Alex
“I’m gone, .” The words echo in my head. It’s been a long time since words have felt like a hot knife to the gut. It’s been a long time since I’ve been drunk alone. I’ve finished most of a bottle of scotch in five hours, and somehow, I feel like I could have more.
It doesn’t make me miss her any less. It makes me hate myself more. The shooting was necessary, unfortunately, with the media and America’s TikTok attention span.
Something new always has to be happening to keep a story alive.
Nobody got hurt. Two cocky bankers were supposed to shit their pants and have a good story to tell at cocktail parties.
Hailee and her brother weren’t supposed to be there, but my gun-for-hire was late. He got his for it.
He’ll never work another contract in his life, but I was disappointed that my middleman neglected to give me his identity so I could end his life. He wasn’t even supposed to fire at them at the restaurant. Marty and Rob were walking from the same health club, and he was instructed to tail them and shoot to miss when there was an opening with no pedestrians around.
I got what I fucking deserve for hiring a motorcycle hitman.
I tong another ice cube into my scotch. I’m drunk enough that it doesn’t even burn anymore. It goes down like water.
Dangerous.
Tomorrow is already ruined, so I figure why not keep going tonight. Hailee texted once a few hours ago. She told me to tell Lucas that my private security has determined without a doubt that he and Hailee were not targets. Based on information that I unfortunately must keep private, if he asks for details.
Why didn’t I think of that originally? I could’ve delayed Lucas from leaving for San Francisco for a day and come up with the same lie. I realize now why I didn’t. It wasn’t just that Lucas ambushed me with the idea of Hailee staying with me. It was because I wanted her to.
I didn’t try to think my way out of it.
Now I look like a manipulator. A monster. Maybe I am both those things. When I first heard Hailee and Lucas were in the line of fire, I broke a mirror with my fist. Bad luck. I only made things worse by playing along to poor Lucas’s paranoia.
I could’ve put a stop to it. Possibly even told him the truth. No. Not to Lucas. Our friendship became rocky enough to maintain when he took that job at Summit. I never told him about the mine explosion. I never told anyone.
My vendetta is private, and I don’t think he would’ve taken well to the idea that I was trying to put his boss in prison. His obstinance isn’t my fault. I have offered him a half dozen jobs over the years, but he insisted on climbing the monkey bars of banking.
Still, none of this makes what I did any better. I am who I am. If anything, I should be beating myself up for prioritizing my feelings for Hailee over business. I tell myself this, but it all sounds like bullshit.
Business has left me miserable for months. Years. The last weeks with her were as alive as I’d ever felt, but what’s done is done. There was no way my black heart wasn’t going to be discovered eventually. I drunkenly squint as I open my phone and text Paige.
Me: You up?
Paige: Scrolling on my phone at two am…
Me: Come over. Now.
Paige: No more bubbly girl?
I stare at the text for a half a minute before I will my fingers to move.
Me: No. I’ll have a car at your apartment in ten.
Paige: Ok.
I toss my phone onto the chair across from me. What am I doing? I’m going to have to make myself vomit before she gets here. Scotch and Paige. Vices.
Hailee left my life just hours ago, and I jumped directly to self-destruction. I go into the bathroom and take a cold shower, followed by downing two large glasses of water. I’m a little more sober but not much.
I pull on jeans and a T-shirt and look in the mirror. My eyes shine lazily from the liquor. Their blue seems duller, and it’s just what I deserve.
***
I’m standing against my bedroom wall and dodge a clumsily thrown vase that explodes at my feet.
“You think that’s okay!” Paige screams. “You fucking asshole!”
I changed my mind about Paige. We both got naked and looking at her bare flesh felt… wrong. Drunk as I am, I can’t pretend she’s a substitute for Hailee. No one is.
I just told her to leave and not very kindly. She’s not taking it well. Fair enough.
I’m naked and crouched in what might be described as a ninja stance, ready to dodge whatever else she throws my way.
Her tits bounce as she tosses my box of watches across the room. Towards me, I think, but it doesn’t get within ten feet.
“You’re trash! A stupid son of a bitch! I know you like that girl. I’ve seen how you look at her in the pictures!”
She throws my empty scotch glass, and it explodes against the wall a few inches from my head. I straighten up and look at the point of impact.
