Because He Torments Me (5 page)

Lemon.

I pulled it off, my heart pounding,
my
hand shaking as I slid my finger under the flap.

Lemon,

Please accept these gifts as a token of
apology.
 
I will not contact you
after today, and if I see you at work, I promise to be nothing but
professional.

Good luck on your first day tomorrow.
 
I have every reason to believe you are at
the beginning of a very long and successful career.

All best,

Callum

The words blurred before me as furious tears
filled my eyes.
 
I felt the side of
my face started to twitch, that’s how infuriating this gesture was.

All best?

A token of apology?

For what?
 

Making me feel something for him before taking
off not once, but twice?

He was a sociopath, I realized.
 
He was an insane, crazy sociopath who
cared about nothing but
himself
.
 

The thought was comforting for a moment, but I
couldn’t convince myself to believe it.
 
I saw something in
him,
saw something in the way
he was with me, the way he’d treated me that night in Florida, bringing me ice
cream in bed.

I’d felt a connection to him, not just
sexually, but emotionally, intellectually.

Was all of this because had had a
girlfriend?
 
That girl who’d shown
up at lunch that day, the whispered conversation he’d had on the terrace of his
bedroom in Tampa, the way he insisted on me not talking to anyone about what
had happened, the contract I had to sign in which I promised to pretend not to
know him.

Was he telling me I needed to stay away from
him because he was with someone else?
 

“Wow,” a voice behind me said, and I turned to
see Nessa standing in the living room, her eyes wide.
 
“What’s all this?”

“It’s nothing,” I said, suddenly
uncomfortable.
 
How the hell was I
supposed to explain this?

“It looks like a whole lot of something,” she
said, dropping her bag on the couch and walking further into the room.

“I thought you had to work late,” I said.

“Botox party was cancelled,” she said.
 
“The birthday girl got cold feet when
she realized botox is made from botulism.”

“Botox is made from botulism?” I asked.
 
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve
ever heard.”

“Don’t try to change the subject.
 
Where did you get all this stuff?”
 
She peeked into one of the garment bags,
her eyes widening when she saw the designer label.

“It was a gift,” I said.
 

“From Callum?”

I hesitated,
then
nodded.

“Wow, are you guys… I mean, is this like…”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“No, this
was... he just wanted to congratulate me on my new job.”

“You got a new job?”

I nodded.
 
“At Archway.”

“Adriana, that’s amazing!”
 
She threw her arms around me, and I
hugged her back, touched by her excitement for me.
 
“What’s the job?”

“Publicity assistant,” I said, realizing I
hadn’t gotten any other information.
 
I had no idea the salary or even what responsibilities the job entailed.
 
But Nessa didn’t care about any of
that.
 
After her initial
congratulations, she was right back to focusing on Callum.

“So this is a gift?” she asked gently.

“Yes.”
 
I nodded.
 
“We’re just…
“
 
I trailed off, not sure exactly
what we were.
 
I didn’t want to
reveal that we were going to be working together, because that was going to
lead to all kinds of other questions, and I really wasn’t ready to admit that
Callum was the one who’d gotten me the job in the first place.
 
“We’re friends.”

It was a lie.
 
Callum and I weren’t friends.
 
At all.

Nessa repeated the word. “Friends.”

“Yes,” I said, with more conviction.

“Friends who buy each other twenty thousand
dollars worth of clothes and shoes.”

I shook my head.
 
“No.
 
I can’t accept them.”

“What?”
 
Her eyes widened.
 
“Adriana,
yes, you can.”

“No, it’s too…” It made me feel cheap, like he
was buying me off.
 
He was trying to
smooth things over why?
 
So he could
soothe his conscience with the fact that I’d gotten something out of our
weekend away together?
 
To buy me
off, so I would keep quiet about what we’d done?
 
His motives were as confusing as his moves.

“Adriana,” Nessa said.
 
“Yes.
 
You can.”
 
She might not have known the details,
but the look on her face said everything.
 
She wasn’t stupid.
 
She could
read between the lines.
 
She knew
I’d gone away with him for the weekend, and now suddenly he’d sent me a super
expensive gift.

Whatever she thought – whether it was
that I was somehow being paid for sex, or whatever – she seemed to think
it was okay that I keep these clothes.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly.

“Adriana, he’s a billionaire,” she said.
 
“You do realize that him spending twenty
thousand dollars is like us buying a stick of gum, right?”

“I don’t think that’s really how you’re
supposed to look at it.”

She shrugged.
 
“I’d keep them.”
 
She slid her feet into a pair of high
heels and let out a tiny groan of pleasure.
 
“These shoes feel like butter.”

I laughed as Nessa began trying on all the different
pairs of shoes, sounding like someone on the home shopping network as she
narrated.

I ran my hand over the shimmery fabrics.

I knew it would be wrong to keep the clothes.

