When the driver pulls up to the curb, I grab my overflowing duffle bag of things out of the backseat and walk quickly to the front door. I know as soon as I’m inside, surrounded by all of my books, I’ll feel better. Going through my usual daily routine of work, walking through the aisles and running my hands over the spines, will ground me and help me forget about everything that happened today.
I grab the door handle to pull it open, and it doesn’t budge. Setting my bag on the ground, I reach into the front pocket of my dress and pull out my keys, sliding them into the lock, but they won’t turn. Pulling the key back out, I flip through the other ones on the keyring, wondering if I picked the wrong key, when something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye.
Looking up, I see a piece of paper taped to the inside of the door that I didn’t notice when I came up. In big, bold letters are the words Closed Indefinitely.
“No, no, no . . . ,” I mutter, shoving my key back into the lock and trying again.
I turn the key as hard as I can, until my fingers start to hurt.
Just when I think I have no more tears left, they start pouring from my eyes again as again and again try to turn the lock and yank on the door handle. After a few minutes, I finally realize what this means: The board closed the library. They came in and closed the library and changed the locks, even though I left them a message and told them I was starting to make money to help keep it open. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have called me back. I don’t understand why they’d do this earlier than they said they would. I’ll never walk between the aisles again, running my hands over those books. I’ll never open up a box of deliveries, sticking my head inside and breathing in the scent of new books. I’ll never sit on the floor surrounded by children, watching their eyes light up and listening to their laughter as I read them a story. I’ll never see the excitement on a child’s face the first time they get their very own library card. I knew all of this was a possibility, but I never thought it would actually happen. I never prepared myself to say good-bye to my home for the last nine years because I believed and I had hope that this library would get a happy ending.
Just like with Vincent, I was a fool to believe in something so stupid.
My knees give out and I drop to the ground, crying so hard I can’t breathe. Grabbing my duffle bag and pulling it closer, I reach down inside, feeling around for my phone. When I finally find it, I see that I have five missed calls from Mrs. Potter and three from Vincent.
I already know what Mrs. Potter will say, since she was supposed to open the library for me earlier and must have seen the note on the door. And right now, there’s nothing else I care to hear from Vincent. Swiping my arm across my cheeks, I call the only person I can deal with right now.
* * *
“Wow. You have . . . a lot of stuff,” I tell Ariel as I stand in her living room, looking around at everything.
I always thought it was weird that we’ve never been to her home considering she lives right down the street from Cindy, but now I see why. A lot of stuff was a polite way of saying she could be on an episode of that TV show Hoarders. I knew she used to own an antique store and when she lost the business after her divorce, she had to move everything here. But I thought she’d gotten rid of a lot of her things in the last few months to pay her bills. But she’s got items covering every surface of the room, from the fireplace to the end tables to the floor. She’s also got several pieces of antique furniture, from chests of drawers to Victorian chairs, also all piled with more stuff. There are gilded frames of every shape and size hanging on the walls, and even sitting on the floor and leaning up against the walls. Some of them have old oil paintings in them, and some are just empty frames. There are vases and figurines, typewriters and jewelry boxes, pocket watches and cuckoo clocks. There’s even an old glass-front armoire filled to the brim with old, creepy, porcelain dolls.
I walk over to an old pedestal table shoved into a corner. It’s covered in nothing but teacups of every size, shape, and color, aside from one item that stands out amongst the pretty cups.
Picking it up, I turn around and look at Ariel questioningly.
“Is this an antique?”
Ariel walks over and snatches it out of my hand.
“Yes. It’s a dinglejumper. It was used to comb hair in the sixteenth century.”
When I don’t say anything for several seconds, she rolls her eyes at me.
“It’s a fucking fork. And no, it’s not an antique. I was in the middle of eating lunch when you called crying and snotting all over the place, and in my haste to get to you, I set it down when I ran out of here,” she explains, gingerly stepping around items as she moves through the living room and heads into the kitchen.
I follow behind her, careful not to knock anything over, my eyes growing wider as we get into the kitchen. I’m not as shocked by all of the antiques covering every available surface in here as I am by what else I see.
“You have seven fish tanks.”
“Excellent. You can count,” she replies sarcastically, tossing the fork into the sink.
“They’re . . . very nice fish tanks,” I tell her lamely.
And really, they are very nice. She’s decorated each one with different colored rocks at the bottom and, upon closer inspection, what looks like smaller antique pieces, like brooches and padlocks and random skeleton keys. Each tanks looks to be about ten gallons; they line the entire counter top, with two on the island in the middle of the room. But still. She has seven fish tanks. In her kitchen.
“I have a thing for fish. Stop judging me.”
“I’m not judging you. I just thought you’d told us that you sold a lot of your stuff,” I reply to her softly.
“Are you insane?! This house is practically empty, I’ve sold so many things. And can we stop talking about my shit and move onto your shit? You didn’t do anything on the ride over but cry and mumble about fairy tales being bullshit and how everything sucks.”
