33. Sinclair
Sinclair
Iawaken, if awaken is the right term when you’ve barely slept, and scroll mindlessly through my personal emails, freezing when I spot one from Katrin, the MD of Alchemy, entitled Membership. I click on it immediately. I’d bet I can guess what it’ll say even before I read it.
From: Katrin Lawlor
To: Sinclair Voss
Subject: Membership
Mr. Voss,
Effective immediately, your membership at Alchemy is terminated and access to the club revoked. Any prorated dues will be refunded to the bank account we hold on file within five business days.
Per Section 34(c) of your membership agreement, termination is at management’s sole discretion and no reason need be given.
(I’ll give you one anyway: you know what you did.)
This decision is final. Please do not attempt to enter the premises. Please do not contact our staff members.
Katrin
I let my head fall back against my pillows. I’m one-zip down before the day has even fucking begun.
Not that it’s a competition, of course.
What I mean is that it’s barely six a.m. and Elyse has already tied one of my hands behind my back in my quest to make things right between us.
More accurately, I’m two-zip down. I sent her an impassioned voice note last night on WhatsApp—I was hoping that the sound of my voice might trigger some level of goodwill toward me—but it’s still sitting there this morning with one sad gray check next to it.
Which means that she’s either turned her phone off…
Or she’s blocked me.
How the hell am I supposed to apologize if she’s barring access at every turn?
I wonder what she’s doing right now. I wonder if she feels at all conflicted. Surely one so-called betrayal, if that’s the terminology she’s insisting on using, can’t wipe out everything we’ve had? Surely she misses me, even if she’s pissed right now?
In the shower, I exhaustedly consider my next moves. The idea of an expensive gift I reject almost instantly. If she wouldn’t take money when she apparently needed it so badly, she’ll just look at my gift and see me trying to buy her. Again.
So I’m no longer welcome at Alchemy, I’m most likely blocked by phone, and I daren’t show my face at her modeling agency. Not if her agent is a crony of fucking Vanessa.
The way I see it, I have two options. One is surrender, which is not an actual option, and the other?
The other is to go, cap in hand, to her family home and fall on her mercy.
At least that way, I get to see her.
Andrew knows the way to Elyse’s house like the back of his hand.
He’s driven her home from my place plenty of times.
I could not have opted for a worse time than rush hour to drive out to Jersey, but here we are.
She’s not working at Alchemy this evening—she’s actually still on my schedule for spending this evening with me—so I figured I’d show up around dinnertime and hopefully catch her at home.
Crawling through the traffic feels like its own kind of penance, but I put my cell away and stay alert once we’re through the Holland Tunnel.
It’s good for me, taking this pilgrimage to where Elyse lives.
Besides, it gives me time to prepare what I’m going to say.
It’s still niggling at me that she won’t let my previous errors of judgment be water under the bridge, but my overwhelming sensation is that I miss her.
I miss her desperately, and nothing feels right when she’s not within reach, and I cannot let this rift between us grow any wider.
I cannot. I will say and do and promise anything she wants me to; I’ll call everyone in my contacts to find her a bigger and better modeling opportunity.
At this point, I’d even agree to couples counseling if it got me in a room with her.
Like I said, I’m desperate.
As it turns out, Elyse’s home is at the southern end of Bayonne, in a built-up area with no view of the body of water that I assume lies only a couple blocks away.
I have never been to this part of the world, but it’s where the woman who has my heart grew up, so I absorb every detail on every block as if it’s significant—because it is.
Andrew pulls up in front of a nondescript single-story home flanked by two-story buildings with a narrow space on either side.
The front is covered in bland, chalky-looking siding with maroon scalloped awnings over the two front windows, their bolts weeping rust down the siding.
But this house’s most notable feature is the wooden ramp covering the five or so steps up to the door.
The ramp looks solid but homemade, and its gradient strikes me as aggressive.
It’s a stark reminder that Elyse’s family is dealing with a major injury on her sister’s part.
I climb out of the car with the small—as in financially negligible—gift I’ve brought and survey the property: unremarkable in every way, built for function and little else, but also the place that shelters the person I care most about in the world.
I walk up the ramp, take a deep breath, and ring the doorbell, which echoes tinnily inside the house, before scuttling back down to the sidewalk.
I don’t want to be right in Elyse’s face if she opens the door.
A flurry of barking sounds through the door, along with a cry of “Hang on a second!” The sound makes my heart rate quicken.
Is that Elyse? After a few more moments, the door opens slowly, and my gaze drops a couple of feet—because the young woman at the door is not the love of my life but a clear relative, judging from the likeness.
And she’s in a wheelchair.
Shit. It’s the sister.
I take her in and the distant memory of a sound hits me far too clearly: the sickening thump of a body hitting the road.
We stare at each other for a moment before her jaw drops and she wrangles the door farther open around her chair.
