19. Eliza
— ? —
Eliza
Charlie takes me to the restaurant attached to Gordon’s hotel.
I don’t know this when I say yes. I said yes three days ago, standing in his office after a long day, tired of my own indecision, tired of treating a nice dinner like a life sentence.
I said yes because he asked kindly and because I couldn’t think of a single good reason to say no that didn’t have Gordon’s name in it.
I spend the three days between the yes and the dinner regretting it in small doses. Not because of Charlie. Because of what saying yes means, which is that I’m a person who goes on dates now, a person whose life is moving forward, and forward has a direction, and the direction is away.
I call Gabriella on Wednesday night to tell her, because if she finds out later from anyone but me, she’ll never let it go. She’s thrilled for about four seconds, and then she stops, and then she says, “Does he know?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
I hang up on her. She texts me one eye-roll emoji, and then an hour later, wear something he’s never seen, and I love you.
Friday evening I try on four dresses and settle on one Gordon has never seen, which I tell myself is a coincidence and know isn’t.
I told Charlie I’d meet him there, a small piece of stubbornness he didn’t argue with, and I find out where we’re going when the address he texts me turns into a building I know.
Gordon’s been staying here for weeks. I know because I stood in one of these rooms and watched him tell me he’d signed away his company, and now I’m about to walk into the lobby restaurant on another man’s arm.
“This okay?” Charlie asks, reading something in my face. “The chef’s a friend. But we can go anywhere.”
Part of me wants to ask him to take me somewhere else. Part of me thinks: good. Let him see.
“It’s fine,” I say.
The restaurant is beautiful, soft lighting and white tablecloths and a menu with no prices on it anywhere.
Charlie orders wine and asks the waiter real questions about the fish, and the waiter visibly relaxes, and I file that away, that he’s a man waiters relax around.
I sit across from him and try to be a person on a date instead of a woman doing surveillance on her own heart.
He tells me about the early years of the label, the collection that nearly bankrupted him, the review that saved him, the mentor he lost two years ago whose scissors he still keeps in his desk drawer and has never once used.
He asks what I’d make if money and time didn’t exist, and then he actually waits for the answer, and when I describe the low-back gown, the one I’ve been redrawing for the last ten years, he nods slowly and says, “That’s the one from your sketchbook.
First page I stopped on.” He remembered.
Weeks later, out of hundreds of pages, he remembered.
Charlie is perfect. That’s the thing. He’s attentive without being overbearing, funny in a quiet way that sneaks up on you.
He asks about my designs, real questions, follow-up questions, and he remembers details from conversations we had weeks ago, the collar I was fighting with, the fabric I said I’d sell a kidney for.
He listens to the answers. He watches my face while I talk.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like, I think. Being seen. Being valued. Being asked.
I should be happy. I keep waiting to be happy.
“You’re thinking about him,” Charlie says.
I startle. “What?”
“Gordon.” He smiles gently. “It’s okay. I expected it.”
“I’m sorry. That’s incredibly rude-”
“It’s fine. Eliza, I like you. A lot. But I’m not stupid. You were married to him for eleven years. You don’t just turn that off.”
“I should, though. After everything he did-”
“Should has nothing to do with it.” He takes my hand across the table, and his hand is warm and steady, and it doesn’t burn. That’s the test. That’s the whole test, and I already know the result. “I’m not asking you to have it all figured out. I’m just asking if there’s room for something new.”
I look at him. This kind, handsome man who has done nothing wrong. Who treats me the way I deserve to be treated. Who would probably make me happy in the calm, sustainable way that people write books about.
“I don’t think I can,” I say honestly. “Not right now. Not yet.”
He nods. He doesn’t look surprised, and somehow that’s the saddest part, that he saw this coming and took me to dinner anyway, hoping he was wrong.
“Can we still be friends?”
“I’d like that.”
“And colleagues?”
“Definitely colleagues.” I squeeze his hand. “You’re the best boss I’ve ever had. I’m not giving that up over one dinner.”
“One very good dinner.”
“One very good dinner,” I agree.
He pays the check and walks me out through the lobby, his hand light at my back, friendly now, nothing more. At the doors he kisses my cheek and wishes me well, and there’s real warmth in it, and I think we’re actually going to be okay.
That’s when I see Gordon.
He’s coming out of the elevator, keys in his hand, clearly heading somewhere, not watching for me, not lurking, just a man leaving his hotel on a Friday night. He sees us and freezes. Charlie. Me. The restaurant behind us. The math takes him about one second, and I watch it land.
For a long moment, nobody moves.
Then Gordon nods once, turns, and walks out the front door.
He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t storm over. Didn’t make a scene, didn’t say my name, didn’t do any of the things the old Gordon would have done.
That’s new.
Charlie’s car takes him home. I stand at the valet stand with my ticket in my hand, and the valet asks if I’m ready, and I hear myself say give me a minute.
I get in my own car. I sit in it with my hands on the wheel.
I don’t go home.
I go to his hotel room.
I know the floor from the last time I stormed up here, and the elevator is empty, and my blood is loud in my ears the whole ride.
The mirrored doors show me a woman in a new dress with her arms crossed, and I don’t make eye contact with her, because she has questions I’m not answering tonight.
I don’t let myself think about what I’m doing.
If I think about it, I’ll stop, and I don’t want to stop, and that second part is the part I’m not thinking about hardest of all.
