Chapter 19 #3
If someone had asked me a few months ago what “having it all” meant to me, I’d have described my life: a wonderful group of best friends, a successful business I’d built myself, and a contract to host a show that was about to begin filming.
Now, standing in this sitting room, I feel like “having it all” could look very different: married to Sasha, adopting Stella, building a new group of friends here, moving my business back to New York.
No, this isn’t the life you’ve chosen. You’re already too far down the first path, backtracking would be ridiculous. You don’t want to be married. You don’t want kids. And you’re about to become a household name when your show airs. You’ve built the life you wanted, now it’s time to enjoy it.
“This is when he surprised me with a trip to St. Thomas at Christmas. It’s when I knew for sure that he felt the same way I did.
” The look on her face is so tender, so full of love, that it makes my heart hurt.
I remember what it was like to feel that way, but it only ever led to heartbreak and humiliation for me.
The life you’ve built is so much better than what any man could offer you, I remind myself.
Emily’s smile is huge and genuine when she tells Avery, “You two are very cute together.”
“I’m still kind of pinching myself that it’s all real. I mean, initially I thought he was a total asshole.”
Ah, the allure of the asshole. I know that well. Hopefully, Tom turns out to truly be a good person, unlike my last boyfriend.
Avery looks at me as I sit near them. “Oh no, what’s that look?” she asks.
I school my face into a neutral expression. “What look?”
“The look you got when I said I initially thought Tom was a total asshole?”
“Oh”—I shrug it off—“nothing. It just made me remember the last guy I dated, who turned out to be the worst when I thought he was one of the good guys.”
“He really was the worst,” Emily says with a wry little laugh.
“Oh no, what happened?” Avery asks, her concern evident in her voice. I can tell she has a big heart, and I hope for her sake that Tom guards it like it deserves to be protected.
“Well, he ended up in jail, so . . .” I never tell anyone this story. Emily knows, because she was involved, as were a few other women we used to model with. It’s a well-known story in the industry, but outside of that, the only other person I’ve ever told is Jackson.
“He was our agent,” Emily supplies when I stop talking.
“And he was literally stealing from us—creating fake contracts that undersold what the companies we were modeling for were actually paying us so he could pocket the difference. He did this for years, to six of the models he represented. He and Petra happened to be in a relationship, so it was even worse that she was one of the women he was stealing from.”
“Oh, wow,” Avery breathes. “How did you find out?”
“I started to suspect something shady was going on, so I hired a private investigator who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.”
“What does that even mean?” Avery asks.
“I needed her to gather evidence, and I didn’t care how she got it. Was there breaking and entering involved? Did she somehow pick her way into his safe? I don’t know, and I don’t care. She got me what I needed.”
“Sounds like an utter badass to me,” Avery smiles.
Alicia was a badass and a saint. Some people come into our lives just when we need them, and Alicia was that person for me.
A chance meeting at a party and my fascination with her career choice led us to exchange numbers.
I never thought I’d need to hire her, but I was so glad I had her in my contact list when I needed her.
“In a lot of ways,” I tell Avery, “she saved me.”
“You saved yourself, Petra,” Emily insists. “You’re the one who hired her, and when he was prosecuted, you testified against him.”
“You had to testify against your boyfriend in court?” Avery gasps as she turns her head toward me.
“Hell no. He wasn’t my boyfriend anymore at that point,” I tell her.
“I cut him loose the minute I had the evidence I needed to turn over to the DA. The worst part was realizing that I’d internalized a lot of things he’d said to me, like that I’d get paid more if I lost a few pounds.
He was trying to make it look like I wasn’t earning as much as I deserved by some deficit of my own doing, when really I was being paid fairly and he was just making excuses to cover that he was stealing from me. ”
“Wow, Petra. I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Avery says. “And you, too, Emily.”
“It wasn’t as bad for me, for obvious reasons,” Emily tells her. “But this is why Petra generally hates men.”
What Emily doesn’t know—actually, what no one knows—is that Ryan was the last in a string of men who did me wrong. She sees him as the thousand pound weight that broke the camel’s back, when really he was just the final straw.
“That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger,” I quip. That little saying got me through a lot of heartache, and has helped me rebuild my life time and time again.
“I can’t really imagine anyone being stronger than you,” Emily says. “For real.” Her words are supportive, but her smile is sad, so I direct our attention back to the game now that the commercial break is over.