Chapter Ten
Lauren’s never cried in front of James before, and she doesn’t want things to change at this point, so she marches into the office with her head held high. She remains steadfast, carrying out all her daily tasks as if nothing at all has happened, as if she hasn’t just left the man she possibly loves alone in a hotel room with nothing but a phone number.
She sits down in her office and thinks about anything but him, immersing herself in spreadsheets and timetables rather than compulsively checking her phone, wondering if she’s got a text from him. It becomes one of her most productive days yet, her mind fixed solely on her work, her concentration never wavering from the numbers on the screen for fear of straying towards the events of the past few days. She should get her heart broken more often; it’s great for business.
She’s in the middle of plowing through the month’s expenditure when there’s a knock at the door. She knows it’s James, he’s been hovering around her, asking what’s up with her all day. She’s managed to hold him off for most of the afternoon, but she knows he won’t stop lurking until she tells him what’s going on. Beckoning him in, she leans back in her chair with a sigh. Maybe talking about it will help.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong,” James says rather patronizingly as he sits down.
She opens her mouth. “Well, it’s – ”
“It’s Richard, isn’t it. These rich guys are all the same, they’ll just fuck you and dump you and you mean nothing to them, they’re all pains in the ass,” James gushes, and Lauren suspects there might be some residual bitterness there, but she’ll bring that up with him later on.
“Whoa, okay, slow down. He didn’t dump me, we just – well, we’re still technically together, but with his work I’ll only see him, like, once in a blue moon and today was the last time I’ll see him in ages and I just –” she lets out a huff of air, crossing her arms, “I don’t want to wait that long.”
“Oh, man, that sucks,” he says, “long distance relationships are difficult.”
“I know!” she almost shrieks at him. She’s been told that so many times, and she’s sick of hearing it. “I know. But we’ll just have to make it work, won’t we.”
“Lauren –”
“Look, I’m fine,” she snaps, suddenly unreasonably angry. “Just – leave me alone, okay? I’ll be fine on Monday.”
“But –”
“No, James. Just go. It must be nearly time to go, anyway –”
“Well, that’s what I came in here for, really, it’s six-thirty, Lauren. I wanted to check if you were okay,” he says gently, and she glances at the clock on her computer.
“Six thirty?” She’s been here for far longer that she realized. The day hasn’t quite felt real – everything after she left Richard’s hotel room has been a blur. She doesn’t want to go home, though. That would leave her time to think. “I’ll just stay here for a –”
“No, Lauren, go the fuck home, for God’s sake, it’s Friday night,” James tells her, and he looks more serious than ever.
“I’ve got work to do, I might as well stay and do it –”
“No,” he says firmly, pointing a finger at her. “Save it for Monday, you work far too hard anyway. I know you don’t wanna be alone, so what we’re gonna do is get up, turn everything off, and go back to my place to watch eighties movies, okay?”
She looks up, and he seems so hopeful that she can’t help but nod. James is good company when he’s not whining about work, and he always seems to have an endless supply of popcorn in his cupboards. “Alright. Okay, that sounds good.”
He makes a celebratory noise and jumps up from his chair, chivying her along as she starts to shut down her computer and clear all the rubbish from her desk. She begins to regret her decision when he babbles about God knows what for the whole journey to his apartment, but in the end, she’s glad of the distraction.
They spend the evening watching cheesy movies and insulting all of the characters, and Lauren ends up almost passed out on James’ couch. Still, it could have been a worse evening – it could have been her, by herself, crying into a bottle of wine, but instead she’s with someone who catches her tears before they fall and lets her put her feet up on his legs.
She gets a text from Richard at around nine o’clock telling her that his flight has landed, safe and sound. It makes her relax a little to know that he’s still thinking about her, that he hasn’t forgotten about her even though he’s halfway across the country.
James’ couch isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to sleep, but he drapes a blanket over her and fetches her a glass of water and it’s almost like being at her mom’s house again. James is nothing if not a mother figure to her and he even puts on Alien for her, despite his absolute hatred of blood and gore. She dozes in and out of consciousness, occasionally telling James to shut his eyes or leave the room if she knows it’s about to get bloody. She appreciates his kindness, even if he can’t fix anything.