He opens the door in his undershirt, clearly not expecting anyone, and I watch about six expressions fight over his face before cautious hope wins.
“Eliza.”
“You were in the lobby.”
“I was going out.”
“You saw me with him.”
“Yes.”
“And you just left.”
“You asked me to respect your boundaries.” His voice is careful, even. “I’m trying.”
I push past him into the room.
He closes the door and turns around, and we look at each other, and neither of us says anything, because there’s nothing to say that we haven’t already said a hundred times.
I kiss him.
He makes a sound against my mouth, surprise and relief and want all at once, and then his hands are in my hair and my back is against the wall and we’re not talking about it. We’re not talking about anything.
I go for his undershirt and he yanks it off, and I hear stitches complain somewhere and I don’t care.
He gets my dress zipper halfway down and loses patience and I feel a hook give way, and I should care about that too, the dress Gordon has never seen dying its first night out, and instead it makes me kiss him harder.
We move along the wall toward the bed like a fight looking for a place to happen, knocking into the desk, his watch and keys scattering, his mouth at my jaw, my throat, the strap of my bra, everything teeth and heat and months of not doing this.
Halfway there I shove him back a step, and he stops instantly, chest heaving, watching me with his hands open at his sides.
I get down on my knees.
“Eliza-” His voice comes apart in the middle of my name.
“You wanted to know about my night,” I say, and I take him out and take him in my mouth, and whatever he was going to say dies somewhere above me.
His hand comes to rest against my hair, not guiding, barely touching, shaking, and I look up at him while I do it, and the look on his face is a man losing an argument with himself in real time.
I do it until his thighs are rigid and his breathing has gone ragged and his hand tightens once in my hair, involuntary.
“Stop.” It comes out hoarse. “Stop, or this is over embarrassingly fast.”
He hauls me up and we hit the bed, and the rest of our clothes come off in a hostile negotiation, and we’re doing things I swore I wouldn’t do again, and I can’t find it in me to care, because his mouth is on my throat and his hands know exactly where to go and my body remembers all of it, every single map of him, no matter how many times I’ve told it to forget.
It’s angry and hungry and eleven years of everything at once.
“Did you kiss him?” His voice is rough in my ear, his hand fisted in my hair. “Tonight. Did you kiss him?”
“That’s not your business.”
“Did you?”
“No.” I bite his shoulder, hard, because I hate that I’m answering, hate that it matters to both of us. “I didn’t kiss him. I’m here, aren’t I? I left a perfect man at the valet stand and came up here to you. I hate you for that.”
“I know.” He drives into me and I gasp and dig my nails into his back. “Hate me. Stay anyway.”
He says things he’ll regret. That I’m his, that I’ve always been his, that no one else gets to have me.
I say things I’ll regret. That he ruined me, that I’ve tried to want someone else and can’t, that I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, and every time I say it, it sounds less true and we both hear it.
We grab and pull and push and neither of us is gentle.
His hand splays flat on my sternum, pressing me into the mattress, holding me exactly where he wants me while I claw at his forearm and pull him deeper with my heels, and when I come it tears through me with his name nowhere in it, just a sound, raw and furious, and he follows hard a few strokes later with his forehead pressed to my temple and his breath breaking against my cheek, my whole body shaking.
When it’s over, we’re lying in the wreckage of all my good intentions.
The room is dark except for the city glow through the curtains.
His arm is around me. My head is on his chest, and his heart is still going fast under my ear, and I should move and I don’t.
His thumb is moving slowly against my shoulder, back and forth, an old habit, and my whole body knows it, and I let it happen because there’s no one here to see me let it happen.
Somewhere below us, the restaurant is clearing its last tables.
Somewhere across town, a kind man is probably home by now, pouring himself a drink, being decent about it.
I can’t hold him in my head for more than a few seconds at a time, and that’s the whole answer to his question, isn’t it. That was always going to be the answer.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” I say.
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” His arm tightens around me. “I’ll take it anyway.”
I should leave. I should get dressed and go home and add tonight to the list of mistakes I’m not letting myself repeat.
I stay.
I hate myself for it.
But I stay.
In the morning, I wake up alone in his bed.
The sheets on his side are cool. For one ugly second, eleven years of waking up alone comes rushing back, and then I see the note on the pillow.
Board transition meeting. Breakfast on the counter. This doesn’t change anything.
His handwriting hasn’t changed in eleven years. The last line is in slightly smaller letters, like he wrote it after standing there deciding whether to write it at all. He’s giving me my own words back. He’s letting me keep the lie if I need it.
I sit up and look around the room in daylight.
His suitcase in the corner, still half packed after weeks, like he can’t commit to being here either.
His watch on the nightstand on what used to be my side.
A book on the desk with a receipt marking his place, a third of the way in, and I recognize the title because I mentioned it once, years ago, at a dinner he spent on his phone.
He’s a third of the way into a book I recommended when he wasn’t listening.
There’s coffee in a carafe on the counter, and fruit, and toast wrapped in a napkin to keep it warm, which didn’t work, and which he would have known wouldn’t work, and which he did anyway.
I eat the breakfast standing at the counter, in his shirt, which I don’t remember putting on and refuse to think about. I read the note three more times.
Then I get dressed and walk out, telling myself I’m not coming back.