Chapter 13 What Have I Done
Colt
I open my eyes and I don't know where I am.
The ceiling is unfamiliar. White stucco, recessed lighting, the kind of finish you only see in hotels. There is gray-yellow morning light coming through a window I don't remember walking past. The bed is too big. The duvet is too white.
I am shirtless.
I am wearing my pants. My belt. My shoes are off. Socks still on.
There's a pressure on my chest that won't lift.
I look down.
Cheyenne. Asleep. Her arm draped across my chest. Her hair on my shoulder. She is wearing a slip or a camisole, I can't tell. Her makeup from last night is smudged under her eyes.
I don't move. I can't move. My body is half in cement. My head is splitting. My mouth tastes like pennies and panic.
What did I do.
What did I do.
What did I do.
I don't remember leaving the bar. I don't remember coming to a hotel. I don't remember walking into this room and I don't remember whether anything happened in this bed. I haven't lost a night since college. I had three drinks. Maybe four. I didn't drink enough to lose hours.
But I lost hours.
Slowly, I lift her arm off me. I don't want to wake her up or talk to her right now. I don't know what happened and I am freaking the fuck out.
She makes a soft sound. Doesn't wake.
I get off the bed in stages. Sit up. Wait for the room to stop tilting. Stand. Wait for it to stop tilting again. I find my shirt on the floor at the foot of the bed. My jacket on a chair. My phone, dead, on the nightstand.
The bathroom is huge. My stomach starts to pitch and I rush to make it to the toilet before I begin throwing up.
I sit on the cold floor with my back against the bathtub and I press my palms against my eyes and I try to make a single complete memory of last night.
I can't.
I had my arm around Cheyenne. I know that much. Her face by my cheek. Cameras flashing. Her falling, or pretending to fall, into the back of the limo.
Did anything happen in that bed. My head goes into my hands and I get a fistful of hair and hold on. What the fuck did I do. What the actual fuck did I do last night. I don't know. That's the thing sitting on my chest. I don't know and I have to tell her something.
My pants are still on. My belt is still buckled.
The bed didn't look slept in on her side, but it didn't look unslept either.
There are no signs that I had sex with Cheyenne.
I should be able to tell. A man should be able to tell what happened with his own body.
My pants are still on, I don't see a condom wrapper or anything like that anywhere.
I stand up. Wash my face. Look at myself in the mirror. The man looking back at me looks like a guilty stranger and a man who is going to throw up again.
I find my shoes.
I leave the hotel room without waking her. I don't know if leaving is the right thing. I just know I can't be in that room when she opens her eyes, because if she says good morning I will lose it.
I take the elevator down. I don't look at the lobby.
I get in a cab. I give the driver my home address.
I stare out the window and watch Charleston wake up.
Maybe nothing happened. Maybe she was just there.
None of my thoughts give me any comfort.
I don't know what I am going to tell Summer, but I need to see her.
I need to tell her what happened, and that nothing happened.
Fuck, I just remembered she isn't home yet.
She is still in Savannah on her book tour.
The one that I flaked out on. I am a shitty person.
***
I pay the driver. I get out. I walk to the front door. My hand is shaking on the key.
The house is too quiet.
That doesn't mean anything by itself. Summer is in Savannah. She isn't supposed to be home until tomorrow. The house should be quiet. I am supposed to be the only person in it.
But it is a different kind of quiet than I left it in. Something is off and I can't name what.
I drop my keys in the ceramic dish by the door. I walk through the kitchen. The coffeemaker is empty. Her mug hangs on the hook beside it where she left it before Savannah.
I open the fridge for a glass of water and the water bottle I expect to be there isn't there. Neither is the half-empty thing of cold brew she keeps in the door.
I close the fridge.
I walk through the living room. Up the stairs. Slowly. Because something is climbing my throat.
The bedroom door is open.
I see them before I see anything else.
Two rings on the dresser. Wedding band. Engagement ring.
There is a piece of paper folded under them.
I don't pick it up yet. I don't move toward it. I look around the room first. I am not ready for what the paper says.
Closet doors open. Half her clothes are gone. The big suitcase is gone. Her laptop is gone. The leather notebook I gave her on our first anniversary is gone. The dresser drawer where she keeps her socks is partially open and emptied.
The small framed photos that lived on her side of the dresser.
The one of us at King's Diner. Our wedding portrait.
The beach trip when she made me wear the stupid hat.
They are gone from the dresser. I look around.
They are in the wastebasket by her side of the bed. Frames intact. Faces facing down.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
I pick up the piece of paper.
Her handwriting.
Guess I got my answer.
My lawyer will be in touch.
Don't contact me. Don't look for me.
PS. I left my cocktail dresses in the closet, Cheyenne may need them.
I read it three times. I read it like the words might change if I look hard enough.
It doesn't.
The room is too quiet.
She isn't coming home.
I can't make my hands stop shaking.
The smell on my collar is the smell of another woman. It is on me, in this room, in our bed.
I get to my feet. The room tilts. I sit back down. My chest is wrong. My breath is short.
It is happening. It is happening right now. My wife is gone. My mind runs through every conversation she has had with me recently. Every conversation where I made her feel like she was crazy because she was seeing something I couldn't. Every single thing is falling into place now.
I can't move.
I find my phone in my jacket pocket. Plug it into the charger by the bed. The screen lights up with a wall of notifications.
Forty-seven missed calls. None from Summer.
Eleven from my father.
Fourteen from Cheyenne.
The rest are notifications from social media. Tags. Mentions. The firm's official account posted a celebration carousel last night. I am tagged in eight photos. Summer is tagged as my wife.
