Chapter 32
Taylor walks into the agency wearing a confidence she doesn’t feel. There’s a knot wedged in her chest and throat; not being able to cry the way she needs to isn’t helping much, but Loretta was right—showing up to a meeting with red eyes wouldn’t reflect well on her.
At the entrance, she runs into Liam and she’s grateful.
He’s the one who walks her to one of the rooms where they hold this kind of meeting.
Inside, Abigail is already there, seated across from a woman of about fifty, with very short hair dyed a nearly white gray that gives her a striking, intriguing air.
Abigail doesn’t look at her when Liam makes the introductions, not even when the woman asks her questions.
She simply takes a few notes and lets her partner take the lead and advise Taylor when she needs it.
Deep down, Taylor prefers it; right now she doesn’t even know how to deal with her, so she just answers, asks, and smiles when she has to, waiting for it all to be over so she can talk to Abigail alone.
"Well, I think that’s everything," the woman says, while Abigail keeps typing on her laptop.
They all stand, Abigail too, though she does it like a robot that seems unplugged, and they say goodbye to the woman as they wait to sign the contract they’ve just agreed on.
"Congratulations, you just landed your first sponsorship," Liam tells Taylor, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
Taylor thanks him and, while she does, Abigail slips out of the room and heads to her office.
"Excuse her," Liam says, "she says her head hurts. That makes her even less communicative than usual."
Taylor would laugh if she didn’t feel like crying.
"It’s fine. Will you excuse me? I need to use the bathroom," Taylor lies.
"Sure."
The singer leaves the meeting room and goes straight to Abigail’s office. This time she greets Patricia and doesn’t stop to ask permission to go in because she knows Abigail won’t give it; she opens the door anyway, leaving Patricia mid-sentence.
"What do you want?" asks Abigail, who hasn’t even had time to sit when Taylor storms in and shuts the door behind her.
"Talk to you."
"I think we’ve said everything there is to say. Your session with Demian for today has been canceled, so you can take the rest of the day off to do as you please."
"Great," Taylor says without moving, "but we do need to talk."
Abigail sighs, shaking her head.
"About what, Taylor?" she asks, feeling exhausted.
Taylor shifts her weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable.
"This morning. What you saw."
Abigail’s neck muscles seize up all at once.
"I didn’t see anything I care about," she snaps. "Your personal life isn’t my business."
Taylor has never fought with anyone, but she’s aching to slap Abigail.
"Then why won’t you look me in the face when you say it?" the singer fires back.
Abigail lifts her gaze, those gray eyes turned to two stones about to crush her.
"Come on, Abby," Taylor challenges her, emboldened even though her eyes are swimming. "Look me in the fucking eyes and tell me you don’t feel anything."
The executive steps toward her, holding her gaze.
"I don’t feel anything," she lashes out, "and I don’t give a shit who you fuck. Is that clearer now?"
Something breaks inside Taylor, but she refuses to cry in front of her. She won’t give her anything else; she already feels pathetic. She’s begged enough and put up with her slights and unjustified cruelty too many times.
"I wish you did care, Abigail," she murmurs, defeated. "I wish you cared who I sleep with," she adds with a bitter smile, "and I wish you could admit you feel something for me. Because this," she says, gesturing between them, "is killing me. And I know it’s killing you, too, but you’re too much of a coward to admit it, and I can’t keep fighting a brick wall. Stop trying to keep me away. I won’t come near you again, not this time. It’s clear to me where I belong, and it’s not by your side. "
And with that, Taylor turns and leaves the office, closing the door with a sound that, to Abigail, lands like a gunshot straight into the center of that muscle that won’t stop aching.
The executive stays motionless for several minutes, staring at the closed door.
Something strange is happening in her chest; she feels a pressure she can’t identify.
It’s as if someone has put a stone where her heart should be, a stone that’s pushing her down.
She tries to breathe normally, but the air keeps catching in her throat.
She turns and heads straight for her chair, her steps slow and clumsy.
She sits as if nothing were happening and opens her laptop, not understanding why her fingers are trembling.
She has things to do, calls to return, contracts pending review, and emails to open.
Work has always been her anchor, the only thing that gives meaning to her orderly, controlled existence, but when she tries to focus on the letters on the screen, everything blurs.
Taylor’s words echo in her head and Abigail can’t silence them. "I wish you cared who I sleep with."
Of course she cares, but Abigail tries to block out the image from that morning. The woman’s surprised expression when she saw her, and the hickey on her neck. A hickey that unhinges her—something she thought belonged to them in a stupid, primitive way.
Her chest starts to hurt, and something spreads through her abdomen—something like nausea, but different.
Deeper and more destructive. She stands abruptly and walks to the window, pressing her palms to the glass, seeking a little cool.
