10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Willa
Ilasted four days so far.
Four days of not going to the kitchen. Of not texting.
Of not sending a car, or food, or flowers, or any of the dozen things every fucking instinct I had was screaming at me to send.
She’d asked for space, and she’d asked me to give it to her without trying to fix it, and giving someone something by doing absolutely nothing turned out to be the single hardest thing I’d ever attempted.
I’m not built for nothing. I’m built for action.
I solve things. Sitting in my apartment knowing she was twelve blocks south and hurting and not going to her went against the entire architecture of who I was.
I did it anyway, because for once the thing she needed and the thing I wanted to do were opposites, and she got to win.
The plant was still on the windowsill. Her toothbrush was still by the sink. I’d look at them and feel like I’d been hollowed out with a spoon.
Danny found me at the bar on the fourth night.
I hadn’t gone to the club to see anyone.
I’d gone because my apartment had started to feel like a held breath and I needed to be somewhere that wasn’t full of her things.
I was nursing a Blanton’s I had no intention of finishing when Danny sat down beside me, didn’t say anything for a full minute, and then signaled Matteo for a Yamazaki like he had all night.
“You look terrible,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“What did you do?”
I told him. The short version — the calls, the contracts, the thread, the fact that I’d done all of it without saying a word to her, and she’d found out from a pair of line cooks gossiping over a prep station.
Danny listened to everything, without expression, turning his glass slowly on the bar, and when I finished, he was quiet for a while.
“You solved her problem for her,” he said. “Without asking.”
“He stole from her. He spent two years tearing her down. He deserved it.”
“Probably. That’s not the part that’s blown up in your face, though, is it.
” He took a drink. “You’re hearing two things as one thing.
Whether he deserved it — that’s one question.
Whether it was yours to handle without telling her — that’s a completely different one.
You did the first thing right and the second thing wrong, and you’re standing here trying to use the first one to cancel out the second.
It doesn’t work like that. She knows he deserved it.
That was never what she was angry about. ”
I didn’t say anything, because he was right, and we both knew it.
“You took a decision out of her hands,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter that your reasons were good.
What she’ll remember is that you looked at the hardest thing in her life and decided you knew what to do about it better than she did, and then you did it behind her back.
That’s the thing you have to answer for. Not the rest of it.”
“How do I fix it?”
“You don’t charm your way through it. That’s your move, and it’s the worst possible thing you could do here, because the charm is part of what she’s afraid of.
” He set the glass down and looked at me directly.
“You go to her honest and uncomfortable and you let her see the version of you that isn’t smooth.
You apologize for the actual thing instead of the thing that’s easier to apologize for.
And you give her back whatever you can of what you took.
Get on your fucking knees if you have to, these women are worth it.
” He stood, dropped a hand on my shoulder for a second, which from Danny was roughly equivalent to a long embrace.
“She didn’t fall for the magazine version of you, Jagger. Nobody does. Show her the other one.”
He walked off toward the stairs, and I sat at the bar with my bourbon and thought about it for a long time.
Then I went home and did the one thing I was good at, which was the thing she hadn’t asked for and the only thing I had to give: I figured out exactly what I’d done, every piece of it, what was finished and what could still be reversed, and I wrote it all down, so that when I finally went to her I wouldn’t be bringing an apology.
I’d be bringing her back the decision I’d taken.
* * *
I went to the kitchen on the fifth night, after service, when I knew she’d be the last one there.
I didn’t dress for it. No suit. Jeans, an old sweater, I hadn’t shaved in four days and hadn’t slept much in them either.
I knew I looked like hell, and I let myself look like hell, because the whole point was that I wasn’t going to walk in there polished.
I pushed open the service door to see she was at her counter cleaning down.
She went still when she saw me, but she didn’t tell me to leave.
That was progress I’d fucking take.
“I know you asked for space,” I said, from just inside the door. “I gave you five days. If you need more, tell me, and I’ll go, and I’ll wait however long it takes. But I needed to say some things, and I’d rather say them badly to your face than perfectly in a text.”