My lip starts to quiver, and my eyes fill with tears all over again.
“Son of a bitch. We’re going to need booze for this, aren’t we?”
I just nod my head silently as she reaches above one of her fish tanks, opening a cupboard and pulling out two wine glasses. She moves over to the fridge, pulling a bottle of white wine out, studying me for a few seconds, then reaching back inside and pulling out a second bottle.
Leading me over to her kitchen table, which is covered with stacks of at least ten different antique china sets, she pushes a pile of plates and bowls to the side, setting down the glasses and the wine.
She pours me a glass, and before she even pours her own, I’ve already chugged it. I smack my glass down on the table, pointing for her to add more.
“If you puke on any of my good china, I’m gonna be pissed,” she mumbles, pulling out a chair and taking a seat as I flop down into the chair next to her. “Talk.”
For the next twenty minutes, I tell her everything. From all of the sweet things Vincent said to me over the last few weeks that were all just lies, to the whopper of a lie that he’d been keeping from me this entire time.
“He’s Canadian?!” she shouts when I stop talking, wiping more tears from my cheeks.
“That’s the part you’re most shocked about?”
Ariel shrugs.
“I mean, aren’t Canadians supposed to be super polite? I bet you they wouldn’t even take him back if he doesn’t get a green card. All he’d have to do is growl and glare at them and they’d be like, ‘Nope! You aren’t one of us! Go back to America with all the other rude, annoying people!’”
She laughs at her own joke, and I just pour myself another glass of wine.
“I’m in love with him,” I whisper, staring down into my glass. “I’m in love with a guy who lied to me about everything.”
Ariel sighs, grabbing my wineglass and sliding it away from me.
“That was your first mistake. You should have just kept it about sex
. Love is horseshit and it does nothing but cause people pain. And honestly, how do you know he lied to you about everything? Didn’t he say things changed right after he got you to his house?” she asks.
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on your side, asshole! Believe me, I want to murder him in his sleep for making you cry, but think about this for a minute. He’s rude and annoying, but he doesn’t really strike me as the type of guy to let a woman take over his home, teach him how to be all domestic and cook, who would admit to fucking up his life with another woman so much that he lost his job, and who would be all overprotective and shit and refuse to sleep with you until you were comfortable if he didn’t have real feelings for you. Feelings that go a hell of a lot deeper than what you think. Yes, he lied about the whole green card thing, but put yourself in his shoes. He liked you. He liked you before you even moved in, and after he got to know you more, he was probably scared shitless you would hate him.”
I don’t want what she’s saying to make sense. I don’t want to feel bad for him or second-guess my decision to leave, so I reach over the table and snatch my wineglass back.
“I don’t want to talk anymore. I just want to get drunk. Really, really drunk.”
Like a good friend, Ariel doesn’t say another word. She keeps my wineglass filled and even runs to the store when I drink it all and demand more.
When she helps me walk into her spare bedroom, removing thirteen antique wedding dresses from the bed and tossing them onto a chair in the corner, she doesn’t say anything stupid and cliché like everything will look better tomorrow.
I lost my belief in happily ever after and a new day won’t make that better.
Just like the library, my heart is officially closed indefinitely.
Chapter 32: We’re Storming the Castle
“Did you know it’s no easier to tell if a stranger is lying than if your partner is? Researchers from the University of California gathered statistics from 253 trials on lying and found we have only a fifty-fifty chance of distinguishing people who lied from those telling the truth,” I tell the man who’s lap I’m straddling as I swivel my hips to the music.
He nods his head and smiles up at me, not saying a word as he gently rests his hands on my hips.
I stop moving, quickly remove his hands, then resume my lap dance, resting my own hands on his shoulders.
“Every thirteen seconds a couple in the U.S. files for divorce. And did you know heartbreak can actually make you sick? Our brain releases stress hormones, which can weaken our immune system and leave our bodies more susceptible to illness,” I inform him as I slide off his lap to stand between his spread legs.
“That’s . . . interesting,” he mutters, watching me run my hands over my breasts and down my sides as I move sensually to the music.
“It’s also a true fact that your heart can literally break. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, known as broken heart syndrome, is typically caused by emotional or physical stress. Hormones create a stunning effect on the heart muscles, which can cause temporary dysfunction, much like a heart attack.”
I hear a throat clear from the corner of the room and shake my head to stop all the depressing thoughts that won’t quit running through it, doing my best to put on a smile and finish the show. When the song comes to an end I look around the room, grateful that I’m now finished giving a lap dance to everyone who wanted one.
I say a quick thank you to the groom-to-be and apologize for my gloomy facts tonight, and the men all move into the kitchen to continue their drunken bachelor party. I head over to the far corner of the living room.
“You can turn around now.”
“Are you dressed yet?” PJ asks, his nose buried in the corner and his arms crossed in front of him.
I sigh heavily.
“I’m wearing a bra and underwear, I’m not naked.”
“You’re not dressed yet, and I’m not turning around until you are. Beast will cut off my limbs and eat them for dinner,” he mutters.
