My eyes water, and suddenly I grab the cards and start tearing them up, one by one. Then I lie with all the notes scattered around me and cry a little. Then I look at the scattered mess. What did I just do? Oh god.
If I want to save the magazine, I need to deliver something.
I breathe in and out.
“Rachel?” I hear Gina call.
She peers inside and scans the mess of torn note cards, and then me. As broken as the paper around me.
“Oh, Rachel.”
I start crying.
“I need to write it.”
“Rachel, tell him the truth. Tell him the truth. If he knows you well at all, he’ll understand.”
“What? That I’m a liar?”
“Tell him you love him,” she says.
“He doesn’t want my love. He values . . . truth and honesty, qualities I don’t possess.”
“You possess them in spades. You’re loyal and honest with everyone.”
“But not with him.”
“From the moment you talk to him and come clean, you will be. Make him see it from your eyes. Maybe you can have it all.”
“Whoever gets it all, Gina? Nobody. Nobody, that’s who.”
“But yet we all believe that we can. Isn’t that the point of everything we do? We want it all. So write this piece. And if you still want him, then you should go get him.”
I pause. “I do want him,” I whisper, wiping my wet face with the back of my hand. “It’s a million tiny things that, added up, tell me there is no one in this world, ever, who will have this spectacular effect on me but him. Sometimes I just can’t see myself when we’re together, I’m so lost in him.” I wipe my eyes. “He’s the only man I dream about at night, and the only man I want to wake up next to in the morning. Everyone is after his fame or his money, but I love him not because of anything he has but because he has me. . . .”
“Oh, Rache. Don’t cry. Maybe there’s hope for you two.”
“How can there be? He doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
“He’s fucking hurting, Rachel! Even I can tell, because there’s not one picture of him without fucking shades to cover his eyes. There must be hell in those eyes, Rachel. I can’t believe I actually feel bad for him now.”
“Because I was the Paul in our relationship. I was the liar.”
“Paul played me. You never played him. Your feelings were real.”
I groan and bury my face in my hands. I remember how Helen warned me from the beginning. That I was too young, playing with adults. I hadn’t seen all of this coming. She was right. I was not ready for this at all.
But I take the Kleenex Gina passes, wipe my tears, connect my laptop, boot it up, and write my heart out.
The day I turn it in, Helen tells me that the Edge email servers are bursting with hate mail for me, and she advises me to take the week to work from home.
The day it’s published, I don’t get out of bed. I don’t answer my phone. My mother stops by, but she ends up chatting with Gina because I don’t want her to see me like this; I’m too sad to fake it today, and she knows me so well. She tells me before she leaves, “I’m going to go paint.”
She’s telling me I should do the same. She’s telling me I’m free to go out there and do something I love.
But what I love hates me.
Twitter:
Did you read your girlfriend’s article? @malcolmsaint
On his Instagram:
No way @malcolmsaint would give that bitch a second chance!!
And the feminist groups online:
Rachel Livingston, our hero! Revenge on the playboys! Want to play with our hearts? Beware the time you will find your own weakness. Revenge is sweet!
Later that week I find enough energy to get out of bed and go to work, and I’m immediately called into Helen’s office.
There’s tension between us. Helen was not happy when I sent over the article. She said, “It’s not what I asked for.”
“No,” I concurred.
Helen took it and printed it anyway.
Today, I’m surprised that she seems pleased to see me, genuinely pleased. “It’s a circus out there,” Helen tells me, waving me forward from behind her cluttered desk.
“I’m not online. Can you blame me?”
“No. But let me fill you in.” She signs to a chair across from her desk, but I remain standing. “Your boyfriend,” she begins with obvious glee, “pulled Vicky’s piece. It can’t be reposted without legal repercussions now.” She eyes me with a new gleam of respect and admiration, and adds, “In case you lost me when I said ‘your boyfriend’ ”—she laughs happily—“Malcolm Saint canned any print editions of Victoria’s post—and it was removed from the blog.” She nods ever so slowly and somberly.
My eyes widen. “What?” I finally speak.
“Victoria’s article. Your boyfriend owns the rights. It can’t be published anymore—not without his say-so.”
“What? How?”
She shrugs, then leans back in her chair with a little creak of the wheels. “Seems like Saint doesn’t want it out there.”
Ohmigod, he made Victoria’s story go away? “If he canned Victoria’s, why not ours? Why didn’t he can mine?” Why didn’t he read mine?!
My heart is in a fist in my chest and so are my lungs.
“Guess he doesn’t hate you that much.” She shrugs casually, but stops herself when she seems to notice—finally notice—that I’m crushed. That my hair is a mess, my face is a mess, I’m a mess. “Maybe he does like you, Rachel,” she says softly. “I’m impressed, did you know? I’m not the only one who’s impressed. The world is impressed too. He hasn’t been seen . . . consorting with you-know-what types.” She taps a pencil absently on her desk, her eyes narrowed on me. “But he’s been skydiving daily. You’d think he has a death wish or has some serious mojo to get out of his system.”
I hardly hear her. I need to get away. From Edge, from her, from this office. “Is it all right if I work from home today, Helen?”
