Because you know deep down inside that you made the wrong choice.
That last one stuck with me. So much so that I had to take pause and think about it. I stared down at the beer in my hand and then up at the crowd in the bar. It had nearly doubled since I'd first arrived. Men were talking, women were laughing, music was playing. I knew how loud the noise in the room must have been, but I couldn't hear a thing.
Suddenly, my surroundings reminded me of an old silent movie. Mouths moving but nothing coming out.
Fine, I eventually yielded to my other half. If that's Jamie calling, I'll walk out of here right now. I'll leave and never look back. But if it's not . . .
I didn't finish the thought. I didn't have to. That rational, highly outspoken part of me got the point. And it quietly succumbed to the acceptable compromise.
The noise in the room came back with sudden force. My phone had already stopped vibrating, and as I slid my bag over my shoulder, I could feel the subsequent single vibration alerting me to a new voicemail. I scooted off the bar stool and hurried back into the lobby. If it was Jamie, I wanted to be somewhere quiet enough to hear his message.
And you'll want to be closer to the exit.
The contrast of the crowded bar and the relatively calmer lobby was severe. And I welcomed its tranquillity. The hordes of people had started to make me feel claustrophobic.
I took a deep breath and slid my purse off my shoulder, feeling in its straps the weight of the bargain I had just made. If it was Jamie who had called, this night would be over before it even began. And I would have to tell Julie Bleeker that I wouldn't be able to help her after all.
But if it wasn't him, I would walk back into that bar and continue on with no regrets.
With an audible exhale, I unzipped the bag and pulled out the phone, knowing that whatever name was displayed on that list of missed calls would send my heart into palpitations.
I sucked in a breath and peered at the screen. Just as I expected, my heart started pounding.
But not because I had to leave . . . because I had to stay. And my mind could no longer put forth halfway convincing arguments to persuade me otherwise. It had lost the bet, and now all was deathly quiet.
The screen of my iPhone was small, but seeing my dad's name displayed on it made it feel bigger than the JumboTron at Dodger Stadium.
Fitting, really. That my dad would be the one to win this wager for me. I almost had to laugh.
Almost.
I knew exactly why he was calling. He wanted to have that obligatory post-dinner conversation. The one where I'm forced to "review" his third wife as if she's the long-awaited follow-up novel from a best-selling author and I'm the infamously hard-to-please New York Times book critic.
But I couldn't deal with that now. I had a job to do. And now that the war in my head had been won, there was no more doubting. No more second-guessing. It was time to march back in there and do exactly what I had come here to do.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and turned back in the direction from which I'd come. Very soon, Ryan Bleeker would be walking into that bar, and I would be ready and waiting for him.
But before I could complete the rotation, my eye caught sight of someone entering through the front door of the lobby, walking straight toward me. I whipped my head back around in astonishment and stared at him, my eyes blinking rapidly to make sure my vision hadn't suddenly been impaired.
Air stopped flowing through my lungs. Blood stopped pumping through my veins. Every inch of me, inside and out, was frozen.
I didn't need to check the photograph in my bag again to verify. This was definitely not the person I had come to see.
It was the person I had left behind.
21
wide-open spaces
The world around me stopped cold. As if someone had pressed pause on the entire hotel lobby and Jamie and I were the only two things in it that were still moving. Except neither of us flinched. We just stood there staring at each other. My heavy breathing was the only sound for a thousand miles.
Our eyes were fiercely locked, like two contenders in an eighteenth-century duel. Each waiting for the other to make the first move, take the first step, draw the first weapon.
As much as I tried to derive meaning from his stare, his eyes were void. Like two empty portals—long, dark, expressive, and yet leading to nowhere.
I approached him carefully, now standing a mere arm's length away. And for the first time, I looked away, casting my eyes at a downward angle.
Jamie was the first to speak. "Looking for someone?"
And then it suddenly hit me. He doesn't know why I'm here. How could he possibly? I could easily come up with a believable explanation for being here. An associate was in trouble and I came to help. Zoë broke up with her mystery man and asked me to meet her here for drinks at the last minute. A long-lost friend was in town. There were a hundred innocent excuses to choose from. All I had to do was pick one and go with it. Ryan Bleeker was still nowhere to be found. I could just leave here and pretend none of it ever happened. Pretend I had never even agreed to come.
Of course, my seemingly brilliant plan had only one apparent flaw. It didn't account for the reason that Jamie was here.
And then suddenly every thought in my mind was turned upside down. He was supposed to be in Phoenix tonight. What on earth was he doing here?
My heart lurched inside my chest as I realized that I might not be the only one hiding something.
I swallowed hard and attempted to answer his question with a noncommittal shrug. "Just a friend," I stated, casually glancing around.
"Hmm," Jamie replied thoughtfully, sweeping his eyes across the hotel lobby. "Anyone I know?"
My mind was torn. I couldn't figure out what was more important right now, catching Jamie in his own lie or covering the tracks of my own. It was a dangerous intersection.
I shook my head. "No, I don't think so. Just an old friend who's in town, called me up to see if I wanted to have a drink."
