Chapter Fourteen
I couldn’t remember finding my keys or unlocking the door or taking out my contact lenses.
All I know is Ben was next to me when I woke up.
I jumped out of bed and immediately realized I was still drunk.
“I’m supposed to be on a flight to Los Angeles.”
I looked over and saw Ben sitting up in bed, rubbing his right temple. “You have to go to Los Angeles? When?”
I hadn’t realized I was talking out loud. There was no way I could miss my flight. How would I explain to Eddie that I overslept for an 8 a.m. flight?
I had no idea what had happened, or if we’d even used protection. Had he been safe over the year we’d been separated? Did I need to find a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and take Plan B before the flight? My thoughts were racing so loudly, I was sure Ben could hear them.
“My flight is in three hours. I haven’t even taken my suitcase down from the top of my closet . . .”
I sat helplessly in the middle of the floor, struggling to make a mental checklist of everything that needed to happen to get myself to JFK. I pointed to the step stool next to the dresser and drew a line with my finger from the step stool to the closet door.
“I need that to go there so I can take that down,” I muttered, pointing to the shelf above the closet.
Ben looked confused. “What time is it?”
I squinted at the clock on the stove and jumped up, totally panicked.
I didn’t have time to spiral.
“It’s almost five a.m. It takes an hour to get to JFK from here . . . oh my god, why didn’t I tell Patricia to book me out of Newark?”
Ben threw back the covers and was by my side before I could blink.
“Sam, it’s okay. Just take a later flight . . . say you got sick . . . but don’t go. Not yet. We need to talk. Please.”
I looked at him as if he had two heads.
“Are you crazy? Ben . . . whatever happened last night, we can talk about it when I’m back from LA. Or I can call you when I get there. But I have to make that flight.”
Ben shook his head. “Last night was amazing. The conversation we had at the end of the night, after we got in the cab—we need to talk about it now. I can’t wait for you to come back from LA. Stay here with me. I’m asking you, Sam. For us.”
I felt a wave of intense nausea and stumbled to the bed. I dropped my head in my hands. The room was spinning.
I didn’t remember saying anything in the cab.
I had to get to the airport on time.
“You’re welcome to stay as late as you like. It’s five a.m., for Christ’s sake. Go back to sleep. There are clean towels on the shelf in the bathroom. Please just lock the bottom when you leave.”
He stared at me, a stunned look on his face. “Goddammit, you really are selfish. Not that I should be surprised. Everyone but me seemed to figure it out. But even after you ripped the rug out from under me, I still didn’t want to believe it.”
I felt the hot sting of tears but kept my back turned and continued packing.
“You can’t even look at me, because you know it’s true. You needed me, and then when you thought you didn’t, you left. When we met, I felt sorry for you. But I don’t anymore.”
There was no way I’d make it through the day without throwing up.
“You think you’re being given some ‘second chance’ to live the life you always wanted? I’ve got news for you—you’re still the same lost, insecure person you were with me. You take yourself wherever you go, Sam.”
I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I said goodbye, Ben was lying in bed, facing the window. He didn’t turn around.
The moment I shut the door to the Uber, my whole body shook as I sobbed. What had I done? I had wanted so badly to convince myself that despite everything, he’d be okay, that maybe one day, we could even be part of each other’s lives again.
If that had ever been a possibility, I’d just destroyed it.
I hobbled through the security line at JFK and collapsed into my seat with ten minutes to spare.
I had six hours in the air with nothing to do but think about how I’d stepped knee deep in shit.
It hadn’t even been three months since I found him in his apartment, angrily writing a divorce memoir.
What was the point of getting that drunk?
To feel less nervous? It would have been better to have ghosted him entirely.
The flight was bumpy. In my hungover daze, I’d forgotten to pack the Xanax Ben and I had joked about less than twelve hours earlier.
Despite the captain leaving the seat belt sign on throughout the flight, I threw up in the business class lavatory three times, feeling more remorseful each time I sank back into my seat.
I knew I had the emotional upper hand, and I had abused it. I was the one who left and broke his heart. I should have known better.
He was right: I was still the same lost person. Just with more expensive clothes, a Manhattan address, and a sixty-hour workweek.
