CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – HAYLEY
I thanked the driver and got out of the car.
“Are you sure that’ll be all, Mrs. Sand?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes. Thank you,” I nodded, giving the man a smile. Poor guy—he looked confused. “I’ll be fine.”
“If you’re sure,” he said, twisting uncomfortably where he stood on the sidewalk across from me. “You have my number if you need any help, yeah?”
I nodded, smiling at him. After the worries of the day, and how bad I felt about myself at that moment, his care soothed me. I knew in my heart what I was doing seemed excessive. But it wasn’t. Everything would be better without me. And I could no longer live the life he was forcing on me.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Thank you. If I need you, I’ll call. I will.”
“Okay, Mrs. Sand,” he said, still worried. “I just don’t want you to be unsafe.”
“I’m fine,” I said softly. “It’s still light,” I added. Well, it was almost light: It was eight o’ clock and the summery dusk was gray-mauve and warm yet.
“Okay,” he said uncomfortably. “If you’re sure you’ll be fine, I’ll go.”
“Thank you,” I smiled.
Still frowning, he got into his car and drove away.
He’s a nice man, I thought about the driver as I waited, standing on the sidewalk. I hope things work out alright for him.
I still felt a bit unreal. The world was fluid around me, as if I floated in it; not quite present in the space and time I occupied. Half of me was back at the Sand Castle, half of me on the sidewalk in Los Angeles with the dusk warm around me and the scent of diesel and cigarettes in my nose.
I need to get a taxi; take myself home once again.
I sighed. I was here in town, at the hotel where the driver had first picked me up. My car was at home in the garage. I had taken a taxi into town, so I could leave it there. The taxi had cost more than I liked to think about, and I wished now that I was here again, that I had thought to ask Beckett Sand to pay for it.
The least I could have done is get something out of all that.
I laughed at myself, feeling sad. It was a small thought and one I wouldn’t have been proud of earlier. Except that now getting one over him, even something silly like the fare for a cut-price taxi firm, was a way to restore my sense of pride in myself once more.
The dream with Beckett was drifting away like mist in the morning, leaving me on the street, at night, with my bank-card in my wallet and nothing else but my identity.
I sighed. I was a strong person. I had come through worse; faced tougher things from nastier people. I would face this.
“I need a taxi to Montrose.”
The driver I got was an affable and quiet man, for which I was grateful. I had no energy for chatting about anything. I was, I realized, as I sat down in the seat beside him and shut the door, monstrously tired. I closed my eyes and let myself drift in the realm that narrowly skirts sleep.
I could hear the radio, the swish of the tires on the tar, and the hiss of wind as we rattled and jolted out of town and up toward my home.
I had, I thought wryly, got used to cars with more comfortable seats than this one.
My last thought, as I drifted into the realms of sleep, was for Beckett and how he would take my absence.
He’ll get over it.
I woke again as the driver pulled in up the hill toward my house. It was darker than it had been when we left the city proper, and my eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. There it was, my little cottage, sitting where I had left it. In the midst of all the other little cottages in the orange beam of the streetlamp. I was home.
Grateful that the driver took payment by card, I paid him and went slowly up the drive to my front door. I fumbled in my bag for the keys and let myself in. The scent of stale air drifted past me, mixed with the spicy, warm familiarity of home and the vague whiff of floral Air-Wick scent dispensers from the bathroom.
The familiarity of it all was too much for me just then. I collapsed into a ball on the couch and sobbed and sobbed.
I didn’t even really know what I cried for: too many things had hurt me in this. I cried for the loss of a friendship that had become extremely precious to me, in the short time I had it. I cried for myself, for the loss and sadness I felt. I cried for my having been fooled and the fact that I had at once missed an opportunity and set myself up with so many more challenges on my hands; and I cried because I was small and alone and tired and I felt so lonely and helpless.
Then I sat up.
“I’m going to overcome this,” I whispered to myself.
Somewhere in me was iron. I had hit the bottom of my reserves before and found that right inside me, like the core of a star, was a hard, immovable iron mountain. I would not let this man do this to me.
I still couldn’t quite believe he had set me up like this. I could have forgiven him, except for the fact that his family hated me. He hadn’t only set me up as a Jezebel in the press, but in the eyes of his family. And I could handle hate from a distance, but not close to home.
I wouldn’t let him keep on hurting me, though. I thought about it logically. Yes, he had set me up But so what? There were lots of people called Hayley Morris, I was sure. Why did that Hayley Morris even have to be me? Most of my work was done remotely anyways. How would anyone even know it was me; if they even cared?
I knew then that it wasn’t that. It was the fact that I loved Beckett, and having to pose as his wife without really being that; having to love him and never be accepted, was really hurtful to me.
I hadn’t left because I hated him, or I was angry. I had left because I loved him and because my presence in his home was hurting him, and me.
I stood and went through to the kitchen. I switched on all the lights, opened some windows, swept the floor. Then I went and made dinner. I was, I realized, absolutely starving. When I finished it was nine thirty.
I sat down to a solitary supper in the dark, feeling better as the hot meal restored strength to my body. I would fight.
In my heart, I knew that my reputation being ruined was the least of it. I had faced that thought and decided it didn’t matter soon after he discussed it with me. Yes, I could overcome that. But it was absolutely not the point. The thing that made me so terribly, exhaustively sad, was the fact that I would never see Beckett Sand again.
I finished my dinner and cleared the dishes to the sink, rinsing them meticulously as I stacked them aside.
“Think about it,” I told myself aloud. “You’re out of the public eye. You won’t have to see another press photographer or do another report again.”
I smiled, though it was a smile flavored with sadness. I would never have to do any of those things again, it was true. But I couldn’t help the fact that I missed something about that life.
Oddly enough, the bells and whistles—the silk sheets, the soft carpets, the fancy taps in the bathroom—I didn’t miss any of these things. I was glad to be in my own home, in some way safer here than I was in an environment that felt so strangely foreign to me.
The only thing I missed about it—the only thing I would ever miss about any of it—was Beckett Sand.
I tried to distract myself by watching some videos, then, an hour or so later, tired and drained, I dragged myself to bed.
As I slipped under the cold sheets I felt my heart contract. It had been just hours before that I had lain with him in a bed, his arms around me. Now I was alone. He was far away from me.
I wonder how he will take it; my disappearance?
My thought as I fell slowly asleep for the second time that day, was the same as it had been earlier. He will get over it.
So, I thought, would I. Sometime in the future; some time that was, categorically, not tonight.