“I assure you, he would not,” I tell him with a roll of my eyes.
I grab my grey cotton dress from the bag by PJ’s feet and quickly pull it over my head.
“I’m decent. You can pull your face away from the wall now.”
PJ slowly turns his head, squinting his eyes. He studies me through the slits for a few seconds, and when he’s satisfied, he finally turns around to face me.
“Look, I get that you’re pissed at the guy, and you have every right to be. But it’s been a week, Belle. Are you ever going to talk to him again?” PJ asks, grabbing my bag from the floor and carrying it out of the room as I follow behind him.
Believe me, I know exactly how long it’s been since the last time I saw or spoke to Vincent. I feel it every day, every minute, and every second, like a knife to the heart. As much as I didn’t want to let what Ariel said get to me, it did. It’s all I’ve thought about every day since then, as I moped around her mess of a house and numbly danced at party after party each night.
PJ leads me out of the house and to his truck parked in the driveway. He doesn’t speak again until we’re halfway back to Ariel’s house.
“He should have told you the truth, and he knows that. He feels like absolute shit for lying to you, but you have to know, that’s the only thing he kept from you. Everything else he said to you was the truth.”
“Well, that’s a pretty big fucking thing to lie about, don’t you think?” I snap in annoyance.
“Yes. It absolutely was. But I’ve never seen him like this, Belle. Not even when that bitch Kayla broke his heart. Back then, he was just pissed. Now, he’s . . .”
I hold my breath, waiting for PJ to continue.
He lets out a loud sigh, glancing over at me when he comes to a stop sign.
“Now, he’s just blah.”
I look at him in confusion.
“Blah? What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means blah!” PJ replies in frustration. “He’s not pissed, he’s not sad, he’s just . . . nothing. He doesn’t give a shit about anything. He comes to work and he does his job, but he doesn’t care. Eric and I went over to his house a couple of nights ago for an intervention, and he just sat in his library, staring at the shelves, not saying a word. He’s hurting.”
“You don’t think I’m hurting too? He broke my heart, PJ. I trusted him and he broke that trust,” I remind him, swallowing back the lump in my throat.
I finally managed to go one full day without crying and I’m not about to start again now or I’ll never stop. He used me, plain and simple. Sure, maybe somewhere along the way he really did start to like me, but he still asked me to move in with him under false pretenses, and he let something develop between us, something I thought was real and good and amazing. But it was all built on one big lie because he needed something from me.
“One of the best things about you is that you believe in fairy tales. You believe in love and happily ever after. At least, you used to. There’s no reason for you not to believe again. He can give all of those things to you if you just let him,” PJ tells me softly. “People make mistakes. Sometimes people make big mistakes. You don’t really seem like the type of person who would hold a grudge and never forgive someone. Especially someone who changed everything about himself for you. Who was screwed over by a woman once before and yet still took a chance on you, believing that you wouldn’t do the same thing. Look at everything you’ve done with your life these last few months. You moved out on your own, you successfully started a stripping business with new friends, you found a guy who was real and wasn’t just part of a story in a book. You took chances. You took risks. Take it from me, there’s nothing more rewarding than the risk of falling in love. Sometimes you hit a few roadblocks along the way, but it’s always worth it in the end.”
I don’t say another word to PJ as he drives me the rest of the way to Ariel’s house, aside from thanking him for being my bodyguard for the night. Maybe what he sai
d was true, but if it was, why hasn’t Vincent tried to contact me? Aside from the couple of missed calls the day I left, he hasn’t called again. If he’s hurting so much and feels so blah, why hasn’t he tried to tell me that himself? I know I’m not the type of woman who never forgives someone or who holds a grudge forever. And even though I’ll deny it to anyone who asks, a part of me still wants that happy ending. A piece of me still hopes for it and wishes for it. But you can’t exactly have a happy ending when the man who can give it to you doesn’t even want to try.
Crawling under the covers in Ariel’s spare bedroom after washing off my performance makeup and changing into comfortable pajamas, I spend the night tossing and turning, PJ’s words refusing to go away or let me sleep.
* * *
The bright sun shining through the window wakes me up entirely too early, considering I didn’t manage to fall asleep until an hour or two before dawn.
Rolling over with a groan, I grab my phone from the nightstand and dial my dad’s number, thinking that after everything I’ve lost recently, at least I still have him, and hopefully he’ll want to go to breakfast with me and cheer me up.
“Can’t talk right now, Belle,” my father answers without a greeting. “Little busy here.”
So much for that idea.
I hear a woman shouting in the background and quickly sit up in bed.
“Is that Ariel? Why are you with Ariel?” I question, flinging the covers off, racing out of the room and across the hall to Ariel’s room, which is empty.
“Your friends are a delight!” my father announces happily. “I’m sorry I misjudged them. I’m sorry I misjudged you, ladies!”
“We forgive you! Step on it, Silver Fox! We’ve got shit to do!”
“Is that Cindy too? Dad! What are you guys doing?”