Chapter 9 #3
She stared down at Daphne’s hand on her arm, fingers pale and slender, her sharp nails painted the color of freshly spilled blood. She waited for the anger to hit her, and after a moment, when it didn’t, she frowned.
There was a fable, hardly cheery enough to be a bedtime story, that her grandmother had told her once.
It was about a scorpion who wanted to cross a river but couldn’t swim, so it asked a frog to carry it across.
The frog was rightfully trepidatious, afraid the scorpion would sting it.
But the scorpion swore it wouldn’t do such a thing.
The scorpion would drown, too, it argued, if it stung the frog while crossing the river.
The frog considered what the scorpion said, thought it made sense, and agreed to the scorpion’s request. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog anyway, condemning them both to a watery death.
As the frog was dying, it asked the scorpion why it would do such a thing, knowing it would doom them both.
The scorpion replied that it couldn’t help itself; to sting was in its nature.
Trickery was in Daphne’s, so if Sam was angry with anyone, it was with herself for being too naive, too trusting, like that damn frog in the story.
“Buck up, buttercup,” Daphne said, taking back her hand. “You still have three wishes.”
Three wishes.
Sam wasn’t sure how many more times she could stand to watch Hannah walk away from her before it killed something inside her forever.
But she’d wished for wealth and success and …
that was what Hannah wanted from her. No, for her.
She’d fixed what Hannah had griped about when they were together, what Hannah had said were her reasons for ending their relationship.
You’re not the girl I fell in love with, Sam.
When I met you, you were going places. Places I wanted to go with you.
But now you come home late every night, covered in flour, reeking of butter and God only knows what else you use in that kitchen.
You never want to go anywhere or do anything.
Nothing fun. You come home and you rot on the couch watching old episodes of that British baking show you’re obsessed with, and you know what?
I’m pretty sure you love those damn cats of yours more than you claim to love me.
Don’t even get me started on how you’re delusional if you honestly think Coco’s going to promote from in-house.
It’s never going to happen. I know it, and deep down, you know it, too, but you refuse to look for a job anywhere else.
When we met, you had so much potential, and I’m not going to wait around a second longer and watch you continue to squander it.
Sam didn’t even know what to wish for anymore.
“If you’re looking for recommendations, like I said, Reykjavík is beautiful—”
“Would you shut up about fucking Reykjavík?” Sam snapped.
Frustrated tears pricked at the backs of her eyelids, and she blinked hard, trying to banish them.
“I don’t want to go to Reykjavík. I don’t want a vacation.
I don’t want money or power or anything else you’re going to try to convince me to waste a wish on.
” She clutched the placket of her suit jacket in her fists so tight her knucklebones gleamed white through her skin, her breath coming in sharp pants.
Sam closed her eyes. “I just want Hannah.”
Was that really so much to ask for? She didn’t want money or influence, wasn’t asking for power or fame. She just wanted to be enough. Enough for Hannah. Enough that maybe this time she would stay.
“You want to know what really makes people stupid like none other? Love.”
Sam peeled open her eyes. Daphne had a far-off look in her eye, wasn’t looking at Sam at all but staring off into the middle distance with an intense frown on her face.
“Battles waged, blood spilled, lives lost, people driven to madness, whole empires destroyed. Hearts broken and souls bargained. For what?” She turned her head and met Sam’s eyes with a solemn stare.
“To love is to suffer, Sam. It’s a curse and I don’t know why anyone would wish it upon themselves. ”
Love had found Sam in a grocery store on a rainy day in March. Sam hadn’t been looking for it, but it found her anyway, found her when she’d least expected it, at a time when she wasn’t sure she would ever find it, halfway convinced her deck was missing that card.
Love had ensnared her, taken root inside her heart.
Yes, it hurt sometimes, it hurt a lot of the time, but what would her life be without it?
Empty, a pale imitation of what it should be.
Love was the air in her lungs and the blood in her veins, the reason her heart beat, the reason it wasn’t a calcified lump of stone in her chest.
Who was she, if not in love with Hannah?
Clearly, she and Daphne did not see eye to eye. If Sam didn’t know better, she’d think Daphne’s disdain for love was personal.
“It sounds a little to me like you’re speaking from experience,” she said. “The personal kind.”
Daphne’s eyes flickered to Sam’s, and her jaw hardened with a barely perceptible twitch that Sam would’ve missed had she not been watching her so closely.
Close enough to pick up on the subtlest changes, the way any trace of warmth left her eyes, her face cold and shuttered, like a veiled bust made of marble.
“Would you like to know what the woman whose heart you’re so hell-bent on winning is doing right now?
” Daphne walked over to the media cabinet and turned the topmost knob on the television.
Black-and-white static flickered across the screen, crunchy white noise filling the room.
She rotated the knob a few clicks and the static cleared, a picture finally coming through.
“While you have been turning yourself inside out trying to make her love you, this is what Hannah’s been doing. ”
Reluctantly, Sam stepped closer, eyes on the screen.
She was looking at a bedroom, that much she could tell, but not one she recognized. The walls were painted red, the bed positioned next to a window overlooking the city, a sliver of the East River in view. It was night. Nothing happened.
“What am I looking at?”
“Just keep watching,” Daphne said tonelessly. “You’ll see.”
From outside the frame came the sound of a door opening.
Hannah stepped into view, wearing the same cornflowerblue dress she’d had on at the restaurant where Sam had proposed.
