Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I would’ve thought that after the nightmare of an evening, falling asleep would’ve been impossible, that my mind would’ve been sprinting a mile a minute. The night would’ve consisted of tossing, turning, and replaying the gut punch over as if I were stuck on some deranged merry-go-round.
But last night, as soon as I pulled my covers over me, I sank into a dreamless sleep like a stone.
Granted, I had been running on fumes after pulling shift after grueling shift in preparation for the fundraiser from hell. After a week of go-go-going, after last night, I’d crashed. And if there were any night to immediately pass out and avoid my never-ending thoughts, it’d been Saturday night.
I didn’t have an alarm set for Sunday morning, since I had the day off, but at eight o’clock, my phone began ringing. It was Verdi’s “Dies Irae.” The ringtone. The Alderton-Du Ponte ringtone.
“Could you come in at noon for a meeting?” Mr. Roberts asked when I answered, voice somber. “Bring your uniform.”
Bring my uniform. Not wear my uniform.
I stared up at my water-stained ceiling, knowing exactly what that meant. But even still, it was as if the shock from the night before still had a chokehold on me, and I couldn’t feel anything but a budding weight of dread.
I took my time getting ready, waving a curl through my hair, styling my bangs, swiping on a bit of makeup. Despite everything falling apart, putting myself together had given me a moment of peace. I refused to go into the country club with gray under eyes and knotted hair. I refused to look anything short of put-together and respectable.
As I drove to Alderton-Du Ponte, I found myself looking at the roads and scenery closer. The houses along the winding drive to the country club were large, with exquisite lawns and expensive cars parked in cobblestoned driveways. The road itself was also well maintained, not a pothole in sight.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that the road to my mother’s dream house was dilapidated, while the road to the Alderton-Du Ponte estate was pristine.
I pulled into the employee lot, staring at the backside of the building. Before I opened my door, I pulled out my phone and sent one text to Paige.
I’m getting fired.
There was a strange calmness over the fact that I just knew beforehand. I wasn’t walking into a shift to be blindsided, like Paige had been. Or even worse, after a full shift. If it had to be any way, I preferred this one.
My phone began vibrating with an incoming call from Paige, one I should’ve expected. I silenced my phone and shoved it into my back pocket, climbing from my car.
As I walked up to the country club, I couldn’t help but remember, once more, what my first day had been like.
I’d cried in the car. In fact, I’d cried as I’d applied my makeup, and cried again as I pulled on the teal polo. Back then, tears seemed to flip as easily as a light switch, on one moment, off the next. One of those times, I’d cried because my mother couldn’t send me off to my first ever day of work with a hug. The next time, I’d cried because the teal polo was ugly and too tight. And then I’d cried because I wasn’t supposed to be working—I was supposed to be going to Julliard.
The beauty of the building had taken the tears from my eyes, even if only for a moment. And I remember thinking that, if I had to work somewhere, at least it was at someplace as elite as Alderton-Du Ponte.
It was funny, the things I said to myself to feel less like I was drowning.
The employee hallways were empty, since everyone was at their station. I tightened my grip on my uniform, holding my head high.
Mr. Roberts’s office was at the very end of the employee wing, the first door before the one that led out into public access. When I walked up to it, I found it open. Mr. Roberts sat at his desk, kneading his forehead as he agonized over a piece of paper in front of him. From here, I could tell his forehead was already shiny.
You can do this. I knocked a knuckle to his door.
Mr. Roberts rose hastily from his desk, jarring the arm of his chair into the wood as it turned. “Lovey,” he greeted, and in just my name, he affirmed my assumption.
I let out a little sigh, giving him a small smile. “It’s come to this, huh?”
He scrambled to gesture to the chair in front of his desk. “Please… sit.”
Here we go , I thought to myself.
Mr. Roberts picked up the paper on his desk, and now that I was closer, I realized what it was. I bit down on my lip to keep from chuckling. He had a script to fire me. “It’s been brought to my attention that you’ve behaved inappropriately with a guest on Alderton-Du Ponte grounds. As stated at our most recent staff meeting, it is grounds for immediate dismissal.”