I was just about to turn the question back on him, ask him who he was looking for. What he was doing here. And more important, why he wasn't in fucking Phoenix, where he'd said he would be.
But I didn't even have the opportunity. Because the moment I was about to open my mouth, he said, "His name wouldn't happen to be Ryan Bleeker, would it?"
As hard as I struggled to keep the reaction from spreading across my face, to keep the shock from escaping my lips, it was no use. My mouth flew open, the horror in my eyes registered, and the gasp that left my mouth echoed across the lobby.
I was trapped. And it was in that moment I realized that my lie and his lie were one and the same. They were intricately interwoven.
"How do you know that name?" I whispered, the words barely managing to flee my rapidly closing throat.
"Well," Jamie began. His voice was calm. Too calm. Bordering on icy. "Ryan is my middle name, and Bleeker is my mom's maiden name."
I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. I managed to blink a few of them away. But the rest fell rebelliously down the sides of my face. My eyelids closed, but it did nothing to stop them. "You sent her. You sent Julie Bleeker to my office."
"Yes," he replied softly. "She's a receptionist at the office. An aspiring actress. I paid her."
The words came out of his mouth at a normal, conversational level, but as soon as they reached my ears and started echoing around in my head, they were positively deafening. An aspiring actress? A decoy? Well, she certainly wasn't aspiring anymore. She deserved an Oscar for those believable emotions.
Or maybe they were believable to me only because I wanted so badly to believe them.
A painful realization washed over me as I mentally replayed the scene in my office. The same one I had replayed at least a dozen times this week. But this time, I inserted a fake Julie Bleeker into the equation.
Someone referred me. An old friend.
That's what Julie Bleeker had said, but technically,
they weren't her words. They were Jamie's. And I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it earlier. The night we got engaged, he had asked me point-blank, "But what if the client doesn't want one of your associates? What if the client wants you?"
Of course it was a setup. All the signs were right in front of my eyes. And yet, just like every subject I'd ever tested, I was far too blinded by what I wanted it to be, I couldn't see what it really was.
"You were testing me," I whispered.
"And you failed."
I shook my head, the grief penetrating every inch of my body. "You don't understand—"
"Oh, I understand just fine," Jamie interrupted in a tone that I had never heard before. It made me feel like a stranger. Someone he had just met on the street and decided rather quickly that he didn't care for at all. But then again, Jamie was always fairly nice to strangers, even ones he didn't care for. So that made me something else. Something worse.
"I understand that you sacrificed our relationship for this." He motioned to the general area around him, as if this one random hotel lobby represented everything that I gave up for him. Everything that I used to be. And everything that used to define me.
And I suppose, in a sad, pathetic way . . . it did.
"No," I begged him. "It wasn't like that."
"Why, Jen?" he insisted, his tone once again harsh and foreign. "Why would you do this? We had a deal. You made me a promise. No more assignments. No more cheating men. But clearly that was too hard for you to keep. Clearly, this lifestyle was too hard for you to give up."
The tears were falling even harder now. They had taken on a life of their own, and for the first time since I'd walked through those doors, I noticed that people had begun to stare. I placed my hand desperately on Jamie's arm and pulled gently. "Please, don't do this here. Let's go somewhere quiet and talk about this."
His arm flexed beneath my grasp, and his jaw tightened. "There's nothing to talk about, Jen. I now understand where your priorities are. I'm just glad I figured it out before we got married."
Without another word, he turned and walked out the front door. He didn't hesitate. He didn't glance behind him for one last, longing look at my tear-streaked face. He didn't even slow down. He just left.
And he didn't come back.
I stood in the middle of the lobby, feeling small and helpless. The grief slowly gave way to humiliation as I felt several pairs of eyes on me. Hotel clerks at the front desk, bellhops, customers. Tonight the lobby of this happening Westwood hotel was bustling, and I was the main attraction.
"Is everything okay, ma'am?"
A warm hand landed on my arm, and I whipped around to see a man in a dark suit standing next to me. His hotel name tag informed me that he was the night manager. I had little doubt that his inquiry after my well-being had less to do with actual, genuine concern and more to do with avoiding any kind of "incident" on his watch. But maybe that was just the kind of cynical mind frame I was in.
"Yes, I'm fine," I replied coldly as I wiped the tears away with the back of my hand. "I was just leaving."
I didn't drive straight home. After collecting my car from the valet, I circled the streets of Westwood aimlessly, my body shuddering in anguished sobs. I admit I wasn't in the best condition to drive, but I just kept going.
Two hours later, I found my way back home.
The front door opened willingly, welcoming me back with open arms. But I didn't feel I belonged there. Not now. Not at this moment. In fact, I wasn't sure if I belonged anywhere at this moment.
I stood in the foyer, staring out into my beautiful three-bedroom condo. The warm and spacious living room to my left, the chic and modern dining room to my right, the bright and open kitchen behind that. I had lived here for nearly three years, and for the first time since the day I moved in, it felt like a stranger's house.
And I felt like a stranger in it.
An intruder.
But I was not alone.
