind the back of her dying spouse? There’s no possible excuse for that.
The day is as gray as my heart, and I’m too upset to sleep, which is for the best since I agreed to meet a realtor, a meeting I forgot until she shows up at my doorstep, too perky and cheerful by half.
She politely details the ass-load of work required before the house can be placed on the market, and I nod vacantly.
None of it even matters anymore. I was ready to leave my home behind because I felt as if I was going somewhere, but where exactly am I going?
If the show airs, I’m telling the whole world I’ve married a man who’s actually sleeping with a married woman.
If it doesn’t, I’m co-owner of a company that’s going to file for bankruptcy, a company I co-own with a man who, best case, has been lying by omission for months.
By the time the realtor leaves, the skies have opened.
The rain is torrential, and I’m so sick to my stomach that I can’t remain still.
I can’t sit on the couch. I don’t want donut holes, I don’t want Real Housewives.
I don’t want anything except for the magic spell that will undo what has happened—which is how I find myself in the rain, running.
It’s coming down so hard that I’m blinded by it, so hard that my shoes quickly grow waterlogged and squelch with each step I take and I don’t care.
I’m going to run, and run, and keep right on running until I’m too exhausted to feel the way I currently do.
I don’t stop until I’m standing outside the gates of my old elementary school.
I’ve failed at being a student, at being a daughter, at my first real relationship, and this is the place where my failures began.
The place where I bombed one test after another trying to make Jessie love me and it was never enough.
She needed me to be the bad kid so I became one. She needed me to fail so that Bronwyn could triumph, and I did that too. I blew up my childhood and my future when I was still too young to understand the consequences. But I’ve continued destroying things long after it was necessary.
It’s only because of Theo that I see all this clearly. But seeing it clearly means I’ve got to see him clearly too. He never told me he cared. He never offered me a single reassurance.
And if what Peter said was true, he never deserved me in the first place.
· · ·
The rain continues all night and into the next day.
It’s so loud that I almost miss the sound of the doorbell, followed by the pounding of the knocker.
There’s only one person it could possibly be, and my heart is beating hard as I approach the door.
There’s a weak girl inside me who wants to believe whatever lame excuse or apology Theo is about to offer just so that I don’t have to give him up.
I have to give him up. The past few days have put a gouge somewhere deep in my chest, one that isn’t going to heal, one I’m always going to feel, no matter what he says.
I open the door, braced for Theo’s lovely, anxious face…and find Wendy’s instead.
This is supposed to be Theo’s grand gesture, his apology for the ages. Only I could wind up faced with the girl he was fucking behind my back in his place.
“Can I come in?” she asks, her tone more fatigued than apologetic.
She’s soaking wet but somehow still model perfect—her skin glows, and the wet hair only serves to highlight her regal bone structure.
Even her makeup smears attractively. There is no one alive I want to let into my home less than her.
When I hesitate, she rolls her eyes. “I’ve come quite a long way to have this conversation. The least you could do is let me dry off.”
I step aside. “The least you could have done is not fuck my husband.”
She peels off her Burberry trench and hangs it on a hook. I’m not sure why she’s acting as if this will be a prolonged visit. I’m giving her five minutes at most.
She strolls in as if she owns the place, glancing around only briefly before she walks into the kitchen and helps herself to a paper towel from the counter, which she presses daintily to her forehead and beneath her eyes.
I hate her.
I hate her for being beautiful. I hate her for being so goddamn elegant even now. I hate her for the fact that she’s married to a man who was in line to become king and that still wasn’t enough for her. She needed Theo too.
“If it’s any consolation, I’ve never touched your husband.” She holds up a hand when my mouth opens to argue. “Not while he was your husband.”
“Peter told me you were having one of your lunches, Wendy. One of your long lunches.”
She pulls out a chair from the kitchen table and sinks into it. “This was your parents’ home? What middle-class taste they had.”
“Someone must have forgotten to mention that they’re dead,” I grit out.
She waves her hand at me. “Yes, yes, I know, but death doesn’t make you a saint.
It also doesn’t bequeath good taste, clearly.
So anyway, yes, we did meet for lunch, and if I’m to be completely honest, I would have slept with him if he’d been willing, but he was not.
” Her mouth sags before she forces it into a tight smile. “You can imagine my disappointment.”
“You were together for six hours, at least. You really expect me to believe you spent the whole time talking?”
She sighs. “Your continued cynicism is incredibly unattractive and illogical as well. What could I possibly gain by lying to you about all of it? And we were in no way alone. At any given point there were two lawyers and a publicist floating about.”
My head jerks up. “Why would you need lawyers and a publicist?”
“Theo should have told you all of this,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s Bryce. He’s been threatening to go public with my affair with Theo for months and now your friends at Baby Makes Three have talked him into it. We’ve been trying to get him into rehab, and it’s failed miserably.”
“Why would Theo care?” I demand. “You were the one who was cheating.”
For the first time since she entered the house, she looks a little less sure of herself.
“Because of you,” she says, not meeting my eye.
“He was worried it would embarrass you if the show actually aired, and he’s been doing his best to kill the story for only that reason ever since.
” Her smile is tremulous. “It’s incredibly irritating. ”
I don’t think Wendy’s a good enough actress to be lying to me, nor is there much of a reason for her to do so.
It’s clear in every line of her face that she wants Theo…
and he doesn’t want her back. Not enough, anyway.
But that doesn’t mean he wants me either.
Nor does it mean anything is solved. I still don’t see how I can forgive him for sleeping with her, under the circumstances.
“So how long did it go on for?” I ask, finally taking a seat.
“When we were in secondary school—”
“Jesus,” I whisper, burying my head in my hands. “This has gone on that long?”
“Not really. Let me finish. Anyhow, I could have had anyone I wanted back then, but not Theo. Which, I suppose, is how Bryce always felt about me. Theo was willing to sleep with me if he’d been drinking, but he never wanted more.
We went in different directions after university, but when he ran into his problems last summer with the video and needed to lie low for a while, I suggested we could help each other.
There’s something about a man you have to work to impress.
He’s the only one who ever made me work. ”
I have no idea how she thinks this is an improvement. It would seem she flew a very long way just to tell me they’re both assholes, which I’d sort of surmised on my own. “How could he have slept with a married woman after what happened to his brother?”
She examines her fingernails. I’d think she wasn’t bothered were it not for her slight wince at the question.
“He didn’t, exactly. I told him I was leaving Malcolm, that we were just keeping it quiet until my son finished fall term.
And I was planning to leave, but my husband was…
less aware of it than I’d implied. Then Malcolm got sick and made this public statement about it and called me his devoted wife, and Theo realized the truth. ”
My jaw falls open. “So you thought you could just…lie to Theo about your marriage and get away with it?”
“It wasn’t entirely a lie…I really was going to leave after the holidays. Theo refused to sleep with me once he found out, and he’s still rather angry, as you can imagine.”
It explains his iciness toward her that night at the pub, the way he acted as if she was invisible when she spoke.
But shouldn’t he have made sure she was separated?
Shouldn’t he have questioned her need for discretion a little more?
Maybe. I’m sure he’s been asking himself those same questions though.
“He should have told me,” I say staunchly.
She raises a brow. “You think you’d have handled it well, then, being told your spouse had been sleeping with a married woman and was being blackmailed by his old friend? You certainly aren’t handling it especially well right now.”
She’s entirely right—I’d have flipped out if Theo had told me all that—but I’m still tempted to kick her chair over.
“Sometimes the truth matters more than how someone will react to it. And that night at the bar…did everyone know it was fake? Did everyone know about the two of you?”