Chapter Fourteen #2
He put his hands up, as if he were surrendering. “Vartre is gone. She left while we were still in Cabourg.”
I swallowed hard as this revelation sank in. Had he double-crossed me? The sickening realization roiled inside me. I’d been even worse than a fool. “So this was why you had to rush home. To assume the position.”
“No. My mother fell. That was why I had to leave. They gave me the editor position yesterday.”
“Why did they do that? Why didn’t they wait for me to come back?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Like he didn’t want to admit to something.
“Was this the plan all along?” While I’d been concerning myself with feelings and affection, he’d been getting promoted. “I was never in the running for the job. And you made me promise to quit when you knew I wasn’t going to get the job anyway.”
“Vanessa. Now that’s not fair. I didn’t know I was going to get it when we made that deal. And I regret making it; I’ve already said as much.”
“So when exactly did you know the job was yours, then?”
He hung his head. “I wasn’t sure until I got back, but Vartre told me it was probably mine a week ago.”
Hot rage rushed through me. “And you let me carry on thinking I still had a shot? You despicable bastard.”
“Vanessa. Please. Let me explain.” His words were tinged with desperation, but also an aloof coolness. I wasn’t getting a warm welcome from him; so much for flowers on my desk. “Vartre was leaving; she didn’t know anything for sure.”
“And you slept with me—seduced me!—knowing full well that you had what I wanted. The whole time!”
“Vanessa, darling,” he scoffed. I’d offended him.
“You’re making this all sound much more sinister than it really is.
And you had to know that I was the more likely candidate.
The paper you worked for is gone. The people I have worked for for years are the ones running it now.
They chose me over you. They know what I’m capable of, and they picked me.
I’m sorry that you didn’t get what you wanted, but I’m not sorry to have this job. I need this. My mother needs care.”
“I can’t believe you. You were working against me this whole time.”
“Vanessa, we were working against each other. What would you have done differently if the situation were reversed?”
I didn’t answer his question. I was too busy being self-righteous to consider it. Instead, I stepped closer so I didn’t yell. “I had sex with you. Something I’ve never done with anyone else. And you knew it would come to this.”
“Forget about our deal, darling.” He changed tack, trying to appease me. “It was stupid to make that deal. I was playing around. I don’t want you to quit. I want you to stay here and do whatever kind of work you want. Whatever moves you. I want to give you creative freedom.”
“But with you as my boss. The man I slept with. No one in this place will ever respect me.”
“But no one has to know.” He threw his hands in the air, frustrated. He also checked his volume. “And we’re no longer sleeping together, remember? What happened in Cabourg stayed in Cabourg. You said yourself that it couldn’t come to Paris.”
“That is such bullshit, Benoit. I can’t work for you. You know I can’t. I came in here this morning thinking we could reconcile in some way. My head full of romantic notions that we could keep seeing what happens. I was changing my mind. And you were setting me up to fail.”
Benoit’s brow creased and his mouth pulled in a stricken line.
His blue eyes pled with me not to take this personally, to reconsider.
Even troubled, his face was one I wanted to hold in my hands and kiss.
But I should have known better. People were unreliable.
They let you down. They hurt you, even when they don’t mean to.
I knew better. Still, I’d let him get to me.
He’d tricked me. Or he held something back from me.
And we’d had a deal. Leaving this job that I loved so much, that I’d hung so much hope on, was the last thing I wanted to do, and now I had to do it.
I couldn’t not do it. Regardless of the timeline of our relationship or this professional outmaneuvering, I had to quit.
When I turned away from him, he came around the desk and reached out a hand to stop me. “Vanessa, I understand why you’re upset, but you’ve got the situation wrong.”
I recoiled from his touch.
“Vanessa, wait. Don’t leave like this.”
“I quit, Benoit.” I was unreachable in my anger and offense. “You knew when you kept this from me that this is what would happen. And now it is happening. You win. I quit.”
My heart galloped as I charged out of his office, down the hall, and across the pen.
I didn’t keep anything at the paper. The desk where I wrote didn’t even technically belong to me.
It was just where I sat when I was here.
And so my departure from the building was swift and clean.
There was no box of personal effects to pack or emptied flower vases to awkwardly carry out.
I just picked up my bag, slung it around my shoulder, and walked back downstairs.
My job had been everything to me for so long that I never imagined how efficiently it could be gone.
No physical cleaving required. No tricky detachment.
I just walked out, retracing the steps I’d only taken minutes before on my way in.
It was an unceremonious departure that was so easy it hurt all the more.
