CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
(Charlotte)
“You walked away from a billionaire.”
“I guess I did.” I didn’t pause in unpacking my suitcase. I couldn’t take the look I knew I’d see on Sarrah’s face.
I used to argue that money could buy happiness. That people who said otherwise were naive or had never needed money. It sucked to find out that money didn’t buy happiness, after all.
“A literal billionaire. Like, you could be jetting off to Paris on the weekends to buy diamonds, but you chose to come back here?”
“How many times are you going to ask the same question in different ways?” I slammed a drawer shut hard enough to rock the stuff on top of my dresser. I couldn’t avoid looking at her anymore.
Sarrah sat on my bed, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress. “I guess until I understand why you ran away from a rich guy that you like.”
Love. I loved him, and that’s what made this slow slide into our inevitable breakup so hard for me.
Not hard for him, apparently. I’d tried to call him the moment I got off the plane. He hadn’t answered. Then, when I’d gotten home, I’d sent a text. Read, but not returned. Maybe he wasn’t worried about our relationship because I told him not to be. Or maybe he was secretly glad I’d gone home, and he wouldn’t ever speak to me again.
“You keep focusing on the rich part,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, because I’m broke, and I don’t understand what’s happening. I would peace out on my entire life if a guy like that wanted me sewn to his hip.” Her long, beaded earrings jangled as she shook her head at my foolishness.
“There’s no way to convince you about this without it sounding clichéd, but… He doesn’t love me as much as he loves his money.” My voice choked off, and I forced myself, through great effort, not to burst into tears.
My best friend’s demeanor changed instantly. “He said that to you? He had the nerve—”
“Not in those exact words.” I should be fair to him. “But he said it was ‘poetic, but unrealistic’ for someone to give up their wealth for love.”
“It’s not ideal.” She chewed her cheek while thinking it over. “Is it worth breaking up over?”
“We didn’t break up. I just needed time to think.”
“I’m sorry, did we meet yesterday? Do I not know you?” She got up, rubbing her hands on the thighs of her jeans, and headed for my kitchen.
“Don’t eat anything in there. I haven’t been home in weeks.” Of course, my mother had probably been out here throwing away spoiled food and generally snooping around to see what I was up to.
I’d been keeping everyone in the dark about what was happening with Matt. They’d all known, of course, that I’d gone off on a fancy vacation with him and then on to a visit in New York.
But declarations of love? My doubt? I’d dropped all that squarely in my best friend’s lap when she’d come over thinking I was home from a vacation fling.
“I’m looking for alcohol. I need it to deal with you sometimes,” she said, taking down a couple of tumblers from a cupboard. She spoke while she poured cotton-candy-flavored vodka into both, neatly dividing the half-full bottle between them. “You’re running away from another guy, all right? Until you can admit to that, we have no way of moving forward to a resolution.”
I threw my hands up. “Fine. I’m running away from Matt.”
“Great, glad we’re on the same page.” She grabbed a couple of diet sodas from the fridge and poured them into our tumblers. “Why?”
“I told you why. Because he said—”
“Because he said something that you would have totally agreed with before you left here to go to Fuck Island with him.”
She had me there.
I dropped onto the couch and jerked upright at a knob of pressure in my lower back. Pulling the stuffed dragon free, I sat it on the coffee table and tried not to make eye contact with it. Matt had never even been to my house, and there were reminders of him all over it.
Fuck. I had a dildo cast from his actual dick. Why did I think running was going to work?
“How did it even come up?” she asked, bringing the drinks over.
I took mine gratefully and sipped it. Way too strong, but necessarily so, if this was the conversation I had to face. “We were talking about my brother. Ugh, my fucking brother. Okay, so, after Scott threw the most epic tantrums about me and Matt, it turns out he was fucking Matt’s sister all along. Matt’s married sister.”
Sarrah’s eyes widened, and she leaned slightly back.
“I know,” I went on. “Believe me, I know. But when I heard Scott and Catherine—that’s Matt’s sister—talking, one of the things that Scott said was that he would give up billions of dollars to be with her. I mean, not those exact words. More like, she said she couldn’t leave her husband because she had more to lose, and he was like, I would lose it all. Something to that effect.”
“And Matt thought that was unrealistic?” Sarrah swirled her cup.
“That’s what he said.” Those words, I could remember with piercing clarity. “Poetic. Not realistic.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t saying it about your brother and his sister?”
“I—”
“You didn’t clarify if he was asking about you.” She punctuated her statement with a gulp from her tumbler.
“What was I supposed to do? Ask him, ‘would you give up billions for me?’ and hope the answer was different?” What if it hadn’t been different?
She circumvented my “what if” without waiting for me to speak it. “If it was different, would you have believed him?”
“I don’t know. Probably not?”
“Would you have wanted to believe him?” She tilted her head and awaited my answer.
Would I have wanted to? “What kind of question is that?”
“The kind someone asks when they can see their best friend repeating the same bullshit she has repeated in all of her relationships. You’re inventing problems because you want to be the one to leave first.”
“Ouch.”
“Truth hurts.”
