11. Gordon
— ? —
Gordon
I’ve been parked across the street for two hours.
Two hours of watching her building, watching the windows, watching the door. Two hours of telling myself I should leave and not leaving. The engine is off and the radio is off and the only sound is my own breathing, too loud in the quiet car, too fast for someone who’s just sitting still.
She told me not to come back. She threatened to call the police. And here I am anyway, because I don’t know how to be anywhere else.
I’ve tried staying away. I’ve tried going home to the house, all those empty rooms and expensive furniture and no sign that anyone actually lives there.
I’ve tried going to the office, but I took indefinite leave and there’s nothing for me to do there anyway, just people who look at me with careful neutral expressions and don’t know what to say.
I’ve tried driving around the city with no destination, but every road seems to lead me back here, to this street, to this building, to her.
This is what it feels like to lose your mind.
I understand that now. I understand why people do crazy things for love, desperate things, things that look insane from the outside but feel completely rational when you’re the one doing them.
Because being near her, even if she won’t see me, even if she hates me, is better than being anywhere else.
Because the alternative is going back to that empty house and lying in that empty bed and staring at the ceiling until morning comes and I have to do it all over again.
I check my phone for the hundredth time.
No messages. No missed calls. Not that I expected any.
She hasn’t responded to anything I’ve sent in two weeks.
She hasn’t answered a single voicemail or a single text.
The read receipts went dark the first week, she changed the setting, so I can’t even tell if she’s seen a word I’ve written, and not knowing is its own punishment.
I should eat something. I can’t remember the last time I ate a full meal.
Everything tastes like cardboard, everything sits wrong in my stomach, and most days I just drink coffee until my hands shake and then switch to whiskey until I can sleep.
My therapist says I’m not taking care of myself.
My therapist says a lot of things. Most of them are probably true.
A car turns onto the street, and I sit up straighter, suddenly wide awake. But it’s not her. Just some stranger, some person with their own life and their own problems, pulling into a parking spot down the block.
I slump back in my seat. My neck hurts from sleeping in the car outside Lucas and Gabriella’s place for three days. My back hurts from sitting too long. Everything hurts, actually, a constant low-grade ache that I’ve stopped noticing except when I move wrong.
I wonder what she’s doing right now. If she’s at home, or still at work, or out somewhere with friends. I wonder if she’s happy. I wonder if she thinks about me at all, or if she’s already moved on, already started building a life that doesn’t include me.
The thought makes me want to put my fist through the windshield.
Another car turns onto the street. This one is nicer, sleek and dark, expensive but not flashy, which somehow makes it worse. It slows as it approaches her building, and my whole body goes tense.
The car stops. The passenger door opens.
Eliza.
She steps out onto the curb, and even from across the street I can see her face in the glow of the streetlight.
She looks tired but happy, animated in a way I haven’t seen in years.
She’s wearing something simple, dark pants and a light blouse, and her hair is pulled back the way she wears it when she’s been working all day.
She’s laughing.
I can’t hear it from here, but I can see it in the way her shoulders move, the way she tips her head back, the way her whole face transforms. She used to laugh like that with me. Back when we had nothing, back when we were happy, back when I was the one who made her light up like that.
The driver gets out too.
He’s tall, dark hair, the easy posture of someone comfortable in his own skin. He walks around the car to where she’s standing, and they talk for a moment on the sidewalk, their heads close together, their body language easy and familiar.
She touches his arm.
Just a brief touch, casual, friendly. But I watch her fingers brush his sleeve and I feel something hot and ugly twist in my chest, jealousy, raw and irrational and consuming, and I haven’t felt it in years.
She used to touch me like that. She used to stand close to me like that, laugh at my jokes like that, look at me the way she’s looking at him right now. Like I was interesting. Like I was worth her time. Like she wanted to hear what I had to say.
I don’t realize I’m out of the car until I’m already halfway across the street.
Eliza sees me first. Her whole body goes rigid, the laughter dying on her face, and what’s in her eyes might be anger or might be fear or might be both. The man follows her gaze and turns to look at me, his expression shifting from confusion to understanding to guarded.
“Gordon.”
“Eliza.”
“Who’s this?” the man asks.
“My ex-husband.”
The word lands somewhere I can’t reach to rub. Ex, like I’m already past tense, like eleven years of marriage can be reduced to a prefix and dismissed.
“Gordon, what are you doing here?”
“I needed to see you.”
“I told you not to come back.”
“I know what you told me.”
The man steps forward, positioning himself slightly between us, and the hot ugly thing in my chest gets worse.
He doesn’t get to protect her. He doesn’t get to stand between us like he has any right to be there.
I’ve been protecting her since we were seventeen years old.
I’ve been taking care of her, providing for her, building a life for her. Who the hell is this guy?
“I can stick around,” he says to Eliza. “If you need me to.”
