Nineteen
Liem
I fucked up. Yet again.
Sai: Great job! It will be good to have you back in the office again next week.
Me: Back in the office? What do you mean?
Sai: You got the contract now you come back.
Me: ???
Me: Call me
Staring at the message. I pace back and forth in the living room, trying to comprehend what happened. How did I fuck up this much? How could I not see that getting the contract would be the end of everything?
And to think I had plans. Candles, Bri’s favorite wine on the countertop, a cake to replace the one I never brought home from the party hiding in the fridge, and me, ready for the conversation we’re going to have, confident that she will make everything feel as safe as it did the night before last and be ready to take it further. And now this.
Finally, my phone buzzes with his call.
“Sai, I don’t understand. What do you mean I have to come back?”
“You did perfectly, my buddy. Dickerson is peeing in his pants! I know you want to get back together with Natalie, but management won’t let me keep you there if money isn’t involved. Everyone has to be in the office three days a week minimum.”
The fuck? “Since when?”
“Since last month.”
“Last—? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sai laughs as if the world isn’t crashing down around me. “It didn’t apply to you because you were making us money, my buddy.”
I’m being punished for succeeding? This can’t be real.
“There’s nothing I can do to get you to let me stay here?”
“You think I get to make the decisions? If I was the boss of this company, I would be on a yacht.” Another ear-grating laugh. “We’ve missed you here. You’ll still have weekends to fly back and see her.”
The “she” he’s referring to is not the person I want to see.
We end the call, and my hope ends with it. My eyes dance over the pieces of the plan I had for the night. Cake. Wine. What was I attempting? Romance? No wonder the universe intervened. I’m not meant to be happy.
I toss the candles into the trash. The sound of the door’s lock stops me. Bri walks in, the scowl on her face matching my mood.
“David called me,” she announces without a greeting.
The surprise quickly gets consumed by guilt. “I thought you had him blocked.”
“I do. He called from a different number.”
“Wh-what did he say?”
“Kelly must have told him I was still here,” she says. “He said he wants me to stay. That he wants me back.”
Shit. “What did you say?”
“I told him to fuck off and lose my number.”
“Good.” My tone suggests nothing is good, because it’s not. Even though she isn’t going back to him, I’m still the reason he went to her in the first place. I’m the reason she’s upset, and I’m about to upset her even more.
“Are you okay?” she asks. She must read it on my face. Setting her phone and leashes down on the countertop next to the wine, she comes to me. “What’s wrong?”
“My boss called.”
“Sai? What did he say?”
“I have to go back to Seattle.”
Her brow furrows. “When?”
“By Monday.”
“Monday? Why so soon?”
“It’s my company. Now that I got the contract, there’s no legitimate reason I can refuse going back to the office.”
“You got the contract?”
I guess I forgot that was supposed to be good news. Maybe because I’ve been lying about it since the first day I stepped into that office and found out who I was working for. “I did.”
“Congratulations?” She says it like a question, which seems apt considering it feels quite shitty. “What happens now?”
“I either look for a new job or I go back.”
“You can’t quit your job.”
“I could.”
“You shouldn’t quit your job. As someone who just applied to six thousand jobs and heard back from two and a half, please, for the love of retirement plans, do not quit.”
But I don’t want to leave you.
“You can stay,” I say past the lump in my throat I clear away right after. “I won’t be able to find a place in time if I go back now. You can use my stipend and stay another month like we planned.”
“Absolutely not,” she refuses with a laugh. “I’m not using you for anything else, and I am not staying here when David thinks being a deadbeat dad is somehow more forgivable than being a cheater.”
“But you don’t have enough saved up yet.”
“This was always the plan anyway, right?” she asks. “We knew this day would come eventually.”
“I guess so.”
The air in the apartment sits flat and devoid of the usual energy we bring. It’s the emptiness of a freshly bleached hotel room, and we’re two strangers who’d planned to part ways since we met.
It’s over. Before we even got started.
~
A few hours later, our bags are packed, flights booked, and I’m in bed, hating every part of it. It’s not fair. Yes, nothing in life is fair, but I don’t understand why it had to flip upside down so quickly.
Maybe it’s a sign—a big, flashing billboard telling me to stop what I’m doing with Bri. It’s undeniable that I’m attracted to her, and as aloof as she pretends to be, she has to see how willing I am to cross the line and let her be the start of my next chapter.