I took a long swallow and grimaced at the burn of the alcohol. Truth did hurt, especially when I couldn’t convince myself of a lie. “No one likes to be rejected.”
“You’re right,” she agreed gently. “Nobody does. But you weren’t rejected, were you?”
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Define ‘not really.’ Was he upset that you were leaving?” she asked.
“I think he would have been perfectly happy if I’d stayed in New York for the rest of my life,” I choked out, a hot tear spilling down my cheek.
Sarrah moved automatically to grab a tissue from the box on the coffee table. “And would you have been perfectly happy doing that?”
I took the tissue and blotted under my eyes. “Throwing my life away and jumping straight into a man’s isn’t something that should make me happy.”
“Should or would?”
Sarrah should have gone to law school. She would have had less time to scrutinize my dating life, if she had.
With a tearful laugh, I said, “I don’t know. The only thing I have going for me here is you and the rest of the group, my parents, the dispensary—”
“You’re going to have so much money, you’ll be able to come back here and hang with us any time you want,” she pointed out. “And there are dispensaries you can work at in New York, if you like it.”
Damn. I didn’t have a way to argue with any of that. I almost brought up Matt’s thing about travel and lessening carbon footprints to assuage his conscience but immediately dismissed it. He would never deny me visits back home. And while I liked working at the dispensary, I also liked having every one of my needs met without any effort on my part.
But I couldn’t quit arguing against my own happiness. “How do I know this is even permanent, though? I’m supposed to, what, put everything on hold until he’s done with me?”
“What do you have going on that’s so hard to pause?” she challenged me.
“Again, ouch.” But what did I have going on? I still didn’t know what I was meant to do with my life. Was it possible that being with Matt was a part of finding that out?
My phone chimed, and I jumped up, racing to my bed to grab it.
“This is definitely the behavior of someone who is emotionally capable of walking away from a relationship,” Sarrah snarked.
“Shut up. It’s from Scott, anyway.” Disappointment rose like acid in my throat as I opened the text. It was a photo of a…check? A check made out for more zeroes than could reasonably cram into the little box.
I glanced up at Sarrah. “Hang on. I have to call my brother real quick.”
“Do you want me to leave?” She gestured to the front door; there wasn’t anywhere one could have a private call in what was basically a studio apartment.
“No. Stay. Something’s happening.” I didn’t explain further, because the call was already connecting.
“Did you get my text?” Scott asked in lieu of a greeting.
“I did. What am I looking at?”
“I told Matt to write me a check for all of his money or break up with you,” Scott said flatly. “That’s thirty billion, by the way.”
“Wait. Wait.” I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. Sarrah sat up on her knees on the couch.
I should have put the call on speakerphone.
“He figured out why you left,” Scott went on. “With my help, obviously, because he’s as clueless as you are sometimes. I made him write me the check, then told him I would cash it if he didn’t break up with you. He chose you over the money.”
“Okay, but he could have canceled—”
“Will you—” Scott started to scold me, then lowered his voice. “Stop it, okay? You love him. He loves you. Stop inventing reasons why you can’t commit, when it’s clear by looking at the two of you that this is it for both of you. You’ve found your true loves. Be happy about it, instead of trying to sabotage it.”
I covered my mouth and moved the phone so I could bring up the image in the text. There were a thousand holes I could poke into this, at least. Empty gesture. Planned stunt between the two of them. Matt could sell property and make the money back. Cancel the check. There was never any real risk. I had so many options for invalidating what Scott was telling me and what Matt had told me all along.
“Charlotte?” Scott’s voice sounded far away.
I put the phone back to my ear. “Sorry. This is…a lot.”
“It’s not. You’re a lot, and it’s getting on my nerves,” Scott snapped. “Stop trying to ruin the best thing that’s happened to you in a long time.”
“I’m sorry, am I still talking to the brother who didn’t want me to date Matt?” I demanded, but I knew I was stalling. The inevitable, horrible moment during which I would have to admit that he was right was barreling down on me.
“I was wrong.” At least, he had to say it first. “When I spent time with the two of you, together, and I saw how different you both were. How happy… Neither of you have been that way in a long time. Hang up with me, get your ass on the phone, and work things out before you’re both miserable and you both make me miserable about it!”
The call disconnected.
On the bright side, I didn’t have to admit to my wrongness.
“What’s up?” Sarrah asked, folding her arms on the back of the sofa as she stared me down.
“Matt… he…” I almost couldn’t believe it, now that I was saying it. “Scott gave him an ultimatum. He said Matt had to either break up with me or give him all of his money.”
“And?”
I showed her the screen.
“Holy. Shit.” She chugged down the rest of her drink in three huge gulps.
“Yeah, that’s…” My mouth went dry. “That’s a lot of money.”
Gasping from lack of oxygen, Sarrah pointed out, “It’s a lot of money he was willing to lose in order to keep you.”
The urge to argue rose once again. “I don’t think Scott could have ca—”
“Oh my god, are you kidding me?” Sarrah shot to her feet. “What is it going to take to convince you that someone loves you?”
