16. Cillian
CILLIAN
It’s not going to do anything. She’s not going to call me.
I know she’s not calling me, but I’m still staring at the phone anyway because apparently this is who I am now, a man who destroyed the best thing in his life and is now sitting in a shitty hotel room holding his phone waiting for a miracle he doesn’t deserve.
I put the phone face down on the mattress.
I pick it up again.
Great. Super. Really healthy behavior I’m exhibiting.
I order whiskey from room service because I have to do something with my hands and also because I have fucking earned a drink tonight.
And by earning it, I mean I’ve earned it by the way everything has gone completely wrong.
It’s delivered with a small bowl of mixed nuts. I don’t touch the nuts because I fucking hate them.
Instead, I drink the whiskey standing at the window, fourteen floors up, looking at the city going about its business below me like nothing has happened.
Like somewhere in this city my wife isn’t sitting in our apartment—or Emma’s or her mother’s, or wherever she is—feeling exactly the way she feels because of me.
I pour another one.
But I don’t drink it. Instead, I just hold it, the glass sweating slightly in my hand as I stare out at the city below.
I’ve been lying to her for a month.
I’ve known it the whole time; I’ve just been calling it something else. Protecting her. Waiting for the right information.
That’s what I told myself, even when I could see that our marriage was turning into something unrecognizable.
Even when she asked me over and over what was wrong and I said nothing, nothing, fine, it’s fine, it’s work.
It wasn’t fine.
It was me being a coward and dressing it up as consideration.
I put the whiskey down and put my face in my hands.
For whatever reason, the bakery on 67th flashes in my mind. She loves that bakery and has mentioned it before.
I always made a note to stop there, to bring something back. I wanted her to know I listen to whatever she says.
I wanted to see her delighted smile.
But I never stopped.
I kept thinking there’d be more time.
My jacket becomes uncomfortably tight and I peel it off me.
But as I do so, I hear a crinkling in one of the pockets. My brow furrows. I don’t recall putting anything in there?
Reaching my hand, my fingers close around a small piece of paper. Bringing it out, I open it and my heart seizes.
It’s a worn Post-it note with the words: naiinis ako sa iyo written on it in Valentina’s writing. It’s Tagalog for “you annoy me.” With trembling fingers, I trace the two stars she scribbled on it. The Post-it note is soft at the folds now and warm from my pocket.
When was it put in here?
Valentina must have done so as another way to annoy me.
God that feels like a lifetime ago, when we were slipping notes to each other like middle schoolers.
Was that only a month ago?
I fold the note back up and place it safely back in my pocket.
I set the whiskey down and lay back on the hotel bed on top of the covers, ignoring that people have probably fucked on the comforter.
I don’t even care right now.
All I can think about is her face. The look when she saw me. When she confronted me.
The way she looked at me right before the door closed. Like she has never been more betrayed in her life.
I put that look on her face.
Bitterness twists in me. I don’t sleep.
At around two a.m., I finally stop kidding myself that I’m going to fall asleep. At seven, I pick up my half-dead phone.
Don’t call her. She won’t answer. Don’t call her you idiot.
I call her.
It rings endlessly until her voicemail picks up. You’ve reached Valentina Brennan, and I hang up before the beep. I don’t know what I’d say. I genuinely don’t know what words exist for this.
I try again at nine. Voicemail again.
I text her. I know you don’t want to hear from me. I know I have no right to ask you for anything. I’m sorry. I need you to know that.
It’s not enough. It doesn’t even come close to enough, but I send it anyway.
The text sends and the bubble is blue so at least she hasn’t blocked me.
Unless she had forgotten all about that until I fucking texted her.
Unable to stand these four walls, I escape to the bathroom for no reason other than it’s a different room from my phone and being in a different room is marginally easier than lying on that bed watching it not light up.
I shower and put on yesterday’s clothes because that’s all I have.
I go downstairs to get out of my room.
The restaurant is one of those hotel breakfast places that tries very hard to be fancy.
White tablecloths.
A little flower on every table.
A man in a suit at the buffet carefully selecting a single piece of melon.
