14. Wishful Thinking
fourteen
When my eyelids fluttered open, a smile drew itself up on my lips in a millisecond of anticipation of Sophie’s form sleeping next to me. But when the empty pillow greeted my eyes, I squeezed my eyelids shut again before burying my face in the sheets.
Why did she keep doing this?
It was clear as day that she couldn’t resist me, just as I failed at resisting her. So why did everything have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t she just go with the flow and see how things would organically go between us? She could hate the fact that I snored. I might grow repulsed by her little ‘stoner’ hobby. A thousand things could come between us, but she was this relationship’s worst enemy.
Relationship?
That was someone else’s thought intercepting my brain, and I resented the way Sophie got me chasing after her like a puppy. It wasn’t like me to think this way, or consider being with a woman who was far too scared to let the light of day see us together.
Lifting up my head, I regretted every motion as my temples tormented me with the inevitable headache that came after last night’s binge. But I wasn’t so used to sleeping like a log after a night of heavy drinking. My mind even dared to wonder if she had spiked my drink when we’d come back and had one last bottle of wine before collapsing in bed.
Shaking off the absurd thought, I slowly pushed myself up, and as I looked down, I chuckled at the sight of my nakedness. Sophie must have had a field day filming me in my sleep like this.
Getting out of bed, I slid my feet into the slippers, grabbed my phone, and leisurely shuffled downstairs. I knew that I looked like an escaped lunatic, but who cared at this point? Everyone was off today, and I needed coffee more than air.
In the middle of my kitchen, I stood in front of the coffee machine, squinting as the whirring sound felt like drills through my ears. When my cup was ready, I took it and downed a big sip, feeling my stomach turn as I did.
I should say, “I’m never drinking again,” but who was I kidding?
With lazy steps, I walked out of the kitchen and checked my phone. A thousand ‘Happy New Year’ texts that need a response. A missed call from mom. Three missed calls from my lawyer friends. I wasn’t ready for any of it.
I didn’t know how I’d arrived back upstairs and in the bedroom, but as I grabbed a dressing robe, I noticed a stick of lip balm on the floor next to the bed. Smiling, I crouched down and picked it up. It was a drugstore brand in peach. Putting aside the coffee, I pulled off the cap and lifted up the tube to my nose, inhaling deeply. That was the taste of her lips last night—or early this morning—mixed with cheap beer and a thrill that made my heart race.
Who would have thought that this seemingly introverted, seemingly innocent and reserved woman from the Cold Spring NGO could explode like a million suns in the privacy of any space alone with me?
With my thumb, I unlocked the phone and dialed her number. This time, her phone was off. So I started typing instead.
You left something in my bedroom. Something I’m tempted to use.
Smiling, I hit ‘send’ and tossed the lip balm onto the bed before picking up my coffee, taking a sip, and heading into the shower.
An hour later, and after a run and a slice of toast, the headache wouldn’t go away. I took two pills of painkiller and just as I washed them down with a drink of water, my phone began to ring. It was Chad.
“Way too early,” I said when I answered.
“For me, maybe. You called it a night after the countdown.” He chuckled. “I’m disappointed in you.”
“For being an early bird?” I mocked.
“For blowing off my party to run off with… who did you run off with? All the hot pieces stayed until closing. Some of them behind closed doors!” He continued to laugh, pride dripping from his tone. According to Chad, the success of a party could be measured by the amount of occupied bedrooms the venue hosted.
“I—”
“Don’t even try to lie to me. I know you got laid.”
“Please tell me more.”
“Your lawyer friend, Frederick?”
“Hendrick,” I corrected him.
“He texted asking if you were still here. You weren’t.”
“Do you know how many parties I was supposed to be at last night?”
“Yet, you didn’t fess up about which one you’d ended up at. My reading of the situation? You’re secretly tapping ass.”
“I’m hanging up—”
“No! No, no, no, don’t you fucking dare. We’re doing chess like we always do.”
“Then get your ass over here and stop interrogating me.”
“Not for another few hours.”
“Why not?”
“I still gotta serve breakfast in bed!” he said in a meaningful tone.
“I didn’t need to know that.”
“Tough shit. Hey, want me to grab anything?”
“A new head? Mine’s about to burst.”
He chuckled. “That’s what you get for drinking whatever piss you drank in whatever hole you were at. Peace out.”
I pressed my lips together. “Goodbye.”
In an attempt to nurse my hangover, I went back into the kitchen and started making a smoothie. Coconut water, ginger tea, kefir apple, pineapple, and orange juice… now, blend. Needless to say, the sound of the mixer nearly reduced me to an anguished pool of pain on the floor.
For nearly two hours, I immersed myself in Jean-Luc Godard’s nineteen-sixty-three masterpiece, Le Mépris (Contempt) with Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli. It told a tale of people who were simultaneously seduced and repelled. Infatuated and appalled. Falling in and out of love.
Love. What did I know of it? In my life, I had barely scratched the surface of matters such as love, compromise, or sacrifice. When a relationship got in the way of the bigger picture, I deemed it unnecessary and moved it.