But she doesn’t want to be in a relationship, she wants sex, and I don’t know how to have sex with someone without falling for them.
We mesh so well, but our needs clash. Is this the universe’s way of ending it before I have a chance to spoil what we’ve had?
Is life telling me not to walk into her room and ask her to get naked with me, ending our friendship?
Does it want me to be alone and full of regret all over again?
While fate is trying to save me from myself, the regret of not crawling to her is too painful to ignore.
Fuck it.
I slip on some pants and leave my room, heart thudding in my chest.
“Hoodie?” Bri calls from inside. She must be able to hear my heartbeat through her door.
“Hi. Can I come in?”
“Of course.” Relieved, I open her door to find her under the sheets, leaning against the headboard, hair down. She hasn’t finished getting ready for bed. “Can’t sleep either?”
“No.” My lack of sleep might be for a different reason than hers. “Can I hang out for a sec?”
“Duh. Come here.” She lifts the blankets beside her, inviting me in.
I go to her, sliding in beneath the sheets, settling on the pillow next to hers. She does the same, slinking down and turning to face me. She grins, but there’s sadness hiding behind it. I can feel it.
“I can’t believe we’re leaving each other,” she says. “For months, we’ve joked that we weren’t going to know each other once we leave, but it’s real this time. It feels like I’m right back to day one in the city, losing everything all over again.”
“I feel the same way.” Of course I do. When do we not feel the same? I hate that I’ve been lying to her, and I’m afraid she’ll hate that I’ve been lying to her too. It’s only fair she knows before she goes home to her friends. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“There’s something I need to tell you too.”
I wasn’t expecting that. “Is yours good or bad?”
“Bad. What’s yours?”
“Also bad.”
“Should I be scared?”
“I’m scared you might hate me.”
She reaches forward and scratches her fingers against the back of my head. “I could never hate you. Tell me.”
How do I say this? “My big client.”
She waits for me to say more. “Uh-huh.”
“It was David’s company.” I look into her eyes, ready to face the anger she’ll throw my way. Her fingers stop their movement, and her brow furrows. “I’ve seen him almost every week since we’ve lived here.”
“You have?” she asks. I nod, not noticing I’ve been holding on to her forearm, keeping her hand on my head, as if that will keep her from leaving me.
“That’s not the worst part of what I have to tell you,” I continue.
“It’s not?”
“No. I’m sorry.” I swallow my fear and admit the truth.
“The celebration dinner I went to last night. David was there, and I ran into him. He started saying shit about breaking up with his girl two months ago—like his only relationship was with you—and it pissed me off. He asked me if I was seeing anyone, and I lied and said yeah . . . her name is Ambrielle.”
She stares at me, saying nothing. Anxious thoughts race through my mind and veins. Then she starts laughing, a bubbly giggle she covers with a hand when it grows too loud. That’s not the reaction I was expecting.
“You’re not mad?” I ask.
“Why would I be mad? That was so messy of you. And exactly what I’d ask you to do if I knew you’d see him.”
“Really?”
“Do you know me? Yes.”
“I’m the reason he found out you were still here, though. Not your friends.” Why I keep trying to dig my grave, I don’t know.
“Babe, I wasn’t upset because he found out I was still here. I was upset he cheated on me then turned around to say he’d leave her the minute he found out I moved on. He’s trash.”
I breathe easier, the weight lifted from my chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. The day I found out, I came home and you were in pain. I didn’t want to add to that, and then it felt like it was too late to mention it without making it seem like I had been hiding it.”
“I understand. Don’t worry about it.”
Her acceptance comes so easily, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the circumstance or because her news is worse. “What did you need to tell me?”
Bri’s eyes drop from mine. It must be bad. “When I went to get your suitcases from Natalie, I told you she didn’t say anything important. But she did. She said a lot.”
“Like what?”
Her eyes look up as if recalling the exact words from deep in her memory. “She said she loved you, but she knew she’d never be in love with you. She said you give up your dreams for others because you don’t believe there’s another way you’d deserve to be loved.”
A message that would have eviscerated me had I heard it right after she left. She never loved me, and somehow she knew I didn’t love myself either? My giving up everything to follow her was the ultimate example of why she never saw a future with me.