Chapter 35
“Okay, there’s no way all of that happened in the last two weeks,” Aadhya says. We’re having iced coffees on the steps of the gallery, having just closed up.
I nod. “Yup. And you know what? The thing I was most worried about; the fact that his best friend was my ex? Wasn’t a problem at all.”
“Of course it’s not,” she says. Takes a long sip of her iced cappuccino. “Because he wanted a beautiful woman more than he wanted to keep an old uni friendship. Perfectly reasonable.”
I chuckle. Happiness feels like there are soap bubbles inside me, light and floating to the surface. It’s a gorgeous June day in London, the gallery’s event is coming up, and I’m chatting with a friend. About to walk home through Chelsea and up to Kensington, past the houses I find just as pretty now as the first time I made that journey, to arrive home. Nate will be back at around eight, and we’re going to have a date in the garden.
Our first true date.
“I mean, when you say it like that… I suppose it makes sense.” I cross my hands and look down at my feet. Stuffed into a pair of navy ballet flats. “Only, do you think it’s too soon for me? To get into a new relationship?”
She lifts her shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Honestly? Yes. Maybe. But maybe not. I think a lot of people have hard and fast rules about those kinds of things, but it’s always unique to each case. You have to do what feels right to you.”
“Yeah,” I say and use the straw to stir in my drink. The ice makes soft clinking noises, and, somewhere in the square, a bird trills. “I’m really excited about him and about this. Us. What might happen if I continue down this road.”
“Judging by that smile on your face, I believe you,” Aadhya says while grinning.
“I used to be afraid that he was too much like my ex. They’re both ten years older than me, both quite… well-off. In a way I’m not,” I say.
“Makes sense,” she says reasonably, “if they have a ten-year head start on their careers.”
I nod. It feels weird not to have told her that Nate Connovan, who occasionally buys art from the gallery, is the same man as my “friend-turned-roommate-turned…-lover.” But it would be even weirder to confess it now, after all this time.
“And I want independence, you know? At least for now. I want to see more of Europe, and to work here with you, and see where life takes me.”
Aadhya unfolds her designer sunglasses and slides them on with practiced ease. “My free-spirited American,” she says. “I’m glad they chose you as the new junior trainee, you know.”
I pretend to gasp. “A compliment?”
She grins. “You’re fun,” she says. “Wild, but fun. God help me if I’d been forced to deal with some uppish British girl.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Sorry to tell you, but?—”
“I know exactly what I said,” she says, her smile intact. “And I like being the only me in a room.”
That makes perfect sense to me.
We say bye, and I start walking back home. Past the boulangerie with beautiful loaves in the window, past the second-hand shop and the perfume store, and onto the residential streets. I’m not seeing any of that, though. My thoughts are swirling.
The past two nights, I’ve slept in his bed.
Maybe we should have some kind of boundaries. Maybe it is too fast, and maybe I should be more careful, but I don’t want to. Not this year. Not this new me. I want to go on wild road trips, embrace spontaneity, and stay out all night.
And maybe, he will want more from me than I can deliver at some point, but that’s then, and now’s now. The only thing?—
My phone rings. It buzzes aggressively in my pocket, and I reach for it.
The number is unknown, but coming from the States. I frown down at it only for a few moments before answering. Between caterers calling occasionally, and my stepdad constantly losing his phone and getting a new one, an unknown number is not that surprising.
I regret answering it the instant his voice comes onto the phone.
“Dean,” I say. The bubbles of happiness inside of me pop one by one. I do not want to deal with him today. “If this is about my last email, with the payment plan I drew up, I think we should keep that conversation to a written communique. There’s no need to?—”
“Oh, you’re wrong about that,” Dean says. “I think there is a need.”
I sigh. This is awkward, and painful, and uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about you seeing what you saw, Dean. Honestly. My goal was never to hurt you, just to move on. I want us both to be able to do that.”
“Move on. Yeah, I think that’s a good goal,” he says. “Maybe it was best that I saw the two of you and realized you had already moved on. You upgraded to an even richer sugar daddy. Impressive, really.”
