Chapter 30
“Oh my God, tell me everything.” Parvati plopped down at Rachel’s table. The apron in her lap signaled that it was her break time, and she was not going to let it go by until Rachel had clarified her texts from the past twenty-four hours. “Are you guys going out for real now?”
Rachel folded her hands before her face and pretended to be oh so totally bothered by her friend’s interruption. “Apparently. I told the fool that I love him and was okay with having him as my boyfriend. So… guess it’s official.”
Parvati shrieked in her seat, which startled both herself and the other diners in Opal’s café. After a quick apology to the old woman slowly hunting and pecking an email beside them, Parvati turned back to Rachel and squealed through her sealed lips. “Girl, you bagged yourself one of the hottest guys ever!”
“Don’t know about that…”
“Shut up! Have you seen your boyfriend lately? He’s rich and hot! Remember me when you’re married to a multimillionaire and I’m over here struggling to pay rent.”
“You live with your parents.”
“Whatever!”
Rachel allowed one smile to creep onto her face. “I’m trying not to jinx it, okay? It’s only been a day.” What a day, though! From waking up in Zack’s arms to having dinner with half his family – and enjoying it! When his mother wasn’t around, Rachel was actually somewhat fond of her boyfriend’s family. Isaiah was on another planet, but so was Uncle Roy and Aunt Lorelei. Watching the three of them interact like old siblings who had known each other since forever had put a smile on Zack’s face as well. They had been too exhausted to make love last night, but he had gone to bed saying he felt like the luckiest man in the world. Rachel couldn’t blame him.
“I want details, though. Give me all of them. The nastier, the better. I’m in a dry spell.”
“I highly doubt that... what about that guy you were dating a week ago?”
“You mean the guy my parents set me up with? Do I have to tell you how that went?”
“Point taken.” Parvati’s parents were anxious to get her married off now that her sister was set. The fact that Sita had married a nice Indian boy only emboldened their parents more. “But I’m not going to tell you every dirty detail…”
“C’mon!”
“…But I’ll tell you most of them.”
“Yesss!”
Rachel leaned forward. God only knew how the old woman typing her email would respond to what Rachel wanted to say next. “It was… ugh. I have no words. Amazing. There was no way I could have anticipated a night like that!”
“Going all the way, you mean?”
“Blah, blah, blah, wait ‘til I tell you about what happened yesterday.” Rachel gave the Cliff Notes version of the day out on the yacht and having dinner with the best parts of Zack’s family. Parvati didn’t really care about that. She cared about when everyone was getting married.
Rachel could only roll her eyes.
“One thing at a time, okay? We’re monogamous now, but that doesn’t mean we’re rushing down the aisle. I’d like to wait a couple of years and make sure it’s what I really want.”
“You are so unromantic. I’m going to help you pick out a dress, anyway.”
Rachel laughed, but something bugged her. I’m not in a hurry to get married. Even if I found the perfect man – and who knows, maybe I have – I don’t want to rush into anything that would take forever to undo. Marrying a man with that much money sounded like a lot of hassle. Sure, the alimony might be great, but at what cost to her emotional state?
Ah, there she went, already thinking about the divorce.
“Have you had any issues with the public or the press?”
Rachel stopped laughing. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, guess those tabloid journalists haven’t figure out who you are yet.”
Rachel couldn’t help but sit back in her seat, eyes wide.
“You haven’t been following the news these past few weeks?”
“No! What news!”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything. It’s nothing big, anyway.”
“No, no, I wanna know.”
Parvati pulled out her phone. “Like I said, it’s nothing serious. But some tabloid has been snagging shots of you and Zack all summer, trying to guess who you are and how involved you two really are. So far they don’t know who you are…”
“They got pictures from yesterday?”
“Yeah.” Parvati handed her phone over. “From that dinner you were talking about.”
Rachel scrolled through three fuzzy pictures of the casual outdoor dinner she shared with the Feldmans. Her face was barely visible in most of them, but Zack was definitely recognizable with his head of black hair and the stubble covering her face. Every picture showed him with his arm either wrapped around his “mysterious lady friend” or with Rachel leaning in toward him, giggles on her lips.
“Whoa.” Rachel glanced up at her friend. “I had no idea. Nobody had said anything to me until now.”
“Like I said, it’s not big news, per se.”
Sure. That’s what Parvati said. The article on her phone said otherwise.
