3 Roxie
Roxie
I hadn’t been able to run after Hallie fast enough. I didn’t dare glance back at the one person I thought I’d locked away in a memory vault years ago, never to be seen again. Luckily, she was too blinded by her fury to notice the brief encounter between me and Sebastian Whittaker.
I followed Hallie along the rain-slicked streets, amidst the blare of taxis and the throng of New Yorkers seeking an escape from their workdays.
Because the vault held more than Sebastian. It held the truth. A truth I hadn’t even told Hallie the full extent of.
I hadn’t always been the Roxie King she had grown to know and love. Before New York Roxie, there was someone else, someone caged in a gilded palace I’d once dreamed of escaping with Sebastian. Until he had done the unthinkable. Until he went behind my back and shattered everything.
I’d spent years imagining the moment I’d run into him again, rehearsing questions I’d never ask. Why? Why betray me? Why tear down all our dreams like they meant nothing? How could the boy I trusted the most be the one who wrecked everything?
But I’d survived without answers. I’d built a life without him. And I wasn’t about to unravel now.
So, I shoved the memories back where they belonged and forced my arm around Hallie’s shoulders, pulling her closer. “Do you want to go grab ice cream from that place around the corner from the apartment?” I asked lightly, eager to change the mood we were both in.
Her head snapped toward me, eyes narrowing. “The one with the homemade waffle cones I love?”
“Of course,” I said, managing a smile. “Those cones are works of art.”
Hallie let out a soft laugh, and I looped my arm through hers. And for a moment, I let myself get lost in the one thing that had never broken my heart—New York City.
Tucked behind the gallery’s front desk, I spent the next week absorbed in client emails and invoices.
Anything to keep from replaying that night at McGuire’s in my mind.
I could still smell Cuban cigars on my leather jacket, and his low, familiar voice kept replaying in my mind.
I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like, and now it was all I could think about.
The entire day had passed without a single alert on my phone. No texts. No calls. The quiet of the art gallery was no match for the thoughts swirling in my mind. I was desperate for a distraction. Anything to take my mind away from Seb.
Then my inbox pinged.
But it wasn’t my work email. My brow furrowed as I looked down at the confusing notification. The email address, Roxanne-Kirsten-King@, was one I’d set up when I was a teenager. It had been years since I’d received anything to that inbox.
When I was thirteen, I believed it sounded professional, precisely the sort of email address a twenty-something living in New York would have.
I pictured myself exchanging correspondence with editors and gallery curators.
Instead, the only emails I’d ever received on that account were from long-forgotten online forums, chain letters my grandmother sent, clothes stores offering discounts, and Sebastian Whittaker.
Subject: Long time, King
From: princewhittaker98@
To: Roxanne-Kirsten-King@
I gasped. I hadn’t seen that email address in years. It felt like a memory from a previous existence, much like the CDs he burned for me and the notes we exchanged in class.
I tapped on the awaiting message.
The message was short. Only one line:
I see you’ve graduated from sneaking out of windows to running out of front doors.
My neck pulsed as I stared at the screen, the words blurring before my eyes. The significance of those words would be lost on everyone but me.
The red glow of my alarm clock read 12:07 AM.
My ears strained, listening intently for any sound that someone was still awake on the other side of my bedroom door, but only silence answered.
I slipped my feet into my worn Hunter boots and slowly crept toward my bedroom window.
The odds of successfully navigating past my parents’ bedroom, then the creaking grand staircase, undetected, were slim to none.
The window it was.
I inched the heavy wooden window open, just enough to swing one leg over the sill. I fumbled, searching for the familiar grip of the weathered trellis that climbed the brick exterior. Securing my foot, I then lowered myself further, adrenaline pumping.
It was early summer, and the night air still held a slight chill that snuck underneath my sleep shorts, raising goosebumps along my legs as I slowly descended the side of the house.
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to use the front door?” A voice, laced with amusement, cut through the quiet of the night.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Sebastian Whittaker standing near the rose bushes in my backyard.
He was wearing his navy-blue lacrosse hoodie, our school’s emblem emblazoned across the front.
It was a stark contrast to the crisp blazers and perfectly pressed dress pants I was accustomed to seeing him in.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked, the words a whisper in the still air, as my feet finally touched the cool grass.
“I brought the good stuff,” Sebastian announced, producing a bottle of chilled champagne from behind his back, the silver foil glinting in the moonlight. “Shall we?” A mischievous grin played on his lips, a silent invitation.
I hadn’t revisited those nights in my mind for a long time.
I’d locked them away for a reason. Those nights contained a pain I couldn’t articulate and a sorrow I desperately tried to outrun.
Vivid images flashed behind my eyelids—the flickering candlelight and the hushed whispers.