I heard noises coming from the bedroom, and then Jamie stepped out from the hallway into the light of the living room. We stared at each other blankly for a few seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm and collected, although still absent its usual warmth. "Just tell me how long it's been going on. How many more have there been?"
I shook my head slowly. "Just one," I murmured. "I swear. It only happened once."
He bowed his head, and a cynical laugh escaped his lips. "Of course," he mumbled to himself, suddenly understanding everything. "Vegas."
I nodded but continued to stare at the ground.
"Shawna wasn't arrested during her second assignment, was she?"
When I didn't respond, Jamie kept talking. "Well, that explains a lot."
"But I didn't have a choice," I begged, feeling the urgency start to rise up once again in my chest. "The client was going to adopt a child the next week. She needed to know—"
"There's always a choice, Jen. In that situation it was her or me. And you chose her. And every day that you kept it a secret, you continued to choose your job over me. Don't you get it? You would rather expose someone else's unfaithfulness than stay faithful to me. Do you realize how messed up that is?"
The tears were suddenly falling again. I couldn't even feel them anymore. My eyes were numb from all the crying, and the skin on my cheeks had been rubbed raw from wiping them away. But I knew they were there.
"I swear that was the only one," I whimpered, clinging to this one argument as if it might actually save me. "The only time."
"Until tonight," he pointed out maliciously.
I was cornered. There was nothing more I could say. He had set a trap and I had walked right into it. There were no more excuses.
"You just can't resist it, can you?" His voice suddenly changed, only slightly louder than a whisper now. It almost sounded as though he felt sorry for me. "You can't resist being that person you used to be. The one who exposes the cheaters. And it's ironic, really. Because it's that very obsession that turned you into one."
With this, my torment instantly morphed into anger. And I violently wiped at my face. "I'm not a cheater! It's not the same thing!"
"It is exactly the same thing," he shot back, the drastic shift in emotion registering on his face. "You took off your ring, you kissed another man, and then you lied to me about it. Blatantly. To my face, as if it were nothing. As if deceit is just a part of your DNA. Something that comes naturally to you. And after everything that's happened with your father, that might not be too far from the truth. Don't you see, Jen? You're just as bad as the rest of them."
My whole body stiffened, my fists clenched at my sides. "That is not true," I asserted through gritted teeth. "And I can't believe that you would actually compare me to any of them. Yes, I lied to you. Yes, I broke our promise. And that's something I'll always have to live with. But at least I know that what I did was for a cause. That I was helping someone."
I could feel the rage burning inside me, except I wasn't sure if it was true rage or just a bad combination of guilt and helplessness that when mixed in the right proportions can lead to a false sense of wrath. But I didn't feel like waiting around to figure it out. So I stalked forward, brushing angrily past him, and started down the hallway to the bedroom, ready to slam the door behind me once I reached it.
But I never got that far. I stopped midway down the hall when I realized that something was missing. Something that I never thought I would actually miss.
Jamie's boxes were gone.
The ones that had seemed to take up permanent residence in this hallway for the past three weeks. They were nowhere to be seen. And the sinking feeling that was already occupying the majority of my chest immediately spread to my stomach, my thighs, my knees, even my toes. I stared at the empty wall space that lined the path to the bedroom. Funny how only yesterday those boxes had made the whole hallway feel so cluttered and claustrophobic, making the entire trip to the bedroom feel like some elaborate obstacle course. And now that they were gone,
there was all too much space surrounding me. An unnecessary amount. Making me wonder why they even made hallways this wide when clearly you can get away with half the width.
It had taken him an entire week to move in all that stuff but apparently only a matter of hours to get rid of it. I didn't know how that was even possible. I guess it's just one of those strange breakup phenomena that the laws of physics can't really explain.
I turned back to Jamie, who hadn't moved an inch. "Where's your stuff?" I asked warily, praying that he would simply shrug and tell me that he finally got around to moving it all into the guest room.
He didn't reply. He just continued to stare straight ahead. But in that silence, I got all the answers I needed.
"You never sold the loft, did you?" I asked with sudden realization. "You never took that offer."
Jamie shook his head so subtly that to an unknowing bystander, it probably would have looked like an innocent twitch. But I could practically feel the gust of air that the motion of his head produced. And it nearly knocked me over.
Everything became very clear in that moment. Jamie had lost faith in me. Long before he'd ever decided to set me up. Long before he'd ever sent someone pretending to be Julie Bleeker into my office. In the back of his mind, something told him that I would let him down. And he had planned accordingly.
Knowing that the person you love has taken out an insurance policy on your relationship is like a sucker punch in the stomach. It happens just as fast, and it knocks the wind right out of you upon impact.
"Okay," I said quietly to the back of Jamie's head as he continued to face away from me. "If that's what you want."
And then I slowly turned back around and took broad, zigzagging paces toward my bedroom, making sure to cover every square inch of the wide-open, unrestricted hallway. Just to prove to myself that those boxes would not be missed. That I did need every speck of space the original floor plan had provided. Even though, deep down, I knew it was a lie.
I shut the bedroom door behind me and slid to the ground, hugging my knees to my chest and crying uncontrollably into the small crevice between my kneecaps.