14. She said, “You were never there.”
14
She said, “You were never there.”
Eden
Flashbulbs crackled like white-hot fireworks.
“You ready, babe?” Sam grinned.
He didn’t shy away from the paparazzi; he ate up the attention. He slung his tree trunk arm around my waist and charged us through the defensive line of cameras crowding the entrance of El Diablo Cantina.
Cocktail bars in Sydney didn’t get more exclusive than the Cantina. Tucked underground, it was edgy and vintage and all kinds of cool. Mahogany walls, rich suede leathers, oversized chandeliers, and everything soaked in luxe. That place was the shit. The real deal. People—celebrities—went there to be seen.
The suited giant guarding the door nodded and lifted the red velvet rope. Sam and I didn’t need to be on his list. We were known. We were in.
But the Cantina was the last place in the world I wanted to be.
My big, lonely bed was calling. I wanted to curl up under my doona with a packet of Tim Tams, watch an endless stream of cats squishing their butts into boxes on my phone, and pretend the night never happened.
My revenge hadn’t gone to plan. I hadn’t acted like the bigger person. I’d stooped so low—so very low—to hurt Zach. Why had I let such ugly words spew out of my mouth? By the time I’d gulped down enough champagne to bravely step into my big-girl apology pants, Zach had left.
Guilt churned in my stomach.
I stole a look at my phone. His number lit up the top of my blocked contacts. My thumb hovered over the screen.
Should I...?
No one had taught me the right things to say or how to navigate all the confusing paths in a relationship—certainly not my father. Therapy had helped, but that was all theory, no practice. When life forced me into a corner, I came out swinging. I’d been hurt too many times not to fight for myself. But I needed to make this right.
I swiped my finger to unblock Zach’s number and opened a new message. I stared at the blank screen.
What should I say? Sorry, I was a bitch even though you treated me like shit . That wasn’t an apology. Sorry, I couldn’t behave like an adult after you told me no one knew I existed. Probably not.
Maybe all I needed to say was… sorry .
Before I could start tapping out a message, Sam whooped out a cheer. “Crew!”
I glanced up from my phone. The silhouettes crammed around the dark table glowed amber under the chandeliers. Rugby players. Women I vaguely knew from the social scene.
An arm stacked with rows and rows of clinking gold bangles shot into the air. Yvette beamed like a disco ball in her sequin dress and patted the empty stool beside her. Andie slumped on the other side, shoulders rolled over a tall glass of beer, her customary all-black invisible in the gloom. A row of empty glasses lined the table in front of her.
My phone disappeared into my clutch. My apology to Zach would have to wait.
Showtime.
I pushed my shoulders back, pasted on a smile, and dodged through the gaps to take up the spot between my friends.
I smirked at Andie. “I guess the party started without me.”
She grunted.
I nodded at the line of glasses. “How many of those have you knocked back, exactly?”
“Not enough to drown out her”—Andie pointed at Yvette—“and all the crapping on about bridesmaid dresses. Navy blue, off-the-shoulder, in case you’re wondering.”
“Call me an optimist,” Yvette cooed. “But you never know who you might run into at one of those corporate events.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, I think you knew exactly who’d be there.”
Yvette didn’t look remotely guilty, but her life was spared when Sam’s head popped in between us.
“Girlies.” He beamed his half-winking grin. “How about some drinks?”
“Maybe a cantarito for me and Vettie?” I fumbled with my clutch to pass him my bank card. “A beer for Andie.”
Sam put his meaty paw over my hand. “My shout for this round, babe.”
I studied my hand as he lumbered off into the crowd. No tingles. No little zings like when Zach had touched my wrist at the stadium. Nothing.
Yvette turned to me. “Isn’t Sam a doll? You two will make such beautiful babies.” Her smile was sly. “Unless, of course, someone else caught your eye? Someone tall, dark, and scowly, perhaps?”
“It’s super cute you think you can interfere in my love life,” I said. “There’s just one little problem with your scheme.”
Yvette cackled. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t think so—”
“Michaela was there,” I said.
Yvette’s jaw dropped.
“Are you fucking kidding?” Andie growled. She was already pushing off the stool when my hand clutched her arm, pulling her back. She tried to shrug me off. “Let go.”
“Not a chance,” I said, shoving her back on the stool.
“I know where the suit lives,” Andie said. “After all his bullshit today, I’m going to kill him if he thinks he’s making a fool outta me.”
“One of you better tell me what the hell is going on,” I demanded. “Zach mentioned he saw Yvette at the salon but not you.” I groaned. “Please tell me he didn’t drop off another one of his scary-as-shit special deliveries.”