A big, scruffy dog with a sweet face emerges next to her and eyes me with interest, though he doesn’t leave her side. The famous Jambon, I assume.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she says.
“Sylvie?” I ask, although I know it’s her.
From her “greeting”, it would seem she’s just as clear on who I am.
Still, I persevere, sliding my hands into my dress pants pockets and already ruing my decision not to put my coat on when I got out of the car.
“My name is Sinclair. Is your sister at home?”
She levels me with a look. “No.”
“Right. I… Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“No.”
Excellent. “Look,” I say. “I’d really like to speak with her.”
She pushes herself farther out onto the small porch. “Jambon, stay. I can guarantee she doesn’t want to speak to you.”
I blow out a breath and hang my head for a moment. Being locked out is a sensation that’s totally unfamiliar to me in any context of my life, and here Elyse is, locking me out at every turn.
“I understand,” I say as evenly as possible, “but she hasn’t actually let me tell my side of the story yet. I would really appreciate the chance to explain myself to her.”
She openly scoffs at me. “You know, I think she’s good.
Let me see—my sister works her ass off, and every dollar she makes goes to keeping this family afloat.
Then she meets you, and you decide she’s your new little fuck toy, and wouldn’t it be a disaster if your little toy got famous and, God forbid, had more agency?
So you locked that shit right down.” Her hands white-knuckle the wheels of her chair as she speaks.
“So what exactly needs an explanation, I’m not clear on. ”
It’s the basest, most reductive, twisted retelling possible, but it’s a knife to my heart at the same time—probably because it’s so close to the version of events her sister spat at me in my office.
You treated me like I was a stupid little toy.
That’s not how it was—at least, not from where I’m standing—but it doesn’t matter. Because that’s how I made Elyse feel.
I force myself to raise my head and look this woman in the eye.
Her sweatshirt looks cheap. Her face looks exhausted.
Given everything she’s been through, I’m not surprised.
Elyse painted a portrait of her family for me, and it was filled with love, and caregiving, and hard work, but the reality is far less cozy.
I suspect the reality is bleak as fuck, and it’s taken me until this moment to understand just how fiercely Elyse has been shielding the truth of her situation from me and me from that same truth.
“I would greatly appreciate a chance to make things right,” I say, which I hope is placatory without being an admission of guilt. I’m not about to admit anything to this woman.
She wheels herself out further until the door is almost closed behind her and the dog and turns her chair until she’s right at the top of the ramp, facing forward. For a second, I have the oddest feeling that she wants to take a run at me. But then she speaks through clenched teeth.
“You sound like a smart guy, so get this through your head. There is no coming back from this. None. No apologies, no forgiveness. Got it? Not only was that job the gateway to fuck knows how many more career opportunities for Elyse—opportunities she’s tried for years and years to get, opportunities you killed—but it was worth six figures in hard cash, too.
And, much as I’d like to think she’d have used the money on a down payment for her own place, we both know she would have put it straight into repaying my medical debt without batting an eye.
” Next, she starts full-on yelling at me, still teetering far too close to the top of the ramp for my liking.
“And if you think you can deprive a family like ours of over one hundred thousand dollars of income and we’ll just turn a blind eye, then the word your fancy vocabulary is missing, you entitled dickhead, is ‘underinsurance’.
Now get the fuck out of here and don’t fucking come back! ”
I stand on the spot, frozen in horror at her words as much as at her deep hatred of me. I kind of thought Elyse was mad on principle, but nothing her sister is saying sounds like principles. Rather, it sounds very, very real.
Before I can react, or stammer out an apology, or turn toward my car, the front door cranks open again and out steps a man. He must be about my dad’s age, but looks older: thin and slightly stooped. He has salt-and-pepper hair and an honest face and is wearing dark gray coveralls.
“What in the hell is goin’ on out here?” he asks, shooing the dog inside before darting forward to grab the handles of the wheelchair, thank fuck. “Darlin’, is everything okay?”
Then he clocks me, and his hands freeze. “Oh, shit,” he says.
I clear my throat. “Sir, I—”
But his daughter cuts me off. “I was just telling him he needs to leave and stay away.”
He looks me up and down somberly. I have not seen such abject disappointment in another man’s face since I had to tell my Dad I didn’t make valedictorian—only this time, it’s deserved.
“You heard my daughter,” he says with a little nod.
“I think you’d better leave, son. There’s nobody for you to see here. ”
I nod. “I understand, sir.” I hold up the small gift bag, feeling foolish. “If it’s all right with you, this is for Elyse. It’s just something small.” Carefully, I inch forward so I can set it on the highest step, to the side of the ramp.
He sighs, stooping to pick it up, and turns the wheelchair away from me as its occupant shoots me one last death stare. “Come on, sweetheart. It’s cold out.”