Chapter 15 Victoria #3
Victoria slipped under the covers. She had never felt so small in their bed despite her body being multiplied by pregnancy.
She had never felt so alone in her life.
Ace was down the hall and Victoria felt his presence like an enemy threat in a Christopher Nolan movie.
She lowered her eye mask, the silk fabric cool against her skin, wondering what Liz was doing and when she’d call her back.
Victoria questioned if she’d ever be able to forgive her husband, or look at him without cataloging the following lies: when he had told her that he’d never thought about settling down and having a family until he met her, when he pontificated about all the ways that becoming a father—at long last—might change him, when he thanked her profusely for giving him a child and making him a dad—something his friends had never thought would come to pass.
Except it already had.
Sometime in the wee hours, Victoria finally drifted into a fitful sleep.
She awoke in the morning with a start and enjoyed a fleeting moment of mental opacity before the fuzziness receded and she remembered everything that had transpired the day before.
It wasn’t a bad dream. It was her life. Eager for an outlet to expel her type A energy upon (other than making a laundry list of the specificities of Ace’s outrageous betrayal), Victoria almost started getting ready to go to the office before being thwarted with the realization that it was Sunday.
She sank back into bed and put her hand on her belly. The baby kicked.
“Hi to you too,” she said softly. “Apparently pregnant women aren’t supposed to be around funerals or sad things, so I’m sorry about this, but I’m pretty sad right now, and I don’t think it can be helped. But I love you, and I don’t know if it’s going to be okay, but you’re going to be okay.”
Then she spent the entire morning in bed watching reality TV, which was something Victoria Miller had never done before in her life.
As she scrolled through the channels, Victoria saw it: The Catch.
She binge-watched six straight episodes.
Then Victoria understood why it was addictive and also why Cam and the other producers should be arraigned on a count of moral indecency against humanity.
Women stabbing one another in the back and throwing themselves at a bunch of cheesy guys who looked like they wouldn’t pass an STD check if their lives depended on it?
Catfights and lies and booze-soaked tears, tragically over-the-top boob jobs and fake lips and women selling their souls for their chance to get a guy.
Victoria couldn’t tear her eyes away from the screen, caught up in Kylie’s and Kelsie’s and Kelly’s antics as they fought over Finn, dismayed but also fascinated for the inevitable moment they were all hurtling towards when Allegra would find out that Dylan, the man she was in love with, was gay.
There is always a catch.
Victoria clicked to the next episode and thought about how Ace had been described as “such a catch.” How his friends, and especially their wives, had congratulated her as if she’d won at life and nabbed herself the ultimate prize: an attractive, charming, successful man without any of the baggage that someone his age was usually laden with, namely sky-high alimony payments, vengeful ex-wives, and bitter children of divorce ready to wreak havoc on any would-be wicked stepmother who came their way.
Ace was too good to be true, Victoria remembered someone exclaiming at their wedding.
It was a compliment then; it haunted her now.
Victoria immersed herself in the escapist, trashy nonsense that The Catch offered on a gilded platter.
She wished she could tell these women that no man was worth any amount of sacrifice to their integrity, that the idea that their happiness and fate hinged upon locking down a guy was a delusion they’d been fed their whole lives.
On-screen, Kelly was pulling Kylie into the confessional and swearing (lying) that she hadn’t hooked up with Finn and that she had Kylie’s back.
Kylie tearfully declared that she loved Finn so much and knew they had something special.
Kelly promised (lied) that Kylie didn’t look bad when she ugly-cried even though there was makeup running down her face.
Kylie told Kelly (still to be revealed as the Judas of reality TV) that they were “sisters for life.” Victoria scoffed.
Then she thought about her own best friend.
She tried to imagine Liz working for this show.
She thought about Liz finally getting the courage to quit.
She thought about Liz’s face, drained of color, when she had uttered that single, apocalyptic word: Dad.
She thought about how Liz had run out of the baby shower after the big reveal.
Were they in their own demented episode of The Catch?
There was a knock on the bedroom door. Victoria’s head snapped up and she glowered in the direction of a small piece of paper that slipped under the crack, into the room.
She paused the episode, then got out of bed and retrieved it.
Ace had written, There’s a tray of food outside.
You don’t have to see me. I am endlessly, genuinely sorry and I will spend the rest of my life proving it, if you let me.
Victoria discarded the piece of paper, throwing it carelessly over her shoulder.
She opened the door, picked up the tray, and retreated to her quarters.
Victoria ate all of it while continuing her marathon of The Catch.
She would have loved nothing more than to giggle over how terrible this show was with her best friend and have Liz give her the inside scoop.
She felt sorry for herself all over again, and kept watching, one thumb on her phone as she scrolled Reddit threads.
Maybe reality television, not religion, was the opiate of the masses.
It was only when hunger interrupted her sojourn again, hours later (Allegra still hadn’t realized Dylan was gay), that Victoria swung her legs over the side of the bed, got up, and walked downstairs to the kitchen.
Her face darkened when she saw Ace standing there, futzing at the stove.
He heard her and turned around, a meek, fearful expression on his face that she had never seen before.
“I’m making you some dinner,” he said. “I can bring it up on a tray when it’s done.”
“And then what?” Victoria said. “What happens tomorrow? Or next week? Or next month? Do we go on like this indefinitely, being roommates down the hall?”
“I’m trying to respect your needs and give you a wide berth,” Ace said. “I want to fix this. You said you thought you had known sadness, until now. I thought I had known regret, until now.” Tears started streaming down Ace’s face—big, sloppy, ugly tears. “I’m so sorry, Victoria. I am so, so sorry.”
Even though she wasn’t done with anger, not by a long shot, Victoria suddenly felt drained.
She walked over to a stool at the kitchen island counter and sat on it.
They usually had music on in the kitchen, especially when Ace was cooking, and the stark silence seemed voluminous and oppressive.
Victoria didn’t speak for several minutes.
When she did, her voice was low and quiet.
“Maybe I could have understood why you did what you did back then. If you had told me. If you had confided in me and trusted me to understand that you made a hard choice in an impossible situation, and it had tortured you for your entire life. But you didn’t give me that option.
And I don’t think—I just don’t see how—I’ll ever be able to get past that. ”
Victoria looked at Ace, at the face she had known so well and loved so much, which now seemed foreign to her. His anguish was spelled out across every inch of his body—in his expression, his posture, his very bearing in the world.
“What are you saying?” Ace asked, gutted. “Are you leaving me?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is that I’m replaying all our conversations through the lens of this giant secret and I’m furious. You’re not the person I thought you were.”
Ace faced her, bereft, his arms down at his sides; he looked like he was offering himself up to be mounted on a cross. “I’m going to check into a hotel,” Victoria said, as if the plan had been previously thought through rather than only now occurring to her.
“You stay,” Ace said. “I should be the one to leave.”
“I can’t be here right now.”
“Will you please call me if you need anything? You, or the baby?” Ace asked, his voice cracking. Victoria thought that he looked like he might collapse. It was unbearable. She wanted to comfort him, to seek refuge in his arms for her own pain, but he was the one who had inflicted it.
Victoria offered him the barest minimum of a nod, then started walking out of the kitchen and away from the man she had trusted implicitly who had betrayed her unthinkably.
“I’m here when you’re ready to talk. Or scream. Or anything,” Ace said. “I love you, Victoria.”
Victoria took this in without response, without looking back.
When she checked into the Bel-Air an hour later, the site of her ill-fated first meal with Liz, her friend had still not returned her calls.
Victoria put her phone on the bedside table in her hotel room, where it would sit all night, silent as a stone.