Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 2) (20 page)

“There’s nothing I
can do?”

“You can try filing
in civil court and asking for damages,” she said. “It’s
something you could discuss with a lawyer.”

“I’ll think about
it,” I said. But I knew I’d never pursue it. I wouldn’t
initiate a connection with Trevor, or spend any more time on him, no
matter what small measure of justice it might bring me.

I considered calling
Marc to give him the news, but couldn’t do it. In nineteen days I
hadn’t heard a word from him. It was as if our time together had
meant nothing, or maybe it had meant too much. A call or email would
feel pathetic, such a sad contrast to what we’d shared that neither
of us had the heart for it.

Time was going by, just
as I’d hoped. I was moving forward – decorating my apartment,
starting my travel blog with posts about Amsterdam, and going out
with friends who knew nothing about Marc and wouldn’t ask
questions. I’d joined a gym and signed up for an Asian cooking
class.

But no matter how many
days vanished into a black hole of work and social engagements, my
feelings never changed. Every moment without him was the first, every
conversation meaningless, every smile forced.

This was my new normal. I had no
choice but to get through it.

In mid-January, after
I’d gone to Montreal and Philadelphia and written two articles for
the February edition of
Wanderlust
,
I started to see Marc everywhere.

I’d gone through the
phases of crying over him, dreaming about him, and talking out loud
to him when I was in my apartment. I’d combed through everything
he’d bought for me, then boxed it back up and buried it in my
closet. I’d talked endlessly about him to my new therapist, a box
of tissues beside me on the leather sofa.

I hardly slept anymore.
It wasn’t just the stress of losing Marc. It was what Trevor had
done to me.

Lately I’d wondered
if I would ever feel safe again. I bought pepper spray and had an
extra lock put on the door. Some nights I had the urge to call one of
my friends and tell her everything, but couldn’t face the
inevitable questions.
Where did
Trevor get the rope? You never knew what kind of person he was? He’s
really going to get away with it?

My article on Sade was
the most popular piece I’d ever written, the traffic to my blog had
exploded as soon as it was published, and I could hardly bring myself
to care. I was more worried about making it through each day, each
afternoon, each moment.

My therapist was urging
me to talk more about what Trevor had done, but I always led the
conversation back to Marc. Talking about someone was a link to them,
and I wanted a link to Marc, no matter how thin and imaginary.

Everything else I wanted only to
forget.

Early in February, my
cell phone rang as I was walking into my apartment with grocery bags.

I’d just finished a
series of blog posts about New York City doughnut shops, and I was
trying to detoxify after days of coconut cream and cinnamon sugar by
eating lots of fish and vegetables. I put the bags down on the
kitchen counter and groped around in my purse.

I answered on the
fourth ring. There was silence on the other end.

“Hello?” I said
again.

“Sophie, this is
Trevor.”

I felt a short, painful
surge of adrenaline.

“Please don’t hang
up,” he said hastily.

I would have cut him
off but I was frozen in place with the phone to my ear. I could
hardly breathe.

“I uh…just called
to see how you’re doing.”

“Fine. Is that all?”
My voice sounded dull and emotionless.

“Well – no,
actually. I want to tell you that I’m sorry.”

“Uh huh.”

“I mean it. I can’t
stop thinking about what I did. It was unforgivable. It wasn’t who
I am.”

A month of pent-up fury
roared through me. “That’s funny,” I said, “because it was
you who did it.”

“I know. And I’ll
have to live with that the rest of my life.”

Live
with that
. As if he were the one who’d been assaulted
and terrified.

He waited for me to
speak but I said nothing. “Um, Julia really values your friendship,
you know,” he said. “She wants to talk to you, patch things up.”

“That is
so
not happening,” I muttered.

“Anyway…I know it’s
none of my business, but are you still with that same guy?”

“You’re right,” I
said. “It’s none of your business.”

He let out a short
sigh. “Okay, well, I understand why you don’t want to talk. But
you won’t have to worry about running into me in New York because
I’m moving on Friday. I got transferred to the office in
Singapore.”

