Chapter 3 Victoria
Victoria’s usual routine, after stepping out of her heels and putting her bag down on the console table in the foyer, was to settle into Ace’s end-of-the-day embrace.
Today, she flung herself into his arms like she had been ejected from a T-shirt cannon at a Lakers game.
She buried her face in Ace’s chest and inhaled his familiar scent, the woodsy muskiness somehow complementing the freshness of Dial soap, which he insisted on still using even though Victoria had read somewhere that the dye was carcinogenic.
“That bastard. He wouldn’t sign?” Ace asked.
“No. It was worse. Much, much worse,” Victoria replied, her voice muffled. She pulled her head back and looked up at her husband, whose brown eyes were brimming with affection. “I threw up on him.”
“What?” Ace exclaimed, his eyebrows lifting.
“And then I panicked and told everyone I was pregnant.”
“I thought you weren’t saying anything until—”
“After I landed managing director and I was showing, I know,” Victoria said, unable to stifle a flare of irritation. “Hence, the ‘I panicked’ of it all.”
Victoria peeled off her jacket and stalked towards the kitchen.
She smelled something simmering on the stovetop.
Bossa nova emanated from the sound system.
A bouquet of peonies sat on top of the gray-and-white Calacatta marble island, their ballet-slipper-pink blooms newly burst open, and two place settings were arranged on the dining room table. It looked like a fucking movie set.
“I’m sorry,” Ace said as he followed her into the kitchen. “What can I do?” Victoria threw her jacket across the counter, knocking a few petals off a peony. She sat on a barstool and kicked off her heels, which skittered across the floor.
“A dirty martini would be great, but I can’t even have that, can I?” Victoria shot Ace an aggrieved look, then shook her head. “After everything…I can’t believe this.”
“You’re human,” Ace said. “We’ve all—”
“Vomited on a billionaire in front of your entire company? After working for decades to be taken seriously? To be taken seriously as a woman, and then that very thing—that womanhood—is the thing to betray me?” Ace opened his mouth to respond but Victoria silenced him with an icy look.
“Don’t try to make me feel better. There’s nothing you can say. ”
Ace put his hands up. “I won’t even try. I won’t point out that it’s not your fault. I might, in fact, try to make you feel worse?”
“Impossible. How?”
“You don’t smell great,” Ace replied, shooting her a smile as he went over to the stove and adjusted the heat setting.
“You do realize I won’t get managing director now? Not after that disaster. Not now that they know I’m going to be out on maternity leave.”
Ace opened his mouth, but Victoria beat him to it.
“Don’t try lecturing me about workplace equality.
The idea that women aren’t discriminated against for having a uterus is complete and utter horseshit!
Sure, that would be nice. That would be fair: Don’t punish our gender while we propagate the human race. But that’s not reality.”
Ace waited patiently for Victoria to finish her tirade.
She knew she was preaching to the choir.
Ace would never try to mansplain about workplace equality.
He was the guy who couldn’t eat lobster rolls after learning that crustaceans often walked claw in claw.
Ace knew how many times Victoria had been mistaken for an assistant.
He understood that the condition of walking-into-a-conference-room-while-female was tenuous at best and arduous at worst. He was deeply aware of how, unbelievably, Victoria still had to fight to be compensated for her worth.
“I’m going to wash the vomit out of my hair!” Victoria yelled before storming out of the room. Her dramatic exit was impaired when she tripped over her discarded shoes, stubbing her toe. “Damn it!”
Victoria limped to the closet—her sanctuary.
Once there, she parted a row of hanging clothes and dove into it like Moses crossing the Red Sea.
This was the only place she cried, not that she would ever admit it.
Just like Victoria didn’t do nerves, she didn’t do tears.
Over the years, she had cultivated the tough emotional shell of an armadillo, which she considered not just key to her success, but also vital for her well-being.
Only by herself, in the dark confines of her closet, safely tucked away from the world, would Victoria occasionally allow herself a good cry.
An initial, indignant tear made its descent down her cheek, soon followed by its brothers-in-arms. While Victoria hoped the tears would prove cathartic and wash away some of her fury, she also tried not to think about Nash’s reaction, what her coworkers were saying, how much Mark Berg was gloating, or how she had taken out her frustrations on Ace.