Though I sense her reluctance, she agrees. I go get my things from my desk, aching to my bones.
Saint skydiving.
Saint buying Victoria’s article.
Saint thinking I betrayed him.
Outside that afternoon, I stop when Edge stares back at me from a newsstand, one copy remaining on this side, a few on the other.
“You read that yet?” The man behind the newsstand whistles and laughs. “That reporter’s got her panties in a twist over the guy.”
I lift my head, prepared to scream at the man. Instead, I scan the picture of Saint that Helen used on the cover—those icy green eyes staring back at me. And yes, this man is right. I do have my panties in a twist over Saint. Not just my panties—my entire body. My entire life.
I miss him like nobody’s business.
I want to kiss him.
I want to squeeze him. With my arms. And my thighs. With my whole body until I BREAK or he breaks me, and that’s just fine, as long as he comes after me.
“Smart woman,” I finally whisper, emotion thickening my voice. “I think I’ll take him home with me.”
I buy the copy just because of Malcolm’s picture. Sharp tie, perfect collar, and that thick-lashed gaze, screaming to be warmed, that gets me. It’s a marvel how those eyes of green ice can so easily melt me.
I sit down on a bench with the magazine on my lap, brushing my fingertips over his eyes, wondering for the thousandth time if he will ever read what I wrote to him.
30
AFTER THE STORM
It’s over.
There wasn’t rain or thunder when we ended. We just ended like we began. There were no flashes of illumination that told me I would fall in love, that I would meet the one man who would challenge me, drive me crazy. Now it’s ended, my project done. Completed.
My mornings have returned to normal. I still have brunch with my friends on the weekends. I still visit Mom on Sundays. My wo
rld is back to ordinary, almost the same as it was before I wrote the exposé. I hadn’t realized how bleak it was. I’m afraid I will pick up the paper and there he will be . . . with someone. Or with three.
The crying spells are bad. You go out and accidentally smell wine and oops, snivel. And don’t talk to me about elephants, that takes me to a whole new level of despair. But the fear is gone. You were afraid of going out and suddenly you’re right there, daring the universe to take that from you or pleading with it to give you an excuse to feel like shit today. Gina passes me the Kleenex.
Some of my coworkers . . . some of them envy me.
“I wish I’d been asked to go after Malcolm Saint,” Sandy, my coworker, tells me because of the positions I’m being offered, but most importantly because “being paraded around in a yacht and being pursued like that . . .” she says dreamily.
“Fess up, was the sex phenomenal?” Valentine asks.
I think they’re trying to cheer me up . . . but I’m uncheerable.
I still stalk his Twitter feed. I can’t help stalking him, wanting to know how he is. Though the social media around him has been more active than ever, Saint himself has been . . . quiet.
He’s been asked about me—by reporters on live TV, and online. He says “no comment” or ignores the online jabs. Just like he’s ignoring me.
“It wasn’t going to last,” Gina assures me when she notices I’m mopey. “It was a hookup. He’s a womanizer to the next level.”
But it kills me that I’ll never know. I’ll never know if all the times he said I was his girl, he meant to keep me.
I have all these unsent emails addressed to Saint, and very little courage to do anything with them when I know that I don’t deserve for him to give me the time of day.
To: Malcolm Saint (Drafts)
Status: unsent
I have a thousand and one emails just like this that I won’t send either. I just needed to write to you.
Please forgive me
Do you think about me at all?
Dibs on your mouth and dibs on your eyes and dibs on your hands and dibs on your heart. Even your stubbornness cause I deserve it. Even your anger. I want it all. Dibs on my man. See #Iamsogreedytoo !!!!
Gina tells me that if she could survive heartbreak, I can survive breaking my own heart.
“Baby, I know it hurts. When I found out about Paul, I wanted a meteor to fall on my head so I could go numb inside a coffin.”
“God, Gina, I know. I just want a chance.”
I stare out the window this morning at the street. No more shiny Rolls-Royce waiting outside on Saturday mornings to take me “anywhere.”
Is it funny, though? That I keep waiting to see it? That I wake up with hope every day? For a text, a message, a call, the car, a glimmer of a chance?
Stop being so hopeful, Rachel . . . he would have read it by now.
Maybe he did and he just doesn’t care to let you know what he thought of it.
I found out so many things about him during all the time we spent together, but I didn’t really find out if he could come to love me. If he’ll be too proud to ever forgive me. If he’ll seek to ease the pain of my betrayal with other women, or if he’ll shut himself off, like I’m doing. I found out dozens of things about him, but not the dozen ones that could give me any kind of comfort right now.
We saved an elephant together, he took up my fight for a safer city, but all I physically have to remind me of my time with him is his shirt.
His shirt, which sits like a priceless trophy folded away in plastic, inside a box, in the deepest part of my closet, because I can hardly bear to see it now. I can’t bear to wear it now. But sometimes when the melancholy hits, I go into my closet and pull it out, stark white and large, completely male against my frilly items, and still with his scent clinging to its collar. Self-pity washes over me on those days, and it takes one second, two, three, and then I think of him, and so I take four. Four seconds before I let myself breathe again.