It took several seconds
for his words to register. “Singapore.”

“My boss gave me no
choice. The guy who runs the show over there is a real dick, I guess,
but it was either go or lose my job. I’ve put eight years into this
company and I have debts to pay off. I can’t start from the bottom
somewhere else.”

Suddenly my hands felt
very clammy. I yanked off my gloves and dropped them to the floor.
“Excuse me, why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know, the
timing of this whole thing’s pretty weird.” He stopped to clear
his throat. “Did you – did you call my boss, Sophie?”

I shook my head.
“What?”

“I guess I wouldn’t
blame you. After what I did, you deserve to have me far away.”

I wasn’t sure what to
feel – disgust, relief, rage. In four days he was gone, exiled to a
distant country.

“I didn’t call your
boss, all right? And you know nothing about what I deserve. Not the
first goddamn thing.”

“A lot of people
found out what happened, if it makes you feel any better. I made the
mistake of telling Julia because I needed to unload, and she didn’t
exactly keep it confidential. I’ve gotten a lot of shit for it.
I’ve lost some good friends. Girls, I mean.”

“Poor you. I’m
surprised you have any friends left at all.”

He let out a snicker of
frustration. “I’m not saying that so you’ll feel sorry for me.
I know who’s at fault here. I have a lot of shit to figure out.”
He sounded cowed, embarrassed, not at all like the man he’d been in
Paris.

“Good for you for
realizing it too late,” I said. “I hope the next woman you meet
has better luck than I did.”

“I don’t expect you
to let me off the hook, but…can’t you even acknowledge that I’m
trying?”

“You’re
trying
?”
I laughed harshly. “Have you told your parents what you did?”

There was a long pause.
“No, I haven’t.”

“Why not? I’m sure
they’d be fascinated to hear what kind of son they raised.”

“Now, listen,”
Trevor said, “I know I fucked up, but if you drag my parents into
–”

“Stay away from me,”
I broke in. “Don’t ever call me again.”

I hung up. I was wet
under the arms and trembling, barely able to catch a breath. For
almost an hour I sat on the couch racked by wrenching sobs, my arms
folded over my stomach. I wanted to jump out the window, tear my
studio apart, scream until the neighbors called the cops.

Nothing in my life had
worked out the way I wanted. No one was who I thought they were. My
parents were gone forever and so was Marc, and there was nothing I
could do about it.

After a while, I
exhausted myself and the tears stopped. My apartment was dark except
for the light from a streetlamp. I felt weak and wrung out, but very
calm.

Trevor was leaving the
city. I no longer had to be afraid of him or anything else. This
wasn’t just a platitude anymore – for the first time since coming
home, I believed it.

I got up and put the
groceries away. I made dinner and ate without music or television,
listening to the soothing swish of tires on the wet street below.
That night, I got into bed and fell immediately to sleep, certain
that I’d never been so tired in my life.

A week after
Valentine’s Day, when all of the cards and heart-shaped candy had
finally vanished from sales shelves, I went on my first date.

Nothing else had
succeeded in driving Marc from my mind. I’d tried meditation, spin
classes, and a large red vibrator I dubbed “Henry.” Finally, I
gave myself a deadline. If I wasn’t at least semi back-to-myself by
the middle of February, I would take drastic measures. And nothing
was more drastic than a blind date.

His name was Dean, he
was twenty-eight, and he worked with my high school friend Jennifer
at one of the top ad agencies in Midtown. She was the only person I’d
told about Marc and Trevor, and the only person I trusted to set me
up with someone halfway normal. Obviously I couldn’t choose a man
who was right for me, so it was time to rely on somebody else.

To give myself an easy
escape, I asked Dean to meet me at a new Italian restaurant half a
block from my apartment. He didn’t have to know how close I lived,
and I didn’t have to do anything but show up, eat a quick plate of
pasta, and walk home.

