CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Becca
The drive back home from Vermont seemed to take forever as I alternated between crying and shouting as I headed down the interstate. The other drivers must have thought I was insane as I screamed everything I wanted to say to Zane and a few things I wanted to say to that overly tanned, Barbie doll of a girlfriend of his. By the time I reached home, I’d lost my voice and I had no more tears left. I had only enough energy to climb into bed and pull the covers up over my head in my best attempt to forget everything that happened with Zane.
While I lay there as recriminations played on a loop in my head, I made a plan. Dive straight back into my work with a renewed vigor. It was the best kind of therapy and not only was it free, but it also put money back in my pocket.
Bright and early the next morning, my feet hit the pavement and I pressed my nose tightly to the grindstone. I got through three projects in record time, and my clients raved they were stunned that I had powered through with such great work so quickly. I smiled and accepted their compliments, but on the inside only I knew there was truly no other option for me.
For the second time, I had allowed Zane Gilford to hurt me, and I couldn’t just sit around moping about it. I had to power through by whatever means possible.
One night, I sat in my living room staring out at the skyline of New York City and the memory of gazing at the Vermont sky, clear of artificial light and studded with bright stars, rushed back into my mind. Choking back the tears, I pushed away thoughts of The Gilford House Inn.
That’s how it always was with me. Better to ignore the pain and just shove it down. Who had time for sitting around crying about things anyway? Still, I silently chastised myself for believing that Zane Gilford could have been anything other than what he always had been back when he left me high and dry all those years ago.
An unfeeling jerk and an asshole.
And I’d let myself get fooled by him for a second time.
Just like that, I found myself falling back into the memory of how it had all ended the first time with Zane. I’d done a great job of compartmentalizing those memories and hiding them in a box deep inside, but it seemed they wanted to come back anyway. Memories had a way of sneaking up on someone like that, and I was no more immune than anyone else.
The sun beat down on us while Zane and I walked along the sand, a pretty romantic time for two people who’d started out together with a quickie at a friend’s party. I never thought I’d see him again after that night, but Zane Gilford had pursued me like a man on a mission. Texts, calls, flowers—he’d done all the right things to get me to fall for him.
And fall for him I did. Hard and fast. Before I knew it, I couldn’t think of anything but him. He seemed just as into me too. We never said we loved one another, but we certainly acted like it.
That late August day, we headed up to Santa Monica Pier and ate way too much junk food as the sun set. Things had been going so well, and I thought we were getting ready to take another step forward by telling one another how we truly felt.
We didn’t that night, but I had a feeling it was just a matter of time. Then one night he just didn’t call. I called him and got his voicemail and figured he just fell asleep.
Three days later, my confusion morphed into worry. What if he had gotten into an accident? How naïve I was then. Never the one to jump to the conclusion that someone would intentionally hurt me, I paced back and forth for hours in my room wondering if something terrible had happened to him.
A few days later, our mutual friend who had thrown the party we met at told me that he had moved to San Diego.
I returned to my senior year in college that fall brokenhearted. I never meant enough to him to get a decent goodbye. If we’d had some huge fight, maybe I could understand leaving without even a goodbye, but everything had seemed so perfect, even up until that last day we spent together.
Yet the next time I saw him all those years later, somehow he found a way to worm back into my heart. I had actually started to care for Zane Gilford again, despite what he’d done that summer. I hadn’t admitted it to him or anyone but myself, but I honestly felt like something was growing between us. I wouldn’t have slept with him if I hadn’t been feeling something and if I hadn’t sensed some genuine change in him. He seemed so much nicer to his staff and had even seemed to care more about the inn. I knew it wasn’t a guarantee that he would fall madly in love with the place, but the effort I saw him exhibit had been enough to tell me he was on the road to change.
God, I had been so foolish! Everyone else saw him for exactly who he was, but I’d convinced myself he could change. So stupid.
Lifting my glass to my lips, I finished my drink and poured myself more wine. Tonight looked to be a full bottle night.
* * *
Buried in work, I sat at my desk and regretted the amount of wine I drank the night before, hating Zane even more and blaming my monster hangover on him. I heard a gentle knock on my door and looked up to see my assistant Amy peeking her head in.
“Hey, Becca. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. Come on in. What’s up?”
Amy took a seat in front of my desk, and I got up to sit in the one next to her after grabbing us each a diet soda. She may have been my assistant, but I hated talking to her from across my desk in such an official capacity all the time. My mother had always told me that when it came to business, not everything always had to be so businesslike.
