“On what?”
“How long were you standing there?” I grinned. “I’m just kidding. Everything is fine.”
“That’s not what it sounded like.” She looked like she immediately regretted saying that. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry… I just meant, is everything okay?”
“It is now that you’re here,” I said, leaning in to kiss her, hoping it served as a distraction. She backed away after a few seconds. I hadn’t done a girl twice in a long time, but she was so damn intelligent, I couldn’t help but want more of her.
“That’s sweet, but I am worried about you. I’ve never seen you like that. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes, just quit it,” I snapped.
Her eyes widened and eyebrows rose.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap—“
“But you did,” she said, her voice trembling. “I think it’s best I leave since you’re in such a shitty mood. You won’t tell me what it’s
about so I can’t even help you, which makes my being here pointless.”
“Why would you think that? Your being here has made this day slightly better,” I said, thinking up the best lie to tell her. “It’s work, it has been really shitty today. More protests, and someone filed a complaint against one of my loan officers.”
“Wilson?” She asked eagerly.
“No, not Wilson,” I said before she could email him or do something stupid. “Someone from the Nashville branch. You don’t know him.”
“Was that him on the phone just now?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes,” I sighed, feeling glad that she literally walked into a solution. “He is threatening to quit and I’ve been trying to explain to him that it will just make him look guilty—which I wouldn’t give a crap about, except that it gives the whole bank a bad reputation. I don’t want scandals, I hate dealing with scandals.”
That merited a laugh. “Really? Sleeping with your employees would be your fault,” she said with mischievous grin.
“Me screwing around with some tellers is hardly a scandal. They’ve all been of age and don’t work here anymore because they can’t handle that it was a one-time thing.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Not you. You know better than to think you’re just a one-time thing,” I said, trying to save myself.
“What am I, then?” She challenged.
What had gotten into her today? This was not at all like her; she was usually graceful, intelligent, and charming. It was stupid for me to have answered Gina’s call just when Aria was scheduled to come.
Gina was my ex-wife and the bane of my existence. She was the daughter of my mom’s oldest friend, and they had decided Gina and I would be married the second we were born. By the time I realized how wrong they were, we had already been married for five years. I was just lucky we never had any children; if it were up to Gina, though, we would have had quite a few. I suppose she thought I would never leave her if kids were involved. And perhaps I wouldn’t, and I must’ve known that deep down inside because I always turned down the idea of having kids until I was more settled with the bank, my first child. Truthfully, I had been settled with the bank years ago and just kept convincing her and myself that we weren’t ready to have kids. We had filed for divorce last year, and although it hadn’t completely gone through yet, she was still out of my life.
Not according to my mother, though. That’s the real reason I had gone to New York; to deal with this bullshit. My mother had attempted what I was convinced was a fake suicide at a hotel room in NYC, drinking half a bottle of whiskey with some painkillers—just the right amount for her to pass out dramatically, but not quite enough to cause any permanent damage. I saw right through it since she used to pull crap like that with Dad all the time. Yet when I went to the hotel and saw her, pale and weak and miserable, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
Leave it to Eleanor Sinclair to milk my sympathy for all it was worth; she quickly went on a long rant about how my divorce was taking a toll on her, how Gina was the perfect girl for me, and how my happiness was the only thing keeping her alive. I tried to explain to her that Gina did the precise opposite of making me happy; for one, she had cheated on me more times than I could count, and I was pretty confident that she loved my money more than me. And most importantly, I had never quite loved her. I thought I did at some point, but it was an illusion built on lust and inspired by her beauty, not to mention my parents insisting that she was perfect for me.
Until last year. I found out she was cheating, and was hardly surprised – some part of me knew all along. I had a solid reason to file for divorce. My mother knew what she had done and somehow found a way to blame me for it. “If only you didn’t work all the time, Zay,” she had said. “A woman has needs, and Gina was getting really lonely. Sure, she could have dealt with it better, but a lonely woman is never thinking straight. She feels a lot of remorse, and you’re a coward if you can’t accept it and forgive her.”
My own mother. Of course she would take her side though; how many times had she cheated on my dad? And now she had pulled this whole fake attempt at killing herself, and decided to use that as bait for getting me to try again with Gina. She wouldn’t stop wailing until I agreed to sign up for couples counseling.
That’s what the call was about. All too anxious to jump back into my life, Gina wanted to start the counseling right away, under the guise of “making momma happy, we owe it to her.” I didn’t want to deal with that yet, so I was meeting her to discuss the right time for that. But I had to be careful about Aria finding out. She would never forgive me. She seemed like a righteous girl, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain myself. Even if she did, what could I say exactly? “Oh, I’m 32 years old but my mom is making me try and get back with my ex-wife?” It would sound ridiculous.
All this craziness was what had led me to my rule; having sex with a girl once and moving on. I didn’t have time for any more lunatic women.
But Aria wasn’t going to stop asking questions. Why was she so stubborn? I admired this in her; she wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted, which sometimes was absolutely infuriating.
I was the same way, though.