We busied ourselves with our food for a minute, avoiding each other’s eyes. I pushed a potato skin around on my plate, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.
“Did you meet her at Mod’s Christmas party?” I asked finally. I really wasn’t hungry. Tom looked up, surprised, his mouth full. “Estella,” I clarified. “Estella Marrone. Did you meet her at the Christmas party?” He looked down and then back at me. He chewed thoughtfully, swallowing loudly.
“Yes,” he said simply, not sounding nearly as guilty as he should have. “How do you know her name?”
“She left her purse in the apartment,” I said. “And her sister came to get it.” Anger welled inside me. “Her sister is Sidra DeSimon, you know. The fashion director at Mod. You were sleeping with the sister of one of my coworkers.” I expected his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise, but he nodded and looked guilty.
“I know,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“You knew?” I was incredulous. “You knew I worked with her sister?”
“Not right away,” he said quickly. “But yeah, I knew. Not at the beginning, though. I didn’t do it on purpose. What a coincidence, right?” He laughed uneasily.
“How is it a coincidence if you met her at my Christmas party?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Well, there were lots of people there you didn’t know,” he said sheepishly. “How was I supposed to know you knew her sister?”
I looked miserably around the table. I was no longer hungry. I swallowed again.
“I am so, so sorry,” Tom said again. “If I could change things, I would.”
“You’d change that I caught you?” I asked bitterly.
“No,” Tom said solemnly. “I deserved that. I’d change the fact that it happened in the first place. I had no right. Look what I’ve thrown away.” He looked as miserable as I felt.
“Oh,” I said finally, because I sensed he was waiting for a response. I didn’t have anything else to say. We sat in silence for another moment, but this time there were no menus to distract us. We had only each other and the uncomfortable wall that stood between us.
The waitress came and cleared away our appetizer. I’d barely touched it. A moment later, a server whisked in with our entrees. I avoided Tom’s eye as I started to pick listlessly at my salad.
“Can I ask you something?” Tom said finally. I looked up, surprised.
“Okay.” Was he going to ask me to take him back? Ask me to forgive him?
“Are you . . .” He paused and his eyes flicked down at the table and back to me. “Are you sleeping with Cole Brannon?”
I just looked at him for a minute.
“No!” I answered, appalled. “Did Estella,” I spat her name, “tell you that?” He paused again and nodded.
“She said her sister Sidra caught you in our apartment,” he said finally.
“My apartment,” I amended, just to be difficult.
I didn’t know what to say. I certainly couldn’t explain to Tom how pathetic I’d been that night, getting drunk and vomiting on a movie star—all because of him. He didn’t need to know he had that kind of power over me. I fixed him with a glare.
“Nothing happened,” I said stiffly. “It was a work thing.” Tom looked at me for a moment and nodded, seeming to accept the explanation.
“Okay,” he said. “I believe you.” I simmered silently for a minute, then changed the subject.
“So are you still with her?” I demanded. Tom looked surprised and shook his head.
“No,” he said solemnly. “No, Claire, I’m not. You’re the only one in my heart. You always have been. I just didn’t know how to appreciate it before.”
It scared me that the words didn’t repulse me. They sent a flush of warmth shooting through my body. I tried to fight it.
“You still have some things in the apartment,” I said icily.
“Do you really want me to move my things out?” he asked softly. I held my breath. Was he asking me to say he could stay? My response was put on hold as our waitress came to refill my Coke and deliver another beer to Tom. She set down our check, and Tom handed her his credit card.
“Claire,” Tom began after the waitress was gone. He again reached for my hand. “I love you so much. I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you. And I can never express to you how sorry I am for what I’ve done.”
My eyes filled with tears, and again, I blinked them back. My heart pounded as we looked into each other’s eyes. This was one of those moments you see in Hugh Grant movies. I could practically hear the violin-laced soundtrack. “I don’t expect you to forgive me right away. Maybe you’ll never be able to. But I want to try, Claire. I want to try.” I was about to speak when our waitress interrupted us, wrenching my tear-filled eyes away from Tom and his heartfelt message.
“Excuse me,” she said, shifting from foot to foot. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But, sir, your card didn’t go through. Do you have another one?” Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He rifled quickly through and looked up at the waitress.
“Gosh, how embarrassing. No, I don’t.” He looked at me. “Claire? I’m so sorry. Can you get this meal? I’ll get the next one?” I swallowed the lump of resentment that had risen suddenly in my throat and nodded. I reached for my wallet and gave the waitress my Visa. She smiled tightly and walked away.
“I’m so sorry, Claire,” Tom said, reaching for my hand again. “I thought I had paid the balance off, but it must not have been processed yet. I feel like such a jerk.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said tightly, telling myself that he couldn’t possibly have done it on purpose. Not when he was about to ask me to take him back. Not while he was in the middle of declaring his love for me. I brushed the thought away and reached for his hand. “You were saying?”
“Right,” said Tom. He squeezed my hand and cleared his throat. “Claire, I love you more than anything in the world, and I want to work things out with you. I really do.”