That would’ve done serious damage.
“Hey, that would’ve done—” I don’t finish my sentence before my water glass explodes on the other side of my head.
I keep my distance. I couldn’t exactly walk with all the glass by my bare feet unless I wanted to get a dozen stitches anyway. Bruce comes into the room in his suit, reminding me how naked the both of us are.
“Okay.” Paige holds her hands out. “Okay. I’m finished,” she says, as calmly as a pastor, and then she turns back to me “And so are we!” she shouts, and she becomes the second woman to storm out of my bedroom in several hours. She leaves naked. She doesn’t even take her clothes with her.
Just her phone.
Bruce and I are left staring at each other. I’m still naked with my hands on my hips. “I’ll get you some shoes.” Bruce goes into my closet and gives me a pair of sneakers so I can step through the glass. I use them to go to the closet myself to dress.
“I’ll call the house services. See if they can’t come early and clean this up.”
“No,” I say, staring at the thousands of shards of glass. “This is my mess, Bruce. I’ll clean it up.”
“Oh, okay, sir.”
He disappears, and I sit on the end of the bed with my head in my hands. This morning, twenty-one hours ago, I was on the jet with Hailee. She was leaning against my shoulder, and despite my recent losses in business, it still felt like the world was mine.
Because I was in love.
***
The hangover seems to last three full days. That’s how long it’s been since Hailee walked out. I’m foggy headed at work. At home. In bed. I take it as a punishment. I don’t deserve to be at full strength. Nor could I be. Despite the mist that covers every thought in my mind, I still can’t stop thinking about Hailee.
I thought I saw her in the office yesterday. I was embarrassed at how quickly I turned to look at an intern. I’m seeing ghosts, and when I got a text from her today, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything faster.
I was hoping for a love letter. Something of the sort saying she understood what happened. What I was fighting for and that it was okay that I made a mistake. In short, I was hoping for a fairy tale.
What I got was an impersonal request to have some of her toiletries she’d forgotten in her bathroom to be dropped off at her apartment.
I matched her tone in my text and told her I’d drop them off at two p.m. I didn’t say I’d have them dropped off. I want to see her. Or at least deliver a final message. That’s what has been bothering me. I’ve rehearsed a shower speech a thousand times over. I know that somewhere, there is some select combination of words to make her forgive me.
Not manipulation. Just… truth.
Maybe it’s the criminal aspect of it all that made Hailee Barnes hop away. That’s too bad. I was only doing it because the system didn’t work. Because men with a certain amount of money can get away with murder. So long as their victims are much, much poorer and die in the workplace.
I pack Hailee’s things myself. I hold my fist around her deodorant, and I have to resist smelling it as I place it in a little brown paper bag with a handle. When I’m done, I consider calling a car around, but I have a better idea and elect to walk instead.
I’m just around the corner from Hailee’s apartment when I stop at a gift shop. Not a tourist one.
It’s one of those places that sells forty-dollar candles and coffee table books. I go to their card section. I almost buy one with a bunny on it, but that feels manipulative. I don’t want to tug on her heartstrings. For me to not feel guilty, I need her to choose me with her mind.
I go with a blank white card and envelope. I borrow a pen from the cashier. I stare at the white space before me. Many words come, yet none strike me as right.
In the end, I write just five words. Two sentences. I dot the period and stare at what I wrote.
I suppose it’s not an apology or an appeal to sound mental reasoning. But I think it speaks to what we both want.
I put the letter in the bag with her toiletries and continue to her apartment. I stop outside. I remember when my Mercedes first picked her up here on the way to the press conference. Busy as I was at that moment, my ears perked up when Melissa texted, asking if we could give Barnes a ride.
I remember hesitating. It would’ve been simple to say no, and how different everything would’ve been if I had. How blissfully blind to love I would’ve remained.
An older man opens the front door to her walk-up, and I tag in behind him. He gives me a quizzical stare, white eyebrows narrowing, but he continues up the stairs. Apparently, he decided a man in a tailored suit makes for an unlikely robber. I catch Hailee’s apartment number on mailboxes, and I climb up to the fourth floor.
I hate how nervous I am. I’ve had soldiers point guns in my face in North Africa and given presentations to halls filled with thousands of people and not felt a damn thing. Now I’m jittering with nerves.