And the whole time, running my hand along that cool marble banister, shoes clicking on each step as I descended the stairs, I wanted nothing more than for him to come running up behind me.
I didn’t care about the job or who got to be the section editor or any of that.
I wanted him to try to catch me. The hardest thing about crossing the lobby and pushing out that back door one last time was that he wasn’t coming.
That I’d messed it up so bad he was letting me go.
I rode my bike all the way back home, parked it, and made it up to my room before my crying started. Crying that lasted for the rest of the day.
By that evening, a strange numbness had settled over me. I thought about doing something to remedy my situation—like looking for jobs or making flyers for the missing cat—then became so overwhelmed that I started crying again.
Nadine must have heard me because she knocked and then opened my bedroom door. “What’s wrong? Can we talk?”
“Oui.” I sat up, wiped my eyes, and smoothed my hair. It didn’t stop my tears from welling.
She stepped inside my room and closed the door behind her. Almost as soon as she sat beside me, I crumpled again. “Is this about Charlotte?”
“No. Not really. I mean, what I did to her is part of it. I quit my job this morning. The same job I was so obsessed with keeping that I did something so horrible to someone. To Charlotte.” I sniffed and choked on tears as I rambled.
The more I talked, the more I cried. “And I know it all turned out okay between Charlotte and the vicomte’s son, but that doesn’t undo the fact that I did it in the first place.
I did a terrible thing. I’m a terrible person.
Maybe not all the time, but sometimes I am.
I hurt people because I was so obsessed with my work.
And it was all of no use because I quit. ”
My shoulders quivered, and Nadine put her arm around me.
“Oh, dear. It will be all right. You’re not a terrible person.
You did something you regret, and you’ll learn from it.
That doesn’t make you horrible. You’re a work in progress.
We all are.” She let me cry, drawing firm, reassuring circles with the palm of her hand between my shoulder blades.
“And don’t worry about work. You’ll find something else fast enough.
And maybe Charlotte can help? She knows the people at that ladies magazine. ”
“If she doesn’t hate me.” My words came out in a bursting sob that didn’t stop or ebb for several minutes. Nadine let me cry and kept rubbing my back.
Several minutes later, she said gently, “Vanessa, it will be okay. You aren’t unforgivable.”
Another sob clenched me. I wasn’t unforgivable.
It was such a simple thing to say, but it meant so much to hear.
I had been bumbling through everything since the newspaper was taken over.
It was like that crumbled and took out everything else in my life with it.
Everything was gone. Everything I’d worked so hard to achieve.
Everything that had been at risk since the paper was bought.
All my worst fears had come to fruition.
All the worst cases that had been lingering on my horizon for weeks were here now and fully realized.
“So why did you quit your job?”
“Remember what I told you about the paper being bought and combined with L’Etoile ?”
“Oh, yes, and that handsome man who wanted the same job as you.”
I nodded and wiped my tears on my well-used handkerchief.
“What happened?”
I explained everything to her then, about how that miserable trip somehow became so incredible. And how that made everything else so much worse.
“So I quit, because I’m mad at him and because that was our agreement.
” An agreement that he did try several times to annul, in all fairness.
When it came right down to it, I’d lost my position and a significant source of income and personal pride in a hot, passionate flash.
I had always thought of myself as level-headed, practical person.
I had never concerned myself with frivolous entanglements or romance.
And yet I had just quit my job—the thing I loved most—over a man.
Something very terrible was happening to me, inside me.
Apolline’s words on the train kept circling around in my mind: I’ve never seen a pair of idiots more in love than you two . I certainly felt like an idiot.
“And you told him that you don’t want to continue the affair now that you’re back in Paris?”
“Yes.”
“But you were having a good time, it sounds like. And now that you aren’t coworkers, it might be okay.”
“No. That’s definitely not a good idea.”
“Why not? The sex is no good?”
“No. I mean yes. The sex was good. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m still mad about work. And I can’t fall for him.
I need to forget about him. That’s what this whole mess is about.
That’s why I slept with him in the first place, so I’d stop thinking about how much I wanted to.
Now, I guess because he was my first, my feelings are confused.
But I most definitely should forget about him. ”
“Well, Vanessa, that’s not going to happen if you don’t get out of bed.”
And so my mission, from that moment on, was to forget about him. What happened in Cabourg was staying in Cabourg. It was over. A blip in my existence that was over and completely unrelated to anything else in my life.
“How do you forget about a man, Nadine?”
“I’m sure we can figure it out! But start by cleaning up your face and coming down for dinner.”