“Me too,” I said softly. I hadn’t intended to admit that to him or even to myself. I hadn’t known for sure that I’d felt that way until the words were out of my mouth. Had I gone too far? But my heart was pounding, and I knew as I looked at him that I could forgive him. Things could change between us. I still loved him. And now I knew he still loved me. I should have hated him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t.
“But I know it will take some time,” Tom said slowly. “I don’t expect things to be back to normal right away.”
“Right,” I said softly, astonished that he realized on his own that things couldn’t go back to being the way they had been. Just then the waitress returned with my credit card, two copies of the receipt, and a full glass of Coke for me. I signed the receipt, put my card away, and took a small sip. Tom took my hand again.
“So I was wondering . . .” Tom paused and tilted his head to the side imploringly. I leaned forward eagerly. This was it. He was going to beg me to take him back. “I was wondering if maybe you could loan me some money for a while. Since you threw me out and all. Then we can have some time apart and maybe try to work things out, you know?”
Everything inside me went cold, and I drew my hand away. I stared at him. He was still looking at me imploringly, an innocent expression on his face.
Suddenly I wanted to reach out and strangle him. Surely it would be justifiable homicide. Any jury would understand.
“You want to borrow money from me?” I asked very slowly, staring at him. Tom shrugged.
“Just a few thousand. To get on my feet, you know.”
“Just a few thousand,” I repeated flatly. Everything inside me had turned to ice.
I looked down at the receipt for the meal I’d just paid for. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been so stupid. I’d bought everything he’d said. I’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
Again.
“Yeah,” he said. I glared at him with the most intense anger I’d ever felt. “You know,” he
said, smiling at me with a sappiness that was so obviously fake. “I heard you got a raise at work. I don’t think we should move back in together right away. That might put too much pressure on us. I want you back, and I want to do it right. And since you threw me out and all . . .” He paused and gave an encouraging smile.
“So you want a few thousand dollars,” I said flatly.
He shrugged.
“Give or take,” he said casually.
He winked at me, and suddenly I detested him. I had come here prepared to listen to his explanation and maybe even to reconcile. He had come to try and trick me into giving him a check. I felt physically ill. He pressed on.
“I just want to make things right between us,” he said with a half smile.
I stared at him for a long time, then I smiled at him slowly.
“You know what?” I said. I suddenly felt calm. “I’ve been thinking about it. And I want to make things right between us too.”
“Really?” he asked hopefully.
“Oh, yes.” I stood up from the table. In one smooth motion, I picked up my full glass of Coke and flung it into Tom’s face, drenching him in a shower of sticky coldness.
He jumped up, his chair clattering to the floor behind him. Around us, people stopped eating and stared, but I hardly noticed.
“What the hell?” Tom demanded furiously, holding his arms out to his side and shaking the soda off. His face dripped with beads of brown liquid, and his hair was drenched. He looked like a drowned rat. A pathetic, hairy, repulsive drowned rat. I smiled.
“I thought you wanted to make things right between us,” I calmly repeated. I shrugged and grinned as he glared at me. “Well, that was a start.”
Still smiling, I turned on my heel and marched out of the restaurant, my head held high. I’d been foolish to think anything good could ever happen between us again. I knew that now, and I knew I wouldn’t turn back.
“You go, girl!” a woman murmured to me as I stormed out of the dining room.
“Thanks,” I said as I kept walking. “I will.”
The Sexy Siren
Wendy took me out that weekend, and for the first time since last Saturday—maybe even for the first time in a year—I finally felt like things were okay. I didn’t need Tom. I didn’t need anyone who would treat me like that. And as Wendy’s blossoming romance with Jean Michel proved, you never knew when you were going to run into Mr. Right.
Or at least Mr. Right Now. Heck, at this point, I would have settled for Mr. Maybe, or even Mr. Slim Chance if he actually showed me some attention. But no such luck.
On Sunday, Wendy came over and helped me clean out the closet. Everything that belonged to Tom was thrown in big green garbage bags. Then, on second thought, we went through the bags and pulled out all the items I’d purchased for Tom the times we’d gone shopping and his credit card hadn’t gone through. All the shirts I’d bought to surprise him, the ties I’d bought because I was thinking of him, the stain-resistant Van Heusen khakis I’d bought because I was sick of scrubbing ink stains out of his pants before trudging them off to the laundromat. By the time we extracted the clothes I’d bought for him, mounds of shirts, socks, boxers, pants, and ties lay strewn across my living room floor.
Wendy grinned.
“What do you want to do with them?” she asked. I smiled. It wasn’t like they belonged to him. He’d gotten them under false pretenses, while pretending to be a faithful, sensitive boyfriend. Which he obviously was not.
“I can think of a few things,” I muttered. We settled on hacking a few of the ties into satisfying little pieces with a pair of scissors, then we bagged up the rest of the clothing to take to Goodwill. As for the clothes Tom had actually purchased for himself, we put them in a heap outside my apartment, and Wendy called to leave a message on his cell phone.
“Your clothes are on Claire’s doorstep, and they’ll be there only until ten o’clock tonight,” she chirped. “If you want them, you’ll have to come get them before then.” After she hung up the phone, she turned to me. “You don’t need to sit around waiting, wondering when he’ll show up. If he doesn’t come tonight, those clothes go in the incinerator.”