EXPOSING MALCOLM SAINT
By R. Livingston
I’m going to tell you a story. A story that managed to pull me apart completely. A story that brought me back to life. A story that has made me cry, laugh, scream, smile, and then cry again. A story I keep telling to myself over and over and over until I have memorized every smile, every word, every thought. A story that I hope to keep with me forever.
The story begins with this very article. It was a regular morning at Edge. A morning that would bring me a big opportunity: to write an exposé on Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan Saint. He’s a man who needs no introduction. Billionaire playboy, beloved womanizer, a source of many speculations. This article would open doors for me, gain a young hungry reporter a voice.
I dove in, managing to get an interview with Malcolm Saint to discuss Interface (his incredible new Facebook-killer) and its immediate rise to popularity. As obsessed as the city has been with his persona for years, I considered myself lucky to be in this position.
I was so focused on revealing Malcolm Saint that I let my guard down, unaware that every time he opened up, he was actually revealing me to me. Things I had never wanted were suddenly all I wanted. I was determined to find out more about this man. This mystery. Why was he so closed off? Why was nothing ever enough for him? I soon discovered he was not a man of many words, but rather a man of the right words. A man of action. I told myself that every inch of information I hunted was for this article, but the knowledge I craved was actually about myself.
I wanted to know everything. I wanted to breathe him. Live him.
But most unexpectedly of all, Saint began to pursue me. Genuinely. Wholeheartedly. And relentlessly. I could not believe that he would be truly interested in me. I had never been pursued like this, intrigued like this. I had never felt so connected to something—someone.
I never expected my story to change, but it did. Stories tend to do that; you go out searching for something and come back with something different. I wasn’t looking to fall in love, I wasn’t looking to lose my mind and common sense over the most beautiful green eyes I have ever seen, I wasn’t looking to drive myself crazy with lust. But I ended up finding a little piece of my soul, a little piece that isn’t really that small at all: it’s over six feet tall, with shoulders about a yard wide, hands more than twice the size of mine, green eyes, dark hair, and it is smart, ambitious, kind, generous, powerful, sexy, and has consumed me completely.
I regret lying, both to myself and to him; I regret not having the experience to recognize what I was feeling the moment I felt it. I regret not savoring each second I had with him more, because I value those seconds more than anything.
However, I don’t regret this story. His story. My story. Our story.
I’d do it all again for another moment with him. I’d do it all again with him. I’d leap blindly into the air if only there were even a 0.01 percent chance that he’d still be there, waiting to catch me.
31
FOUR
Saturday.
The fourth one since.
There are still dozens of messages in my drafts folder that I won’t ever send to him.
I’ve still, more than ever, been living in the land of “what could’ve been” and trust me, this is a very sad place to live in. In the zip code of the lost, you breathe in regret with every breath, sadness permeating every space in which your body stands.
Of all the things that drive people to change, it is despair and sorrow that cause it most of all.
Sadness is so disempowering. Anger, on the other hand, demands action and empowerment. But I can’t get angry when it was me who put myself right where I’m standing.
I’ve spent weekends at the window of my apartment, trying to make myself want to go outside and not really feeling like it.
Never let anyone tell you that your life will return to normal after a hurricane.
I’ve got folders and folders with pics I can’t open.
A number I ca
n’t dial.
A shirt I can’t wear.
A name I can’t say out loud.
The memory of a pair of eyes that will haunt me forever.
I live in fear of never seeing those eyes again. And in even more fear of what I’ll see in them if I do . . .
Helen had complained it was not what she had wanted.
She’d said it was “a love letter to Saint.”
But we all know stories are like that. Stories change. Just like people change. We change when we suffer, when we take, when we give, when we love. When you lose the object of your love, your normal will be perennially changed; there’s no returning to the old anymore. You have to rebuild stronger walls, change your expectations, and wait for the sunlight.
There’s nothing like a sunrise in Chicago, the orange-gold light shimmering over the buildings’ mirrored windows. I’ve watched the sunrises and the sunsets and I’ve watched it rain from this very window. I’ve watched Gina go out, and I’ve watched the cars drive by, not really focused on what colors they are, only that none of those cars belong to him.
My laptop hums nearby. Gina went out to lunch with Wynn, but I still can’t seem to work up the enthusiasm.
I’m trying to work on a new story. A story with good stuff. Stuff about people. Loss. And hope. And . . . forgiveness. I’m pouring tea for myself when my phone vibrates. The number is unlisted.
I stop and set my cup aside, then answer.
“Miss Livingston, this is Catherine Ulysses.”
I pause.
Saint’s assistant.
“Are you there?”
My heart. My heart is going to literally leap out of my chest.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“He’d like to see you in his office.”
I close my eyes.
“Should I tell him you declined?”
“NO! I . . . at what time? I’ll be there.” My fingers tremble as I write down the time and start nervously scribbling when I hang up.
The world tilts a little when I force myself to lower the pen. I stare at the hour. The date. The question mark. The heart. And the name Malcolm, I wrote, with all of that.