Chapter 3 #2
“I’m not a sad woman waiting to be noticed.”
Her mouth softened. “Good.”
I got in the car before she could hug me.
That would have been the end of me.
The drive home blurred.
Not literally. I wasn’t that far gone. But the roads came and went under me without much sticking. Little slices of Virgin Cove. Quiet streets. The bridge. Water black on both sides. Then the small cluster of roads near my apartment, where everything felt less curated and more human.
My place was on the second floor of a modest building three streets back from the water. Not glamorous. Not tragic either. Just real. Rentable. Mine. The sort of place that smelled like coffee and laundry soap and a little too much life compressed into a few rooms.
By the time I got upstairs, my feet hurt, my head hurt, and my body still had not forgiven me for standing that close to Xerses Norouzi.
I kicked off the rest of my clothes, changed into one of my oldest T-shirts, scrubbed my face, and stood in the bathroom for a full thirty seconds staring at myself in the mirror like maybe a different woman would be in there if I looked long enough.
But it was my mouth, my lips and my gut that twisted with the same awareness low in my body that every time Xerses looked at me like he wanted to peel off one layer of me and see what happened next.
I hated this.
One sentence from the right man could make me feel both wanted and trapped. that I was old enough to know better and still not too old to react like my hormones had staged a coup.
My phone buzzed on the bathroom counter.
I looked at it.
Xerses: We need to talk tomorrow.
My first, immediate, completely honest reaction was to throw the phone into the sink.
Instead I stared at the text until another bubble appeared.
Xerses: And before you say no, this affects both of us.
“Oh, wow,” I muttered to my empty bathroom. “Good thing you noticed.”
I typed back before I could think too hard.
Me: You don’t get to tell me what affects me.
Three dots then nothing. I let out a laugh so sharp it startled even me.
Me: You publicly lied about me in front of your family.
Xerses: I solved a problem.
My face went hot all over again.
Me: That was not your problem to solve.
There was a pause this time.
Long enough that I pictured him somewhere in the compound, probably leaning against some expensive surface while ruining my blood pressure one text at a time.
Then dots.
Xerses: It became my problem when my mother used you to make a point. You shouldn’t be just one possible option to anyone.
I stopped breathing for one second. He was nice to me. Sometimes.
Or I read too much into that.
Then I got angry again, because if he got to be accidentally thoughtful on top of everything else I was going to have to become a nun.
Me: No. What became your problem was your inability to leave a room alone.
Xerses: Good night. See you tomorrow morning.
I put the phone facedown and walked out of the bathroom.
Then I made tea, because I would sit on my couch in the soft yellow light of my living room and try not to think.
My apartment was too quiet. Usually that quiet comforted me.
Tonight it gave my brain room to sprint.
Xerses could have anyone and clearly did but he made me laugh and singled me out more than once since I’ve known him. I also thought about the way Roxanne had touched my shoulder like I already belonged to her.
God, no. I was not doing that tonight.
He’d told me no before. He’s busy. And honestly because I was the woman with the loud mouth and the weird dating history and the very normal apartment and the elementary-school teacher salary and the new real-estate license and the friends who all somehow leveled up into impossible men while I kept collecting stories about Batman.
My phone buzzed again.
I lunged for it purely so I could tell him to choke on his own composure.
It wasn’t him.
Hope: Britney said don’t text you but that made me want to text you more.
Me: That’s because you love chaos as much as Charlie does.
Hope: No one loves chaos as much as Charlie does.
Me: Are you okay?
Hope: Always. I was happy when Xerses said you were dating.
I stared at the words longer than I should have.
Me: It’s okay. I’m good. I should have said good night.
Hope: It’s not that. I want you to be happy.
I typed back. Me: Thanks.
Then I silenced the phone, set it on the coffee table, and drank tea until my body slowly came down from the kind of adrenaline that leaves a person exhausted and weirdly awake at the same time.
I did sleep eventually. I dreamed in fragments. Xerses’s hand over mine on the stem of a glass. Britney saying you are not behind. A man in a black shirt looking at me like he already knew what I’d taste like.
I woke up angry that my subconscious was a traitor.
The morning didn’t improve. I had coffee. I showered. I stood in front of my closet too long because putting on clothes for a normal Thursday felt impossible after being socially detonated in front of a trillionaire family the night before.
I settled on jeans and a soft fitted top because I had exactly enough self-respect left to refuse to dress like a woman in emotional recovery.
Then my phone buzzed and I checked my phone. My entire body went hot.
I crossed the apartment in six furious steps and yanked open the blinds. There he was.
Leaning against a black car that probably cost more than my first three years of rent combined.
Dark shirt. Gray trousers. Sunglasses. Two coffees in one hand. Looking like the kind of man women should charge consulting fees to look at.
I opened my apartment door hard to make it clear this was not hospitality.
“What are you doing here?”
He looked up and his gaze moved over me once, enough to tell me he liked what he saw, enough to make me hate the small pulse of heat that answered it.
“Good morning.”
“No.”
One corner of his mouth moved. “Starting strong.”
“You do not get to show up at my home uninvited.”
“I texted last night.”
“That was not an invitation.”
He pushed away from the car, two coffee still in hand, and for one insane second my body remembered how much space he took up when he started moving toward me on purpose.
I held my ground because I valued self-respect.
Also because if I backed into my apartment like a frightened Victorian heroine, I’d have to kill myself.