Andie threw back a gulp of beer and, grimacing, said, “Zach worked at the salon today.”
Yvette’s enormous gold hoop earrings bounced as she nodded. “He wanted to learn about what you do, so we gave him the full experience. Honestly, we should fire Maddie’s butt and put Zach on full-time. That man has a serious work ethic.”
“It was a fucking con job,” Andie sneered. “He’s just getting desperate trying to win you back, Ed.”
“Well, duh. ” Yvette rolled her eyes. “For the record, I’d like to add that Andie was a total bitch to your man, and he didn’t complain once. Not once! Not even when she made him clean the bathrooms.”
“But we don’t touch the bathrooms.” I shifted confused eyes between them. “We have professional cleaners for that.”
“Yeah.” Andie smirked. “But Zach doesn’t know that.”
“He was a total cutie with his yellow rubber gloves on,” Yvette added. “He even spritzed a little eucalyptus in each stall when he was done. I didn’t even know we had any!”
Yvette kept gushing about how they’d kept Zach busy all day, but my gaze dropped to my lap, my fingers flicking restlessly at the clip on my clutch.
On. Off.
On. Off.
My mind spun. Zach had worked all day at my salon to learn more about my work. He was a big-shot lawyer, but he’d let my friends boss him around. He’d cleaned toilets .
Zach did all that for me, and how did I repay him for his efforts? I’d told him he was no one, not a real man. The guilt of all the ugly words I’d said to him at the stadium still stained my soul. No matter how much he’d hurt me, I never should’ve lashed out at him.
I gnawed on my bottom lip.
Don’t cry .
“Ed, you okay?” Andie’s voice was gruff.
Nodding, I tried balling my fists to stop the tears instead. “Yeah,” I choked out. “It’s just been a big day, that’s all.”
A buzz vibrated on my lap. My phone. I didn’t care what the notification was—telemarketers, nonsense updates about some clothing sale. Bring it on. Any distraction would work until Sam came back with enough booze for me to numb the guilt.
I flicked my clutch open and took out my phone. A devastated breath whooshed out of me. I locked my phone again, but it didn’t matter. Zach’s message was already burned in my memory.
Zach
Even when you hate me, you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Sweet dreams, Denny Dee. xo
My hand shot out to push open the door signed ‘Bonitas.’ I didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, but even in a drunk haze, I was certain that was El Diablo Cantina’s fancy way of signalling the women’s restroom.
Wobbling from foot to foot, hands out, trying to keep myself balanced, I stumbled inside. The mishmash of black and white tiles and blood-red doors made my stomach lurch, but my shaky legs reached the free stall at the end. I slammed the door shut, but it took two attempts for my fingers to fumble the lock closed.
My eyes darted around the tiny, suffocating space. What now? My escape plan had never gotten further than getting my booty to the bathroom. I had to get away from Andie and her judgemental eyes. She was always asking too many questions: You okay? Maybe that should be your last drink.
Andie’s eyes had almost bugged out of her head when I’d chugged down my first cantarito in record time and then demanded a second. She’d even had the nerve to rain all over my pity party by trying to ban Sam from getting me any more drinks after I’d downed my third.
Well, the joke was on her because I’d stolen sips from Yvette’s glass when she wasn’t looking. My head was numb. Drunk as a designer-clad skunk. A wave of giggles escaped me and bounced around like a whole party was crammed inside the tiny stall with me. The distraction only lasted a second. There was no party. It was just me. Sad, lonely me.
Why couldn’t Zach just stay away like all the men before him? Why did he keep trying? Locking up my feelings and pretending I hated him would’ve been much easier if he’d stayed away. And he should stay away. I hated him, didn’t I?
I leant against the stall door, closed my eyes, and let all the regrets, the shame, just drop away until the world was blissfully black.
That message…
I pressed my fist into my chest.
I should respond to his message. He deserved my anger for the way he’d treated me, but not my cruelty. I needed to make it right somehow. I’d start by saying sorry.
My fingers fumbled on the clip of my clutch, and with a sharp tug, my phone was out without spilling my makeup and tiny perfume all over the tiled floor. When I looked down at my messages, my brain spun. I squinted, but the letters on the screen spun, too.
Whoa.
“Okay,” I grunted, “maybe no messages.”
I jabbed my finger to press the call button before I could change my mind, and my hand shook as I pressed the phone to my ear. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. The phone trilled for a beat. What the hell was I doing? This definitely wasn’t a great idea. I couldn’t—
“Eden?”