“Who IS this woman we’ve been spotting with Zack Feldman all summer? Has the hardened playboy finally found his full-time match? We have to say, we’re not surprised he’s decided that this one is a keeper! Remember their tryst at the lake house? Wowza! Click HERE to see the pics again!”
Rachel did it. She clicked.
After all, she had no idea that there were pics of the lake house.
What was it? Her straddling Zack and making out with him on the dock?
Or…
Or….
“Oh my God.” Rachel clasped her hand over her heart. “They… they got a pick of me giving him head?”
Parvati pleaded the Fifth.
“Did you know about this? Parvati!”
“I thought you knew! What? It’s not a big deal! I only knew it was you because you told me about it!”
“Oh my God!” Now that Rachel had gone down the worst rabbit hole to ever smack her in the face, she kept scrolling until she found related articles. “A History of Regional Playboys: Zack Feldman.”
She clicked.
The article was as recent as a month ago, apparently inspired by Rachel’s constant reappearances in photos. The writer went into great detail highlighting the “best and prettiest” dates Zack had over the past few years.
It was a long article full of photos.
Zack was largely the same in every picture, whether he was caught on his yacht or walking down the street. T-shirt. Jeans. Sandals. Sunglasses that covered his tanned face.
But the women were vastly different. Beautiful, but so different in their beauty that Rachel couldn’t even compare herself to them.
Zack hadn’t been kidding when he said he had dated supermodels before. “Our personal favorite,” the writer said, “is it-girl plus-size supermodel Kalypso Pointe. Check out these luscious curves in a bikini crafted by God himself!”
Rachel saw Kalypso’s face everywhere. Saw her body everywhere, since she was the biggest lingerie model for plus-sized underwear. Her long brown hair was richer and fuller than Rachel’s thin and stringy strands. While the camera generously showed off Kalypso’s cellulite and stretch marks, there wasn’t a single unflattering photo of the woman sunbathing on the Priss & Moan.
Skinny blondes. Svelte redheads. Curvy blondes. Foreign brunettes. Foreign and curvy redheads. Rachel gasped when she saw one of the biggest Hollywood actresses to shake things up in recent years. The article writer went out of his way to cite the actress’s Nigerian roots.
There was no denying that Zack was sleeping with – or at least trying to sleep with – these women. They held hands, posed half naked, shared kisses, and hung all over each other whether they were dining outside in Italy or sitting on a private balcony in Australia. The article also included women who had openly modeled for his artwork. Most of them were semi-nude.
He told me he couldn’t hang out today because he really needed to work. So had Rachel. Now, she wondered what he was really up to.
“Rachel, I… I’ve gotta get back to work.”
She handed Parvati back her phone and stared at her work materials, none of them making sense anymore. Parvati patted her on the head and said she would only be a shout away. That didn’t make Rachel feel better.
Her own phone came out of her pocket. There were no messages from Zack, who had claimed to be working in his private studio all day.
“Where are you??? We need to talk.”
It was an excruciating ten minutes before he answered.
“What’s up?”
“WHERE are you? In your studio? I’m coming over.”
“Whoa what now? What’s going on? I’m not in my studio. I took a break for lunch.”
“Where the fuck are you???”
“Calm down! I’m in that bar on 3rd Street. The one we went to a few times.”
Rachel packed up her stuff. That didn’t stop Zack from texting her more questions, however. When they finally stopped, Rachel was out the door, marching the four blocks between Opal’s and 3rd Street.
She needed to see her boyfriend. She needed to hear him reassure her that they were definitely solid, that they were going to be together a long time, and they were going to take PR classes together to learn how to deal with nosy paps that Rachel didn’t even know had been following them around! Did he know? He had to know!
Most of all, Rachel needed him to give her a big kiss before she could get back to work.
She entered the bar, currently busy and bustling with the lunch rush. For all Rachel knew, there was a photographer in their midst.
It was difficult to find Zack at first, and Rachel began to wonder if she had picked the wrong bar out of God knew how many they had been to. With her heavy bag weighing her down, she pushed between groups of friends and business meetings taken out of the office. Finally, she heard the familiar sound of Zack guffawing at someone’s joke.
Because he wasn’t alone.
Rachel didn’t recognize the other woman at first. Not until she turned her bubbly blond head and flashed her pearly white veneers in Rachel’s direction.
I’ve seen her here before. That night she and Zack came here to get drunk and pick out dates for each other.
The woman reached out and placed a flirtatious hand on Zack’s leg, her giggles worth all the fake gold on her fingers and around her neck.
Zack took way, way too long to shake her off. About five seconds too long.
