Just Friends

“How?”

That exasperated sigh could be heard clear on the other side of town. Maybe even all the way in Japan. “Rachel said she was overwhelmed, right? She’s got a lot on her plate. She’s feeling insecure. Then you, Mr. Big Bad Billionaire Heir, come swooping in and promise to change her whole life. Maybe you even said that you love her. Don’t know. Can’t hear you having sex like you apparently hear us having sex all the time.”

“He can what? How shitty are these walls?”

They both ignored Ian. “What’s your point?” Zack barked.

Kathryn was unfazed. “My point is that you are going to make shit worse if you saunter up to wherever she is on the other side of the world. She wants space. You need to give it to her.”“But…!”

“I’m telling you, Zack. I’m trying to give you my honest advice here, both as a woman and as someone who has known a shitton of women in her life. For God’s sake, it’s something my own mother would do. And God also knows that I’ve wanted to do it multiple times.”

Ian didn’t say anything to express shock or refute that. All he could do was give Zack a sympathetic look, his first one in years.

“If you go to her right now… if you track her down and show up on her doorstep or place of work in, you’re going to spook the shit out of her. You might ruin everything.”

“Then what do I do? Wait for her?”

She gave him a look of utter disbelief. “Yes?”

“She’s right.” Ian didn’t want to admit that, did he? “I know I’m the last person you want advice from, but you’ll freak her out if you go after her without warning. She sounds like she’s a normal girl, right?” Normal was code for a woman who wasn’t an heiress, so Zack didn’t refute it. “She’s not used to men like us. Hell, heiresses aren’t used to men like us, but at least they’re not shocked if we show up halfway around the world literally a day after they left.”

“If Rachel either gets this out of her system or realizes she’s made a mistake,” Kathryn interjected, “then she’ll contact you. Trust me. That’s better than you gallivanting off to look like a fucking stalker who can’t handle being alone. We’ve got enough of those in this city.”

“You’ve dated some of them, huh, Katie?”

“Watch it, or I’ll be the one punching you next.”

Zack didn’t want to hear this advice, of course. But he took some of it to heart. He agreed to call off taking the Mathers’ private plane and instead keep his standby on the commercial airline. Maybe a night’s rest would give him some perspective.

After begrudgingly thanking them for their help, Zack went to his own apartment two doors down.

A letter had been taped to his door. It had Rachel’s handwriting plastered all over it.

Zack snapped the letter off his door and hurried inside to read it with a bottle of beer. He hoped to God that it had some answers.

“Zack,”

He was already choking up.

“I’m sorry. I know this is really shitty of me to do, but I don’t know what else TO do. I feel like I’m drowning, and I’m not even in the water. But it’s the same kind of phobia pressing in on me. Like when you took me to the dock that first time. I never once touched the water, but I felt like I was going to drown at any moment.

If you’re reading this, I’m already gone. If you haven’t held Parvati at knife-point yet, I’ve taken a job in Japan. My contract is six months with an automatic extension for a year.

It’s not that I need the money. The nursing home told me that some generous benefactor had paid for my mother’s care for the next year. I know it was you. Thank you, Zack. It means a lot to me that I only have to worry about paying my student loans and my taxes. In truth, I could have easily lived in the city without the nursing home bills to pay. But I couldn’t’ stay there. Like I said, I was drowning.

You were pressing in all around me. I couldn’t believe that you really loved someone like me. When I saw you flirting with that girl in the bar, and when I saw all that stuff about us in the tabloids… I couldn’t handle it. I was suffocating. I had to go somewhere. I need to be alone for a while.”

The rest of the letter more or less confirmed what Kathryn had been saying next door. It also confirmed that the best thing Zack could do was give his girlfriend some much needed space, even if he thought she went about it in a completely stupid and selfish way.

Nevertheless, he canceled his flight the next morning.

***

Instead of wrapping himself up in a bubble of pain and despair, Zack reached out to his friends and family for some much-needed recuperation.

