Authors: Emma South
At the forefront of my mind was that surge of joy that had threatened to come through when I’d first opened the door. Jeremy was right, there was something in there that wasn’t dead yet but I didn’t want it inside me anymore, if I ever had.
My discomfort with not feeling in control of myself was completely unabated, and I concentrated on that. He was a rich man who always got his own way, there must have been something about that endless stream of success that seeped into his personality. Success breeds confidence, as the old saying went, and that confidence manifested itself in how he knew, maybe unconsciously, how to manipulate the people around him.
That must have been it. It was the only halfway-sane hypothesis that made any sense to my desperately searching mind. How else, after all these months apart and not remembering him in the first place, could he still have that effect on me, successfully quashed though it was?
I turned away from the window and went back to the couch, resting my elbows on my knees and my face on my hands, letting my hair cascade around me like a curtain cutting me off from the world. There was something about fighting yourself that was utterly exhausting, I felt like crawling into bed and sleeping until I had to go to work on Monday.
With that very intention I went to my bedroom, slipped under the covers, and pulled them up over my head. I think I was almost asleep when I remembered Leyton was supposed to be coming back soon.
Without even peeking out I reached to my bedside table and fumbled for my phone, dragging it back into the darkness under the covers, where the screen made me squint my eyes against its light. I sent a text to Leyton saying I had to cancel the date and apologizing for snapping at him. I was almost asleep again when the phone beeped to life and I read his response.
‘
Hope you feel better soon. Are we still OK?
’
‘
Yes. See you at work.
’
Despite my best intentions I was unable to stay in bed until Monday, I didn’t even make it to Sunday. My furiously rumbling stomach compelled me to order in some pizza and I managed to force some down but most of it went to the fridge. I went back to bed and watched a movie on my laptop, or rather a movie played in front of me while I thought about what to do.
What did Jeremy’s visit mean for the divorce? Was he going to make things difficult somehow? My lawyer had said that there was no way Jeremy would rationally object to the terms, but the look on Jeremy’s face when he left didn’t scream ‘rational’ to me. What if he disputed the terms and tried to force me to take some of his money? Mr. Horowitz would think we were the weirdest damn couple ever to get divorced then, probably.
When the end credits rolled up on whatever movie it was I watched, I changed screens and sent an email to him, requesting a meeting sometime that week during my lunch break. Whatever was going to happen, I supposed
that as my lawyer he needed to know about the visit, it might matter.
By the time I went to work again on Monday I felt almost back to normal, I saw Leyton looking at me anxiously through the glass wall of his small office as I did the mail rounds on the floor he worked on until I got to him. All day he seemed to check in on me at every opportunity and didn’t really calm down until we’d rescheduled a date for towards the end of the week.
Matthew Horowitz shrugged his shoulders when I told him what had happened and said he hadn’t heard anything unusual from Jeremy’s lawyer. He couldn’t imagine Jeremy doing anything but accepting and advised me that it wasn’t worth worrying about until if and when it happened.
It was difficult advice to follow but after a few more days it seemed like business as usual. Just me, the daily grind, an I-don’t-know-what with Leyton, and the waiting game.
Chapter 13
A few weeks went past with no alarm bells ringing from my lawyer, he reported that Jeremy’s lawyer estimated everything would be done at their end in a few more days. It was definitely a relief to think that I wasn’t going to have to fight that particular battle, and I did my best to concentrate on moving forward.
One thing that Jeremy’s visit
had
done though, was make me reconsider my intentions with Leyton. I’d been a hair’s breadth from sleeping with him just for the sake of a fling, but I was no more a casual sex kind of a girl than I was a rich man’s trophy wife. I didn’t think any less of Debbie for her lifestyle choices, she was awesome, it just wasn’t for me.
Of course, after so many dates, Leyton was hardly a one night stand either. He’d been kind, patient and perfectly gentlemanly in response to my boundaries, boundaries that were somewhere closer to the opposite end of the spectrum from the mutual friend who had set us up in the first place.
However, instead of my feelings gradually growing for him towards a level where I thought I’d feel comfortable, really comfortable, with giving more of myself I was feeling the opposite happening. The thrill of the unknown fledgling relationship was waning and it wasn’t because he was a bad person, there was just no real chemistry between us. To me he was ‘nice’, but to someone else he would be the greatest, most handsome, perfect man.
He deserved somebody who felt like that about him and, try as I might, it wasn’t me. This evening had been my last ditch effort to see whether anything might spark between us. He’d taken me to another ‘nice’ restaurant and we’d talked about work and the weather, wasn’t it nice that it was finally warming up a bit?