She set down her cloth. Crossed her arms. Didn’t say anything. Watched me with red-rimmed eyes that told me she’d been doing her own version of the last four days, and the sight of it nearly took my legs out.
“I’m going to do this without being charming,” I said, “which means it’s going to come out clumsy, so bear with me.
” I took a breath. “First. I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry I went after him.
I won’t lie to you and that would be a lie.
He spent two years fucking with you and I’m not capable of being sorry that there are consequences for him.
I told you that the other night and I meant it and four days alone hasn’t changed it. ”
“Jagger—“
“Let me finish. Please.” She closed her mouth.
“But here’s what I’ve spent four days understanding.
The thing I did to him and the thing I did to you are two different things, and I’d been treating them like one.
Hurting his career — I’d do that again. Hurting you, going around you, making a decision about your life like your feelings were something for me to manage — that I would not do again, and that’s the part I’m here about, and I am so sorry for it that I haven’t slept properly since you found out. ”
I crossed the kitchen and put a folded sheet of paper on the counter beside her. She looked at it but didn’t pick it up.
“That’s everything,” I said. “Every call I made. Every person I spoke to and asked for favors. What’s done and can’t be undone, and what can still be reversed if you want it reversed.
The catering company won’t take him back, that’s finished.
But two of the other things — a word from me and they reopen.
The thread, I can’t unpublish, but I know who’s behind it and I can ask them to take it down.
” I pushed it an inch closer to her. “It’s yours.
The whole thing. What happens to Dwayne Evans from here is your call, not mine, and it should have been your call from the start.
You read that, and you decide, and whatever you decide, I’ll do it.
If you want me to put every contract back, I’ll make the calls tonight, albeit begrudgingly.
If you want him left exactly where he is, I leave him there to rot.
Your story. Your decision. I’m just the person who’s going to execute it, finally, the way I should have the first time. ”
She stared at the piece of paper. Her jaw was working. She still hadn’t touched it.
“You’re giving it back to me?” she said.
“I’m giving it back to you, darling. I took something that was yours to decide, and I’m putting it where it belongs. It doesn’t undo that I took it. But it’s the start of me showing you I understand what I did, instead of just telling you.”
And then I got down on my knees in front of her.
Not collapsed. Not a heap. I lowered myself down deliberately, in the middle of her kitchen, and I looked up at her, and I watched her breath catch because she’d never seen me do anything remotely like it, and neither had anyone else alive.
And God, if being on my knees in front of her didn’t turn me on a bit.
Okay, a lot.
“This part isn’t about Dwayne,” I said. “This is about you. I made you feel small, Willa. For a few days, when you found out, I put you right back in the place it took you two years to climb out of, and I did it without even noticing, which is worse, because it means I wasn’t paying enough attention to the one person I pay attention to better than I’ve ever paid attention to anything.
” My voice wasn’t steady anymore and I let it not be steady.
“I’m on my knees because I need you to understand that this is not nothing to me.
You are not a situation I’m managing. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted that I was scared of losing, and four days ago I found out I could lose you, and it has fucked me up.
I’d burn his career down again in a heartbeat.
But I would never, ever do it in a way that made you look at me the way you looked at me the other night.
I’m sorry. Not for protecting you. For hurting you.
Those are different and I finally know the difference. ”
She was crying. So was I, a little, which I hadn’t planned for and didn’t fight.
“Get up,” she said.
“Not yet. I’m not finished.”
“Jagger—“
“One more thing.” I stayed where I was. “I can’t promise I won’t ever want to fix things for you.
I will. Every time you’re hurt, my whole body is going to want to make the thing that hurt you disappear.
That’s not going to change, it’s how I’m built.
But I can promise you that I’ll come to you first. Every single time.
I’ll tell you what I want to do and I’ll let you decide and I’ll do it with you instead of around you, even when it’s killing me to wait, even when I’m certain I’m right.
