For the 100^th time, I deleted my latest message to Rachel.

The glow of my iPhone screen spilled out over my bare chest. I lay on top of my bed covers, too warm to crawl in beneath them.

The place was dark and empty, the darkness a negative space around me.

I wanted to text her. No, I wanted to call her, to hear her voice.

I knew that she blocked me on her phone. I’d tried texting her that same night that awful friend of hers slammed the door in my face and the message bounced back to me, undeliverable.

That was easy enough to circumvent, though. I didn’t even need a new phone, there were so many apps out there that gave you a whole new phone number for a few bucks a month.

But I didn’t call. I didn’t text. Why? Because I thought that she wanted her space.

Still, I typed out these damned messages. I composed voicemails in my head, or thought of different ways to answer if she actually picked up.

Because I wanted her back. We hadn’t known each other all that long, comparatively. It was just over a month now.

But it was the best month in my memory. Days and nights spent together.

“Why didn’t I just come out and tell her?” I muttered, “I should have told her.”

So much for being a man of action. For not putting things off.

I brought up her last message to me. The one that read I know everything.

“Damn it!” I said.

I whipped my prototype iPhone, my gift from Apple, into the darkness. It hit the wall. I didn’t see, but I heard something shatter. Then another sharp crack when the aluminum case hit the floor.

***

THAT MONDAY AT THE office, a new iPhone (one from the store this time) in my pocket, I fired Gigi.

Because even though she hadn’t come out and said she had told Rachel, I knew. And I wanted her to pay for that. I wanted her to hurt. In fact, I couldn’t wait to see the shocked look on her perfect face.

I saw her every day at the office, of course. And each day I saw how smug and happy she was, thinking that she’d gotten away with it.

I let that sink in. Let her think herself safe. Because that was when a person was weakest, when they thought themselves safest.

I paced once around my office, looking out at the Manhattan skyline. It maddened me to think that Rachel also sat in her cubicle at work just a few blocks away. A building I knew. That I could walk there in 15 minutes and see her.

But that I couldn’t, lest I hurt her more and again.

I went to my desk and stabbed at the intercom button. “Gigi, I need to see you.”

“Coming, Mr. Telford,” she replied.

I went and stood by the window again, looking out at the top of the Chrysler Building. I hooked my thumbs into the pockets of my slacks.

Behind me, I heard the door open then close. “Mr. Telford, Neil.”

“Gigi,” I said. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t say anything else. Sometimes silence was the best weapon. People dug their own graves if you fed them enough silence.

“Is there something you need help with?” she asked. “Something I can do for you?”

Still nothing. Part of me wanted to turn around and lay into her. Tell her that I knew that she was the one who told Rachel before I could. I didn’t.

“Neil? I know you and that girl split. You know if there’s anything I can do to ease the hurt, I will. Anything.”

I did not so much hear as sense her come up behind me. The air, stirred by her movements, smelled of her perfume. The scent turned my stomach.

She put her hands on my shoulders. “Anything at all.”

Her hands slid down my arms, coming to rest over my hands. I pulled them from my pockets. Then I turned, holding her hands in mine, to face her.

“Gigi,” I said. I looked at her. She was beautiful. Gorgeous, stunning. But a statue could also be beautiful.

And like some Grecian marble statue, she was cold.

“Neil,” she said. Her eyes flicked down to my lips and then back up again. She licked her own full, plump, smooth lips in anticipation.

I could see it in her eyes. Green eyes, like a river reflecting the leaves of trees in summer. See that triumph in them. That thought that she knew she won. I was the prize, of course.

I leaned in closer. Those lovely green eyes of hers started hooding. I heard the breath catch in her throat.

“You’re fired, Gigi,” I breathed.

Three words, the same number as the final text from Rachel.

I dropped her hands and stepped back.

At first she just stood there as though she didn’t hear me. Her eyes half hooded, her lips puckered slightly.

Then it hit her. Her eyes shot open. She crossed her arms. Then her eyes narrowed again, sharpening.

“What?” she said.

“I know you’re not deaf, Gigi. I also know that you got to Rachel. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I replied.

She shook her head like an unruly filly, her long blonde man shifting around on her shoulders. “Only what you should have done first: told her the truth.”

I knew that wasn’t it. I knew Gigi. I knew that, like a pampered house cat, she liked to torture anything she got her claws into before delivering the killing blow.

