I guess I must have sat in that office longer than I realized. Without my phone telling me the time, I let the minutes tick away. The longer I stayed, the more collected I got, the better I could present when I finally popped the question.
I got out of my chair and stuck my hand in my pocket. I could concentrate on the outcome if I kept that ring in front of my mind at all times. None of this other crap mattered. Only she mattered. Once I got her on board, we could face the world together. No more doubts. No more questions. Just her and me, the way it always should have been.
I got out of the office, but I hesitated at the bedroom door. No sound came from inside. She must be still asleep. How should I do it? Should I slip into bed next to her and wake her up? Or should I wait until she woke up so I could propose on bended knee in front of her by the bed?
How does a guy decide who to propose to the woman of his dreams? Well, I couldn’t hang around out here all day. I pushed the door open….and stopped. The comforter lay tossed aside and that big beautiful bed, the bed where I spent the happiest months of my life—empty.
The minute I saw it, I knew something was wrong. No splash of water or spray shower from the bathroom. No one wandering around in the walk-in closet. At that moment, the sun peeked over the horizon. Shafts of golden rays streamed through the windows and glistened on something on the bedside table.
I rushed across the room, but my instincts told me what it was even before I got there. Her rings. The giant solitaire I got her for the engagement. The diamond-studded wedding band—even the pendant I got her for our three-month anniversary.
I dashed around the room, but the truth stared me in the face everywhere. Her new clothes tossed on the floor. Her old clothes missing from the closet. Her shoes—she was gone. Not just gone, but GONE. Gone for real. Gone with extreme prejudice, but why? Why would she just up and vaporize after a night of the best sex of our lives?
She broke the news and made me the happiest man alive. Then we tumbled onto the couch and fucked like rabbits. She swooned into a pleasure-fueled coma, and I carried her to the bedroom where she passed out. Where in that sequence of familiar events did she see or hear….?
My heart dropped my chest. She heard me. She must have. She must have heard me shouting at Jason. She said the team threatened to throw her out if she made a mistake, and she thought this pregnancy was a mistake. She must have put two and two together. She must have realized the team wanted to end the contract. She must have thought I was going to break it off with her. That’s the only reason she would have left like that.
I started running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I had to find her. I had to get her back if it was the last thing I ever did in life. That ring burned a hole in my pocket. That ring would never grace another woman’s hand. I had to get her to see it somehow. I had to get her to accept it.
I planned this whole thing down to the last detail. I had to follow through on it. I had to go down on one knee in front of her while she brushed away happy tears. I had to ask her to marry me—really marry me. I had to show her that diamond and hear her answer. I wouldn’t accept anything else. I refused to believe it was over until I did that. It couldn’t be over. It couldn’t, not as long as I held that ring in my hand.
I raced out of the penthouse with no hat, no coat, no phone, no nothing. I didn’t call the limo. Screw the limo. I barreled down to the parking garage under the building and go out the Jag. I gunned the motor and hit Madison Avenue going full force.
The car purred down the street, all the way to the south side. I prowled down Mulberry Street, but when I saw the first vendors opening their shops to tourists, I realized. She wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t come running to her parents. She couldn’t tell them she was pregnant and running away from her husband.
So, I wasn’t her real husband, but they didn’t know that. We convinced them. We convinced ourselves. We were as married as anybody else, and now we had a baby on the way. Her parents would tell her one thing: Go home.
So where did she go? Where would she go where they wouldn’t tell her that? I rifled everything I ever knew about her but came up with nothing. I cast my mind back to her first interview. Her application form flashed before my eyes. I trained myself to remember details like that.
I flipped a U-turn at the next intersection and drove to the cheap apartment she listed as her previous address. I jerked the parking brake in place and took the stairs two at a time. I pounded on the door with his fist.
No one answered. I pounded again and shouted. “Open up and let me in.”
After what seemed like hours, the door opened. A disheveled girl in a threadbare bathrobe from the 80s glared at me. “What do you want?”
“I want to see Gabi.”
She pooched out her lips and shook her matted head. “There’s no Gabi here. Take off before I call the police.”
She tried to shut the door, but I stuck his foot in it to block it open. “Please…. I have to see her. It’s important. It’s a matter of life and death.”
Her eyes shot open. “A matter of life and death! That’s a good one.”
I shoved the door further open. “It’s a matter of my life. I can’t live without her. I have to see her. Please, help me. I just want to talk to her.”
The girl glanced over her shoulder. So, it was true. Gabi was here.
I pressed my advantage while I could. “Please. Just once.”
She let go of the door. “You can talk to her. Nothing more, but if she tells you to leave, you have to go with no questions asked. Understand?”
I let out a shaky breath. “All right.”
The door sagged the rest of the way open, and she led me into her living room. There was Gabi on the couch in her old suit with her hair uncombed and bags under her eyes. She was tired. She hadn’t had enough sleep lately. That was my fault. I had to stop being such a selfish, horny asshole all the time. I had to think of her more.
I slowed when I saw her, but she wouldn’t look at me. She picked some fabric off the fraying couch arm. Then she flicked dust off her skirt. She sat perfectly straight and never relaxed an inch.
The girl waved her hand. “You better get this over with.”