“I’m fine, Charlie.” She touches his arm again, brief and casual and familiar, and I want to grab his hand and break every one of his fingers. “Thank you for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Charlie. Her boss. The one from the design label, the one who gave her the internship, the one who’s been spending all day every day with her while I sit in parking lots and wait for glimpses of her through windows.
He hesitates, looking at me like he’s sizing me up, and then he nods and gets back in his car. I watch him drive away, watch his taillights disappear around the corner, and then it’s just me and Eliza standing on the curb in the dark.
“Charlie,” I say. “That’s your boss?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“He drives you home at nine o’clock at night?”
“We had a working dinner. Not that I owe you an explanation.” She folds her arms across her chest, her posture closed off, defensive. “What do you want, Gordon?”
“I want you to come home.”
“No.”
“I want you to give me another chance.”
“No.”
“I want you to tell me what I have to do to fix this, because I’m losing my mind, Eliza. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t think about anything except you, and I know I don’t deserve another chance but I’m asking anyway.”
“Sign the papers.”
“Anything but that.”
She laughs, and there’s no humor in it anywhere.
“What if I set you up with your own company?” The words come out before I can stop them. “Your own label, your own space. I could fund the whole thing, I could get you started, you wouldn’t have to work under anyone-”
“Gordon. Stop.”
“I’m serious. Whatever you need, whatever resources-”
“Money can’t fix this.” Her voice is sharp now, cutting.
“How many times do I have to say it? You can’t buy your way out of eleven years of making me feel invisible.
You can’t write a check that pays for all the dinners I ate alone, all the nights I went to bed wondering if you even remembered I existed. ”
“Then tell me what does fix it.”
“You asked me that last night.” Her voice cracks, and for a second I see past the anger to the hurt underneath, the exhaustion, the grief.
“Standing on my landing, with the machine. The answer hasn’t changed overnight, Gordon.
I still don’t know. And I definitely don’t know why you think throwing money at me is going to help when the whole problem is that you don’t see me as a person.
You see a problem to solve. You see something broken that needs fixing. You don’t see me.”
“I do see you-”
“Then prove it. Stop coming around.” She takes a breath, visibly steadying herself, pulling herself back together. “You’re making this harder for everybody. For me, for you, for people who have nothing to do with our marriage. Go home, Gordon.”
“I can’t give up on you.”
“That’s not your choice to make anymore.”
She turns and walks into her building. The door closes behind her. The lock clicks.
I stand on the curb for a long time, staring at the window that I know is hers, waiting for some sign of movement, a light turning on, a shadow passing behind the curtain, anything at all, and nothing moves.
The street is quiet. A car passes, then another. Somewhere down the block, a dog barks. The night air is cool, and I’m shivering, though I don’t know if it’s from the cold or from everything else.
Her words keep circling, all of them in her voice, and every loop ends on the same one. You don’t see me.
She’s right. I know she’s right. I’ve been throwing money at problems my whole adult life because money is the one thing I have, the one thing I know how to get, the one thing I thought could solve anything if I just had enough of it.
I built an empire because I thought it would prove something, would make me worthy of her, would give her the life I thought she deserved.
But she never wanted the empire. She never wanted the money or the house or any of it. She just wanted me. And I was too busy building things to notice.
I get back in my car. I sit there with my hands on the steering wheel, staring at her window, thinking about Charlie’s car pulling up, Charlie walking around to meet her, Charlie standing on the sidewalk talking to my wife like he had every right to be there.
The thought keeps circling, keeps landing in different places. Stop coming around. Stop showing up. Stop following her, stop leaving gifts, stop trying to buy my way back into her life.
She didn’t say I couldn’t be in the same building.
The idea takes shape slowly, rising up from somewhere I don’t want to examine too closely.
She’s working for Charlie’s label. She’s there every day, learning, growing, building a life that doesn’t include me.
And I’m out here, sitting in parking lots.
She called it stalking, to my face, and she was right.
But if I were a client. If I had a legitimate reason to be there.
It’s a loophole. A technicality. She told me to stop coming to her apartment, to stop leaving flowers, to stop showing up uninvited. She didn’t say anything about professional environments. She didn’t say anything about business relationships.
I pull out my phone. My hands aren’t steady as I search for the label’s website, as I look for a contact number, as I start drafting what I’m going to say.
This is crazy. This is exactly what she’s talking about when she says I don’t respect her boundaries. This is me finding another way to insert myself into her life without her permission, another way to be near her when she’s asked me to stay away.
But I can’t stay away. I’ve tried. God, I’ve tried. And every day I wake up and she’s not there, and it’s killing me.
I dial the number before I can talk myself out of it.
“Hi, yes, I’d like to inquire about a custom wardrobe project. Long-term, exclusive. I’m prepared to discuss budget tomorrow if someone’s available to meet.”
By midnight, I’ve got a meeting scheduled with Charlie’s team. The number I’m going to offer will make sure they can’t say no.
She told me to stop coming around. She didn’t say anything about being a client.