She decides not to call Richard. She’ll do it in the morning, she doesn’t want to reopen the wound right before she tries to sleep. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t stop thinking about him, though.
***
Caviar is still disgusting, Richard thinks as he stares at the canapés he’s just been presented with by a suited waiter in one of LA’s finest restaurants. He doesn’t take one, just stares at the plate as it’s passed around the table and his colleagues gobble them down. He feels sick just looking at them.
He’s not sure who they all are – which is awful because they’re not prospective partners anymore, they’re supposed to be his employees – but he pretends to know them, smiling and nodding when they talk and hoping they don’t ask him too many questions.
They do ask questions, though, mostly about the merger and the meetings that took place in Chicago, and they expect him to have actually listened. Richard struggles through conversations he couldn’t care less about and laughs at jokes he didn’t hear the punchline of. He’s been in this situation so many times – too many times – and he’s so tired of it. He’s not sure how much more he can take.
As he looks around, he knows he doesn’t belong. He hates being complimented on his watch rather than his smile, his business acumen rather than his sense of humor, the contents of his wallet rather than the contents of his mind. He wants to know the people beneath the suits, he wants to know their passions and their fears rather than which fucking car they’re buying next week. He realizes he doesn’t care about profits, about growth, about investments, he doesn’t care about stock markets and shareholders. He doesn’t care.
He sits at the immaculate glass table in complete silence, rubbing the back of his neck and staring into the water jug in the middle of the table, hoping it might have a better idea of what to do than he does.
He looks at his mother, sitting next to him, chatting bullshit to a man wearing an obnoxious hat. She built this company from nothing. As a little boy, he would sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night to watch her pouring over stacks of paperwork. He didn’t realize then that she was building a future for them, something that she would pass on to him - and he didn’t want any of it.
The talking dies down, the canapés demolished and eyes turning upon Richard. They’re waiting for him to give whatever speech his mom used to give whenever she got back from a successful pillage of another firm, and he looks up at them, his eyes flicking around at them and wondering how he even ended up among them.
“Richard?” she says, nudging him with her elbow.
He looks into her eyes and struggles to find the youthful woman who raised him. Time hasn’t been kind to her, and there’s a coldness to her glare. The decades of boardroom battles and legal disputes have taken their toll on her. Still, he knows that she wants him to be happy. He hopes she would some day forgive him.
Richard lets out a slow breath and shakes his head. Enough is enough.
“No. No speech today,” he sighs, wringing his hands together so it’s not as obvious that he’s shaking. “Kingswood is fine. Great, in fact. They want to make us all lots of money. But I don’t want any of it.”
A few chuckles emanate from around the table – they think he’s joking. “What happened to you in Chicago, son?” someone says, a large man opposite Richard who looks like a frog stuck on top of a potato.
“I met someone,” he says truthfully, not caring that their smirks widen, “and she made me see that all of this? It’s bullshit.” The gasps that a few of them let out are particularly gratifying. “I’m not excited by this,” Richard continues, “it’s boring. You’re all boring. You’re all boring, greedy, self-aggrandizing bastards and I hate that I’m one of you. But not anymore.”
He stands, his chair shooting backwards at the same rate as his audience’s eyebrows shoot upwards and straightens his jacket. “I quit,” he says, feeling his mom’s gaze bore into him like a drill, “I don’t want a share of the profits. I don’t want the company car, you can take me off the mailing lists. I’m done.”
“But Richard, I –”
“Mom, I know you had the best intentions. But find someone else. They’ll be much better at this than me,” he says. She doesn’t seem angry, just rather confused. He begins to walk away from her, buttoning his jacket and heading for the entrance. “Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be in Chicago,” he informs them, “and by the way; I fucking hate caviar.”
With that, he walks out. He doesn’t look back.
As he hurries down the steps, he feels movement at his side.
“Emma?” he asks, “where did you come from?”
“I was at the bar,” she says, and Richard rolls his eyes, “did you just – are you – have you - ?”
“I quit,” he says triumphantly, ignoring his shaking hands. “I told them all to go fuck themselves.” He can’t quite believe he actually, finally did it.
Emma stares at him. “So – does this mean you won’t be needing a PA anymore?”
“Not exactly,” Richard hums, heading towards the main road where a taxi will surely be, “I’ll need an agent.”