It was remarkable that her relationship with Ace had even happened.
Victoria had been on a tear of mutually agreed-upon, no-strings dalliances when she attended a client’s wedding in Montecito.
She had been sitting by herself in a quiet corner of the hotel bar, downing a martini before the reception and dreading the gauntlet of social pleasantries she was about to endure, when Ace had interrupted her solitary pregame.
Victoria hadn’t bothered to look up before blurting, “No thanks. I’m not interested. I prefer being single.”
Instead of being rebuffed, Ace asked, “Why’s that?
Have you been dating a bunch of clowns?” Victoria looked up to register this annoying stranger who had invaded her space.
If an oak tree were cast as the star in a romantic comedy, that would be the man standing before her: handsome, tall, sturdy, capped with an impressive shock of salt-and-pepper hair.
Oh, and he possessed what would doubtlessly be described as an “irresistible” twinkle in his eyes.
Victoria replied, “I don’t date clowns.”
That was true enough. Victoria didn’t date clowns; she slept with perfectly acceptable guys for three to six months before finding perfectly reasonable excuses to extract herself. But Victoria didn’t owe anyone an explanation about her personal life. She returned her eyes to her phone.
“No, you don’t date clowns,” Ace corrected himself, sizing her up further. “You don’t date. Or you do, but you don’t relationship.”
“Relationship isn’t a verb,” Victoria responded. Clearly, this guy would have to go away now, understanding that her bar for entertaining someone’s advances started at basic grammar.
“The lady deflects,” Ace hit back, then tossed her a grin enclosed by parentheses of dimples.
A charming grin, those twinkling eyes, and dimples? Victoria was sure the damn things had never failed him. She drained the last drops of her martini and stood up.
“Nice to meet you.” She didn’t think she needed to voice the sentiment Have a nice life, which I will never be a part of again.
It hadn’t been the most eloquent exit line, but it was a solid plan.
That is, until Victoria found her seat assignment for the wedding reception, located the hodgepodge singles’ table her place card directed her to, and saw The Oak Tree sitting there.
“Should we try this again?” he said, giving her a broad grin and extending his hand. “I’m Ace.”
What was Victoria to do? She introduced herself, made polite conversation, and allowed Ace to order a drink for her.
At the end of the night, if forced, Victoria would have to admit that she had enjoyed his company.
Then again, the people at the singles’ table of a wedding were like the dregs at the bottom of a bag of potato chips.
The unfortunate aunts and weird friends from college did not pose fierce competition.
Ace had asked to see Victoria again while escorting her to the hotel elevator.
He handed Victoria his card and watched as she stepped inside.
Victoria pressed the button for her floor.
Ace pointed to the card in her hand, indicating: her move.
Victoria had considered calling him. Emailing?
Texting? Did men his age even text? Was there a complimentary communications course at the Genius Bar for men over the age of fifty-five with the purchase of an iPhone?
What would she even say? What was the chance that this guy would be different from everyone who had come before him, that he was worth the time, the risk, the energy?
Victoria had reminded herself that her life functioned flawlessly exactly as it was. She dismissed the entire episode with Ace and left his business card in the trash can of her hotel room.
When an enormous bouquet arrived at her office without a note a week later, Harper—instinctual Gen Z digital sleuth that she was—immediately did a reverse Google image search and discovered that they were purple torenias. Also known as Clown Flowers, LOL, she had Slacked.
Victoria had felt something inside herself shake loose—an excavation of sorts. In hindsight she could label it. It was hope.
As she sat in their closet, inhabiting a world they now shared as a unit, Victoria thought that it was either unbelievably terrifying or downright extraordinary how one person could bend the trajectory of your life.
She could smell the shallots wafting from the kitchen and her stomach—that traitor—growled with hunger.
After shedding her work clothes, Victoria threw on a silk robe and rinsed her face, the cold water offering a small internal reset.
When she walked back into the kitchen, Ace looked up from the stove, where he was tasting sauce from a wooden spoon.
“I know,” he told her. It was all he needed to say.
Victoria went over to wrap her arms around him and whispered the words into the soft fabric of his shirt anyway. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you also hungry?” Ace asked.
“Yes, but I might throw up on you.”