There’s a family in the corner with two kids—the younger one is maybe three, banging a spoon on the table.
His father reaches over without looking and gently moves the spoon, but the kid immediately picks it back up.
The mother is reading something on her phone and laughing at it, and she turns the screen to show her husband.
He leans over and reads it and he laughs too.
Then they both look at their kids, this quick private look between them that means: look at this. Look at what we have.
I look away.
I order eggs and coffee and I burn my throat on the coffee. I don’t touch the eggs.
The table next to me has two women sharing a pot of tea, both of them reaching for it at the same time, one of them saying sorry, go ahead, and the other saying no you, and they both laugh.
The man in the suit comes back from the buffet with a plate that is mostly berries and an expression like he’s already regretting the melon.
The kid with the spoon has escalated to a fork.
She would have taken my coffee this morning.
She always took mine.
Every single morning since we stopped pretending the exchange was anything other than what it was, she makes hers and I make mine and she takes mine and leaves hers and I drink hers. It was our thing.
Something that existed in the specific language we’d built for ourselves, the one that didn’t need words.
Until I ruined it a month ago.
I look at the two cups on my table. Both are mine.
My stomach turns. I push the eggs away.
At noon I get a cab to the apartment because I have to try.
Even if she’s not answering the door, I have to try because doing nothing feels like the worst version of all my choices so far and I’ve made enough bad ones to last a lifetime.
The lobby is exactly what it always is with its marble floor, brass fittings.
The front desk has its arrangement of white flowers that gets changed out every Monday.
The whole thing screams that rich people live here. And of course I live here, because Connor chose this place. Connor paid for this place.
Every time I walk through that lobby I am walking through a space that belongs to someone else’s idea of what my life should look like.
I have spent the entirety of my marriage trying to make it actually mine, trying to make it ours.
I wait for the concierge to come back from calling up and I look at the elevator doors.
God, how many times have I come through them and she was on the other side? In the chair by the window. Looking up to see me with that small smile gracing her lips, letting me know that I’m part of what this space means to her now.
The concierge comes back with an embarrassed look on his face.
“No one is home, sir,” he says respectfully.
My stomach plummets. “Thanks,” I tell him before I go back outside.
There’s a bunch of people on the pavement, bumping into me and trying to avoid my presence, but I don’t care. My mind is racing, trying to figure out where the hell she could be.
She’s at Emma’s and Leo’s.
There is nowhere else she could be, because Emma is the person Valentina calls when things fall apart.
I should call first and at least give Emma a heads up that I’m coming, but I dismiss that thought immediately. Calling first means she can tell me not to come and I am not ready to be told that. Instead, I hail a cab and give the cabbie Emma and Leo’s address.
When I get to the building, I make my way upstairs and pound on the door. I bounce on the balls of my feet, anxiety and exhaustion making me jittery. Emma will have to let me in. She will know this was all a big mistake. She will let me see—
Emma opens the door and from the look on her face, I made a huge mistake.
I’ve known Emma her entire life and have seen every emotion possible cross her face. I’ve seen her furious. I’ve seen her elated. I’ve seen her inconsolable. I’ve seen her hurt.
But the Emma standing in front of me is none of those emotions.
No, she’s cold.
She is looking at me with green eyes so cold they look like ice chips. She looks so much like Connor right now it’s actually scary.
“You have some fucking nerve,” she snaps, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. “Showing up here today unannounced and uninvited. After what you did.”
I wince and pass a hand over my face. “Emma—”
“No.” She holds up one hand, glaring at me fiercely.
“You don’t get to use my name like that—like you’re trying to get me to agree with you.
” She is barricading the door, unable to let me see anything inside.
It’s confirmation that Valentina is here.
I try to glance around her, but Emma follows my movement.
“Is she here?” I ask.
“She is inside,” Emma says, eyeing me like I’m shit beneath her shoe.
“Trying to figure out what her life looks like now because of choices you made. She is pregnant and exhausted. She spent yesterday handling a disaster you created and then walked out of. You turning up here today doesn’t help that. ”
I hate myself so much right now. “I know—”