Chapter Forty-Four
Sadie
“ W hat the fuck are you doing here?” Bella, in nothing but her underwear, leaps off the lounge to hug me, almost spilling her very large glass of wine in the process. So this is what she does when I’m not here. Watches rom-coms in her underwear. “You’re not supposed to be back for another month.”
“I …” is all I get out before the howling starts.
Half an hour, a glass of wine and the better part of a box of tissues later, I’ve finally reached the end of my tale.
“That bitch.” Bella is incensed on my behalf. “I hope she finds an ancient, cursed object and dies a nasty death from boils and a rotting vajayjay.”
That sounds nice. If only ancient curses were real and not a figment of Hollywood’s imagination.
“I’m so angry. With Riley. With Jennifer. With Ethan. But most of all, with myself. I knew what a risk I was taking. What was I thinking?” It’s all still too raw, and I’m too jetlagged and heartsore to be rational.
“I’m guessing you weren’t thinking. You were feeling,” Bella responds gently.
“I have no business feeling. Certainly not for Ethan.”
“I suspect it might be too late for that, sweetie.” Her words, and her kindness, get the tears starting again.
“I know. Which is why I’m so angry at myself. I should know better than to let my heart run away with me. To expect more from any man than protecting their own self-interests. Because no sooner had I let him in, started to trust him, than bam! I’m smacked upside the head.”
“You never know. He said he’ll fix it. Maybe he will.” Bella pours me another glass of wine, which I gulp down. Drowning my sorrows is exactly what I need.
“I don’t see how. The damage has been done. Everyone will know about it by now. There’s no way I can go back to uni. I’ve become my mother!” I wail.
Bella holds me through another round of crying, and when I finally start to calm down, she wisely changes direction.
“So, this ma’at thing Ashraf mentioned … what is it again?” She tops up my wine with the last of the bottle.
“ That’s what you’ve focused on?”
“Well, yes. Because ma’at seems like it could be positive. Order being restored is good, right?”
Against all odds, I laugh. Only Bella would be able to get a laugh out of me right now.
“It seems my destiny is to drop out of my PhD and spend the rest of my life pulling beers at the local, remembering those couple of perfect weeks when I might actually have had the chance at the career I’d always dreamed of.”
“Could be worse,” she muses.
I raise my eyebrows in disbelief.
“You could be a small-minded, jealous and spiteful harpy. You could be Riley Hall.”
I snort a humourless laugh. Yeah, as shitty as it is, I guess I’ll take that deal.
I take to my bed like a heroine in a Victorian melodrama.
When I don’t respond to his messages over the first few days after I left the boat, Ethan has the good grace not to get in touch. The Cambridge boys and Garret all send me messages of support. They’re careful not to mention the dig. Other than to say Riley is having a pretty tough time. Boo hoo.
I don’t respond to any of them. I can’t. Because right now, I’d sound like a bitter and angry woman. And falling for my professor is as much like my mother as I can bear to be.
After three days in the foetal position, I straighten myself out, wash myself off and message the manager at the pub I was working at before I left for the dig. He has plenty of shifts to give me, and I take everything on offer, which will leave me no time or energy for wallowing.
“Does this mean you’re ready to have a rational conversation about it now?” Bella asks when she comes home from work and finds me on the sofa with a family-size block of roasted almond dark chocolate and a horror movie on the television.
“I guess,” I reply in my sulky teenager voice before stuffing another double square of chocolate into my mouth.
“You don’t think maybe you’re being a teeny tiny bit unreasonable?” She holds her thumb and forefinger up, with a small gap between them. Which she widens as far as she can in order to make her point.
“No.” Well, maybe I am. A little. But I also have to protect little Sadie.
Bella sits next to me, kicks off her sky-high work shoes and breaks off a double square of the chocolate for herself before I have time to snatch it out of reach.
“I think you know that’s not true,” she mumbles through the melting deliciousness.
“Do you even understand the role of the best friend? Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always. You know that. And yes, I understand the role of the best friend. I drew up the contract. Point five states it is my job to ensure you don’t make stupid mistakes as the result of being unable or unwilling to remove your family trauma goggles.”
“Ha. Too late. Mistake already made.”
“Is it, though?”
“How can you even say that? He packed me up and shipped me home without a backward glance to save his own career. I should never have trusted him.” Before the words are even out of my mouth, I know they’re unfair.
“What choice did he have? Should he have shut the whole dig down for you? That wouldn’t have been fair to anyone.”
I know she’s right. I hate that she’s right. But the little girl inside me is still crying.
“No. I know,” I admit grudgingly.
“And if you recall, he did say he wanted to tell Jennifer about your prior involvement from the start. It was you who insisted he kept it quiet.”
“So now it’s my fault?” Dogs in the next suburb start barking at the pitch of my voice.
Bella stuffs more chocolate into her mouth in an effort not to answer. But her eyebrows say it all. She thinks this is my fault. Maybe it is. At least in part. Damnit.
I sigh. Deeply.
“I know he didn’t have a choice, Bella. But for once, just once, I wish someone would put me first.”
Bella puts her arms around me.
“I know, honey. But don’t assume he won’t. It just might not be on your timeline.”
The rational part of my brain knows he had no alternative but to stay and complete the dig. It’s not only his career but, as he said, those of the other students. Not to mention the reputation of the university if things go badly on a dig. And the incomes of the local workers. I’m just collateral damage. Again.
And the irrational side of my brain, the side that takes direction from my sorrow and despair, continues to shriek and scream and wail against the injustice of it.
Then there’s the heartbreak. Because I’m only fooling myself if I deny my feelings for Ethan are—were? I don’t know—far deeper than attraction. Or lust. Or even a crush.
Is this how my mother felt about my father? Is this why she blew up her chance at a career to be with him? Because look how that turned out. Bitterness, anger and regret.
Not that I think Ethan is anything like my father. He’s not. Somewhere deep down, I know that.
None of which means it doesn’t hurt that he allowed me to be sent home like a naughty child. Even though it’s summer break and very few people will be around, gossip travels fast and everyone at the uni will know by now what’s happened.
There goes Sadie Montgomery. Like mother, like daughter . Only, unlike my father, who risked his career for my mother, Ethan chose his career over me. A vicious little voice reminds me of what he said about choosing his career over marrying his wife. I try to shut that down. It’s an unfair, unworthy thought. But my subconscious is looking for any weapon it can find to decapitate my feelings for Ethan.
Aside from anything else, promising to fix it, and actually doing so, are not the same thing.
It’s such a Gordian knot. An insoluble problem. Because my rational brain, my irrational brain, and my heart have tangled themselves together so tightly I can’t pry them apart.
The only thing I know is I can’t go back to studying at that university. So in the small amount of free time I allow myself, I research where else I could complete my PhD. There are a couple of courses in the US. The Charles University in Prague has an interesting program, but that’s out because dear old Dad is lecturing there. Cambridge is out because of Ethan. Still, I have a short list of three by the time my meeting with Jennifer arrives. After the way she dropped a bomb on my career, then brushed her hands off and walked away, the least she can do is put in a good word for me and help me get an interview.