Chapter Seventeen
Cristina
The thought of stepping foot in that office the next day made me feel physically sick. I considered calling out, but then I knew that Willa would find out and I refused to give her any more leverage over me. She had already humiliated me and broken me down until I felt like I could barely look at myself in the mirror. I didn't need to let her win anymore. I was relieved when I approached the door to the building and saw that the inside was dark, giving me hope that the family hadn't stayed late that night. There really wasn't any reason for them to. There were only days left until Christmas and there was nothing more that they could do to try to gouge the public in their last minute shopping. Until the new year came, and they had after Christmas sales and spring to start thinking about, the chances of them dedicating so many long hours to the office were low.
I walked into the storage room that held my supplies and felt somebody staring at me. My breath caught in my throat and I felt for my phone in my pocket.
"Before you jump on me, it's just me."
I turned toward Josh's voice and saw him standing in front of one of the large shelves of cleaning supplies. I felt my shoulders relax, but there was still tension in my body and a sour feeling in my belly.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I haven't been able to get in touch with you," he said.
"Have you considered yet that that was on purpose?"
"I waited at your house all night. I just about froze."
I hung my coat on the hook on the wall and took hold of my cart, steering it toward the door.
"Then I guess we're even," I said.
"What do you mean?"
I sighed, shaking my head. Of course, he didn't remember. Why would he?
"On Black Friday when Willa went to your office and found us together, I left."
"I know. You didn't even give me a chance to talk to you."
"And yet it didn't occur to you that I didn't have my car with me. It was still here. My sisters and mother were already home and asleep, and I don't have anyone else. I had to walk to the bus stop to catch a bus to get here. It was twenty degrees that morning. I know because I felt every step of those ten blocks."
"I'm sorry," Josh said. "I wish that you would have stayed."
“Why did you tell me that you and Willa were done? Huh, I thought you really wanted something with me.”
“We are finished. I wouldn’t lie to you. Please just …”
“Just never mind, I have to work”, walking away as fast as I could.
Willa had been very clear and what I wanted now was just to get away from Josh, so I didn't have to look at him and risk him seeing the pain in my eyes. I got into the elevator and Josh forced himself in with me, squeezing back against the wall so that he could fit in along with the cart that I had purposely placed in the center of the elevator.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I need to talk to you. You need to hear me out."
The doors opened on the first floor of offices and I walked into the nearest one.
"I don't need to do anything," I said. "I heard quite enough from Willa and I don't think that there's really any more to be said."
"That's the thing," Josh said. "There is more."
I dumped the trash out and dusted the room in record time. Tossing the duster back into the cart, I turned and steered it into the next office.
"I'm busy, Josh. I have to work to take care of my family. Don't forget that I'm a different class than you are."
"Don't say that, Cristina. You know that's not true."
"Your future wife definitely thinks it is."
"I never once said anything that should make you feel that way, and she is not my future wife."
"You should probably share that with the printer and the several hundred of your nearest and dearest strangers who will be receiving invitations in the next few days."
"Will you just stop and talk to me?"
"I told you, I don't have anything to say to you."
"Please, Cristina, just five minutes. Give me five minutes to say what I need to, and then you can do whatever you want. I just need to say these things to you."
I couldn't believe that he had just given me the "five minutes" speech. Maybe he had started watching the bad women's network movies, too.
"Fine," I said. "But not right now. I actually do have to work. Meet me up in the office and I'll let you say whatever it is that you want to say when I'm finished for the night."
Josh gave a slight, relieved smile and nodded.
"That works. Thank you. I'll see you soon."
He crossed the hallway into the elevator and I let out a heavy breath as the doors closed. It took actual effort to be around him now. That was such a painful prospect. He had been such a comforting presence. Even from the very beginning he had never made me feel uncomfortable. Being around him had been fun and easy, as though our friendship had blossomed naturally and eased into what it was. Or what I had thought it had been. Now, though, it was hard to breathe when he was close, and I felt like I was constantly struggling to keep my heart beating and stop the pain.