I closed the space between us. Her eyes widened again, and she took half a step back before finding her backbone again.

“Not just the truth, whatever that means,” I said, “What else did you tell her? I know that’s not it.”

She shrugged, suddenly unable to keep eye contact with me. She looked down between us and hugged herself tighter. “Other things she needed to hear.”

My hands balled into fists hard enough that my knuckles cracked and my fingertips dug into my palms. “Tell me what you said, Gigi!”

She glanced up at me, then back down again. Nervously, she unclutched herself and ran one hand’s fingers through her hair. “Just more true things. That she’s not your type, which I mean, come on, Neil, she isn’t!”

There was more I knew it. I also knew I wasn’t going to like it. But I needed to hear it. Just because something was hard to learn didn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it. Usually the opposite, in my experience.

“What else? Tell me now, Gigi.”

That look of defiance with which I was already familiar reappeared on her face. She looked up at me. “I told her that you’re afraid she’s a gold digger. That she’s nothing but your dirty little secret.”

I closed my eyes, blocking her from my vision. Even so, I saw red. It pulsed to the beat of my heart. I needed to center myself, to find some moment or point of serenity.

When I opened my eyes again I saw that Gigi stood another step away from me.

She’s afraid. Good.

“Why, Gigi?”

She tossed her hair in that little defiant, headstrong way again. “Because you’re mine, of course. And also it was the truth. She is your dirty little secret. If you liked her so much why didn’t you introduce her? Why weren’t you seen with her? You should have seen the look on her face when she understood. What, Neil, not used to rejection?”

I think the thing that cut deepest was the realization that there was truth to what she said.

My God, is that it? Was she my dirty little secret? Why didn’t I tell her everything right away?

I shook my head. At that moment, I realized there wasn’t a bigger fool in New York City. Not in any of the five boroughs.

I couldn’t speak with Gigi anymore. I couldn’t see her anymore. Through gritted teeth, I said, “You’re still fired, Gigi. Get out of my sight. Oh, and if I can help it you’re not going to work in New York again. Not if I can help it. And I don’t care who your father is.”

She half smiled, as though I were joking. Then she saw the truth in my eyes and the smile dropped away. Her face blanched, giving her even more of that statuesque look.

“Neil! You can’t!”

“I just did. I’m sure it would give me great pleasure to watch security haul you out of here, so if you don’t want that to happen you better be out of my office before I can reach my phone.”

“You’re joking. You wouldn’t,” she said.

I started for my desk.

“Neil! You can’t! Do you have any idea how angry my dad will be?”

I didn’t say anything else to her. I reached my desk. I reached out and plucked the glossy black receiver from my phone. The extension for security was 9999. Easy to remember in emergencies. I hit the 9 key once, twice.

“You’re such an asshole, Neil!”

Then she whirled around and ran for the door. Which she slammed behind her.

“I’ve been called worse by better,” I said, hanging up the receiver.

Gigi’s father owned a lot of stock in the company. Not as much as I did, true. But enough to make things more than difficult in the boardroom. And I was sure that when Gigi ran crying to him he would.

I didn’t care. In fact, I welcomed the opportunity to really sink my teeth into some big conflict. Anything that might take my mind off Rachel.

I sank into my chair. It was an Yves Saint Laurent and I knew for a fact that it cost in excess of $10,000. Eminently comfortable and ergonomic. A piece of furniture that was also art. Something that anyone in the know would recognize and appreciate instantly.

Yet it granted me no comfort. I had the urge to pick it up and hurl it against the wall until it was worthless detritus at my feet.

I wanted to fix this. I wanted to fix everything. The problem was, for the first time in my life I didn’t know what to do.

Because in spite of Gigi I knew this was a grave I’d dug for myself. She’d only helped to start lowering the casket.

If Rachel was my secret I didn’t want her to be anymore. If she wasn’t my old type then that was good. I’d never liked my old type much anyway.

I liked her so much in part because she wasn’t a part of this fake life you lived at this level. The parties and the galas and the fundraisers where everyone smiled and joked and shook hands in public but wouldn’t hesitate to bury the knife in your back at the next opportunity. Service with a smile.

But I was ready for her to see all that now, if she wanted.

If it wasn’t too late.

“But what in the hell do I do?”

I didn’t have the answer.