I cracked a joke and he’d sat there with a blank look on his face until I’d explained what I was talking about, a true kiss of death for any piece of humor. I sighed remembering the moment as I walked along the waterfront. I’d spent the rest of the meal trying to work up the courage to say what I knew I had to say, and managed to get out a reasonably gentle break-up speech after we paid our bill and were standing in the car park.
He took it well, even offered me a ride home, but I’d told him I wanted to take advantage of the warmer weather and go for a walk along Alaskan Way. I remembered walking along there with my Dad when I was a kid, gaping at the giant cruise ships that looked like huge floating hotels, and thought it might be a nice walk on which to just spend a bit of time thinking to myself. We parted ways with a friendly, if awkward, hug and I told him I’d see him at work on Monday.
Alaskan Way hadn’t changed much in the last eight or so years since I could last remember seeing it, and I walked for a good half hour before coming to a stop and leaning over a handrail at a place where I had a reasonably unobstructed view of the water so I could ponder my situation. Life had certainly thrown me some curveballs that defied the laws of physics.
Debbie would think I was crazy if I’d told her my full story, or my full story as best as I could remember it. She’d probably slap me full in the face if I told her the real reasons I’d run away from Jeremy, combined with ceasing dates with Leyton because he was just ‘nice’.
Life wasn’t fair… but it wasn’t fair for a lot of people. I’d been through some god awful things, but was I overly self-entitled to give up on Leyton because I didn’t see fireworks every time he walked into the room?
What about Jeremy? He was rich, handsome and there was a spark between us the size of the sun. My conscious mind had been pouring water on that spark ever since I woke up in the hospital, but it was still there. Did everything that happened to me and between my parents and I, and the promises I’d made to them and myself as a result, still matter enough to make life so God damn hard now? Or was I just a stupid girl who deserved all that shit
that had happened and I should just curl up and die like I thought I was going to all those years ago when I found out I was all alone in the world?
As I looked at the nearly-full m
oon’s reflection in the water I came to the same conclusion I had when I was eighteen. No. I didn’t deserve it, I was just a kid. But I would show them all that I didn’t need anybody or anything, least of all a man who was nothing but money and power or anything he had to offer.
I looked down and saw my hands bunched up into little fists and let them go, feeling muscles from head to toe releasing as well, as if my entire body was a bunched up little fist. With a sigh, I raised my eyes to the actual moon, hovering above its shimmery twin in the water and wondered what the man in the moon had seen me do during the years I couldn’t remember.
Of course, I thought, his observations would only be available from when the right side of the moon was facing us. But… that wasn’t right, was it? No. The same side of the moon
always
faces the earth because of… tidal locking? Was that it? How did I know that?
Did
I know that?
My brow furrowed as I tried to remember where I’d come across that piece of information. It was just a stupid factoid about the moon, but for some reason it felt
important
and I worried at it for several minutes, feeling a sense of blood rushing to my head, warming my cheeks and ears as I put everything into what seemed like a meaningless task.
There was a voice speaking in my head, a deep man’s voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. It was as if there were pillows being held over my ears. Was it my Dad? Did he once blurt out something about the moon?
A couple, arms wrapped around each other lovingly, walked past me as I looked down towards the ground, still leaning against the handrail. Their low conversation threatened to drown out the voice I was trying to listen to from my memories and I was a fraction of a second away from potentially screaming at them to silence their perfectly reasonable volume of chatter.
Then a smell, a wonderful scent, hit my nose and I inhaled it carefully, the mild breeze that had brought it to me taking it away just as fast as it had come. It was the man’s cologne, a subtle mix of mandarin and lavender, with something else I couldn’t name.
I stared at their backs as the unchanged pace of their steps took them slowly away from my spot leaning against the handrail. Clive Christian 1872. That was the name of his cologne. How did I know that?
How did I know that?
How did I know that?
My mind buzzed for a few moments as if a huge room of people were each trying to shout over each other to tell me something. One by one they fell silent as if the devil himself had walked into that room with them. First the ones at the back as the foul beast waded into the crowd, then the ones nearer the front as they turned to see why everybody was suddenly quiet. A sense of impending doom settled into my very core, as if my heart was about to forget how to beat.
You bought it for him for his birthday.
A strangled moan escaped my lips and I crouched down on my haunches, gripping a lower bar of the handrail and resting my head against the cold metal. I clenched my teeth against the inhuman sound forcing its way out of me, the verbal equivalent of the iron curtain being ripped apart in my mind.
One by one, memories leapt through the claw marks they had gouged in the barrier and each hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t an eighteen year old girl trapped in a twenty-six year old’s body, angry with the whole world and hell-bent on proving something. I was Beatrice. Beatrice
Holt
, and I was in love more completely than I’d ever thought could be possible. More than that, I was loved just as wholly in return.
“What have I done?”