I felt myself cleaning at a slower pace than usual, drawing out each of the tasks in each office, hoping that the longer I kept him waiting, the more likely it was that he would give up and leave. I didn't want to hear what he had to say. I couldn't bear the thought of listening to him try to justify what he had done, or the hollow apologies that I knew would accompany those explanations.
I stopped wiping the desk in the office I had reached and stared out the window, letting my shoulders fall. No. The last thing that I wanted to deal with was the inevitable conversation that I was going to have to have with Matteo. It was the conversation that I never wanted to have to have with him. He had been just a toddler when his father and I had divorced so we had never had to explain to him that we weren't going to be together anymore or that he was going to start visiting his father rather than living with him. I highly doubted he had any memories of a time before those visits and it was just normal for him to have a split family. In just the brief time that he had known Josh, though, he had formed an attachment to him. He liked the idea of him, of a man who was around, strong, confident, and happy, and who wanted to make me and him happy as well. I knew that he had gotten comfortable with Josh being a part of our lives and now I was going to have to tell him that he wasn't going to be anymore.
The thought of the Christmas gifts he had brought over after our Black Friday shopping trip loomed large in my mind and weighed heavily on me. I didn't want anything that was going to tie us to Josh or that would be a constant reminder of the differences between us and the truth behind what Willa had said. At the same time, everything that I had said about Matteo still held true. He was working so hard and was such an incredible child. He deserved that game. It seemed so trivial, so inconsequential when I thought of the bigger things in life that he was going to have to cope with, but that was a big part of why it mattered to me so much. He was still so young, still so much of a little boy even if he didn't want to admit it, and I wanted him to enjoy that. I wanted those trivial things to be what he thought about and what affected him. I wanted him to not have anything else more impactful to worry about.
I took as much time as I could to get through the cleaning and then made my way up to the top floor. I cleaned the few smaller offices along the hallway and then walked into the main office. It was empty when I stepped inside, and I felt a wave of relief, but also a flicker of disappointment. No matter how much I didn't want to deal with these emotions or choke my way through the confrontation that was to come, I couldn't just toss aside all that I had felt for Josh. There was a part of me that still longed for him, still wanted to be close to him.
The containers from his takeout dinner earlier in the evening had just tumbled from the trash can into my cart when I heard the door to the office open. My body tensed, remembering the last time that I heard that door and turned around to see Willa, but when I glanced up at the window in front of me I could see Josh's reflection looking back at me. I said nothing but continued my work until I had completely finished, then stopped beside my cart and met his eyes.
"Alright," I said. "Go ahead."
"I'm so sorry for what Willa said to you," Josh started, "and for showing you that invitation. She never should have done that."
"When were you going to tell me?" I asked, surprising myself with the strength in my voice.
"What do you mean?"
"When were you going to tell me that I was sleeping with a man who was just a few months away from getting married?"
"I wasn't," he said. I gave a mirthless laugh and turned to leave the office, but heard him come up behind me. "I wasn't going to tell you that because it wasn't true. I'm not just a few months away from getting married."
"When did you decide that? Before or after we had sex?"
"Cristina, please." He took my arm and turned me around to face him. "I know that I should have told you that we had been engaged, but I didn't want to even think about it myself. You have to believe me."
He leaned down to kiss me, but just as his lips touched mine, the office door flew open so hard it smashed into the wall, and Willa stomped inside.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing? I thought that I made myself very clear, you little slut."
"Willa, stop," Josh said.
"No. You don't have any control here. But I do," she glared at me, "and you're fired. Get your things and leave. And don't forget to bring this cart downstairs with you. You can't possibly think that I would ever touch something like that."
I pulled away from Josh, looking into his face incredulously, then turned and rushed out of the office. I heard Josh chasing after me, calling out for me, but I whirled around to face him.
"Stop," I demanded. "I don't want to hear anything that you have to say. You've already cost me enough. You need to just go back to your life. Willa was right. We're never going to be able to understand each other. It's time that we stop pretending that we will and move on."
I didn't give him a chance to say anything back. I simply turned and walked away, too numb now to even cry.