10. Honesty Is a Strange Policy （Melissa）
Chapter ten
Honesty Is a Strange Policy (Melissa)
“ Y ou mean my father literally asked you to marry me?” It was strange coming out of his mouth but stranger now that I said it out loud.
Yet there was some comfort in knowing that Father had been thinking about me in his final moments.
I had been engrossed in suspense ever since I’d learned that Ryan was the last person he had talked to before dying.
Now that I knew what they had talked about, I was…
well, it was still too soon to discover what I was.
I was happy that I knew what Dad had said. I was also upset, confused, and a little bit angry. Shocked too, because of Father’s choice. He saw Ryan as a fit enough candidate for me to marry. I had never questioned his judgment and had always relied upon him to make the best decisions.
But this one was a little too out there, a little too drastic. What the fuck.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ryan said. We were still sitting on the tabletop where we had just had sex. Powerful, raw, passionate, mind-blowing sex. It still did not change the fact that Ryan had moments later dropped such a huge bomb that all my thinking faculties had hit a hard brake.
“Yeah, I don’t think you do, Ryan,” I said, rubbing my temples.
“I do, actually. He might not have been my father, but he and I were very close. Can you imagine what I must have gone through, having been asked to do something so huge and then come back and find him being taken away by the paramedics? Until just now, I never really got a chance to process the gravity of his last promise.”
“And it adds to the pressure, given that it was the last promise,” I agreed. “Going against it would feel like dishonoring his last wish.”
“It really wouldn’t, though,” Ryan said.
“Come again?”
“The whole marriage thing was an addendum he added at the end of his request. He was more concerned with me taking care of you. He thought that the only way I’d be able to do that would be by marrying you. Doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways,” Ryan said.
“Is that why you rushed to my defense when Colby X hit on me?”
“Yes, sort of. But also because I’ve genuinely begun to care for you. The two aren’t related.”
“Ryan….”
“Melissa…”
“You don’t know how fucking crazy this is, Ryan!” I said, getting off the table and walking to the window for a change of view.
“I am the only one other than you who knows how crazy it is, Melissa,” he said, coming behind me and putting his hand on my shoulder.
“This is all happening too fast!” I gasped.
“And I may have just the solution for it,” Ryan said, taking a step back.
“What is it? And it better not be something so avant-garde that I end up losing my mind,” I said, my head feeling light. I sat back down on the table, now realizing that I’d been probably a bit too harsh on Colby X for doing something that I’d done twice.
“I want you to forget about everything,” Ryan said. “A do-over, that’s what I’m asking for. Let’s start anew, shall we?”
“That’s just something that people say without knowing what it means,” I tried to explain.
“But we know what it means. It means you truly forgiving me for being an asshole that day, and then also forgetting that we’ve had sex twice more since then. Forget that your father asked me to marry you. Forget everything,” Ryan said.
“Why don’t you just hit me on the head really hard and I’ll forget everything? It’s not so simple!”
“Then make it simple. If you don’t want to forget, don’t. At least give this a chance. We can start anew.”
“Do you even really want this?” I asked, never once considering that maybe he didn’t. “Or do you think that I want this?”
“I don’t know what either of us wants. All I know is that I’ve…”
“Started to care about me? Can you do better? Can you say what you actually want to say without resorting to a softcore euphemism?” I snapped.
“Fine! You want me to say I love you? I love you, there. I do. And I don’t know why.
I just do. Ever since I talked to you that night, I have been feeling things for you.
You once asked me who was the real me, the charming man who took you on a date that night or the asshole you met the following morning.
Well, you wanna know the truth? I am the charming man.
I enjoyed our date. I loved making love to you.
I regretted it the next morning that I’d been coerced into going out with you over a stupid dare.
That’s why I behaved like that. Doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been feeling things for you ever since the first time I saw you walk into my office. Christ, fuck!”
My heart was a malfunctioning jackhammer, beating at four times the speed. I could feel the sandpapery texture of my dry tongue, scraping along my dry mouth. My fingers were trembling as I stuttered and asked, “You…you love me?”