I knock, and no one answers. I realize no one is home, which pokes a hole in the point of my letter.
It’s time sensitive. A risk.
If Hailee isn’t here, I’ll have to take the letter with me. I’ll have to admit maybe this wasn’t meant to be.
The door opens, and I stand straight up. Hailee looks at me with her face wrinkled in confusion like I just arrived from space. “…”
“I thought the least I could do is drop your things off myself.” I hold up the paper bag, and Hailee takes the handle gently. She moves slowly, a little shocked.
We’re both quiet until she steps to the side. “Do you want to come in?”
“Yeah.” I step past her and into her little apartment. The entrance leads through a clean galley kitchen, and at the end of it is a small living room. There’s a big window that lets in a cascade of sunlight, and I walk to the plants that line its ledge.
Hailee sets the bag on a little round table in the corner of the living room. Her arms are crossed defensively.
“I came to say a lot of things. I just can’t remember how to phrase them.”
Hailee waits for me to continue. I want to hear her talk, but I suppose she’s not the one who fucked up.
“I’d say I’m sorry again if I thought it would make a difference. I made a mistake. Two mistakes. I shouldn’t have hired those men, and I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I don’t know which you’d have the most trouble forgiving me for.”
“I can forgive you, ,” Hailee says, but she’s not looking me in the eye. I’m hit with a deep sensation of doom. There’s something else that’s bothering her.
“If you really are regretful for those things, and I believe that you are, I can forgive you.”
I can’t believe it. My heart rate picks up with hope, but there’s still something bothering her. Something unrepaired that I haven’t put right.
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever felt like this for.” Fuck. I still can’t say the word love. It won’t come out from between my lips.
“I know that. I think that’s why I let you in the door.”
I pinch a plant’s leaf between my forefinger and thumb. It’s my turn to be silent while she tells me what the but is.
“I interviewed for that position out in Washington.”
“That’s great,” I say, but Hailee still won’t look at me.
“I got the job. I mean, I still have a second interview, but it’s a formality. They want me to be the strategic planner for the southwest portion of the park. It’s big. For me, at least, it is.”
“That’s amazing.” I try to be as enthusiastic as I can, but it’s not convincing. “When would you leave?”
“By the end of the month.”
I nod slowly.
“, I’ve been in this rut for years in New York. But I’ll be honest… I would’ve stayed because of you. I’d probably say no to this job if it weren’t for that lie. But how can I say no to my dream job when I’m not a hundred percent confident in us? A hundred percent trusting of you?”
My mouth is dry.
“I’ve thought about texting you every day. Every hour. But I would hate myself for not taking this job if we don’t work out. I mean really hate myself.” She moves her hair back. I hate how tortured she looks. “I feel manipulated as it is. How embarrassing would it be to pass on this job, just to have you fool me twice?”
I’m silent. I don’t have anything to barter back with. I could make a thousand promises, but it’d just be words. Noise. I want her to trust me for who I am, not what I say.
“Do you understand, ?”
“I do.”
“I don’t have a job. I don’t want to go back to some office where I pedal emails and spreadsheets all day. I don’t know what to do.”
I want to walk over and take her in my arms. To pet the top of her head. And tell her to stay. Tell her it’s okay. But I stand still.
She takes a deep breath. “I can’t help but feel like it’s fate. This timing feels like it. If we really want to, maybe when I’m back in New York next year or later… and if we’re both single…”
“We get dinner,” I say.
“Yeah,” Hailee says and finally looks at me with a sad smile. “We get dinner.”
I have one last try up my sleeve. One that says stay , without me having to stare her in the eye and say it, because I can’t do that to her after what I’ve done. Beg. Command.
“Okay.” I step forward and give her a hug that breaks my heart into a million pieces. A kiss would be too fucking cruel.
“We’ll be in touch…” Rabbit lingers on my tongue, but I pause and replace it. “Hailee.”
She can only nod, and I realize it’s because she’s fighting off tears. This is bullshit. I should kiss her now and not wait for the letter. But I can’t.
Let this be her decision. Let her make up her own mind. That’s the only way I will not feel like the monster I am.
“There’s a letter in the bag. I’d like you to read it,” I say, and with that I’m out the door and walking slowly down the steps.