His father suggested Bell Jar’s for an early lunch. It so happened to be one of Seth’s favorite places, and even Uncle Roy managed to drag himself off his yacht in a show of solidarity to his favorite nephew.

“You’re kidding,” Seth said once they all sat down. “She left? For Japan? Without telling you? Wow.”

Isaiah shook his head. “Shame. She seemed like she could’ve been the one for you, son.”

Zack glared at his father. “Thanks, Dad. I feel so much better now.”

“Now hang on,” Uncle Roy slammed his elbow on the table. Apparently, his years at a boys’ boarding school hadn’t taught him any rich people manners. “No one is saying you two have broken up. You’re taking a break, son. You’ll be happy that you did in the end.”

“You sure about that?”

“Trust me. It’s how I handle all four of my ladies.”

The whole table fell silent while Roy continued to peruse the menu, acting as if he had no idea what the hell a cobb salad was. “What was that?” Zack asked. “Four ladies? Since when do you even have one girlfriend?”

Uncle Roy shrugged. “I prefer to think of them as my seasonal companions. There’s Estrella in Barbados, Claudia in the Spanish Mediterranean, and Nicola on the Greek side. Oh, and there’s Mary Marie here in America, but she’s down in Florida. I really need to go see her soon before she forgets I exist and goes and gets her another husband. She’s flighty like that.”

The whole table stared at him. “This is the first I’ve heard about any of these women,” Zack said.

“Because I don’t talk about them. Who cares?”

Isaiah held his hand up in confusion. “All these women know about each other, right? How many illegitimate children do you have out there, Roy?”

Seth nudged his best friend. “You hear that? I’m not the biggest polyamorous freak that you know.”

“They all know about each other. That’s the point. I ain’t serious with any of them.” Roy turned to his little brother. “And I don’t have any kids. All of these women I’m talking about are of a certain age. I already told you that I plan on leaving my share of the inheritance to Lorelei’s kids. If I had any kids? Eh, I’d give them some too, but nobody’s come forward in fifty years, so who gives a crap?”

“Jesus, Roy. What other secrets are you keeping?”

“Who says it’s a secret? Just because I never talk about them doesn’t mean they’re secrets. Anyway, the point is that the women I get along with the most are those who like their space. I only see them once, twice a year at the most. It’s a good arrangement for all of us. Maybe that’s what Zack is dealing with here.”

“I don’t think Rachel is that kind of space-hogger, Uncle Roy. I think she’s freaked the fuck out and me going after her is only going to make things worse.”

“Now that I agree with,” Seth said. “I know those romance novels and shit tell us that we gotta hunt down our women like cavemen, but it doesn’t work that way in reality.”

“Says the man sharing his girlfriend with a Monegasque billionaire.”

“So I know what I’m talking about?”

“That… no. That is not what I meant.”

“Gentlemen,” Isaiah interjected, “I believe the best course of action for our man here is to get lightly buzzed and possibly blackout drunk later. Everything else will fall into place afterward.”

“Sounds amazing.”

“I’m in.”

“Do they have anything that’s not French here?”

Zack was grateful to have these level heads around him, because every time he thought of Rachel, he once again resisted the urge to go chasing after her, wherever she was. Where is she right now? In Japan? What city? Is she thinking of me right now? I wish she would at least Skype me. She has my email!

Roy got up to use the bathroom and Isaiah received a call from his wife that took him away from the table. Zack looked to his best friend beside him and asked, “Do you really think I’m doing the right thing by letting her go for now?”

Seth clasped his hand on Zack’s shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be forever. Like everyone is saying, give her the space she’s asked for. You’ll see her again.”

“What the fuck do I do in the meantime? I’m going to go crazy without her!”

Seth leveled a hard gaze on his friend’s face. “You’re one of the greatest artists I regularly hang out with, and you’re asking me what to do until you see her again? What the fuck do you think you should do?”