“Well?” Simon asks again, “How’d you get it?”
“Switched it after sex,” I lie shrugging. “He was asleep, didn’t notice.”
“Well they’re going to notice pretty soon,” Simon says.
“I’m not going back, so it’s no bother for me,” I tell him and turn around to walk out.
What? It’s true.
Ethan basically fired me. From his company. And I’m pretty sure from his life.
Have you ever been in a crowd of people but felt utterly and completely alone?
Well, hun, welcome to me right about now.
I mean, that overcast sky might as well just open up and start raining right about now as I walk down 7th Avenue because that’s my mood.
As if deciding to play a cruel joke on me, I hear something that seems like light rumbling as I approach 52nd Street and 7th Avenue, and the first bits of water start to fall on my head.
Great, now even Mother Nature is deciding to hate me.
The bits of rain quickly turn into a downpour as people scramble around me. The skies darken even farther as I approach Columbus Circle, the horses whinnying along Central Park South.
I’ll tell you one thing though, hun. It’s a good thing it's raining. Because the tears kind of get washed away when I see the giant billboard next to the Trump International Hotel & Tower advertising Illicit Escape.
Right there, holding the futuristic glasses, is my smiling face. The tag line, “Revolutionizing Pleasure” written in a sexy font.
I’m glad you can’t see my tears.
It's in these moments that the biggest city in the world becomes the loneliest place on earth.
But it’s nothing that I don’t deserve after everything I’ve just done.
***
The next week is basically like that day. Cold, sad, depressing, and rainy.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been like this. I mean, I had a chance to b
e happy. I had a chance to settle down with a man that truly, really loved me.
I know what you’re going to say, though. I had an impossible choice. It was either protect myself from Robert or run again.
And why exactly did I sell Ethan out?
Because I didn’t want to run. Because I wanted to stay in New York City and make a home for the baby that I’m carrying. Hoping that Ethan would understand.
I mean, I did go and tell him—at the end. I confessed to lying to him, trying to steal from him, and taking his heart under false pretense.
And what did he do?
He gave me everything I wanted.
He gave me the computer coding for the software that runs the Illicit Escape. He let me keep my home.
He gave me everything I asked for.
But it turns out, while I was on my knees pleading to him to show me mercy, I never once asked him to forgive me and hold me.