I open it.
The first photo is me, glassy-eyed but smiling, with Cheyenne tucked under my arm. The caption reads TIDEWATER CLOSED. CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR DREAM TEAM.
I scroll.
Photo two. My arm around her shoulder.
Photo three. Her mouth at my cheek.
I stop scrolling at three.
I throw the phone across the room.
It hits the wall and falls on the rug face down.
I sit on my bed in clothes that smell like another woman and I look at my wife's wedding band on the dresser and I understand, for the first time in my life, what it feels like to have done something I can't take back, even though I don't know what I did.
***
I try to call her.
Straight to voicemail. Her voice, bright and professional, the Summer Rain voice: Hi, you've reached Summer. Leave a message.
"Summer. Please call me. Please. I don't... I need to talk to you. Something happened and I don't understand what and I need to..." My voice cracks. "Please."
I hang up. I try again. Voicemail.
Text. Won't deliver. She has blocked me. Or turned off her phone. Or both.
I call Greg. He answers on the third ring. His voice is the voice of a man who has been awake for hours waiting for this call.
"She doesn't want to talk to you, son."
"Greg, please. I need to explain..."
"She doesn't want to talk to you." Slower this time. The patience in his voice is worse than anger would be. Greg King doesn't waste emotion on people who don't deserve it.
"Is she safe?"
A pause. "She's safe."
"Greg..."
"I'd respect my daughter's wishes if I were you. And you should think about why she had to make that request."
Click.
Jake doesn't answer. Autumn doesn't answer either, but a text arrives thirty seconds later:
Autumn
Don't ever contact me again unless she tells me it's okay. And if you try to find her before she's ready, I will end you. I have a creative mind and zero legal boundaries. Test me.
Every person who loves Summer has closed ranks. She is inside the circle. I am out.
***
Dominic arrives in twenty minutes. He just got back from a business trip in Europe.
He walks through the front door without knocking.
We've had that policy since college. I think that if Dom was in town, he wouldn't have let things get this far.
This is on me though. I have no one else to blame at this point. I have fucked up my life.
He finds me on the couch. Last night's clothes. Hair wrong. Cracked phone on the rug across the room. The general appearance of a man taken apart.
"Jesus." He stops in the doorway.
"Summer left me, she's gone Dom."
"I know. Autumn called me." He sits on the coffee table across from me. Knees almost touching mine. His face is wearing something I have never seen on him.
"Tell me what happened."
I try. I tell him what I remember, which is almost nothing.
The celebration. The team. My father pulling me into his office at three and telling me to wear the navy suit.
The Butcher Block. Then the bar. Then a limo.
Then waking up in a hotel I don't remember checking into, half-undressed, with Cheyenne's arm across my chest.
Dom's face goes very still.
"That is all you remember?"
"There are pieces. Like watching a movie through frosted glass. Photos. Camera flashes. Her hand on my arm. Then nothing. Then a hotel ceiling."
I can't say it. The words I slept with Cheyenne won't form in my mouth because I don't remember sleeping with Cheyenne. I remember her being there. Close. Photos. Then nothing. A six-hour gap where memory should be, filled with chemicals and confusion.
"How much did you drink?"
"Three. Maybe four."
Dom's face changes. Sharpens.
"You had three drinks and lost a whole night."
"I don't lose nights. I haven't lost a night since college."
"Colt." He leans forward. "Listen to me.
You had three drinks and ended up in a hotel room you can't account for.
You woke up half-undressed next to a woman you wouldn't have chosen to be in bed with if you had been operating with a working brain.
That isn't alcohol. I hate to say it but it sounds like it was something else. "
The words hang in the air between us.
Something else.
"She wouldn't..."
"Who picked the place?"
"Cheyenne."
"Who ordered your drinks?"
"Cheyenne."
"Who ended up in the limo with you, in a hotel room with you, and is texting you fourteen times this morning?"
I stare at the rug. At the phone face-down on the floor.
My phone buzzes from across the room. I don't move. Dom gets up. Picks it up. Brings it to me.
Cheyenne.
Cheyenne
Last night was amazing. I've wanted that for so long. I am so glad that we finally gave into what we've both been feeling for a while.
I read it twice. Three times.
I've wanted that for so long.
She wanted this. She is texting me the morning after with the intimacy of a woman who believes last night was mutual. That we crossed a line together. Voluntarily.
I make it to the kitchen sink before I throw up.
Not dramatic. My body catching up to what my brain is trying to outrun. Something terrible happened to me last night and I can't prove it and Summer is gone and I don't even know how to start explaining what I don't understand.
Dom's hand on my back. Steady. Waiting.
"I didn't want this." I say it to the sink, to Dom, to the empty house. "I didn't... Dom, I swear to God, I didn't choose this."
"I believe you." He's already moving toward the door. "Stay here. Don't call anyone, don't respond to her. I'm going to make some calls. I know people who can find out what actually happened to you that night. It's going to take time. Give me time."
He leaves.
Our house is quiet.
In the kitchen, Summer's coffee mug is hanging on the hook by the coffee pot. Still has the ghost of her lipstick on the rim. The dusty pink she wears every day because she says it's the only color that doesn't make her look like she's trying.
I take it down. Hold it with both hands.
She told me. She fucking told me. She stood in our bedroom before she left with a suitcase in her hand and she told me. It's like you aren't even aware that you're losing me.
I told her I would fix it. I didn't.
I went to a celebration instead.
The mug is warm in my hands. Or my hands are cold. I can't tell the difference anymore, I'm numb.