Chapter 32
VICTORIA
Iheld up the bottle of wine and was surprised to see it was empty. When had that happened? I got up and walked a little unsteadily into the kitchen. I wasn’t drunk but I wasn’t sober.
I’d been sitting on the couch all day in the same robe. I was still wearing my pajamas and it was almost time for bed again. Doordash had delivered all the food I needed after Betty called me the morning after the Callum conversation.
She told me to take a few days off. It would have been less painful if she stabbed me in the gut.
I fucked up. It wasn’t even me that really fucked up.
It was my fault for telling Callum I wasn’t okay with the asshole who shall not be named.
I blamed him for this bullshit, too. If he wasn’t such a skeevy bastard, I wouldn’t have been weirded out by a lunch meeting.
But he intentionally made people uncomfortable.
So fuck him.
I reached for the other bottle of wine I had delivered earlier. “Shit.”
I meant to put it in the fridge but in my haste to get the first bottle opened, I forgot.
Now I was drinking another bottle of warm wine.
Whatever. It would all go down the same.
I reached for the opener, and with just a little struggling, I managed to get it open.
I didn’t even need to bother with a glass, but that felt like a bridge too far.
I’d save that for the third bottle, which I decided to put in the fridge.
I bought three with the intention of having enough for the next few days.
Guess I was going to be making another delivery order. “Thank you to whoever invented delivery apps,” I said and held up the bottle to no one for an invisible toast.
I snatched the bag of Chex Mix and carried it and the bottle of wine back to the little nest I had made on the couch. The TV was on and I remembered I was looking for another sappy romance to watch. I’d gotten distracted by the empty wine bottle.
A quick scroll and I went with the classic tearjerker, The Notebook.
Yes, that’s exactly what I needed. A love story that made me cry because I was in such a good mental state. Why not add a little more fuel to my misery?
I started the movie and popped a handful of mix into my mouth.
The salt was exactly what I needed. And it would help absorb the alcohol sloshing around in my belly.
That was just science. I desperately wanted to stop thinking about Callum.
When I ordered the wine, I was operating under the impression it would help dull the pain.
I was wrong. It was making me melancholy.
The smart thing to do would be to stop drinking, take a shower, and go for a walk.
Go to the beach. Anything other than wallow in my own stench.
And I was smelling a little ripe. At one point I thought I spilled wine and realized it was me. Wine was seeping out through my pores.
I watched Ryan Gosling make a fool of himself in an attempt to please the girl.
And of course, that made me think about Callum’s goofy smile and the fire alarm nonsense.
Things between us had been so good. Better than good.
I’d never experienced that kind of joy before.
It was so easy. So comfortable. He made me feel cherished and safe and I had settled right in. I liked his family. They liked me.
I hadn’t imagined any of that. It was real.
That’s what made the rest of it so much harder to deal with.
I took a long sip of wine and stared at the screen without really seeing it.
The thing that kept tugging at me was that Callum didn’t think twice about storming in there to rescue me.
He didn’t weigh the consequences. He didn’t consider what it might cost me.
He saw something he didn’t like and he acted on instinct.
The fallout landed entirely on my side of the table.
Not his. I was the one that had to deal with the consequences of his actions.
It wasn’t fair.
He would be fine. He was always going to be fine. That was the luxury of being Callum Blackwell. He was wealthy and respected. He had businesses that would keep running and making money. His name didn’t suffer. His income didn’t suffer. The store was still opening. His family still loved him.
I was the one that was going to lose my job.
My sole income. The thing that kept the lights on and a roof over my head.
A job I truly loved. There was no way I would ever get another job in the field once people figured out why I no longer worked for Betty.
It was a niche industry and everyone in our world knew everyone else.
I took another drink and realized my glass was empty. Screw refilling it. That was too much effort. I reached for the bottle and took a swig.
I knew what it felt like to have people in your life who operated without a single care about how their choices impacted others.
I had grown up in that world and I absolutely hated it.
My parents moved through the world with that same brazen certainty that consequences were for other people.
My father could say whatever he liked at whatever dinner table he sat at because he owned the table and the room and most of the people in it.
My mother could cut me out of her life without a backward glance because what was I going to do about it?
What recourse did I have? None. I had none because the power was never mine.
It was always theirs.
I’d walked away from all of it. Most people didn’t understand what it actually cost to leave a life like that.
