14. Emily #2
“Don’t you smile at me.” Her voice cracks up out of the sugary register entirely now, too loud, and a couple near the auction table glance over and then quickly away.
She doesn’t even notice. That’s the thing about Carmen, she’s never once in her life noticed the room turning, she only ever sees me.
“You think you won something? You think because some rich idiot took pity on you, that makes you better than me?”
“I don’t think about you enough to rank us, Carmen.”
It’s a lie. My heart’s slamming and my hands have gone cold and there’s a part of me, the old part, the small part she spent twenty years carving down, that wants to scream at her in the middle of this beautiful room I built.
I don’t. I just stand there and let her be the one coming apart, because for the first time in our entire lives I’m the one holding still and she’s the one shaking.
“Henry came to me because you weren’t enough.
” The words come out fast and vicious, the practiced wound, the one she’s clearly been saving.
“A man doesn’t go wandering if he’s happy at home.
You drove him into my bed, Emily, the affair, the baby, all of it, that’s on you. I just stood there and let it happen.”
For two years, that would have worked.
For two years I let people like Carmen and Henry and my own mother decide exactly how much space I got to take up, and a line like that would’ve folded me clean in half. I’d have swallowed it and smiled and gone home and cried where nobody could see.
But I threw that woman’s wedding ring in a lake three weeks ago, and she’s not coming back.
“You know what’s funny?” The rage comes up hot and clean, and for once I let it.
“A month ago that would’ve gutted me. I’d have laid awake all night picking through it for the part that was my fault.
” I take a step in. She actually steps back.
“And right now? Nothing. You won, Carmen. Congratulations. You got Henry, and a baby, and a man who lies and cheats and runs, and now you’re stuck with all three forever.
” I let that sit. “That’s the part you didn’t think through, isn’t it.
I get to walk away from him. You don’t. You’ve got his kid.
You’re tied to that lying, cheating coward for the rest of your life, and he’s going to do to you exactly what he did to me the second somebody newer smiles at him, except you won’t get a divorce and a fresh start.
You’ll get a custody schedule. Enjoy the hell out of that. ”
“Shut up.”
“You spent your whole life taking things off me because you thought having what I had would finally make you feel like something.” I say it slow, so it sticks.
“And it didn’t. It never will. Because the problem was never me, and it was never what I had.
It’s you. You’re the thing that’s wrong, and there’s no version of my life you can steal that fixes that. ”
She stares at me. For once in her life she doesn’t have a single thing loaded and ready.
“Is there a problem here?”
Richard’s voice, right beside me. I didn’t even hear him come up.
And Carmen transforms. It’s the fastest thing I’ve ever seen, the venom gone in a blink, her eyes going wide and wet, her shoulders curling in small and soft.
She turns to him like a flower turning to the sun, and her whole voice changes pitch, goes breathy and wounded, and I remember all at once that this is the thing she does, the thing she’s always done the second a man worth having walks into the room.
She wanted him at seventeen. She’s looking at him now like the last ten years didn’t happen.
“Richard.” His name comes out trembling.
“Oh my god, thank you. I came over to say hello, that’s all, I swear, and she just started screaming at me in front of everyone, I didn’t do anything.
” Her eyes well up on command. “She’s not, she’s not well, okay?
I’ve known her since we were kids and she’s always been like this, she makes things up.
The stuff she’s saying about me, about my family, none of it’s true, she’s obsessed with me, she always has been.
” A tear actually spills. She reaches out and touches his arm.
“I’m worried about her, honestly. You should be too.
You don’t know her like I do. Whatever she’s told you about her marriage, about her ex, she lies, Richard, she twists everything to make herself the victim. ..”
“Take your hand off me.”
He says it quietly, and she does, fast. He looks at her like she’s something tracked in on a shoe.
“I know exactly who you are, Carmen. I knew you back when you used to follow me around the senior lot pretending it was a coincidence. You haven’t changed a bit.
You’ve just moved on from chasing me to tormenting the one person who was ever decent to you.
” He doesn’t raise his voice once. “And don’t tell me who Emily is.
I know who she is. I’ve known longer than you’d believe.
She’s worth ten of you on her worst day, and everyone in this building can see it. So can you. That’s why you came.”
“I’m telling you, she’s...”
“Stop talking.”
Her mouth shuts. The wounded act flickers, trying to find another angle and coming up empty.
He leans down and presses a slow kiss to my forehead, unbothered, taking his time, letting her watch every second of it. Then he laces his fingers through mine and holds on.
“Oh, and the crying thing.” He glances back at her, almost bored. “Save it. Nobody’s buying it, only morons would, and I don’t keep morons at my events. So go on. Scram. Me and Emily have a date to get to.”
That’s news to me.
Carmen’s mask cracks straight down the middle, and for one naked second the thing underneath is pure, ugly hatred, all of it pointed at me. Two men in dark suits have appeared at the edge of my vision.
“You’ll regret this,” she hisses. At me. Not him. Me.
I look at her, and I feel nothing but tired. “I really won’t.”
Security walks her out. Most of the room never noticed a thing, and she’s gone before she can land a single parting shot. The doors close behind her, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
He keeps my hand in his and walks me a few steps from the empty space where Carmen’s face just was, but I dig in before we get far.
“Richard, I can’t just leave. I’m running this. There’s the auction close, and the thank-you remarks, and the breakdown after, I have a whole list...”
“Paul.” He says it to the air, and Paul materializes out of nowhere like he always does, already holding his tablet like he’s been waiting for exactly this. “Can you close out the night?”
“I closed out the last six of these before she got here,” Paul says, not unkindly, plucking the headset off my ear before I can argue. “Auction’s already running itself. Go. You’ve done the hard part, and frankly you’ve been on your feet for fourteen hours, I’ve been counting.”
“The remarks...”
“Are cue-carded and timed, because you made the cards. I can read.” He’s already turning away. “Go, Emily. That’s not me being nice, that’s me wanting my event back for one night.”
And that’s that. The thing I built is humming along without needing me hovering over it, which is the whole point of building it right, and the realization lands warm in my chest, that I can hand this off and it holds, that I’m good enough at this that it runs without me.
“Thanks for that,” I say to Richard once we’re out in the corridor, the noise of the ballroom dropping behind us. “Nice move, by the way. The date thing.”
“It wasn’t a move.” He glances over, and he’s not joking. “We’re going on a date.”
I stop walking. “What? Where?”
“I want to take you to dinner. For real.” His thumb moves over my knuckles. “Though it did upset Carmen, so consider it a cherry on top.”
So I let him lead me out into the night. And I let Carmen, somewhere behind us in her borrowed evening, watch us go.