“Yes,” Ryan said, his face red, his breath short. “I’m not putting any kind of pressure on you to say ‘I love you’ back. I know that’s not how it happens in real life, even though all the novels and movies have us convinced otherwise.”
“I don’t know what I feel about you right now, Ryan.
I don’t hate you. That’s a start. I hated you that day, and I hated seeing you at the funeral two weeks later.
But then you did something I never expected.
You were accountable. You took responsibility for your actions and made me see that perhaps there was more to you than met my eye.
When we talked after my father’s death, I saw this introspective side that made me want to believe that you could change and be a better man.
And if Dad, in all his wisdom, also saw that, it brings me back to the fucking start of it all.
I don’t know what I feel about you right now! ”
This severely emotional discourse was bringing tears to my eyes.
Not tears of sadness or rage or confusion, but tears of intensity that usually follow a big speech, such as the one I’d given just now.
I wiped them away immediately. I didn’t want him to think I was some overly emotional little girl incapable of handling conflicting emotions.
“It brings me back to the beginning too. Let me be the person that your father thought I could be. I can be that man if you give me a chance. Christ, Melissa, if you knew me any better, you’d see that I’ve never made a case for something this fervently before.
I can be the man your father wanted me to be — the man that you want me to be,” Ryan promised.
“Don’t think that I can’t empathize with your position either.
You’re feeling strongarmed. I know it. I don’t want to contribute to it.
I know why you gave me the head of acquisitions position.
You want to take care of me in the way you see fit.
I don’t want to contribute anymore. I don’t want to coerce you,” I said.
If I imagined myself there in his place when my dad had told him that he wanted him to take care of and then marry me, I could feel the weight of responsibility he was feeling on his shoulders.
“He was solving a crossword that day, you know,” Ryan said. “You want me to show you?”
“Show me the last thing my father ever wrote? Yes, please. I’m going to frame it and hang it at my place,” I said.
Once we were back in his office, he opened his drawer and took out the now slightly yellow newspaper, all folded to grant ease of access to the crossword in the middle.
“My red rose has turned white,” Ryan said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s the one he’d just penned down. See,” Ryan pointed at the words Dad had etched on the newspaper with a shaky hand.
“Scorcher, huh,” I said, taking the newspaper from him and reading the rest of the puzzle. I handed it back and watched him neatly fold it and put it back in the drawer.
“He never mentioned you before,” Ryan said. “I knew he had a daughter. I knew about his whole rule to keep his business and personal life separate. You can imagine how I felt when I finally took your name, told me who you were, and that you’d just taken a secretarial position here.”
“You must have shit bricks sideways,” I said, giggling at the thought.
“You have no idea,” Ryan said, taking the stopper off the crystal decanter.
“Hey, mister, we’re not getting drunk right now,” I said, taking the stopper from him and putting it back on the bottle.
“As you wish.”
“I appreciate you, you know. You chose to honor his dying wish. You didn’t run away from the mess that you created.
You cleaned it up and did it well. I mean it.
All my friends were like, ‘Hey, you can’t go out with him, don’t you remember how badly he behaved?
’ I was like, ‘yeah, but you don’t know how good he behaved afterward,’” I said.
“I would love to meet your friends and change their opinions about me,” Ryan said.
“Maybe someday you will, but right now is too soon. It’s too soon for a lot of things, actually.
It’s too soon for us to get into a relationship or rush into something we’ll regret later.
Healing is a process. Time helps that process.
What do you say?” I asked, a little afraid that he’d not react well to this.
Instead, he smiled warmly, and asked, “How about I take you out on a real date? We’ll see where things go from there? No pressure or anything.”
“I would love that,” I said, smiling.
“Then I will do as you said and not rush into things. How about Wednesday next week?” Ryan asked, taking my hand in his and squeezing it.
“Next Wednesday it is,” I said.
He didn’t let go of my hand just yet. He held onto it, making butterflies flutter in my stomach. Then he let go and just looked at me, as if he wanted to say something but was holding back.
“All right then,” I said, not really wanting to walk out of his office just yet. “I’ll go find a new client and hope that he’s more well-mannered than the last one.”