But here I was, questioning the bigger picture for the sake of a woman. What was I doing so wrong that she couldn’t overlook?
You don’t think that maybe—just maybe—there’s something wrong with her and not you?
Commitment phobia. A second life in crime. A secret boyfriend.
“Or maybe she’s a spy,” my friend Hendrick chuckled as we caught up over the phone. Now I was sitting in my study with a cup of hot ginger tea.
“Do you think she works for Carnie?” I humored his joke.
“Nah, Carnie would use a drone much like himself. Sounds more like a Schwab operation.”
“How is he, by the way?”
“About to announce his engagement to Maria Lucado.”
“Oh.”
“I know. She got him!”
“C’mon, she’s doing alright on her own.”
“And when did a second house in the Hamptons sound like a bad idea?”
“You need to stop doing that.”
“What—What am I doing?”
“Dubbing every woman a gold-digger, because she’s marrying up.”
“Isn’t that the very definition?”
“By that logic, people should say the same thing about Floyd.”
“We’re not married.”
“You’ve been together three years. He moved into your apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street after six months. And two years later, you paid for a house in Montauk in both your names.”
“You can be a real asshole, you know that?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“And you know that Schwab uses his money to lure in the pussy.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “You’re hopeless. We still on for lunch next week?”
“Yes, but my newest client is taking one of yours to court… so how about my place?”
“I can do that.”
The call ended, and with it, many of my questions from before. They were all replaced with one giant statement: Sophie doesn’t want to be called a gold-digger. It felt like a better option than most, since it was the one I could live with and maybe even mitigate.
I was awfully aware of how biased I was, and how far I was willing to go to convince myself that Sophie wasn’t simply toying with my feelings. It was easier and more acceptable to believe that she had a good reason. That she…
The doorbell interrupted my train of thought, and I pressed on the nearest security panel to unlock it.
“Honey! I’m home!” Chad hollered.
I raced toward the foyer, holding up both hands. “I’m begging you, don’t yell.”
“Jesus Christ!” He furrowed his eyebrows as soon as he laid eyes on my face. “You drank the ocean.”
“Shut up.”
Pointing at my face, he chuckled. “If my eyes ever get this puffy, you shoot me. Am I clear?”
“Shut up.” I grabbed another smoothie and watched him strut toward my study. I silently followed.
“If my agent saw me looking like that—”
“Well, thank fuck I’m not in show business.”
As I stood in the doorway, he turned to me and pretended to stifle a laugh as he shook his head. “If you don’t tell me what you were up to, I’m just going to assume the worst, and you know it.”
Sitting down at the chess table, I glanced at him with a visible scowl. “You’ve crossed over to completely annoying.”
“Thank you.” He sat down, clearing his throat while staring at the board for a moment. As usual, he played with white. “Also, it’s very unlike you to be drinking… what’s this?” He leaned over, looking at his smoothie and then at me with questioning eyes.
“A hangover recipe.”
“I’m not hungover.” He shrugged, picking it up and taking a sip. “Mmm. Yummy.”
Pointing at the chess board, I stared at him from under my eyebrows. “Sometime today?”
“Here.” He moved a pawn. I could feel his eyes burning holes through my face as I concentrated on my initial move.
Finally, I moved my pawn and said, “I think I met someone.”
“Oh boy, am I speechless,” he mocked, giving me a knowing look before nodding and looking down at the board. “When?”
“Christmas.”
“So you weren’t stuck in Cold Spring!” He began to chuckle, slowly clapping his hands. “I knew it.”
“I actually was.” I nodded in confirmation.
His hands stopped mid-air as he stared at me. “She’s not.”
“She is.”
“From Cold Spring?” He paused. “Is that where you went last night?”
“No, no. She’s um—here, actually. Volunteering in Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn?” He raised his eyebrows. “You know, all these impromptu reactions are not good for the wrinkles.”
“Stop doing it, then.”
“Then quit messing with me! Who’s volunteering on New Year’s?”
“Sophie.”
“And Sophie is…”
“A writer.”
“Anything I might’ve read?”
“I don’t know. Are you familiar with Anna Brandt versus Plemon Studios?”
“What?”
“She works for the Creators’ Rights Organization.”
He tilted his head and said nothing for a moment, taking a sharp breath as he did. “She’s a Jane Doe.”
“I hate when you do that.” I shook my head.
“I’m not being judgy. I’m just saying…” Holding up both hands, he pulled back, straightening up in his seat while his face grew more serious. “Your parents, your friends—”
“My associates, partners, competition and everyone who knows my name will question her intentions.” I paused, looking him dead in the eyes. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Chad.”
“It’s only been a minute, you don’t have to—”
I interrupted him with a wag of my finger. “We didn”t meet yesterday, either.”
“I know. I know you like to see a thousand steps down the road before your feet touch the ground. But this may be tricky. For the first time in maybe ever, you can’t see the future with this one.”
Not only was he right, but I was thrown back into doubt, as all my wishful thinking seemed to evaporate.