Each memory, a shard of glass, threatened to cut me if I dared to reach out and touch it.
My fingers hovered over the keypad. To answer the question, to rekindle the memory, to pull those ghosts from their shadowy prison. It felt like a bad idea.
But I couldn’t bring myself to delete the email.
Instead, I closed the app and slammed my phone down on the desk, the sound echoing in the sudden silence of the gallery. It was a desperate attempt to escape Sebastian’s presence. I needed to get away, to breathe, to clear my head before I did something I’d regret.
Like entertain responding.
I tried to focus on the mountain of admin I still needed to do for the gallery, but my mind couldn’t shake that stupid email.
I didn’t know what surprised me more: that Sebastian, after all these years, still had access to that ancient, forgotten email account of his, the one he’d used when we were barely old enough to have one, or that he still remembered my stupidly formal email address.
I guess his contact options were limited, since he didn’t have my number and I only used a seldom-checked social media account for my photography.
The email itself offered no context, no explanation, just a single line, a half-remembered inside joke that sent a ripple of confusion and a strange, unwelcome nostalgia through me.
“Excuse me?” I glanced up to see a woman dressed head to toe in designer clothes with a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on her nose.
Her perfectly coiffed blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders, framing a face that, despite the sunglasses, I suspected was impeccably made up.
A Birkin bag, in a shade of electric blue that screamed expensive hung elegantly from her arm.
I’d never been happier to have a rich person walk through the art gallery’s doors, and that was saying something. I desperately needed the distraction.
“Can I help you?” I asked, forcing a smile and trying my best to forget about the email still sitting in my old inbox.
“I sure hope so,” the woman replied. Her voice was tight, her face a mask of barely controlled fury. “I just found out my husband has a mistress, and I’m here to spend all of his money.”
My smile stretched into a real one because if there was one thing I understood, it was a woman scorned. “Right this way.” I motioned toward the back of the gallery where some of our most expensive pieces were kept. “I think I know exactly what you’re looking for.”
I grew up around women just like her. Sebastian’s mother, a vibrant, kind woman with a laugh that could fill a room, had weathered her own storms of infidelity with Seb’s father.
She possessed an unwavering strength, a quiet resilience that I admired from afar.
I remembered the way she always greeted me with a warm smile and a plate of freshly baked cookies, even during the most difficult times.
She never spoke ill of Seb’s father, instead focusing on raising her son with love and teaching him the importance of family.
But her efforts were lost on Seb. With every careless action of his father, a man who chased fleeting pleasures and cared little for the consequences, Sebastian grew more closed off and jaded.
The beautiful smile I’d loved seeing, the one that could light up a room, came less.
He’d retreated into himself, his eyes growing distant, the spark dimming with each new disappointment.
By the time senior year had rolled around, he was following in his father’s footsteps, turning to alcohol and frivolous, shiny flings.
The only time I saw glimpses of the old Sebastian was on the nights we’d slip away to spend on his sailboat, just the two of us like it had always been.
God, I’d gone ten years barely thinking about that man, and now I couldn’t go a minute without something reminding me of him.
So, I tried my best to focus on my job. On the art. But even when the woman decided on one of our most expensive pieces and signed to have it delivered to her house, making two large sales in as many weeks, my fingers itched to open my phone again.
Nostalgia, I figured, explained the thirty minutes I spent reading Sebastian Whittaker’s email after locking up the gallery. Fascination for when I clicked on the button to reply. Pure delusion for when my fingers started typing. Idiocy when I hit send.
Re: Long time, King
From: Roxanne-Kirsten-King@
To: princewhittaker98@
Doors are so overrated.
It meant nothing—sending that email. Just a flippant response. A throwaway line meant to curb the allure.
But, deep down, I knew better.
The second I hit send; I knew I’d reopened something I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
Everything had felt so much simpler before I’d seen him. Before that email. Before I remembered the version of myself that I once believed would belong to him.
By the time I reached my apartment, I’d convinced myself Sebastian wouldn’t answer. He probably wouldn’t even see it. Sent it in a drunken stupor or something. I climbed the stairs two at a time and pushed through my front door.
Hallie was still at the workout class she’d opted to take tonight in hopes of hearing something juicy she could use for her articles, and I was thankful to have the space for myself. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fake a smile and pretend everything was fine.
But all I could think about was that stupid email and the stupid person who had sent it.
I pulled the phone out of my pocket, dropped it face down on my kitchen counter, and grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filling it with cold water.
This was the moment when I could walk away. Pretend I hadn’t seen the email. That I hadn’t answered. That I didn’t care.
But the problem was—I did.
But whether I missed Seb’s friendship or just wanted answers about what happened back then, I couldn’t deny it.
I cared.