Chapter 26
Emilia
"Don't you dare use your key, Damian," I screamed at him. "I changed the security codes so you're going to wake up the building and when the cops get here, I'll tell them you're trespassing."
The truth was I hadn't changed the code. I didn’t even know how to.
"Baby, come on." He knocked on the door again. "Please. Let me explain."
"You already did. You wanted revenge and you got it. I hope it makes you feel good." I downed my second glass of wine since I'd come home. Damian liked his wine and had stocked the new wine fridge he bought with some expensive shit. I didn't give a damn how the wine tasted. I just wanted to get drunk.
"Em, darling, are you drinking?"
"Go away, Damian. Sign the divorce papers. Or I'm going to tell the whole fucking world what you did, and you can then sue me for violating that NDA your mother made me sign."
"I'm so sorry, Emilia. So, fucking sorry."
Tears poured down my cheeks. They'd been doing that since I left that stupid gala. Best night of my life, indeed. Fucking joke.
"It's three in the morning," I heard Moana on the other side of the door. "Do marital therapy when it's not the middle of the fucking night."
"Moana, I need to talk to—"
"Go away, Damian," Moana said. I toasted her through the door. You go, girl. "What you did to her is so not okay. And in any case, she's not listening right now. She's crying and drinking. Come back tomorrow and—"
"No, don't come back tomorrow. Send signed divorce papers," I screamed.
"Go to sleep, bitch." Moana thumped a fist on my door.
After that there was silence. I peeked through the keyhole and there was no one on the other side of the door. I didn't know how to feel about that. A part of me thought good riddance. Another thought, that was all the fight he had in him?
I fell asleep after I drank the whole bottle of wine while I listened to Marvin Gaye songs. I woke up in the middle of the night to throw up and then fell back to sleep.
I spent the day in bed, ignoring the numerous knocks on my door. I subsisted on Diet Coke and grilled cheese sandwiches I made to nurse my hangover.
Mostly, I cried and slept.
I had turned my phone off. When Moana had banged on my door in the morning, I told her to go away. She said she'd give me twenty four hours and after that my ass was hers.
I hated all the drama. My life had been easy, simple. I pretended to have a close relationship with my family. I pretended to like my job. I pretended that someday I'd go do my master's in Chicago. I pretended a whole lot of things and had zero drama.
Since Damian Fucking Archer seduced me in Las Vegas, I was pretending to have a happy marriage—but the rest of my life had become really good. I was having high-quality sex. Even though Damian was my first, my ex-escort friend had told me, "Three orgasms in one night? Keep him. Tie him down. Poke holes in the condom, get knocked up. Don't let the sumbitch get away."
We were socializing with fun people as a couple. I was seen by him. I had a man in my life who told me I was beautiful and proved it by inserting his erect penis into me relentlessly.
Now, I'd never have good sex again. I'd have a broken heart instead.
All hysterics aside, my soul was wounded. Every time I'd told him how guilty I felt because he was drunk and I hadn't been—he probably laughed at me, enjoying how he'd manipulated me so well that I thought getting married had been my idea. Isn't that what narcissists did? Convinced you that their bad ideas were yours?
If he had told me, "Hey, Bianca is cheating on me, let's pretend we're dating and having sex so I can make her jealous," I'd have been all over that.
But I knew better. That kind of subterfuge would have emotionally bankrupted me to the point that I would have trouble waking up in the morning and looking at myself in the mirror.
After spending two days crying, I sat in front of my easel and decided to let my pain flow out of me. It took that long for my eyes to stop watering and be clear enough for me to see the canvas.
Liza came as she did on Monday morning. She had a key, so she walked in, disarmed security, and saw me on the floor.
"Morning."
"Damian doesn't live here anymore so you don't have to come by," I told her as I stared at the blank canvas. It was rude but I didn't care. I was too tired for niceties.
Liza set her bag on the kitchen counter and sat on the floor next to me. "What happened?"
"Damian didn't tell you?" I sniffled.
"No."
"He married me to make Bianca jealous." I felt the bile rise inside me at those words.
"I don't understand."
I told Liza the whole sordid tale. She'd probably signed enough NDAs to work at an Archer household that she was a safe person to talk to.
"So, what?"
"Didn't you hear me? He married me…seduced me, not because of me but my sister."
"That was then. He's in love with you now."
I stuck my tongue out at Liza. "He's not in love with me."
"Yes, he is." Then she stuck her tongue out at me.
I smiled despite myself. "I hurt, Liza," I confessed somberly. "It's hard to make fun of this. I usually laugh it all away but…this one is…I thought he cared about me. That he noticed me."
"You thought he married you because he was drunk. Now you know he did it while he was sober. Doesn't change what you both have built since then."
"I'm going to paint," I told her.
"I'm going to clean up and—"
"Damian doesn't live here, Liza. You can't just—"
"Go paint and let me do my job. I'm going to make lasagna, so you have something to eat. And I want you to take breaks to sleep and eat. I don't need you to collapse like last time because you're painting nonstop."
I took a deep breath and faced the blank canvas. My emotions were a storm inside me, but I needed to channel them into something tangible. I decided to paint a surrealistic landscape where I could spill my feelings of betrayal, hurt, and the stupid, fragile hope that still lingered.
Through my mind's eye, I could see the painting.
A vast, empty desert under a twilight sky.
The sun setting in a blaze of fiery reds and purples, casting long shadows over the barren land.
In the center, a cracked hourglass filled with a swirling mixture of sand and water—symbolizing the passage of time and the merging of the past and the present.
As I poured my soul onto the canvas, Liza quietly moved around the loft, cleaning and preparing food. The aroma of lasagna baking in the oven gradually filled the air, grounding me. I painted through the pain, through the tears that occasionally blurred my vision, determined to turn my suffering into something beautiful, something that could give me strength to move forward.
Liza made sure I ate before she left and told me that I had to finish a massive jug of pineapple juice she left in the fridge. I liked pineapples because they reminded me of summers with Aunt Maddy.
I painted for nearly eight hours after Liza left. Feeling exhausted, I crawled into bed and let sleep take me.