Chapter Thirteen Paul #2
Before we even walk inside, Elise pulls me to her against the car and kisses me hard. Thinking that she’s nervous to meet my friends, I hold her gorgeous face, more angular than the one I had been kissing for six years, and return the kiss fiercely.
Drowning in Elise kept me from drowning in my own thoughts and guilt. Elise smirks against my lips, pulling back to wipe the lipstick from my mouth.
Regret hits me as soon as we walk into the bar.
Sophie had been friendly with Adriana and Maude the way you usually are with your partner's girlfriends, all surface-level. It was enough for shared laughs over beers and swapping funny work stories when the guys tuned in to whatever game was playing on the TV over the bar.
Those times always felt easy and fun.
I guess that I hope we can recapture that feeling, making it new and fresh with the new woman on my arm. Because things change. Life happens, and sometimes people break up.
That's what I’d been planning to tell Brian and Chris, and that's what I try to keep telling myself.
Maybe one day I’ll actually believe it.
As soon as the door slams shut behind us, I feel all the eyes in the room turn to us. Elise is dressed to kill, as always, and I try to ignore the staring, seeing far too many familiar faces looking between the two of us in confusion, clearly searching for the brunette who usually accompanied me.
I search the room for my friends, seeing them talking at a corner table.
"Hey," I greet them casually, catching their attention. Their faces had been smiling when they heard my voice, but they dropped along with my stomach when they see the smiling blonde next to me. I pull out a chair for Elise, who gracefully takes off her coat and reveals a fitted red tank top.
Brian and Chris share a confused look, and to break some tension, I glance around. "Where are the girls?"
"At the bar," Chris says flatly. His dark brown eyes don't meet mine.
Instead, they narrow as he looks Elise over suspiciously, and his gaze drifts to the door, as though expecting someone else to walk through it.
Sophie. Dread settles in my stomach as I struggle to keep my expression casual and unaffected.
"Uh... hi," Brian says next, awkwardly, his blue eyes darting between Elise and me.
"I'm Elise," she says, her voice a confident purr as she holds her hand out to shake his.
Elise carries herself like royalty, and it was one of the things that made her devastatingly attractive.
You just couldn't help but look twice. "It’s so nice to meet you.
I've heard so much about you from Paul."
"That's funny," Chris shoots back, his voice cool as he glares directly at me. "We haven't heard anything about you."
I shrug casually and flag down the passing waitress for two beers.
We sit in an awkward silence for a long moment, Brian and Chris exchanging tense looks, while I send reassuring glances to Elise.
When the waitress returns with our drinks, I gulp half of it down before the click-click of heels catches my attention.
Glancing up, I meet the cold, dark brown eyes of Maude Jackson, Esq., Brian's girlfriend.
Adriana, Chris' girlfriend, settles into the seat next to him, the dark-haired man wrapping his arm around her and whispering something in her ear.
"Who are you?" Maude asks, direct as ever, and eyes laser-focused on Elise.
A word to describe Maude? Sharp.
Her black hair is cut into a clean, sharp bob. Her heels look like weapons, her outfit is expensive and sleek, and her makeup is done with perfect precision. There’s no unnecessary softness with Maude. That's what makes her such a great lawyer: she doesn't flinch or bend.
Brian's the mellow one, while Maude is the one who'd make sure the waitress brought his burger exactly the way he ordered it.
They were a perfect balance.
"I'm Elise—"
"Yeah, I heard that," Maude interrupts. "But who are you?"
"I'm Paul's girlfriend," Elise says, turning to me with a smile that I try—unsuccessfully—to return.
"Girlfriend?" Adriana squeaks, looking toward Chris, who is still staring at me like I've grown a second head. His mouth twists into something halfway between disgust and disappointment.
Maude looks mock-surprised. "Wow, that's funny, because Paul had a fiancée not even three weeks ago."
Silence.
"But... what about Sophie and the... cancer?" Adriana asks, brows knitted together.
"We broke up."
Again, silence.
"We're just… incompatible," I shrug, trying for relaxed and reasonable. "This is for the best. I wouldn't have made a good partner, especially through all of this. This is better for both of us—"
"Did you even try?" Chris asks me, his voice sharper than Brian's. "Did you even want to try?"
“I—” Shame prickles at the back of my neck, but I shove it down, "I've never been through… that before—"
"Neither has Sophie," Maude snaps. "Neither did my grandmom, but you figure it out. People often go through this experience without a guidebook. You don't just jump ship."
"I'm sorry, but how is his life any of your business?" Elise scoffs, before casually sipping from her glass.
Maude's eyes narrow into slits as they slowly trail over to Elise. Her face shifts then, subtly, but I recognize it. The one I'd seen once before, when she took apart a shady investor at a City Hall function. It's the look she gave when she was about to shred you to pieces and smile while doing it.
"Let me ask you something, Elise," she says, voice calm and lethal.
"Here we go," Brian murmurs into his beer.
I tense and wonder, briefly, if I could run us out of here with minimal judgment. From the looks around us, eyes quietly locked onto our group, eavesdropping in plain sight, probably not.
"When did you guys start fucking? Was it before he and Sophie broke up?"
Elise just purses her lips. That's answer enough, and I hunch deeper in my seat as my friends glare at me.
Maude scoffs and shakes her head, "Thought so."
"Maude—" I start, but she ignores me.
"What kind of woman sleeps with a man whose fiancée is battling cancer?"