“Inappropriately how?” I asked, hiding my fidgeting fingers in the fabric of my uniform. “With a guest—with which guest? Can you be more specific?”
“I’ve—it’s been reported that you kissed Mr. Astor.”
Someone saw me kiss Aaron? “Who reported it?”
“I can’t disclose?—”
I sighed, realizing there was only one suspect. “Caroline?”
Mr. Roberts blinked several times, knowing he couldn’t confirm, but not wanting to deny. He set the script back down, leaning over it and closer to me. “I warned you about getting too close,” he said quietly, sadly. “That people who seem to have good intentions don’t always do.”
The day he’d said I wasn’t eligible for the bonus—his unsolicited advice that had prickled underneath my skin. It’s my own advice to you, he’d said. You’re not new to this world, Lovey. You’ve seen what happens when people make mistakes.
Well, he could’ve been more specific.
Mr. Roberts released a soft breath. “My hands… are tied, Lovey.”
That was exactly what Paige had said Mr. Roberts said to her. I might’ve thought it was part of his script if the remorse wasn’t scrawled all over his face. Out of everyone at Alderton-Du Ponte, Mr. Roberts had been one of my favorites. Quirky and nervous, like a mutant chihuahua, but kind at his core. Not many people around here were like that, but he was.
“I was going to quit, anyway.” I stood from the desk chair, feeling as though I swayed in place for a moment. “I was just waiting to do it until after the fundraiser.”
His eyes bugged wide, because clearly that was the last thing he expected me to say. “But you—you loved working here. You’re Alderton-Du Ponte’s Princess.”
I pressed my folded uniform onto the surface of his desk, smoothing out the wrinkles, brushing my fingers along the Alderton-Du Ponte embroidered logo on the breast of the shirt. My spare sat underneath it, along with my khaki-colored dress pants. The same outfit I’d worn for the past five years, no longer mine. In the most neutral voice, I told him, “I hated it, actually.”
I could understand why Margot Massey flipped the table at Annalise’s wedding. It was going to be her final time in Alderton-Du Ponte society, and she wanted to release everything she’d held pent-up all those years. Going out with a bang.
“Get a coffee from the café for the road,” Mr. Roberts said, holding out a five-dollar bill. “My treat.”
I stared at it for a moment. “So, will my last paycheck be coming in the mail, then?”
Five dollars richer, I left the employee hallway and went into the main public space, heading for the café, seeing this world through a different lens. It was the last time I’d walk these marbled floors, the last time I’d listen to the soft music that filtered through the speakers of the building. I didn’t have to waltz through this world as nothing more than a shadow anymore. I could finally step out and into my own spotlight.
If anything, Alderton-Du Ponte just kept me stuck in the false belief that I needed my mother’s dream house. It taught me how to make myself smaller, to submit to what others wanted without fail. It quieted my voice, calmed my fire, and left me too afraid to raise my voice.
It was funny, all the things you noticed in hindsight.
A girl I didn’t recognize worked the café counter, and by the way she fumbled with the computer system, it was clear that she was new. I ordered an iced mocha latte, watching patiently as she typed it into the system, clearly nervous. I wondered if I looked like a guest to her.
Don’t lose yourself here , I wanted to tell her. Don’t lose yourself trying to impress them .
I had to walk out of the front lobby, since I no longer had a keycard to let me through the employee hallway, and I sipped my coffee on the journey. The air outside was crisp with promise, and I breathed it in, finally feeling ready to start over.
And then, in an almost cosmic joke, a car pulled up to the country club’s valet—and Aaron climbed out of the driver’s side.
With Caroline rising out of the passenger side.
The universe had a lame sense of humor.
“Lovey!” Caroline greeted warmly, as if we’d left on good terms last night. She was wearing a bright spring dress, with her hair coiled perfectly down her shoulders. Her sandals were white and strappy, with ugly rhinestones on the band that stretched across her exposed toes. “What are you doing here on your day off? Where’s your uniform?”
The way she asked—so casual, with that smug little smile—said everything. She knew.
Aaron handed off his keys to the valet and came around the car. He hesitated at her side, like some part of him knew this was all wrong.