My heart thumped against my ribs. My strappy heels were too flimsy to hold up my wobbly legs, so I flipped down the toilet seat lid with my knee, the loud crack rattling my nerves. I sat down in a puffy black lump of guilt.
I gulped a breath. “H-Hi.”
“You unblocked me?” Zach’s voice was low and heavy, like a sad but relieved sigh. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
It was good to hear his voice, too. When we’d first started dating, he’d loved chatting after sex. He’d prop himself up on his elbow, trace lazy fingers over my skin, steal kisses, and share a hundred stories about the kayaking and hiking trips he was planning. His words had been murmured in a deep, sleepy voice that comforted me to my bones. Not that he ever went on one of those trips. He was always too busy working.
“I, um…” I sat in dumb silence, gripping my phone so hard to stop the shaking my fingers were about to snap off.
“Denny Dee? Are you okay?”
Everyone kept asking me that. I always lied. Yeah, sure, I’m peachy. Couldn’t be better. But there was no one with me in the toilet stall to bother painting on a brave face. Maybe it was okay to admit the truth for once.
“No,” I whispered.
“Are you safe?” My foggy brain registered that Zach’s words were clipped, hurried. Was he worried about me? That was a first. “Where are you?”
“Oh, I’m just here…hiding out with the bonitas at El Diablo Cantina.” My voice sounded so sad . “You… You like the bonitas , right?”
Silence stretched.
“I’m still here,” Zach said. “My verbal prowess is limited to English, and the online translator took forever. It means beautiful … I think?” Another pause. “Eden, you know there’s only one woman who I think is bonita .”
“Michaela?”
“Never. You hear me? Never. It’s only ever been you.”
I gulped in another breath. My nose itched, and tears brimmed in my eyes. “But I wasn’t enough for you.”
“You were always enough.” The big liar sounded so sincere. “Since the day I first saw you at the coffee shop.”
“Then w-why didn’t you—” My throat seized. I forced in a shaky breath, but the more I fought the wave of emotion swelling inside me, the more it wanted to crash through my chest. “Why d-didn’t anyone know—”
Why didn’t anyone know about me? Why did you keep me a secret? Why were you ashamed of me? Why am I good enough to fuck, but not to love?
Humiliating tears dribbled down my cheeks. I clapped my hand over my mouth, but a strangled wail still escaped.
“Oh, Denny Dee… Oh, love…” Zach’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry you’re hurting so much. Cry it all out. I’m here.”
“You’re not. You never are.” The restroom was so cold. So lonely. I dragged up my knee and hugged around it with my free arm, resting my cheek on the scratchy tulle of my skirt. I hiccupped through the sobs. “Why didn’t you want anyone to know about me?”
“I want everyone to know about you,” he insisted. “I do.”
“Michaela didn’t know about me.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“But you’ve told her about me? After we met?”
Zach sighed. “No.”
His admission stabbed through the last of the patchwork armour I’d slapped over too much past hurt. I screwed my eyes shut. “Oh.” There was nothing else I could say.
“I didn’t tell her about you because she’s not a part of my life. She doesn’t deserve to know anything about who I’m with. If you want me to tell her, I will. In a heartbeat.” When I said nothing, he added, “Michaela’s just a colleague. Nothing more.”
My laugh was brittle. “That’s a lie.”
“It’s not. She’s just—”
“She’s not just a colleague,” I snapped. “You’ve been inside her, Zach.”
He exhaled sharply. “Shit, Eden, I can’t change that. I would if I could. A thousand times over. I’d never ignore my values like that again. Believe me.”
“Is she the only one? At your work?”
“Yes.”
Was that better…or worse? “Personal lives stay personal except for Michaela?”
Silence.
“She was worth bending the rules, but I wasn’t?”
Silence.
Why did that hurt so much? I had no right to be upset about who Zach had been with before we were together. I was no doe-eyed virgin when we’d met. No, women like me got around. I’d bet good money the notches on my bedpost outnumbered his ten to one, and I’d never cared about body counts with anyone else I’d been with. History of screwing around? Have at it. You do you. So why did I care about Michaela?
The ugly whispers of childhood echoed in my mind.
Because you love him, and he doesn’t love you. He chose her first.
Fresh tears popped into my eyes. I hugged my knees again to dull the sobs echoing in the tiny toilet stall. The numbing effects of all those drinks were a long-lost memory.
“Zach, what did I need to do to make you love me?”
Silence.
Agony made me restless. Why didn’t he say something? Shout at me? Anything? I couldn’t stand it.
But maybe…
I eased the phone away from my ear. I broke apart all over again when I looked down. The screen was blank.
Zach had hung up.