I yanked myself back to my feet and wiped the tears away from my face with the back of one hand while I searched for my phone in my pocket with the other, tearing it out and fumbling at the buttons, accidentally calling my mechanic before hanging up, forcing myself to take a deep, shuddering, breath and stopping my hands from shaking. I scrolled through my contacts until I found Jeremy and pressed the little green handset icon to call him.
My heart was thudding in my chest and I held a hand over it in case it was going to burst through my ribs at any moment while I listened to the sound of ringing at the other end of the phone line. I had no idea what I was going to say, all I knew was that the ordeal of the last… my God it was almost a year… would soon be over.
The phone rang and rang on the other end and I slapped my hand down on the handrail several times.
“C’mon, C’mon…”
‘Hello, this is Jeremy Holt, please leave your number, name and…’
I let out a growl that was bordering on a scream, a woman walking past me gave me a funny look and hurried on her way as I hung up and
dialed again. Once more it went through to his voicemail.
“Jeremy! It’s me… Bea! I remember! I remember! Call me back quick!”
What the hell was he doing? I tried to imagine where he might be on a Friday night… but he obviously had the means to be anywhere at all. Was he ignoring the call because he didn’t recognize the number? Would he listen to the voicemail?
Sometimes Jeremy changed numbers when the media somehow got hold of his personal number and he was receiving more calls about whether he’d like to appear in a reality TV show than calls he actually needed to take. Had he recently changed his number? I had no way of knowing.
“Holy crap…”
I was in full fight, flight or freeze mode, adrenaline pumping through my system, almost ready to start running south right there and then. I needed to see him, needed to look in his eyes and see myself reflected in them to find out whether my actions over the last several months had killed in him what I’d been trying to kill in myself. Oh God, why didn’t he answer?
I turned from the water and scanned the road, desperately hoping there would be a taxi there. Further along the road in the direction I had been walking I saw one heading my way and wondered whether I could wrestle its passenger out. I ran towards it along the side of the road, waving my arm.
Thankfully, there was no passenger I had to remove from the equation and the taxi driver picked up on my urgency with surprising enthusiasm, pushing the limits of traffic law and getting me back to my apartment in record time. I threw the fare and a generous tip at him and bolted out on to the sidewalk, through the outer doors and didn’t even bother waiting for the elevator.
I ignored the dull ache in my leg from the high impact of my feet pounding on the stairs, got to my floor, burst through the door and went to my bedroom. I flung my laptop lid open, screaming at it for taking too long to connect to the internet before searching for flights to L.A.
Most of the sites wouldn’t do a search for same-day flights at this time of night, and I unsuccessfully tried to fight back tears of frustration, which blurred my vision. I tried calling Jeremy again, still no answer.
“Think, God dammit!
Think!
”
Maybe there were some sites that
specialized in booking emergency or last minute flights. I did some searches and found a couple that promised lots but I couldn’t figure out how to book them, one of them had prices that totaled more than I had in my bank account. The website looked dodgy as hell too, but I probably would have risked it if I hadn’t just given so much money to have my car fixed.
Jesus Christ, I was married to a billionaire and I’d spent all my money on a mechanic. I hoped I
was
still married, Matthew Horowitz had said the paperwork was supposedly only a few days away. How could I have forced those divorce papers on him? I squeezed my eyes shut, failing to stop the tears again as I tried to call him once again.
No answer… my car! That was it! I’d drive straight down there through the night. How long would it take? Thirty hours? I tried to remember how much pure driving time I had put in when coming to Seattle and couldn’t remember, but I had to do something, get moving. To sit here and wait for him to call back or sit at the airport and wait for a flight that I probably couldn’t pay for would be hell.
I called Jeremy again and left a second message.
“I’m driving down there, right now, call me back no matter what time it is… I love you.”
Looking frantically around the room I tried to think of what I should bring. I eventually settled on nothing beyond what I’d carried in a few minutes previous and sprinted out of the apartment that had been my home for the last six months without a backwards glance.
My car took a few attempts to start up and I thought back to the mechanic’s advice when I’d picked it up. In a nutshell, he’d told me to go easy on it.
“Yeah right,” I said as the engine finally turned over.
I threw it into reverse and backed out of my parking space before pulling out on to the road and pointing the headlights to the south with the intention of eating up the miles between my husband and I as quickly as possible. At least once an hour my eyes blurred with tears as more memories surfaced and fought with the fresher recollections of what had happened since the accident.
My eyes were red and raw from rubbing after a few hours, and still the memories came flooding back, each new one bringing a group of associated memories with it. Our meeting, our wedding, our house, our future, our love. Like Jeremy had said when he tracked me down in Seattle, we could still have it all. I just had to
get there
.