I’d rather ask you the same question a thousand times than ever take a decision out of your hands again.
That’s the promise. That’s the one that matters. ”
The kitchen was silent except for the hum of the walk-in. She looked down at me on my knees in front of her, and I watched something move across her face — not softening exactly, more like a wall coming down brick by brick, slow and deliberate.
“You did the same thing he did,” she said quietly. “That’s what I couldn’t get past. The shape of it was identical.”
“I know, darling.”
“But you’re down on the kitchen floor handing me back the decision and apologizing for the hurt and not the act, and he never once in two years got the difference between those two things.
” A tear slid down her cheek and she let it.
“He’d have apologized for the wrong thing.
He’d have said sorry for making me upset and meant sorry for getting caught.
He’d never have understood that the problem wasn’t that I was sad, it was that I didn’t get a vote.
” She wiped her face. “You understand the actual thing. That’s the whole difference between you and him, and I’ve been standing here for four days trying to figure out if it was real or if I was just making excuses, and it’s real.
You did it because you love me. He did it because he owned me.
Those aren’t the same and I know they aren’t, even when the actions look identical. ”
“They’re not the same,” I said. “I love you. I should have led with that the other night, before the apology, and I didn’t, so I’m leading with it now. I love you, Willa. I have since you handed me a soufflé and told me it wasn’t revolutionary.”
“You loved my soufflé.”
“I loved the woman who made it. The soufflé was just how she introduced herself.” I was still on my knees. “Can I get up now, or am I living down here, because honestly, I’m okay with either.”
She laughed — the laugh I’d been starving for over five days — and she reached down and took my face in both hands and pulled, and I came up off the floor.
She kissed me before I was fully standing, so that I had to catch her, and the kiss was salt and pure fucking relief.
Her fists were in my sweater, and I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her clean off her feet and held her there in the middle of her kitchen because I couldn’t not.
“I’m still going to read the paper,” she said against my mouth. “And I haven’t decided what I want to do about him.”
“Read the paper. Take as long as you want. Whatever you decide.”
“And you ask me. Next time. Every time. Even when you’re sure.”
“I ask you. Every time. I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” She pulled back enough to look at me, her hands still on my face, her thumb moving over the four days of stubble. “For the record, this is the worst you’ve ever looked.”
“I know.”
“You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t.”
“You’re still the hottest man I’ve ever seen, annoyingly,” she said, and kissed me again, and I felt her smile against my mouth, and the held breath I’d been living inside for five days finally, finally let go.
We stood in the kitchen for a long time, her feet back on the floor and her head against my chest and my chin on top of her hair, the folded paper still sitting on the counter beside us, unopened, waiting for her. Her decision. In her time. Exactly where it should have been all along.
“I love you too,” she said into my sweater, like it was an afterthought, like it wasn’t the only thing I’d ever needed to hear. “I have for a while. I just didn’t want to say it to a man who’d look this smug about it.”
“I’m not smug.”
“You’re extremely smug.”
“I’m relieved. There’s a difference.”
She laughed into my chest, and I held her, and we stayed like that until the laugh went quiet and the kitchen was just the hum of the walk-in and the two of us.
“Can I ask you something,” I said, into her hair. “And I want you to notice that I’m asking.”
She pulled back to look at me, wary and amused at once. “Go on.”
“The Prix. The competition I brought up at that first dinner, before I knew how to do any of this properly.” I kept my hands light on her waist, no grip, nothing that would make it a push.
“Did you manage to think about it? Entries open in a few weeks. I think you should put your name in.” I held her eyes.
“Do you want me to send you the link? You can read it, or delete it, or never speak to me about it again. Your call. Completely.”
She went still in the way she did when something landed harder than I’d meant it to. She looked at me for a long moment, and I watched her clock the difference — the actual, structural difference between a man telling her what was going to happen and a man asking — and her eyes went bright.
“That’s all it took,” she said quietly. “You just had to ask.”
“I’m a slow learner. But I get there.”
“Send it,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I wanted.”