Wendy called a locksmith who came quickly and changed my locks. He gave me new keys, and Wendy pressed my old key into my palm.
“Throw it in a fountain or something,” she said. “Maybe it’ll bring you good luck.” It couldn’t hurt, I had to admit. It would be hard for my luck to get much worse.
We set off for Goodwill, each of us hauling a plastic bag full of things I’d bought for Tom. After we dropped them off, Wendy insisted on treating me to dinner, to celebrate getting rid of Tom once and for all. We took the subway uptown and made a quick trip to Rockefeller Center, so I could throw my old key into the fountain. There it settled, alongside mounds of pennies carrying wishes from their previous owners.
“What did you wish for?” Wendy asked me as we walked away.
“I can’t tell you, or it won’t come true,” I said playfully. But I had wished that I would never again settle for someone who didn’t treat me like I deserved to be treated.
Oh, and I added a wish to have sex again sometime before I hit thirty. After all, a key is bigger than a penny. I figure I was owed at least two wishes.
Over dinner (which Wendy paid for on a credit card that didn’t bounce), we laughed and talked, and toasted freedom and self-respect. Cute waiters smiled at me, and I noticed. They smiled at Wendy, and she seemed genuinely oblivious.
How the tables had turned.
Back at my apartment, the doorstep was bare. Tom had come to get his things. Relief swept through me. I didn’t owe him another phone call, another encounter, another smidgen of contact in any form.
“To Tom being gone forever,” Wendy said triumphantly, popping the cork in a bottle of champagne we had picked up on the way home.
“I’ll toast to that!” I said, raising my glass. “And to my apartment being my apartment again.”
“Well, I was meaning to talk to you about that,” Wendy said, cocking her head to the side and smiling at me. “Now that Jean Michel and I are officially dating, I won’t be eating out quite as much, and I have the feeling I’ll have a bit more money for rent. I was wondering if you might be interested in a new roommate?”
“Oh my gosh, yes!” I exclaimed, setting my champagne flute down and hugging her. She hugged me back, and we both laughed and jumped up and down with excitement. “Really? I would love for you to move in! I can’t believe it! Do you mean it? We can turn the office into your bedroom.”
“Really? You sure you want a roommate?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” We toasted again.
After Wendy had gone home for the night, I drifted happily into a dreamless sleep.
*
The phone rang on Tuesday morning at 6:45, jarring me out of the first pleasant sleep I’d had in months. My first thought was that if it was Tom again, I’d kill him. What was with this new trend of shaking me out of bed at the crack of dawn? I was not a morning person.
I grumpily answered the phone and was surprised to hear not Tom’s voice, but my mother’s.
“How dare you?” she demanded, without even a hello. I sat up in confusion and rubbed my eyes. I looked at the clock again, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined the time. Nope, it was now 6:46 a.m. I cleared my throat.
“Um, good morning,” I said sleepily.
“I can’t believe you’d embarrass me like this, young lady,” my mother said immediately. “I am just stunned at your behavior.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it for a moment. Then I put it back to my ear. I couldn’t imagine what was going on.
“What are you talking about?” I asked finally.
“Don’t play innocent with me,” my mother said angrily. I took a deep breath, scanning my brain for any offending activities I might have taken part in, but I came up blank.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking ab
out,” I said finally.
“Your aunt Cecilia just called me,” my mother said slowly, her voice icy. “She was on her way to work when she saw a copy of that horrible tabloid Tattletale. How dare you embarrass me that way?”
My heart was suddenly pounding although I still had no idea what she was talking about. But I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was a vision of a smug, smirking Sidra DeSimon.
“What was in Tattletale?” I asked slowly. This couldn’t be good.
“Oh, I think you know,” my mother said coldly. “If you want to shack up with a movie star, that’s just fine with me. But when you tarnish our good family name by being splashed across the cover of a tabloid magazine as Cole Brannon’s sex toy, that is unforgivable. I did not raise you to be a slut.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
A sex toy?
Cole Brannon’s sex toy?
“Mom, I never did anything with him,” I finally squeaked through a closed throat. My palms were sweaty, my mouth dry. “I swear. Are you sure it was me? Was Cecilia sure?”
“She’s sure,” my mother said, her voice icy. “You’re right on the cover, Claire. How am I supposed to live that down? What am I supposed to say when your eighty-five-year-old grandmother sees you on the cover of a tabloid, looking like a cheap hooker?”
“Oh my God,” I murmured, too stunned to respond to the fact that my own mother was accusing me of looking like a hooker. My heart was racing. I finally spoke. “This is all a big mix-up, Mom, I swear. I interviewed Cole Brannon, but that’s it. Tattletale is a tabloid, Mom. It’s not real news. You can’t believe everything they print.”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Claire,” my mother said after a moment’s pause. “You’re clearly not the same young lady I raised.”
Her words stung. I took a deep breath and tried again.
“Mom, none of this is true,” I said. “You have to believe me.”
“I am so disappointed in you,” she said coldly. Then she hung up without waiting for a response. I sat there stunned for a moment, holding the phone to my ear until the dial tone snapped me into action.