I tried not to look at him, but my stomach still gave a violent twist. “You did me a favor,” I told her, giving my iced coffee a shake to disguise my shaking hand. “I was going to quit. At least now I can file for unemployment.”
Aaron’s head snapped toward Caroline. “What?” And then to me. “You were fired? For what?”
I’d been so determined to ignore him completely, but the words clawed their way out. “For kissing you.” I caught my straw between my teeth, staring Caroline down. “Guess someone felt threatened.”
Caroline wound her arm through Aaron’s, raising her eyebrows. “I wonder who?”
Even in her sandals, Caroline was as tall as Aaron—which I knew she must’ve hated. In fact, everything about Aaron went so far against what she preferred in a guy. In that moment, I felt bad for them both. Even Caroline. She didn’t want Aaron—as much as she denied it, I knew that truth. If Fiona hadn’t latched onto Aaron, I was certain Caroline wouldn’t have, either. And if I hadn’t wanted him, she never would’ve gone to the lengths she did.
But now she had him. The prize she’d clawed her way toward, not out of love, but out of spite. One day, she’d realize what she’d done. I wondered what she’d do then. Kick him to the curb, or stay with him to save face?
And how would Aaron feel when that happened?
On its own accord, my gaze slipped sideways. Looking at Aaron now, it was strange to think that, twenty-four hours ago, things had been drastically different. Heck, forty-eight hours ago, it’d been a different lifetime entirely. Before I’d kissed him, before I’d confessed, before he’d called things off with Fiona. Now, miles separated us, roadblocked so that neither of us could cross that distance again.
An unfinished symphony, never meant to be.
“You two are perfect for each other,” I said, staring Aaron down. I wanted to hit him, to shove at him like I had many times before, but I couldn’t. Because as angry as I was at him, my heart broke for him just the same. “Thriving in a world I want no part of.”
“I do feel sorry for you,” Caroline went on, eyebrows drawing together. “Things just never seem to go right for you. Some people just aren’t made for happily ever afters, I guess.”
“That’s not true,” I argued, wanting to catch the words before they made it to Aaron’s heart. I wondered if it was intentional that she was using his argument against me now—if she even knew it. “Everyone’s made for a happily ever after. Everyone deserves a chance at love. Even wicked witches like you.”
Caroline tossed her head of hair. “Just not the help.”
Aaron sucked in a sharp breath. Maybe he was about to defend me. Maybe he wasn’t. I didn’t care. “I’m not the help,” I said with a small smile on my face. “Not anymore.”
Without thinking twice, I let go of my iced latte, and it plummeted to the ground at our feet. It slammed into the sidewalk, the lid popping off on impact, and iced coffee sprayed up onto all of us, coating Caroline’s exposed toes.
She screeched as if it were acid instead of milk, stumbling back from the detonation site.
“You—you—” she sputtered, gripping Aaron’s arm. “These are Claire Hautes !”
I bent down and picked up the now-empty plastic cup from the sidewalk, flicking an ice cube out of the way to swipe up the straw. “Oh really? I thought they looked cheap,” I said, as if Claire Haute shoes didn’t cost me a week’s worth of pay. Those rhinestones did look like they’d been hot-glued on, though.
Caroline gave a loud scoff. “You don’t even know how expensive these are. These—these are brand new !”
For the last time, my gaze slid to Aaron, unbidden. The pain from last night still rested in his eyes, etching into his face, as if it were a part of him now. But it didn’t hurt enough to change his course. I’m nothing if not an Astor .
If he wanted to sell his soul, that was up to him. I couldn’t make that decision for him. I couldn’t push him off his metaphorical bridge—he had to jump himself. And if he didn’t want to, there was nothing I could do but walk away.
There were so many things to say, with no time to say them. So I memorized him instead—every line of his face, the way his hands hung uselessly at his sides, the shadows in his eyes.
It’d be the last time I’d see him, after all.
I turned back to Caroline. “Send me a bill,” I told her in the most uncaring voice I could manage, and then, without waiting for her to respond, I walked away from them both.
Caroline still stammered behind me, trying to come up with an insult before I moved out of range, but she couldn’t think of one fast enough.