She’d been with me since I started my agency four years ago and had grown to be more like a sister than just an assistant to me. It was often strange trying to make new friends as an adult in a huge city like New York, and I had been very grateful to meet Amy, someone I could go for drinks with and talk to even if we weren’t at work. She had a healthy respect for me as her boss, but it was never awkward between us, especially when we were off the clock.
“Thanks, Becca. Listen, I wasn’t going to say anything, but you’ve been moping around the office for days, and I can’t just sit out there pretending like I can’t tell,” Amy said bluntly as she set the perspiring soda can down on a coaster on my desk.
“I don’t know that I would say moping exactly. I mean, maybe a little off of my game, but moping?” I said, looking away as I took a sip of soda.
“Becca, your whole vibe is off, and you know I can read the vibes from a mile away. I know you like to bury yourself in work when things get tough, but you have to open up, girl. I keep asking why you’re going out of town so often and you do the coy thing with me, and now you’re back in town and sad. Things aren’t adding up here, honey. I know Dustin is being his usual jackass self, but there’s something else, isn’t there? I don’t want to push you to open up. Well, actually, yes I do, but only because I know it will be good for you. Come on, let it out. Dr. Amy is in the house.”
Amy and her vibes. She never failed to cut to the heart of the issue at hand.
Chuckling at her bluntness, I nodded. “Okay, well, there’s this guy I’d been seeing in Vermont.”
It seemed like such a silly jumping off point, but isn’t that how it had all began in the first place? I detailed for her the events of the past couple of months and explained the history between Zane and me. I didn’t leave out any details, even the painful ones like how just a week after sleeping with me he paraded that blonde with the legs that went on forever in front of me. She didn’t interrupt once, and I was again reminded that I should start talking to people about things instead of trying to bottle them up all the damned time.
When I finished, I took a long drink from my soda and asked, “Well, that do you think?”
“I think I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me for months, Becca! We’ve talked about you and this holding everything in thing. It’s going to give you a stroke, you know.”
“I know, I know. I just didn’t want to explain the whole Zane thing and how we knew one another before and everything. I wasn’t sure about him. That’s the only reason I kept things from you.”
Amy smiled and patted my arm. “Relax, Becca. It’s fine. I understand. But you know what I always say. A leopard can’t change his spots. That man is obviously no good, honey.”
I nodded and reclined back in my chair, feeling slightly more relaxed now that I had gotten this whole Zane thing off my chest. Amy just stared and waited with those big brown eyes of hers as I said, “Even with all the changes I was beginning to see?”
I wanted so badly to believe that the front desk clerk, Mandy, had been right about me having a positive effect on Zane. It seemed like such a silly thing to get my self-confidence wrapped up in, but it meant something to me to know that he had been trying, especially if it was for me.
After blinking a few times and shaking her head, causing her dark curls to bounce to and fro, Amy said with all her cynical heart, “So now we’re acting under the impression that men can be changed? Honey, they’re going to take away your feminist card. People don’t change. They just get worse as they get older. You and I both know that. And the idea that a man can be changed, I mean, come on now.”
“But what if he was a good guy underneath all that bad guy stuff?”
Even I knew how sad that sounded as soon as the words left my mouth. When did I become such a pathetic romantic?
Amy just shook her head. If she was judging me harshly, she was kind enough to keep most of it inside as she answered, “He must be pretty damn incredible in bed if you’re willing to make all these excuses for him.”
“He is,” I admitted as I felt my cheeks heat up. “I wish to God he wasn’t, but that man is incredible between the sheets.”
Amy nodded wisely like an old sage. “I see. That’s what this is all about. You’re being ruled by your hormones. You need to start thinking with your head, girl.”
“I don’t know. I don’t. At first, I thought he was an ass like he was back when, and then as time went on, he seemed to get nicer, and I guess I began to think maybe we could be together like we were when we were happy before. Then I saw him with that woman and everything that happened all came rushing back. I hated how I felt, but I was jealous.”
Amy looked at me with skepticism in her dark eyes. “I don’t know what to say other than go with your gut. It’s never done you wrong, so go with what it’s telling you now.”
Go with my gut. Too bad my gut remained tied up in knots, even now days after seeing Zane with another woman.
“You’ve got this, Becca. No matter what, no guy gets to bring you down. You know that.”
“I know. I guess I just needed to hear it from someone else,” I said quietly.
She smiled and gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I better get back out to my desk. You want to go out for a drink after work tonight?”
The pounding in my head made her offer sound perfectly awful, so I smiled and begged off. “Another time. But thanks.”
“Anytime, honey. My shoulder’s always here for you.”
She left me sitting there knowing full well that her advice on following my gut had been right on the money. If I had listened to it in the first place when it was telling me that nothing had changed in Zane, none of this would have happened.
God, I really was stupid when it came to him.