“I would love to model for you sometime, Zack.” She crossed one leg over the other and did nothing when her skirt continued to ride up her thighs. “I bet it’s an exciting experience.”
Hell. No.
“The fuck is going on here?”
Both Zack and his blond bimbo stopped laughing. I can’t believe it. He actually told me where he was so I would see this? Rachel scoffed in disgust.
Zack was the only one not panicking. “Rachel! There you are! What’s going on?”
“I should be asking you the same thing!”
“Who’s this?” Another thing Rachel should be asking first! “Do you know her, Zack?”
“I’m his girlfriend!”
Rachel blurted that out before Zack had the chance to answer on his own behalf. The blonde looked to Zack for confirmation.
“Bailey, meet Rachel. Rachel, meet Bailey. It’s because of you we know each other.”
“I can see that.” Rachel’s throat was dry. Who did this drop-dead gorgeous woman think she was, feeding into Rachel’s insecurities and making her want to fling herself out the window?
And making her have flashbacks to one of the worst days of her life?
“Oh my God…” she couldn’t believe this. What if that bastard she once dated was right?
“Men are dogs, Rach. All of us. Don’t trust any of us. Stick with women, if you’ve got the choice. Don’t ever date another man again. We’re not worth it.”
“You okay, hon?”
Hon? Hon? “No.” Rachel looked between this woman, already laying her claim on playboy Zack, and the man himself, who looked so blissfully ignorant that she would either kiss him or slap him.
We should’ve stayed friends.
“Rachel!”
That was the last thing she heard as she fled the bar, her brain full of the kind of junk that made a woman decide terrible, terrible things.
***
Her phone was off. Her apartment locked up tight. Her computer only on work-related websites, for all the good it did her.
Zack had tried to contact her all afternoon and evening. He showed up to her door around dinnertime, and only left when she threatened to call the police. A notecard was slipped beneath her door, but she refused to read it.
It wasn’t her trust that was shattered, per se. When she finally calmed down, Rachel rationalized that it wasn’t what she thought at first.
That wasn’t the problem, though.
Even if Zack remained true for the rest of their days as boyfriend and girlfriend, that didn’t stop the mental gymnastics always leaping about in Rachel’s broken brain.
How could she be in a relationship when she was always haunted by the shit some other man said to her years ago? Maybe Zack had finally moved on from what Sadie did to him. Rachel would never move on from Mr. Dumps During Sex.
She smacked her head against her desk. Her email dinged with a new message.
It wasn’t Zack, amazingly enough. Does he even know my email address? They were connected via phone and one of his private Facebook accounts, but not email.
“Thank you for your interest in returning to Happy Kids’ Park. This is Daisuke Aoyama, head of staffing for the Chubu Region…”
So, Daisuke had gone from teacher to management, huh? Good for him. Rachel had only worked with him once before, when she covered for a foreign teacher who had called out sick from his usual school. At least she knew this guy, even if he probably didn’t remember her.
“We still have openings and could fast track you through the approval and training process, depending on whatever timeline works for you. Please respond if you are still interested in a one-year contract.”
Rachel got up and went to her tiny kitchen, where she poured herself more hot water from the kettle and slapped a fresh teabag into her mug. I should be in bed with Zack right now. He had promised to order takeout for them that night and watch whatever movie she wanted. She had planned to jump his bones halfway through chow mein and beef and broccoli.
That was before her insecurities came crashing into her once again.
Zack thought he had them? She was a train wreck! What made her think she could possibly be in a healthy relationship now? Let alone with a guy like him?
What a joke!
Even though she loved him. Even though the thought of running away was both life-changing and heartbreaking.
Rachel sipped her tea and finally turned on her phone. There were about fifty texts and voice mails from Zack.
“What the hell is going on? You don’t think I’m already cheating on you, do you? I bumped into her! She said hello! What, did you want me to be rude?”
Sure. He had happened to bump into a woman he slept with while also seeing Rachel. They may have been open at the time, but…
Damnit! Was that a sign, or what?
The last time Rachel felt like this, she packed up her bags and moved to the city. She had been drowning in depression and the realization that her mother had dementia and would never be the same again. Had she regretted it? She was financially unstable for a long while, but when she looked at how far she had come…
A call came through. Zack’s name was plastered on her phone screen.
Rachel turned it off again. She couldn’t think. She needed peace. Maybe tomorrow she would be able to explain herself and the crap in her mind.
Fuck it.
She planted her ass down in her computer chair and reread Daisuke’s email. A minute later, she hit REPLY.