My stomach sinks. It’s just past noon in New York, but I wonder if he’s drunk. If he’s been at lunch with an investor and indulged more than he should’ve. “If you called to rant, then I’m hanging up. We’ll speak over email about my monthly payments?—”
“Monthly payments?” Dean asks. “He really hasn’t told you. Wow. Well, there will be no need for those.” Dean’s voice is bitter, and just a tad vindictive. Like he’s exhausted but taking pleasure from this exchange. “You see, Nate settled all of it with me.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes. Told me to never contact you again. But when your email came in last night, I realized you didn’t know.”
“He didn’t,” I say. “He wouldn’t do that, so whatever game you’re playing?—”
“Ask him,” Dean says. “He’s an arrogant bastard, but he’s not a liar. At least, he didn’t use to be. Now, I don’t know anymore.”
I don’t know what to say.
Don’t know what to think. The last remaining bubbles inside me go off with a pop, leaving me deflated and heavy. I can’t imagine Nate would do that. He knows what it means to me to repay Dean for my part. To stand on my own, to stand by my own decision, and to be independent.
To be able to leave Dean and his financial manipulations behind.
I’m the one who called off the wedding. I want to pay my half of the costs.
It feels like the easiest concept in the world to grasp, but if he did this, if he went to Dean…
“When?” I ask.
“In London, after you went inside,” Dean says. His voice is laced with delight now. “You know, maybe you didn’t make a good choice after all, Harper. I would’ve taken your wishes into consideration. I used to want us back, but now I doubt I’d?—”
“You’ve never once considered my wishes or opinion.” I hang up the phone, my hand clutching it so tightly that my fingers hurt.
He couldn’t have.
But he has. It makes sense. A painful, warped kind of sense, and my stomach feels like it has turned to lead. So heavy it’s hard to keep walking.
Somehow I do. Somehow, I end up back at home, going through the motions like I do most afternoons. I put on my workout clothes and go knock on Richard’s door. Get the dogs, take them for a walk, and chat with our neighbor.
By the time the summer sun has started to kiss the horizon, by the time I’m sitting cross-legged in the garden, it’s time for Nate to come home.
A part of me wanted to flee as soon as I arrived at the townhouse today. A part of me wanted to start packing, and I wasn’t able to resist gathering my clothes together. Tidying up in the guest bedroom. Throwing the most important things into a bag.
I don’t want to be in this position again.
The sentiment is so strong it’s hard to keep still on the chair. This situation, this dependence, this kind of relationship. I didn’t want to experience it again.
And yet, I have. I’ve fallen right into it, because it had felt so easy, so right with him. Nate had paid for almost everything. I’d tried. He’d accepted on occasion, begrudgingly, but he’d paid for the Paris trip, and for the excursion up north, and the movie premiere, and… and… I let him. I’d gone along with all of it.
Because it felt different from Dean. It feltgood.
But maybe, just when I started to figure things out for myself, I’d fallen back into the trap of letting someone else decide for me. And that’s one step away from living a life I don’t want. Again.
I hear Dean’s voice again. The thing he said, that fateful day, when he didn’t care about me overhearing him. That he didn’t think I was capable. It hurts to think that Nate might feel the same way. That he didn’t believe I could repay my debts.
I feel numb when I hear the noise coming from the kitchen. Nate walks out of the open French double doors. He’s got a bottle of wine in one hand and a smile on his face.
“Hey,” he says. “I’m later than I planned. A work meeting ran over. Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
I shake my head, my hands firmly clasped together on my lap. “That’s okay.”
Nate frowns. “Everything okay?”
“No. Not really.”
He sets the wine bottle down and comes to me. “You look… has something happened?”
“Yes. I have something to ask you.”
“All right.” His tone is cautious now, and concerned. He sits down on the lawn chair across from mine. “What is it?”
It’s hard to get the words out. I feel sad and mad at the same time, and the mix of emotions create a cloying tightness in my chest. “Did you pay off Dean to get him to leave me alone?”
A furrow appears between his brows. “I didn’t pay him off. I settled the debts, yes.”
I close my eyes. “Oh my God.”
“He was using them as an excuse to contact you,” Nate says. “It was manipulation, pure and simple, and I saw how it was affecting you. It wasn’t right.”
“Those were my debts to pay.” My eyes are starting to water, and I hate it, hate how I cry when I’m angry and embarrassed. “This is my life, Nate.”
“Harper? It was to help you. To ensure you didn’t have to speak to him again unless you wanted to. Don’t cry, please.”