“We need to talk,” he said as he handed me a coffee.
It smelled good. Coffee and that sandalwood cologne of his mixed in my nostrils. “And yet here I am.”
I took his offering but shook my head. “You say that like persistence is a charming trait and not an untreated condition.”
“It can be both.”
“Why are you calm?”
He watched me over the top of his sunglasses. “Would you prefer panic?”
I kept this conversation outside. He’d not go in my place, ever. I held my head high. “I’d prefer an apology and then immediate disappearance.”
“I’m prepared to give you one of those.”
My heart kicked once. Of course.
He took off the sunglasses and slid them into his shirt. His eyes found mine directly then, and I had to fight the reflex to look away first.
“I shouldn’t have put you in that position,” he said.
“Of course.”
His expression didn’t change much, but something in it sharpened. “But we have a practical problem.”
“Stop saying we.” I sipped the coffee. It was good with a hint of lavender like I ordered after I made a big sale.
“Great. Then solve it yourself.”
His jaw moved once. Tiny. Controlled. “There isn’t a version where I clarify this alone and you come out untouched.”
I blinked.
He set his coffee down on the hood of the car. “If I walk back into that house today and say I misspoke, my mother will not hear I lied. She’ll hear you rejected me. Charlie will make it worse. Hope will try to rescue you. My mother will overcompensate. Everyone will know exactly what happened.”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
And God, I hated how ruthlessly practical that sounded. Hated that every word of it clicked right into the center of the exact humiliation I’d been trying not to name.
“That is not my fault,” I said.
“No.”
“Then why does it sound like I’m the one who has to fix it?”
“You don’t.”
“I get clients from your mother so from where I’m standing, that’s exactly what this is.”
He was quiet for a beat.
Then he said, “I’m asking you not to make yourself collateral damage just to prove you don’t need me to solve the problem.”
My breath caught. I looked away first and realized, distantly, that my fingers were digging into my own arms.
“Britney was right about you,” I said.
That got his attention.
His eyes widened. I sipped the coffee and met his gaze. Time to talk. I held my head higher.
“That you prefer women who know the terms,” I said, voice flatter now. “Women who don’t ask for more. Women who fit neatly into whatever arrangement makes your life easier.”
He pressed his lips together.
The silence made me angrier than denial would have.
“Right,” I said. “Thought so. Because we both know I don’t take orders from anyone.”
I started to step back into my apartment.
His hand caught the door before I could shut it.
Something changed in his face when he realized I’d looked at the hand before the rest of him.
“I don’t remember their names. I know yours.”
Being charmed was not in the works for us. I let out one disbelieving laugh. “You do think every room belongs to you.”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep acting like I and everyone else does as you decide?”
He held my gaze for a long second before answering.
“Because I overstepped last night,” he said. “And I’m trying to figure out how to correct that now.”
That hit too cleanly.
“What?” I asked and shook my head. We needed to get back to reality. “Act like saying one unexpectedly decent thing every six minutes means I won’t notice the rest of you.”
His eyes flicked over my face. “And what is the rest?”
“You deciding things for me.”
“You think I’m deciding for you now?”
“I think you’re standing outside my apartment explaining my social options to me like I’m a risk assessment.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“And yet your voice changes every time I’m right.”
I halted. Neither of us breathed for one very stupid second.
Then I stepped fully into the doorway and pointed out toward the stairs. “Leave.”
“Kelly-”
And that, somehow, was worse.
Because whatever game he was playing in his own head, whatever clean, efficient path through the fallout he thought he could build if he just stayed calm enough, it pressing at the edges of this conversation.
I stepped closer, close enough that if he wanted to pretend I was overreacting he’d have to do it with my anger in his face.
“Let me save you some time,” I said quietly. “Find someone else to solve your problem with.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second.
Came back up.
That awful, electric shift I’d felt across tables and on terraces and apparently now on my own damn apartment landing. The one where anger turned physical so fast it made me want to peel off my own skin.
“Kelly,” he said, lower now.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“Yes, I do.”
His expression sharpened. “Tell me.”
I smiled without humor. “You want me to help you clean this up. You want my cooperation because my refusal becomes messy for me first and you know it. You want me calm enough to hear reason and attracted enough to believe you when you say this is practical.”
He didn’t move.
I kept going because if I stopped I might start shaking.
“And the thing I hate most? You’re right. It is practical. Which means I need to say no now, before practicality turns into me making your life easier while pretending I’m still in charge of mine.”
Something flashed across his face then. Quick enough that I almost missed it.
“Fine?” I repeated. “For now.”
“This is a good start.”
My laugh came back. “Oh, incredible. You say that like there’s going to be a later.”
He reached for the coffee he’d set on the car.
“No.”
Neither of us moved.
The landing outside my apartment felt too small. I wanted him to stop looking at me and I wanted my body to stop reacting to the simple fact of him existing in my air.
So I took the only control still available to me. I stepped back inside and shut the door in his face.
Then I stood there with my hand flat against the door and listened.
No immediate knock. Then nothing. I waited a full thirty seconds before I looked through the peephole. The landing was empty.
I stared at it long to consider whether leaving it there was part of some larger psychological operation or deeply annoying rich-man confidence.
Then I opened the door, and stared at the road.
Then my phone buzzed.
Britney: I know. Michael saw his car leaving. Coffee. Now.
I grabbed my keys. I needed better hobbies than coffee. Everyone knew my weakness.