CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mia

The past, a year ago…

I don’t know how I make it out of the office building without crying. I don’t even know how I get blocks away on foot. I search the area around me and I don’t even know where I am. A cab with a light on drives by and I chase after him. He stops. For once a New York City cab driver actually stops for me. I climb inside. “Just drive,” I say. “Just drive and there’s a big tip in it for you. And ignore me back here.” The minute the car starts moving, the inevitable happens. I burst into tears, a fierce, body-quaking explosion. I cry and cry and I don’t even try to hold back.

“Big tip,” I call out when the driver looks back at me. “Just drive.” My phone starts ringing again and I know it’s Grayson. Of course it’s Grayson. He’s busted. He’s so very busted. I don’t look at my phone. I want to throw it out of the window. I have nowhere to go. I can’t go home. It’s his home that was clearly never mine. That’s what I get for moving in with a man at three months and then accepting a proposal at nine months. “Out—out of the city,” I sob to the driver. “A hotel. Queens or Brooklyn. I don’t care which. Just take me. A hundred dollars on top of your fare.”

I sink back against the cushion and look at my gorgeous special ring that seemed to have so much thought behind it. It meant something. Now it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean anything. I squeeze my eyes shut and the image of Becky pressed to Grayson, no, her breasts pressed against Grayson, twists me in knots. He fired me from the case and gave it to her. Now I know why. My phone rings again and I grab it, stare at Grayson’s number and turn it off. It’s off. We’re off. We’re over forever.

I start to cry all over again and curl up against the door behind the driver’s seat. I lose time inside the tears until finally, the driver stops. “Holiday Inn, sweetheart,” the driver says. “That’s as good as it gets right now. I’m done driving.”

I open my purse, glance at the meter and toss him cash; I always have cash because Grayson always worries I might need it. Or he did. Those days are over. Maybe he didn’t worry at all. I exit the car and try to pull myself together. I have to walk into this hotel and get a room without blubbering. I shut the cab door and it races away. I glance around and the airplane overhead tells me I’m close to the airport. Maybe I’ll just fly away and go somewhere. It’s not like I have a job now. Grayson owns that, too. I think I let him own everything I am and that was okay when I thought I had everything he was, but I was wrong. I didn’t have all of him. I had nothing and I have nothing.

I swipe at my cheeks and walk into the hotel lobby. I actually hold it together. I’m proud of myself. I grab my key and once I make it into the room, I’m done holding it together. I melt down right there at the door. I sink to the floor. I lie there. Time passes and passes and I just don’t stop hurting. I don’t even know when I come to enough to realize that I’m in the dark. I don’t care, though. I dig in my purse and turn my phone back on. Grayson calls immediately and I hit “decline” and dial my friend, Courtney, because now I have to admit my hell to someone, and who better than my best friend since childhood?

“Mia!” she says. “Grayson is looking for you. He’s worried sick. What’s happening?”

“I need you to come to me. I need you.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not dying or anything, even if I feel like it. Just come.”

“Where are you?” she asks, urgently.

“I don’t know. Hold on.” I push to my feet and flip on a light.

“You don’t know?!” she asks incredulously. “Were you kidnapped? Do we need the police? Are you okay?”

“If only those things were true.” I sit down on the king-sized bed with a stupid orange comforter, when orange happens to be Grayson’s favorite color. Or not. I don’t know what is real anymore. “I’m in a Holiday Inn in Queens. I just told the cab driver to take me wherever.” I give her the address.

“I got it. Mia, what is going on?”

“Just come here and do not, and I mean do not, tell Grayson where I am or you aren’t a friend.” I hang up and walk to the window, pulling open the basic cream-colored curtains to spy the “liquor” sign. I’m not a drinker, but I need to be sedated right now.

I glance down and realize I’ve smartly settled my purse over my chest and it rests at my hip. Smartly, because I’m really barely hanging on right now. I find the key to the room on the floor by the door and grab it, sticking it in my purse. A short walk down the hallway and I’m exiting onto a street in what looks like a crappy neighborhood, but hey, I grew up in a crappy neighborhood. I’m just fine in this one. I cross the street, enter the store and walk to the counter. “Where’s the cheapest bubbly you have?”

The lady behind the counter, who has dark hair speckled with gray and seems to be missing a front tooth, looks me up and down. “You don’t look like you need cheap. That’s an expensive purse at your hip which means your outfit is expensive, too.”

“Yeah, well, I’d tell you I had a rich guy that fucked around on me and now I’m alone, but I bought these clothes and the purse on my own. And you bet your ass they’re expensive. I worked for them, not him, because I don’t need his damn money. It was never about his money.”