On the other hand, was it so wrong to feel like
maybe Callum did owe me something?
 

Shouldn’t I at least get something out of the
weekend besides memories and a bruised heart?

Yes, I decided, I should.

And if what he was offering
was
a whole new wardrobe, well, then, I would take it.

***

The next morning, my commute was rainy and
drizzly, and everyone on the subway was cranky.
 
I felt like Anna Hathaway during the
beginning credits of The Devil Wears Prada, walking along with her onion bagel,
looking totally out of place.

Only I didn’t have an onion bagel, I had a
coffee from Peet’s Coffee, and I was dressed in some of my new clothes –
a pair of tan trousers, a loose white blouse and a chocolate colored crocodile
belt.
 
On my feet were soft suede
booties, and around my neck was a chunky gold necklace.

I’d scraped my hair back into a twist and kept
my make up to a smoky eye and a nude lip.

I was excited and nervous, my stomach flipping
as I closed my umbrella and walked into Archway.

When I got to the sixth floor, I was surprised
at how alive the office was already.
  
Phones rang, keystrokes tapped, papers ruffled, voices hummed.
 
It was going to be the soundtrack to the
rest of my life, and the thought filled me with excitement.

I made my way back to Kiersten’s office.

She was sitting at her desk, a long sheet of
paper before her, her nails sliding down a line of printed numbers.

I knocked softly on her open door.

“Come in,” she said absent-mindedly before
glancing up at me.
 
“Oh, good,” she
said.
 
“You’re here.”

I might have just been being paranoid, but I
felt like she was insinuating I should have been there earlier.
 
I glanced at the clock hanging on the
wall over her desk.
 
It was
6:58.
 

“Yes.
 
You said seven, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.
 
“We have an important meeting this
morning with Aubrey Zane and her people, and it’s going to be a bloodbath.”

Right.
 
Aubrey Zane, the pop star
who
had written a
book about her struggles with an eating disorder, the book that was supposed to
relaunch
her career.

“Why will it be a bloodbath?” I asked.
 
I was hovering awkwardly by the door, so
I walked into the office and took a seat in front of Kiersten’s desk.

“Her preliminary sales numbers aren’t good.”

“How bad are they?”

“Bad,” she said.
 
“Aubrey’s book was bought at
auction.
 
Archway gave her a huge
advance, and it should be performing better.
 
Part of the package we used to woo her
over here was the promise of a huge publicity push.
 
And now everything’s falling apart.
 
The sell-in wasn’t great, but we were
hoping the bookstores would reorder.
 
Her launch party is tonight, and we haven’t gotten RSVPs from half the
people we were hoping for.”
 
Kiersten
shook her head.
 
“It’s just not
coming together the way we envisioned, and it’s frustrating, because Wayne is
the one who worked on this, and I’m going to get the blame.”

Wayne.
 
Right.
 
Kiersten’s
predecessor, the guy with the porn addiction who’d put blinds up in his office.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Come to the meeting and take notes,” she
said.
 
She picked up her bag and set
it down on her desk, rummaged through it until she found her lipstick, pulled
it out and gave her lips a relining.

Her phone buzzed, and she pushed the button for
speaker.

“Yes?”

“Aubrey Zane and her people have arrived,” a
voice said.

“Please show them to the conference room.”
 
Kiersten ended the call and turned to
me, the first time she’d really looked at me since I’d gotten here.
 
“Do you have any ideas?”

“What?”

“I need ideas,” she said.
 
“A way to take the content of the book
and make it more front and center.
 
We need to get away from the book being all about Aubrey and find a way
to make it more about the broader conversation involving mental illness.”

My mind went blank and my throat went dry.
 
“I’m not, I mean, I’d have to think
about it.”

“You read the book, right?”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
Had she
forgotten that I’d told her yesterday that I hadn’t read the book?
 
I’d specifically mentioned it to her.

“You haven’t read it?
 
I told you to read it!”

“Oh.
 
I thought you meant, like, at some point in the future.”

She shook her head, like she couldn’t believe
she’d hired someone so incompetent.

“I’ll read it tonight,” I said.
 
“I’ll pick up a copy as soon as –“

“Don’t bother,” Kiersten snapped.
 
“By then it will be too late.”

She started walking out of the office, and I
followed her, but she turned on me.
 
“I can’t have you come to the meeting with Aubrey and her people if you
haven’t even read the book.”
 
She
shook her head.
 
“Go to human
resources and fill out your paperwork, then find Betty and she’ll show you how
to put prize packs together.”

“Okay,” I said.
  
“I’m so sorry, Kiersten, I thought
– ”

“I don’t care what you thought.
 
And I don’t want your apologies.
 
Get your shit together before Callum
comes in this afternoon, Adriana.
 
I’m going to need you on that.”

And then she turned on her heel and stalked off
down the hall.

Before Callum comes in this afternoon? What?

I felt like someone had sucker punched me.