“I could do that!” Emma pipes up like he knew she would, “I could totally learn how to do that!”
“Okay, well, first job, find an apartment for us. In Chicago,” he adds, and Emma stops him in his tracks.
“Are you doing this for Lauren?” Emma asks, but Richard shakes his head.
“No, I’m doing it for me. It’s just – y’know, if I’m gonna leave, I might as well go be with her, too,” he shrugs, hailing a cab and trotting towards it as it pulls over. He’s never felt more positive about anything in his life as he asks Emma to look up flight times.
A week later, he’s leaving LA for good.
***
Lauren’s been doing okay. Not horribly, not bad, but not brilliant either. It feels a little like she’s drifting through the days with no real motivation, throwing everything into her work rather than addressing the mess of her personal life. Richard calls often enough, but it’s never quite what she wants, it’s never quite enough for either of them just to hear the other’s voice.
But it’s Saturday today, and that means a whole day of sulking around her apartment, trying to persuade herself to do something vaguely productive. She tries cooking soup for later and fails miserably – the power of the blender always catches her unawares – and spends the next hour scrubbing soup from the stove with an irritable expression etched into her face.
She launders every item of clothing that’s currently spread over her apartment floor, so that at least it’s a clean trip hazard now, and tries not to think of what Richard might be doing right at this moment. Probably having drinks with some other millionaires and planning which massive yachts he’s going to buy once summer hits. She hates the fact that all those stupid rich people get to spend time with her Richard whilst she’s alone in her apartment, nearly crying over spilled soup. She bets they don’t appreciate him nearly as much as she would.
She almost breaks her phone in her haste to grab it when it buzzes at her later on that evening.
“Richard?”
“Hey, Lauren,” his voice buzzes. It’s never as nice over the phone as it is in person – plus, she can’t see his cute smile like this. “How are you?”
“I’m alright,” she says, leaning back on the couch and throwing her feet over the arm. “It’s been a dull day, so why don’t you tell me about yours.”
She can hear the sound of passing cars from Richard’s end of the line, and she wonders what on earth he’s walking for. “Oh, alright, I guess,” he says, and yeah, he’s definitely somewhere outside.
“Where are you going? Isn’t there some driver at your beck and call?”
“No, not today,” he says, “I’m not on business right now.”
“So where are you headed?”
“Oh, just somewhere I’ve been meaning to go for a while,” he says, his voice drowned out a little by the sound of a truck rumbling past.
“Where? Are you finally going to that art exhibition you were so excited about?”
“Kind of,” he chuckles, and Lauren frowns at the phone.
“What’s so funny?” she asks, “Don’t laugh at me!”
“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at – well, you’ll see.”
“Why, what’ve you done?” she giggles, when she hears a knock at the door. “Have you sent me muffins again?”
“Uh, kind of?” he says as she hurries down the stairs, eyes trained on her front door.
“Oh my God thank you,” she babbles, jumping the last few steps. Yanking her front door open, she searches for a parcel. Instead, Richard stands on her doorstep.
She gawks at him, the phone still held to her ear and the words still lingering on her tongue. Her mouth flaps as she tries to find something, anything, to say that quite sums up the happiness blazing in her chest. “I – um – I don’t –”
“Hi,” Richard says with a little wave, his smile bright and hopeful and right there in front of her.
She’d like to say she didn’t throw herself at him, but the truth is she can’t think of anything else to do as she hugs him tight and places kisses all down the side of his face. “What the hell are you doing here?” she gasps, “I thought you were in LA?”
“I bought an apartment here,” he grins, “I quit the firm.”
“No way,” Lauren says, pulling back to cup his face in her hands. “You’re here for good?”
“Yup, I’m no longer your millionaire boyfriend, I’m your struggling artist boyfriend. Provided I’m still your boyfriend?” he says, hope written all over his face.
“Huh, well…” she ponders, “I suppose so. Provided you kiss me right this instant.”
“So demanding,” he says with a smile, before leaning to press his lips against hers, his hands pulling her closer to him.
“Celebratory homecoming sex?” she suggests, taking his hand and leading him through the door.
“Definitely,” he grins, pulling her into another kiss and shrugging off his jacket.
Lauren smiles against his mouth. Perhaps today won’t be so bad after all.
The End