30. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
The store has one room, one mirror, and prices that would make a normal person faint.
We’re in Tokyo because Beck has an office here and a meeting he’s been putting off since spring, since the afternoon he turned down a call from this very office to have a tea party with Josie. He mentioned the dates the way he tells me everything now, casually, without asking.
I invited myself.
The room is private, hushed, the kind of space where money speaks in whispers. A woman in an impeccable black dress brings champagne on a silver tray. Neither of us touches it.
Beck holds out a black card.
“This is yours,” he says.
I stare at it. “What?”
“No limit or approval. You also don’t get an opinion from me.” He presses it into my hand. “Whatever you want.”
“Beck, I can’t-”
“You can.” His voice is firm. “You spent two years married to me, and I never once brought you here. I never showed you this part of my life, the part where money stops meaning anything and starts being just… possibility.” He gestures at the room, at the woman waiting discreetly by the door.
“This is yours. All of it. Whatever you want to try on, take home, throw in the trash, it’s yours. ”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I know you don’t need it.” He catches my hand, the one holding the card. “That’s not the point. The point is I’m giving it to you. Because it’s mine to give and I want you to have it.”
I look at the card. Black and heavy, the kind of card that opens doors I’ve never even seen.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
“There’s always a catch with you.”
“Not anymore.” He lets go of my hand and steps back, settling into a chair in the corner. “I’m going to sit here. I’m not going to pick anything. I’m not going to tell you what looks good. I’m not going to have any opinions at all.”
“You always have opinions.”
He crosses his arms, and there’s something almost vulnerable in his expression. “Today I’m just going to watch.”
The woman in black approaches, her smile polite and expectant. “May I show you something specific, Mrs. Cooper?”
Mrs. Cooper. The name hits me strangely. I haven’t been Mrs. Cooper in months, the papers are signed, the divorce is final. But here, in this room, with this card in my hand, the name feels different. Like a door I could choose to walk through.
“Show me everything,” I say.
She does.
Scarves, bags, and dresses that cost more per item than the colt that I last sold on Beck’s ranch, that seventy-four thousand dollars that feels like a lifetime ago.
I start small. A scarf, silk, deep blue. My hand shakes when I hand over the card.
The woman doesn’t blink. The card doesn’t decline and Beck doesn’t say a word.
I try something bolder. A coat, cashmere, the color of storm clouds. It fits like it was made for me.
“That one’s nice,” Beck says from his corner.
“You said no opinions.”
“That was an observation.”
“It sounded like an opinion.”
“It was an observation that you look incredible and I’m having a hard time staying in this chair.”
Heat floods my cheeks. The woman in black pretends not to hear.
I buy the coat and then I stop being careful.
Boots that will never see a barn. A dress the color of bluebonnets. A bag that’s ridiculous and impractical and makes me feel like someone I’ve never been.
Somewhere in there, I catch myself laughing.
Beck is watching me with a nervous face, thrilled. Like a man who’s handed over the keys to his kingdom and can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
“What? You’ve never seen a woman shop before.”
“I’ve never seen you shop before.” He stands up and walks toward me, and even in this absurd room full of absurd things, the sight of him makes my breath catch. “I’ve seen you buy practical things. Useful things. Things you need. I’ve never seen you buy something just because you wanted it.”
“This is different.”
“I know.” He stops in front of me, close enough to touch.
The woman in black clears her throat delicately. “Shall I wrap everything, Mrs. Cooper?”
“Please.”
She disappears with an armful of impossible things, and Beck and I are alone in the room with its single mirror and its champagne nobody drank.
“I have something for you,” he says.
“You’ve given me enough.”
“This is different.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small. A tiny iron horse, the kind you’d find at a street market. “Two dollars. From a stall by the train station at six this morning. I counted out the change wrong and the vendor had to help me.”
I take the horse. It’s heavy for its size, rough around the edges, nothing like the polished things surrounding us.
“It’s for Josie,” he says. “But I wanted you to see it first. Because that’s who I want to be. The man who buys two-dollar horses for his daughter and counts out the change wrong. Not just the man who hands you a black card and tells you to go crazy.”
“You can be both.”
“Can I?”
“You’re learning.” I close my fingers around the little horse. “That’s all I ever wanted. For you to learn.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he glances around the room, at the mirror, at the champagne, at the space where his money has bought us privacy and time.
“I’ve been to Tokyo countless times,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“I never once asked you to come.”
“I thought you only do boring things here anyway.”
“It is boring because I did all of it without you. The meetings, the deals, the dinners that went until midnight.” He shakes his head. “I kept this whole part of my life separate, like it didn’t belong to you. Like you weren’t allowed to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid.” He meets my eyes. “Afraid you’d see how much money there really was and decide you couldn’t handle it. Afraid you’d look at all this and realize you didn’t want it. Afraid you’d-”
“Disappear?”
He goes still.
“That’s my fear,” I say. “Not yours.”
“Maybe it’s both of ours.” He reaches out and touches my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. “I was so afraid of losing you that I kept you out of everything. That if I let you be in your own world the way you want it, then you’ll never leave. And then I lost you anyway.”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“I almost did.”
“Almost doesn’t count.” I turn my head and press a kiss to his palm. “What do you want, Beck? Right now. Not what you think I want, not what you think you should want. What do you actually want?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then, “I want to go home and build you a barn.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s everything.” He pulls me closer, his hands on my waist. “I don’t want Tokyo. I don’t want meetings that go until midnight. I don’t want any of it if you’re not there. I just want to go home and build something with you.”
The woman in black returns with shopping bags. She sets them by the door and disappears again, tactful as ever.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“Let’s go home. Let’s build a barn.”
The smile that breaks across his face is worth more than everything in those bags.
“Yes ma’am,” he says.