“I don’t know!” I sat on the end of my bed, shoulders slumped in defeat. “I believe that Matt loves me. I don’t believe I deserve it, maybe?”
“Then go to therapy! In New York! Where the hot rich guy who’s madly in love with you is waiting for you!” She jabbed her hand toward the door frantically. “You are living the dream, and you want everyone to wake you up?”
Thirty billion could buy a lot of therapy. Maybe even enough to make me normal.
“I don’t know.” I tossed the phone down on the bedspread. “Things were so much easier when we were at the resort.”
“Oh, wow, shocker, life was easier when you were on vacation.” She rolled her eyes so epically I was sure they would sever from the optic nerves and fall right out. “Go to kink clubs, if it’s such a problem for you to be in the real world for more than twenty-four hours at a time.”
I frowned. “I don’t think I’m going to find many kink clubs in New York City.”
“False!” Now, she turned her jabby finger in my direction. “There are, and they’re totally legal. I saw a documentary about it on YouTube. They’ve got licenses and everything.”
“It’s not about the kink. It’s about—”
“It’s about the money, about him valuing you more than dollar signs, I get it. But it’s tired, Charlotte. There isn’t any reason you shouldn’t be with him.” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m going to get a car home. Don’t talk to me again until you’re in New York.”
“Come on, do you think it’s healthy for me to move in with a guy I—”
“I said don’t talk to me again until you’re in New York,” she reiterated, grabbing her purse. “Do with that what you will.”
My jaw dropped. “Sarrah—”
But she walked out.
I sat motionless, trying to process the last twenty minutes of my life. It all came up error screens. Scott had been against the relationship. Now, he was our biggest fan. Sarrah, who once gave me an hour-long lecture about financial autonomy because I’d cosigned on an ex’s car lease, thought I should toss out my entire life for a rich man.
Who were these people?
Why were they right?
I fell back on my bed and closed my eyes. I wanted to believe I was being pushed into calling Matt, that I wasn’t choosing to be with him, that I was bowing to pressure. That was bullshit. Barriers I was setting up in advance, in the hopes it would hurt less when Matt rejected me, or when I got scared again.
I was tired of trying to come up with reasons to run that I could comfortably fall back on. Maybe, for the first time in my life, I needed to see something through.
Matt was worth it.
If he would even answer the phone, that was. Since he’d ignored all earlier communication, I didn’t have high hopes as I listened to the call ring in.
“Hey, princess.”
My whole body went weak at the sound of his voice.
“I’m sorry I didn’t pick up before,” he said hesitantly, as if he was worried he was in trouble. “Scott told me not to talk to you before he did.”
“Oh, he told you that, did he?” I wanted to be pissed off, but Scott knew me too well. If I’d spoken to Matt earlier, if he’d tried to bring up the subject of poeticism versus reality before I’d seen the evidence, it would have been unlikely to sway me. “Did you really write him that check?”
“Of course, I did. I would have gone out and gotten him cash, if he’d told me to.” Matt paused. “Well, maybe. I don’t think I could get that amount of printed cash within a day.”
“I’m pretty sure you couldn’t get that amount of printed cash, full stop. So, remember, when the computers rise up, you’re going to be as broke as everybody else,” I warned with a miserable little laugh. “You’re not going to let him jump into our relationship and interfere every time I make a decision, are you?”
“Only when that decision scares the hell out of me. I allowed him to interfere because… He said I was losing you. And it confirmed the fear I’ve had all day.” Matt paused. “Charlotte. Am I losing you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and let the tears come. “You were.”
“That’s past tense,” he said quietly. “What about now?”
“You’re not.”
The declaration loosened the tension in my chest immediately.
With a shuddering sob, I told him, “I want to come home.”
“I’ll get you on the first flight back that’s available,” he said without even a second of hesitation. “Tomorrow, though. You need to get some sleep.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“And when you get here, we’re going to have a long, long conversation about why the hell you would go all the way across the country rather than tell me the truth about why you’re going,” he added sternly.
“That’s fair.” I would save my ideas about therapy for when we were face-to-face. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” He said it so effortlessly, considering none of this was his fault.
“Don’t be. This one is fully my problem.” I blew out a long breath. “You know, we could have stayed at Ascend Red forever, and this wouldn’t have happened.”
He made a noise of annoyance. “You were the one who said we couldn’t stay there forever. I would have been perfectly happy to run away from reality.”
“We obviously need to hold each other accountable for our destructive, irrational impulses.” It wasn’t a joke, but I hoped it sounded like one. “And the first thing you need to hold me accountable for is my laziness. I don’t want to sit around your penthouse all day being a kept woman. I’m going to have to get a job.”
“There are plenty of dispensaries,” he unintentionally echoed Sarrah’s earlier suggestion.
“Ooh, or a kink club,” I said playfully. “I hear there are some of those in the city.”
“None I’ve ever been impressed with.”
Light. Fucking. Bulb.
“So, you’re coming home, then?” he went on, leaning on the word “home.”
“I am.” I couldn’t contain my grin. “I’m coming home. And I’m bringing a business proposition.”