“Wow, honey. Fridge. Far right. Buy two. Spumante. It tastes good when everything else tastes bad.”

“How much?”

“Ten dollars a bottle.”

I yank a hundred about of my purse and stick it on the counter. “Keep the change. He’s buying the booze.”

She hands me a paper bag and two plastic cups. “One for now and one for later,” she says.

A few minutes later, I enter my room, struggle to get the stupid bottle to pop and then sit down on the loveseat against the wall where I guzzle the bubbly right from the bottle. My phone starts ringing, on the nightstand where I apparently left it, and I take my bottle with me to check it just in case it’s Courtney. It’s not. It’s Eric.

I answer. “What do you want, Eric?”

“He didn’t do it, Mia. He’s devastated. He’s freaking out. It was a set-up. He was—”

“Stop. Just stop. You’re his best friend. You’re like brothers. You’d say anything to protect him.”

“I would, but I’m not. He didn’t do this. He loves you. He needs you.”

“I’m not coming back. I’ll send the ring. I’ll send my credit cards he gave me. I don’t want his money. I don’t want him or that job either.”

“Mia, be reasonable.”

“Reasonable?! Did you really just say that to me? Go away and take him with you.”

“Mia. Mia.” Suddenly, I’m not talking to Eric anymore and it’s not him saying my name.

At the sound of Grayson’s voice, I can’t breathe. I hurt so badly. So very badly. “Go away,” I whisper, but I’m not even sure he can hear me. I hang up and throw my phone. I start to cry again and I don’t stop until my phone rings like ten times in a row.

“Courtney,” I whisper and I force myself to get up, kicking off my heels to pad across the carpet. My phone confirms Courtney has called four times. I call her back.

“Which room?” she asks.

I open my door and look at the number. “331.”

“I’m on my way up.”

I flip the lock to prop the door open and walk to the sofa, where I sit down. I’ve downed another drink and I’m starting to feel the blessed buzz when Courtney appears in the doorway, her blonde hair in disarray, her red dress ripped. “What happened?”

“Don’t ask.” She shuts the door and drops her purse on the floor. “He called me. He says—”

“I walked in on him with Becky’s naked breasts pressed against him.”

“He says she—”

“Don’t. Don’t you too. I saw it. Do you not understand that I saw it?” My phone rings in my hand and I toss it. “Just help me plan the rest of my life without him.”

“Right now. We’re going to order pizza, you need food because that bottle is half empty and you don’t drink. As in, you get drunk at half a glass.”

Her phone rings in her hand and she glances down at it. She answers the line. “Yes. She’s—”

“Are you talking to him?” I demand.

She stands up and holds up her hand. “Mia.”

“You are. I can’t believe you took his call. Hang up.”

“Hold on,” she says into her phone and punches a button. “She’s on speaker.”

“Mia, I didn’t do this,” Grayson says. “I swear on my mother, my father, and to God.”

“Stop talking, Grayson, because you see, I’m stupid. I listen to you. I want to believe you. Or I did. I trusted you. I would have died for you. No more. No more!”

“Baby, I’ll do anything—”

“To get your baby-making machine back? So you can look perfect and have your heir? No. I’m not her. I’m taking off the ring and Courtney will bring it to you. Maybe you can put it on her. She can be—”

“Stop, Mia,” Courtney says. “Stop.”

“He fired me off my case and put her on it, Courtney!” I shout. “Did he tell you that?”

She pales. “What?”

“Yes. Fired me and then fucked her. Or fucked me and fucked her. I don’t know. Hang up.”

“Mia!” Grayson calls out. “Listen to me. I—”

My stomach rolls and I rush to the bathroom and end up on my knees at the toilet. I heave and I am so sick I want to die. When I finally fall back on the tile, Courtney kneels beside me. “Honey, I hung up. I didn’t know about the case. That’s—”

“Damning?”

“Yeah. It kind of is.”

I curl up in a ball and let the ring in my hand settle on the tile. “Take it to him and try to get my things. I need to be alone.”

“I’ll deal with all of that tomorrow. I’m staying with you tonight, but let’s go to my place.”

“He’ll find me there.”

“Well, we have a friend who’s a realtor. I’ll see if she can get you into a place tomorrow, but you need to be somewhere where you can deal with paperwork. Let’s go back to the city.”

I sit up and pull my knees to my chest. “Right. Because I need a home and a new job.”

Because I don’t live or work with Grayson anymore.