She walked backward into the bedroom, a smile flirting at the edges of her lips, looking at something offscreen.
Her hands rose, reaching for and slowly unbuttoning the row of tiny pearl buttons running down her front.
Sam shouldn’t have been watching this. It didn’t matter that she’d watched Hannah undress a million times before; Hannah didn’t know Sam was watching now, and if she did, she’d probably have words for her.
It was wrong, it was an invasion of privacy, and it made Sam’s chest tight, but for some reason, she couldn’t look away.
Hannah’s dress hit the floor and—
Coco Duquette stepped into the frame.
Sam’s heart pounded. She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe.
Her tongue felt huge in her chalk-dry mouth and her skin felt too tight, like it was shrink-wrapped around her bones.
Her eyes burned from not blinking, her vision beginning to blur, and still she couldn’t look away, not even when Coco put her hands on Hannah, palms on her waist, sliding up over her ribs, cupping her bare—
Sam was going to be sick.
Standing beside the TV, Daphne rotated the knob another click, and the picture changed.
Sam would’ve called it a small mercy had this new scene not told the same story, only on a different day.
On the screen, Hannah and Coco were locked in an embrace, Hannah’s mouth leaving a trail of lipstick kisses down the front of Coco’s throat.
Hannah’s hair was long and loose, falling down around her shoulders, the length it had been some six months ago, before she’d chopped it off at her shoulders.
Daphne reached for the knob and a whimper clawed its way up Sam’s throat.
“Don’t.” She pressed a fist against her stomach as if that would settle it. “That’s enough.”
Something soft and sorrowful flickered in Daphne’s eyes. By the time Sam blinked, it was gone. A trick of the light, no doubt. Daphne’s eyes were pretty little chips of ice, her gaze cold and sharp. “I’m sure this is hard for you to see, Sam, but you need to understand that—”
“ Hard for me to see? ” Sam scoffed and rubbed her eyes as if by doing so she could banish what she’d seen from her brain. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? I knew you were evil, but I didn’t think that you’d stoop so low as to do something as—as despicable as this.”
On the television, a scene out of Sam’s worst nightmare continued to play out. Except not even her subconscious could cook up something as awful as this, the idea of Hannah and Coco … together never once crossing her mind.
Daphne’s brows drew together. “Not to be platitudinous at a time like this, but shooting the messenger isn’t going to change the fact that—”
“ Messenger? ” Sam thrust a hand out at the television. “That is not real.”
Daphne’s brow smoothed, her lips parting soundlessly. “Sam, no. This isn’t a trick. What you’re seeing? It really happened. It’s happening as we speak, and it’s been happening right under your nose for months.”
“Not a trick? And why should I believe a goddamn word that comes out of your mouth? You lie. That’s what you do.
You lie and you trick, and you prey on people.
Desperate people. Don’t you see that makes you a terrible person?
What am I saying? You’re not even a person at all.
You’re a demon and I’m—I’m a fool for getting into bed with you.
” Her vision went fractal, and she scrubbed at her eyes.
“God, I don’t even know why I’m bothering to say any of this to you.
You don’t care. You probably think this is funny, don’t you?
Fodder to take back to your buddies and laugh about around some fucked-up demon watercooler?
Tell me, Daphne , what circle of Hell is that in, huh? ”
Sam’s breath hitched and she quickly dragged the side of her hand under her nose, beneath her eyes. Daphne had taken enough pleasure in her pain, and Sam wouldn’t give Daphne the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
“Do you feel better now?” Daphne asked quietly. “Now that you got that off your chest?”
Sam clenched her jaw and looked away.
No. She didn’t feel better. She felt sick to her stomach about it all. What she’d seen, what she’d been told, lashing out even if it was warranted, all of it.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Daphne said. “But deep down, Sam, you know that what I just showed you is real.”
Sam’s lip wobbled.
All those times Hannah had visited her mom in Rhode Island. Or that girls’ spa trip in the Catskills where she’d claimed to have had spotty cell service. Her growing indifference and how she seemed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Coco would never promote Sam to executive pastry chef.
How could things between them have gotten so—so broken?
How could Sam have let it happen?
People didn’t step out on a relationship because their partner didn’t make enough money or wasn’t ambitious enough in their career.
People—God, Sam could hardly think the word—cheated because they weren’t fulfilled.
Because they felt physically or emotionally neglected.
Because they were hurt and angry and wanted to spite their partner.
People cheated because they weren’t happy.
People cheated because they had fallen out of love.
No amount of money and success would fix this. Her circumstances weren’t the problem here.
Sam was.
She knew exactly what her wish would be.
“I wish—”
“Wait.” Daphne held up a hand. “Don’t you want to take a minute? Think about it?”
Now she cared about Sam going into these wishes with her eyes wide open? Don’t make her laugh.
“I don’t need a minute. I know exactly what I want.
” Sam squared her shoulders. “I wish that I was the woman of Hannah’s dreams, her perfect partner in all ways.
” She paused, cutting her eyes at Daphne.
“And don’t you even think of getting cute and giving me something like that Creutzfeldt-whatever disease or I swear on all that’s un holy that I will spend the rest of my natural life figuring out how to make you wish you’d never met me. Same page?”
For a long moment, all Daphne did was stare. Finally, she sighed.
“I hope this goes the way you want it to, Sam,” she said. “Wish granted.”