“You okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“You guys were seeing each other for a while, so…just wanted to make sure.”
“It was only a couple weeks,” I said. “It was just casual, didn’t mean much.” I was uncomfortable by the conversation, feeling the warmth all over my skin, the spotlight shining hot right on top of me.
“Alright.” He turned to leave the office.
I watched him go, relieved the conversation was over.
Ten
Dex
I sat at the dining table and looked at my notes scattered around me, trying to figure out a way to make this thing work. From the very start, I knew it was controversial and would take a goddamn village to get off the ground, but it was still disheartening, regardless.
Sometimes my mind would wander to Sicily.
I overheard her conversation, more than I should have, and I realized she’d dumped Zach because he was too obsessed with money, which was typical of every billionaire out there. Well, except my family. I wasn’t sure what she expected, for him to be some philanthropic, charitable person.
When people got money, they kept it.
That was just how it was.
Daisy said Sicily dumped him because of me, but after listening to that conversation, I realized that wasn’t entirely accurate.
But it kinda was true.
She wanted someone like me—and there was only one of me.
Maybe now was the time to talk to her again…before some other guy beat me to the punch.
A knock sounded on my door.
I quickly looked at the time on my laptop and realized it was almost eight.
Maybe it was her.
I crossed the living room and opened the door, expecting to see that short little woman with the green eyes, wearing flats instead of heels because she never wore heels when she was off the clock. I expected to see her long hair pulled over one shoulder, to see the confidence and trepidation in her gaze.
But it wasn’t who I hoped.
It was Catherine.
Her pale cheeks had a subtle pinkness from her blush, and she still had the same little freckle under one eye that I used to stare at for hours. She was taller than Sicily, even without the heels, and that had been nice while we were married. I was so tall that it was hard to be with a short woman sometimes, but Sicily made me realize how much I liked it. “Um…what are you doing here?”
Her eyes immediately filled with hurt, as if she’d expected me to respond in a different fashion.
Just this past Christmas, I looked at the floor in front of the Christmas tree and pictured the kid I could have had with her, pictured her sitting on a different couch with a glass of wine, making my mom laugh. I felt so alone, so empty, because I’d lost something that brought me so much happiness. But now, I didn’t feel that way at all.
“Can I talk to you?” she whispered.
“About what? We finished our conversation in the coffee house.”
“Please…”
The part of me that would always love her stepped aside and let her in.
We moved to the couch, and she pulled out a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “I haven’t spent a dime of it.”
“Dime of what?”
She unfolded the paper and revealed a check. It was everything I’d had to give her in the divorce. “My mom found that lawyer, and she instructed him to get every penny from you she could as compensation for my dad. I should have intervened, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. I never felt good about taking the profits of all of your hard work, which is why I never spent it. I want you to have it back.” She held out the check to me.
I looked at the line of zeros in the box, the money I’d earned busting my ass to provide for us, to give her a life that would allow her to work for a nonprofit and essentially make nothing. “Catherine, it hurt when you went after everything I had. But it was never about the money. It was about…the coldness.”
“I know… I’m so sorry.” She continued to hold it out.
But I didn’t take it. “It’s yours.”
“I want you to have it—”
“And I don’t want it. I’m doing just fine now.” I had a place to live, and my practice was making enough to give me a nice profit at the end of every month.
She looked down at the check before she set it on the coffee table.
I waited for her to get up and leave.
But she stayed, wearing a short purple dress with strappy flats, a black cardigan on top, her hair in big curls. And she looked right at me, deep into my eyes, staring endlessly.
It was an out-of-body experience, to have her beside me on the couch, when she’d been a mythical creature for the past year. She lived in my memories, but my heartbreak had driven me to insanity, and I started to question if those memories were ever real. It’d been a really rough year, the worst of my life, and now she was there, staring at me, looking at me the way she used to.