It wasn’t just the money, though that part was very real and very hard in ways I still didn’t entirely like to think about.
It was the identity. Everything I was supposed to be had been built by other people.
I had dismantled it piece by piece and rebuilt something that actually belonged to me.
And it hadn’t been pretty. There had been months when I didn’t know if I was going to be okay.
I couldn’t even count the number of times I had wondered if I’d made a catastrophic mistake.
I cried in the shower because I missed my family.
Not them for the people they were, but the idea of having a loving family.
I hated myself for missing something that had never been real to begin with.
I survived that. I survived it alone, without anyone catching me.
There wasn’t a safety net. Working with Betty had given me something to hold on to.
A reason to be good at something. A reason to believe that I was worth something beyond the name I’d been born with or the bank account I no longer had access to.
I would not compromise that. I had refused to compromise it for my own family.
People I had loved with everything I had before I understood that love wasn’t supposed to feel like a leash.
If I wouldn’t bend for them, I couldn’t bend for this.
Even if this felt like something I hadn’t expected to feel.
Even if the thought of Callum not being in my life caused me physical pain.
I had no cushion. I had no backup plan. I had no family money waiting in a trust to soften any blow that came my way if and when I lost my job.
When something went wrong in my professional life, I felt it.
Maybe it was my fault for not having a nest egg but I made ends meet and that was that. I could accept that was on me.
I didn’t think Callum was a bad person. He certainly hadn’t meant to hurt me.
That was the worst part. He’d done it because he cared.
He couldn’t stand the thought of me being in a situation that could go badly.
I believed him, which made the resentment sitting in my stomach that much more complicated to digest. I felt a little guilty for being pissed at him.
He didn’t do anything with ill intentions.
But good intentions didn’t pay my rent. Good intentions didn’t provide children’s hospitals with the funding they needed.
His good intentions didn’t rebuild the professional credibility I’d spent years building.
Yes, he could donate money to the charity, but that was putting a finger in a broken dam.
I must have dozed off because when I woke up, the nurse found the old couple.
It was the part I’d been bracing for and dreading because I knew how it would hit me.
I watched it anyway. I let myself feel it and told myself I was crying about the movie and not my own life.
I wiped my face on the sleeve of my robe and drank more wine. The nap had killed my buzz.
I pulled the blanket up over my legs and stared at the TV, debating if I wanted to go to bed or torture myself with another sappy movie. Another movie and more wine.
“I need pizza,” I declared to no one.
I looked around for my phone. I had purposely put it out of reach because I didn’t want to drunk text him. I had to stay strong. But now I needed pizza. It took me a minute to find the thing. I apparently left it in the bathroom.
I ordered a supreme pizza and told myself after my pity party I would take up jogging. I hated running but it was my bargain with the part of me that was trying to make me feel guilty for my indulgences. It was eat and drink my feelings or completely lose my shit.
I looked down at the phone in my hand.
I wasn’t going to call him. Not yet. Maybe not for a while.
Maybe ever. I needed to figure out what I actually wanted before I said anything, because the last thing I was going to do was walk back into something without knowing exactly what I was walking into.
I needed to figure out what I was willing to accept and where my lines were.
I also had to consider he might reject the lines I needed.
He might just be one of those guys that needed control.
Relationships were about compromise. How much were either of us willing to give?
I reached for my bottle of wine and gulped some down.
He had better figure out what his lines were and whether he was actually capable of respecting mine. I was not going to spend whatever years I had left in this life feeling like I was making choices based on someone else.
The pizza arrived, the perfect distraction.
I sat back down in my nest of blankets and pizza grease and thought about the charity runway show.
We had built something together. Not just Callum and me, but all of us.
I wasn’t going to hand that off to someone else or walk away from it unfinished.
That wasn’t who I was. The charity was important and I wasn’t going to let Mimi and Tiana down.
But the rest of it? That needed to slow down. At least until I could think clearly. I couldn’t think clearly when he was anywhere in my vicinity. I reached for my phone before I could talk myself out of it. Not to call him. I couldn’t hear his voice.
I sent him a message. I think we should put things on hold until after the show. We’ll figure it out from there.
That was it. I turned off my phone and chose another movie. I had half a bottle of wine and a pizza with my name on it. And a bucket of tears to cry.