When I arrived at seven
that night, he was already sitting at an excruciatingly romantic
curved booth by the window. “Shit,” I said under my breath as I
handed my coat to the hostess. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Though his Facebook
picture had made him look semi-attractive, I was already
disappointed. I’d known it since first meeting Marc: for the rest
of my life, every other man would fall short.

“Are you Sophie?”

“Hi,” I said.
“Dean?”

Instead of the suit and
clean-shaven face from his picture, he sported an ironed plaid shirt
and a carefully weed-whacked hipster beard. I’d told Jennifer I was
open to anyone with a job and a pulse, but hadn’t expected her to
take it literally.

“Hey,” he said, and
frowned at my elegant wrap dress as if I’d worn a ball gown.

I slid into the booth,
kicking myself for not meeting him for a drink instead. Now I was
committed, with an entire dinner to suffer through before I could be
alone again. Determined to put on a happy face, I threw back half my
drink when the waitress put it down and immediately ordered another.

Minutes dragged on. I
heard myself asking inane questions like, “Been in the same job
long?” Jennifer had said that Dean could talk knowledgeably about
almost anything, but so far the only subject he seemed interested in
was himself.

I’d forgotten how
shitty dating could be, what a colossally depressing waste of time.
Suddenly, extreme loneliness seemed like a good alternative. If I ate
fast and told him I had an early meeting I could be home in no time,
clutching a pint of ice cream and watching a stupefying reality show.

Just after our
appetizers arrived, it started to snow. I looked out, struck by the
beauty of it, watching people walk along the street with their heads
bowed. The snow was thick, with large, sparkling flakes that vanished
as soon as they hit the ground. I stared longingly at my own dark
kitchen window, halfway down the street and five floors up. I could
see someone standing at the door of my building, pressing one of the
buzzers. He waited and pressed again. I watched him absently, a smile
stuck to my face as Dean talked endlessly about learning to play the
banjo.

Down the street, the
figure turned away from the door. My heart contracted with a hard
thump. I leaned toward the window, putting my hand to the glass.

“Um, Sophie?” Dean
said, sounding annoyed.

Of course the man in
front of my building wasn’t Marc, but I could enjoy the hope, the
not knowing.

Please
don’t walk away. Please don’t walk away
.

As if he could hear me,
he started in the direction of the restaurant. I tried to tear my
eyes from him but I couldn’t.

As soon as he stepped
into the bright pool of light from the store across the street, I got
up. “Excuse me a minute,” I muttered, my napkin dropping to the
carpet.

“Are you leaving?”
Dean asked.

“Your coat, ma’am?”
said the hostess as I went out the door, but I didn’t answer. Dimly
aware that it was frigidly cold, I walked into the snow, my heels
slipping on the sidewalk.

“Marc,” I called.

He looked up. At first,
he hardly seemed to recognize me.

Just when I’d stopped
seeing him behind the wheel of every car, here he was crossing the
street toward me. Looking stunned, he smiled. He stood a foot away,
snowflakes settling on the shoulders of his black overcoat. Somehow
he was even more gorgeous than the last time I’d seen him.

“Hi,” he said, his
voice deep and smooth. I’d forgotten how intensely he could look at
me, as if something inside him were smoldering.

“Hi? That’s all
you’re going to say?”

“I just rang up to
your apartment. You weren’t home, obviously.”

“No, I’m – I’m
inside having dinner.”

He looked in the window
directly at Dean, who sat watching us with his fork in his hand. “I
see that. Who’s the guy?”

“He’s a favor to a
friend of mine.”

“Well, he has knives
coming out of his eyes. I don’t think he’s too excited to see
me.” He paused, his gaze so intimate I was powerless to look away.
“Are you?”

Excited
.
He had no idea.

In a matter of thirty
seconds, I’d gone from thinking I’d never see him again to
watching the snow fall in his hair. I was excited, thrilled, and
terrified all at once. “Of course I am,” I said. “What are you
doing here?”

“I have business in
town, but I really just wanted to see you.” He began unbuttoning
his coat. “Take this. You’ll freeze standing out here like that.”

“It was hot in
there,” I said. “The air feels good.”

“You sure?”