Nine hours after I woke up next to Ben, I landed at LAX, physically and emotionally wrecked.
I shuffled through the terminal and foggily scanned the drivers until I spotted my name.
I dozed in the back of the car and woke up at the Peninsula Beverly Hills.
It wasn’t even 1 p.m. yet. I was supposed to meet Eddie in a conference room at the Century City office at 3:30 p.m. I checked into my room, showered, and shut my eyes for a few minutes, willing my hangover to disappear.
Twenty minutes later, I woke with a start, feeling slightly less nauseated but still exhausted.
I called an Uber at 2:45 and forced myself to review the interview outlines over the ten-minute ride.
The LA office overlooked all of Century City, the former Fox studio lot. The receptionist deposited me in an unoccupied visitor office. I sat down in the plush leather desk chair and rested my head against the back of it, trying to ignore my persistent nausea.
I jumped at a knock on the door.
“Samantha, right? Leo Hirschman. Eddie said we should meet while you’re out here. Think we’re grabbing a cocktail at the bar downstairs after your witness interview. See you then?”
He was taller than I expected and looked about ten years younger than his law firm bio.
The irony of it all was too much. It was as if half of me was crushing this new life, and the other half was stuck in the quicksand of my old life.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to compartmentalize everything that was happening here, in Los Angeles, from the emotional bonfire waiting for me back in New York.
I could barely appreciate how well the interview went.
I sensed from Eddie’s reactions that the trip had been worth it from the first meeting alone.
We needed support for the argument that the poker game wasn’t an “illegal gambling business” because, among other things, Andie hadn’t employed the required threshold of five “participants” to help run the business.
The only people Andie had worked with consistently were two personal assistants whose “duties,” she maintained, were of a personal nature and had nothing to do with poker.
The first assistant we interviewed had even brought the hard-copy planner she used to schedule Andie’s life, and there wasn’t a single entry that referenced poker games.
“That was fantastic. They’re not all like that. But that was a win for us. Let’s call Andie tomorrow and debrief.”
I made a note to ask Patricia to schedule the call.
“Leo Hirschman said he mentioned cocktails. I need to send a few emails first, but you should feel free to head down,” Eddie said as he headed out the door.
All I wanted was a soft pillow in a dark hotel room. But skipping drinks with Eddie and Leo would be career suicide. I stopped by the visitor office to grab my things and tried to pull myself together.
Twenty minutes later, I found Leo in a back booth, martini in one hand and iPhone in the other. The sight of him kicked my nerves into overdrive.
Leo personified the confidence of a young partner whose client list and accolades topped most veteran partners’.
He had aqua-blue eyes and dark-brown hair that was almost black, and he was tall, lean, and tanned.
He could have been an actor. He reminded me of a throwback to the old-school studio executives: handsome, dynamic, hypermasculine.
He probably spent all his free time on the tennis court.
“Eddie’s been full of praise for you over the last few weeks,” Leo said with a friendly smile.
I managed a humble grin. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’m sure you know this, but you’re a legend in the New York office.”
“Tell me more.” He smiled. “Wait. Before Eddie gets here—what is Andie Reese like? Is she difficult? He won’t spill a word,” he griped.
I took a breath. “She’s intense. Whip-smart. I’m a little bit scared of her.”
Leo laughed. “You’ll get over that. As long as she’s scared of Eddie, everything will be fine.”
“I know she respects him. He breaks everything down in a way that I appreciate as much as she does, given I’ve been at this for about two months.”
“I remember when I first started at the firm. Never had any plans to make partner. I thought I’d bang it out for a couple years, pay off my law school loans, then try to be an agent or manager.
At the end of every year, I realized I was just happy enough not to leave.
And then the longer I stayed, the more it became who I was. And now it’s been fifteen years.”
“I used to think I wanted to be an agent too. Would you ever make the jump?”
“Nah, can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Plus, I’d miss the drama of this gig.”
“There must be a special type of drama that goes along with representing talented people.”
“Oh, yeah. Few clients can get into this level of deep shit without being brilliant.”
“I guess I never thought of it that way. Andie strikes me as someone who was so smart, she outsmarted herself somewhere along the way.”
“How so?” he asked, looking genuinely curious.