Central Park is right there, but Abigail can’t see it; she can only think of Taylor’s broken voice when she said she was clear on where she belonged.
The pressure in her chest intensifies and suddenly she feels she can’t breathe the way she should.
It’s as if someone were slowly squeezing her lungs, controlling how much air she can draw and never letting it be enough.
Her phone rings and she jumps. The name of an executive from one of the record labels that wants to sign Taylor pops up on the screen; she should take the call, but when she reaches out, she sees her hand is shaking even more than before.
The phone stops ringing and the office falls silent again. Abigail sits back down and presses the intercom button.
"Patricia," she says, and she’s surprised by how hoarse her voice comes out.
"Yes, Ms. Stone."
"Cancel the rest of my meetings today, and don’t put any calls through."
There’s a silence on the other end, the kind that reflects Patricia’s astonishment; in all the time she’s worked for Abigail, she’s never heard her cancel anything without a specific work reason.
"Of course. Are you all right?"
"Yes," she lies.
Abigail looks at her laptop screen again; this time, it seems as if the words are written in a language she doesn’t understand.
She tries to work. She opens documents, reads emails, and goes over offers, but after several hours, she realizes that everything she’s doing is useless.
In the last hour, she’s read a paragraph seven times and still can’t make sense of it.
Her hands are still shaking and the pressure in her chest hasn’t eased, so she gives up and, at five p.m.—something she can’t remember ever doing—decides to go home.
The elevator feels too slow, and Abigail has to lean against the wall—something she never does either; she always stays upright, in control, ready for the attack.
Loretta is waiting by the car, and Abigail slides into the vehicle without processing anything the woman says.
"Are you okay, boss?" Loretta asks, watching her in the rearview mirror. "You’re a little pale."
Abigail doesn’t answer; she just looks out the window, though her mind can’t think of anything except the way Taylor looked at her before she walked out of the office and the feeling that something has died between them.
"My neighbor always says when the soul hurts, the body feels it, too," Loretta remarks. "Have you eaten today?"
Abigail nods, lying so Loretta won’t say she’s stopping somewhere to buy her something she doesn’t want and knows she’ll throw up if she tries to swallow it.
"Fucking idiot!" Loretta suddenly yells, blaring the horn like a maniac when someone cuts her off. "Learn the rules of the road, asshole!"
On a normal day, Abigail would startle at her shouting; now she doesn’t even hear it. She stays stuck in the loop of Taylor’s scene until Loretta pulls the Mercedes up in front of her building.
"Are you sure you’re okay, boss? I can go up with you."
"I’m fine, Loretta. Thanks."
Abigail walks to the elevator without remembering how she gets there.
The pressure in her chest intensifies as she rides up, as if something were pushing against her ribs, making it harder and harder to breathe.
She opens her apartment door and hears noise in the kitchen.
Erin is usually there when she’s home; she has a penchant for cooking that Abigail doesn’t understand.
"Abby?" Erin says, surprised to hear the door. "You’re home really early, I was about to pour myself a glass of… Abby?"
Erin sees her crossing the living room toward the hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Abigail looks at her without seeing her—everything happens around her as if in slow motion, as if she were watching it through fogged glass.
"Abby, what’s wrong?" Erin asks, chasing after her.
Abigail goes into the bathroom. She needs cold water on her face—or so she thinks—but as she crosses the threshold, her legs give out and she has to grab the doorframe.
Now even less air reaches her than a moment ago; the air feels heavy and she feels smothered.
Her hands are shaking violently now, and she yanks open the buttons of her shirt, desperate for air.
She bends over the sink, turns on the tap, and puts her face directly under the stream of cold water and, although she feels some relief, it doesn’t take away the sensation that she’s drowning.
"Abby, you’re scaring me," Erin says.
Her sister’s voice sounds as if it were very far away, even though Erin is right behind her, holding her by the waist. Abigail can’t respond.
She can’t explain that something has broken inside her and she doesn’t know how to fix it.
She can’t tell her sister that, for the first time in her adult life, she feels she has lost control of everything and now she doesn’t know who she is if she doesn’t get it back.
She feels Erin’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her back, guiding her down to the bathroom floor. Her sister sits behind her and wraps her arms around her, and Abigail lets her.
"Breathe slowly," Erin whispers while Abigail tries to fix her gaze on some point on the bathroom wall. "I think you’re having a panic attack, and it’s okay, you just have to breathe with me."
Abigail’s eyes widen. Panic attack. She doesn’t have panic attacks; she’s Abigail Stone, the woman who can make any executive sweat with a single look, the one who launches careers from nothing with the precision of an architect who, without a misstep, starts and sees it through.
But now she’s here, sitting on her bathroom floor, unable to control her own breathing while Taylor’s words repeat in her head: "It’s clear to me where I belong. "
Now it’s Abigail who doesn’t know where she belongs.