“I can’t believe you did that. I never once asked you to do that for me.”
“You didn’t have to,” he says. The furrow is deeper than ever, his eyes locked on me. There’s pained confusion there. Like he truly doesn’t understand.
Because this is just what he does. He looks after the people he cares about. And it hurts, like a knife to my chest, that he did this because of how he feels… but the result is still the same.
“I wanted to settle those debts,” I say. “It was my way of finding peace with the past and standing up to Dean.”
“Dean doesn’t need the money,” Nate says fiercely. “It’s fucking ridiculous that you’re supposed to pay him for a wedding that never took place, a wedding—by the sounds of it—that he insisted on.”
“It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t need the money. It’s the principle.” I shake my head again, and a tear slides down my cheek. “This was my issue to handle, Nate. This is my life.”
“I couldn’t stand by and let you pay that asshole?—”
“Let me? Do you hear yourself?” I can’t believe he’s doubling down on it. Pressure creeps through my veins, like an itch I can’t scratch, and I need to move. I need to escape.
I rise out of my chair and head up the few steps into the kitchen.
Nate follows me. “Harper, it was to help you. He won’t bother you again.”
“Of course not. Just my conscience will.” I round the railing in the hallway and take the steps up to the second floor. To my room.
Only it’s not mine. It’s his, like everything else in this beautiful house. The house I’ve lived in rent-free for longer than our agreement from that bet. I went from being under Dean’s thumb to a couple weeks of glorious independence to landing right back in the same quicksand pit—moving into the house of another rich man.
I feel so disappointed with myself. I was supposed to get out, damn it, to move abroad and be wild and stand on my own two feet and?—
“Your conscience? You can’t be serious,” Nate says. His voice sounds incredulous. “He doesn’t deserve a single passing thought in your head.”
“Maybe not, but that’s my decision.” I reach for the bag. Grab my laptop and slip it inside. The need to flee is so strong, I debate leaving my charger behind.
I fight it. Round the neatly made bed and grab that, too, nearly knocking my head on the nightstand.
“You’re packing,” Nate says. “No, you’re… you’ve already packed. Unbelievable.”
“I need to think. I just need to think. That’s all.”
“Over the money? It’s such a small sum, Harper, and what does it matter if it keeps Dean off your back and away?—”
“It’s not a small sum,” I say. My voice is stronger now. Seeing him standing there, blocking most of the doorway, his expression one of pure exasperation… it fuels me. “It’s a small sum to you, definitely, and maybe even to Dean, but it’s not a small sum to me. Nor to most normal people. And I wanted to be the one to pay it back.”
Nate crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s not what I meant.”
“That was exactly what you meant. God, you and Dean, both so detached. A dollar may have lost its value to you a long time ago, but it’s still important to some of us.” I swing my weekend bag up on my shoulder and push past him.
He follows me. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it is. I’ve seen it every day since I moved in.”
“What would you have me do, Harper? Stand by and watch as Dean abused you through veiled threats and hints of paying interest?” His voice is angry now, too. Frustrated. “I had to help.”
“You didn’t help!”
“Didn’t I? Isn’t it better not to have?—”
I spin around to face him. “Because now I’m indebted to you!”
He stops in the entryway and looks like I’ve just hit him over the head. “What? Of course, you’re not.”
“No. Of course, I am. And now… I’m gonna have to draw up a payment plan with you. How could you not tell me, Nate? How could you not ask me first?”
The words feel like a lead weight, settling somewhere over my ribcage, and a hit of sadness strikes me, strong enough that it feels like a punch to my stomach.
I’ve been having so much fun with him. I’ve been feeling like maybe… like we might be… But now, it feels like all of that has been pulled out from under me.
Nate looks at me with sorrow in his eyes, but doesn’t give me a response. Even though there is one. But maybe that’s part of the box we kept sealed away, too.
The box I can’t ignore any longer.
I open the front door and step out into the waning sunlight.
“Harper, you can’t leave.”
“Oh, that’s one thing I can still do on my own.”
“Where are you going? Where will you spend the night?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
He follows me out to the sidewalk. “Let me book you a hotel, at least. Call a cab.”
The words make me laugh. It’s humorless, and another tear tracks down my cheek. “No, thank you. I think it’s time I start paying for things myself.”