Elise's jaw tightens and she forces out through gritted teeth, "I'm sorry, but I don't think that's any of your—"
"Was it the thrill? Or was it a novelty?" Maude presses, her tone mocking. "Did it make you feel powerful—taking something that wasn't yours? To say you could? Are you that pathetic? Or are you just an evil little bitch?"
I slam my hand down on the table, "Maude, what the fu—"
“Paul, shut the fuck up," she keeps her eyes narrowed on Elise, but points a sharp red-painted fingernail at me. "I'll deal with you next."
"Baby—" Brian tries to calm her, a hand lightly on her wrist.
"No—I want to hear it from her mouth. Because you knew about Sophie, right?" she asks, leaning in like a cross-examiner with her witness shrinking under the pressure. "You knew she was sick?"
"Yes," Elise huffs.
"You don't think that's a little fucked up? A little sick and twisted?"
Chris speaks, his voice a snarl. "Jesus, Paul! What the hell were you thinking? What are you doing? You were with Sophie for six years. She was all you talked about—how wonderful and perfect and beautiful and smart your fiancée was—"
Elise stiffens beside me.
"I—"
The words catch in my throat because there truly is nothing to say. Nothing that they would believe anyway.
"I was overwhelmed," I finally manage, stumbling over the words, trying to get them out all at once. "It was too much. I—I wasn't handling it well—"
Adriana, sweet Adriana, looks at me like I'm a stranger. "You were overwhelmed?"
Chris tightens his arm around her, anchoring himself so he doesn't punch me.
"Sophie is the one who has to suffer through cancer," he bites out, "and instead of standing beside her, instead of holding her hand and being the man who loved her—the man you claimed to be—you slept with someone else?"
"I wasn't happy!" I yell, louder than I meant to. I feel the shift, the sudden stillness of the bar as the dam breaks. Maude's lips curl into a satisfied grin like she knew I'd crack.
She had me, and I couldn't stop.
"I was miserable and drowning, and none of you helped me!" I rant, sounding half-crazed. "All you kept telling me was to hang in there and be there for Sophie. I was doing that, and I was terrified. I was so fucking scared, I was drowning in it, and none of you helped me..."
Everyone is looking at me, and Elise places her hand on my arm, trying to get me to calm down. I feel as though I'm choking, yet I'm the one tightening the noose around my neck.
Brian stares like he doesn't recognize me. "Because, Paul, it wasn't about you," he says slowly, like he doesn't think I'd hear it otherwise. "You weren't the one with cancer.”
Maude's lip curls into a sneer. "I'm sorry we didn't coddle you—lie to you. Sorry, we didn't pat you on the back and tell you everything was going to be okay. Sorry, we didn't tell you to cheat on Sophie to make yourself feel better."
Chris shakes his head, his face baffled. “If you had told us you were struggling, we would have helped you. But you didn’t…”
I shake my head, all the fight draining out of me. "I didn't want that. I just wanted..."
I wanted a way out of this terrifying time, any way possible.
I can't admit it out loud, the words getting caught in my throat, but I don't need to. I've known Brian and Chris since high school, they already know.
“Right,” Chris nods, shaking his head in disgust.
"We would've helped you, Paul," Brian says, voice quiet but stern. "If you had told us you were struggling and needed something else—needed us to say something else, we would have figured it out."
"I could have given you the number to a therapist," Adriana pipes up, motioning to herself. Adriana has bipolar disorder and has been in every therapy under the sun. "We could have helped."
But, I didn't want that, did I?
"Okay, you know what, we're going to go," Chris says, draining his beer. He helps Adriana up, his arm wrapped around her thin shoulders. "Paul? Figure your shit out."
He tosses a twenty on the table, and they head for the door. Brian stands up, and Maude just keeps her eyes on Elise and me. She drains the rest of her drink and slams it down on the table.
"You two deserve each other," she hisses, voice razor sharp..
She turns and walks straight into Brian's waiting, open arms. He doesn't even look at me as they follow Chris and Adriana out into the night.
The bar patrons seem to realize the show is over, but they still glance over at Elise and me—some subtle, some not so much.
One patron at the bar in particular stands out, only because she is familiar.
Two days ago, I was on my way into the apartment while she was leaving. The woman was tall, almost as tall as me, with bleached blonde hair and red lips. She was as tatted as Rhea, so I assumed she was a friend or coworker and grinned, stepping aside so she could leave.
She didn't return my smile.
In fact, her blue eyes seemed to crystallize when she saw me, and her mouth tightened into a mutinous line. I felt confused as I'd never seen this woman before, but she seemed to hate my guts.
"Uh... sorry."
"Yeah, you will be," I could have sworn I heard her say under her breath as she passed me, swinging a motorcycle helmet over her shoulder.
"What?" I called out to her, but she didn't turn around, just kept walking toward the stairs. When I walked into the apartment, Rhea was in the kitchen and shot me a dark look before she stomped down the hallway to her bedroom.
Now, that same blonde woman smirks at me from the bar and slams back a shot of amber liquid.
Elise cuddles up into my side, pulling my attention toward her.
"They just don't get it, Paul."
"Yeah," I murmur. "Yeah, maybe not."
◆◆◆
My phone alarm goes off, pulling me from my thoughts. Distractions. I need distractions.
Untangling myself from a rousing Elise, I grab my phone as I head to the bathroom to shower, absentmindedly scrolling through my work emails.
I see something that stops my heart—an HR meeting invite in four hours. Elise is invited too.
Shit.