Chapter 10 – Talia
One day, a few weeks back, I woke up from a dream so vivid, so jarring, so satisfying that I had the cheesiest grin on my face.
I had been in the house for just a few months and Blake barged into my room with news that he couldn't hold in any longer. He looked eager like a little kid that had to go the bathroom really bad.
"What is it?" dream me asked, almost worried about what he was going to say.
"I know that we got into this arrangment with the idea that neither one of us would develop feelings and that it would just be a companionship thing with sex included. Well, I can't do that anymore. I am falling for you hard and fast and I don't know what to do about it other than..."
He dropped to one knee, pulled a gray velvet box out of his pocket, looked up with me with loving eyes, and asked, "Will you marry me?"
It had been so unexpected, but the way that I had been feeling in the dream, I started to toy with the idea. So, I said yes. And from there, we lived happily ever after, had a huge family with lots of children and laughter and happy memories.
But, even though I woke up in such a happy mood, part of me knew that that could never happen. I had dismissed the dream as silly, something that I would never have to come to terms with. I hadn't considered that maybe there was a part of me that wanted the dream to be true.
Until today.
As soon as I heard him speak the words, I felt stupid.
The perfect girl for the ad.
It sounded so clinical, so cold. Like there were no feelings involved.
I knew that there wasn't supposed to be. That was the reason why both of them had entered into the arrangement. Both of us wanted to get what we wanted and to be able to walk away unscathed, in one piece, with no messy feelings left behind for either of us to sort through.
The perfect girl for the ad.
He kept right on talking like he hadn't said much of anything, like it was the most natural thing ever. I pretended to keep listening, but in my head, it was as if a silent alarm was ringing and there was no off switch. I knew that I had to get away from him as soon as I could.
I found a reason to dismiss myself and walked into the house and headed to the bathroom.
I needed a moment to think things through away from him and his charm and wit and amazing cooking and everything that was making me fall head over heels. And fast.
Had I read too much into things? Part of what made me drawn to Blake was the fact that he was so attentive. I thought for a while that just like I was starting to change what I was wanting and how I viewed him and our whole arrangement, that maybe he was, too.
Why did his words upset me so much if I knew that they were right? I had been struggling to keep things together so that we could spend time together, have amazing sex, but without all of the messy feelings.
Obviously, I had failed on my end.
And his words were like a slap in the face because, in my mind, they could only mean one thing: the feelings that I had for him were stronger than the feelings that he had for me.
I thought about my mother, the hopeless romantic mess left with remnants of a family that was the product of such a love.
I remembered coming home one day and seeing her sitting in the dark in her bedroom, the loud noise of the TV her only companion.
She would always play her soaps really loud so that the blaring of the TV was the only sound that could be heard probably for miles. The loud violins and the dramatic dialogue would pierce the air as I moved about doing whatever it was that I was doing. My mother used to ask me to sit and watch with her, but I could never stomach the sad story lines and syrupy sweet plot twists that often had her on the edge of her seat or that would deduce her to a puddle of tears.
And when, inevitably, one of her favorite characters would get their heart shattered into a million tiny pieces, she would cluck her tongue and shake her head.
"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," she would say aloud. She said it quite often. I didn't know if she was saying it in hopes that I would believe it or if she was trying to convince herself. Whatever the case, I took those moments are clear confirmation that love was never something that I wanted to be held captive by.
And yet here I was, like an immature teenager with a pointless crush on my employer.
Because, that's who he was despite the story that my overactive imagination liked to paint. He was the guy who paid me money so that I could pay the bills that would be waiting for me in the inevitable moment that I finally returned home.
This wasn't someone that I had met randomly, someone that I met with hopes of building a future with. He was a guy who paid me for sex in exchange for a studio.
I shuddered to have to think of it that way, but it was necessary. Not only was it completely true, it was also necessary for me to keep my own emotions in check so that I wouldn't be tempted to keep diving off of the deep end.
The other night, I was up thinking about things like would my life could be like if I decided to stay on the island.
As if that were a decision that I could just unanimously make when Blake had made it clear that having a long term relationship was not an interest of his.
The perfect girl for the ad.
That's who he said that I was.
While I was busying piecing together a life that we would live together, he was busy thinking about the business arrangement that we had struck.
I had turned into one of the very girls that I would have pitied, ones who were willing to do anything even literally sell their soul for a few dollars. I used Harvey and the showcase as an excuse, dangling a proverbial carrot in front of my own nose as incentive for me to stay. I tried to tell myself that the sexual part of our relationship was only a byproduct of the real reason that I was there: to work on my craft in a way that I had never had the chance and quite possibly may never have the chance again.
But, if I were to sit and be completely honest with myself, I would have to admit that all of that was a lie. I was no different than one of the common women who stood on random street corners trading their bodies for whatever vice they were hooked on.
I was ashamed.
The more I thought about it, the more the sad realization set in about what I had to do.
I was going to have to leave the island right away.
I really didn't see how I could stay when our minds and hearts were in two completely separate places. And I knew that if I shared how I felt, it would hasten the very thing that we both were not looking to: breaking each other's hearts.
And not only that, I started to think about the actual agreement. Maybe the reason why I started to develop such strong feelings for him is that I had basically deduced myself down to being his whore. And not even one that made any money. It all felt dirty and I couldn't take it anymore.
The tears began to burn the back of my eyelids and flow before I had the chance to stop them. I stood there, letting them flow, feeling like pieces of my soul were coming out in shards. It burned. It stung. This was the pain that I had been avoided and just like an unsuspecting animal walking into a trap, I had managed to get my own self mangled inside of it and couldn't really see too many viable options for escape.
I threw open the door of the bathroom and bounded down the hallway, running as fast as my legs would take me. Once I got to the room that I had called my own for week, I grabbed my floral bag and began throwing my clothes into them. I moved as quickly as I could so that I could put this place in my rearview. I hoped that once I was gone, the memory of this place would be just like a bad dream that I had somehow managed to wake up from, one that would make me shudder and do everything in my power to make sure that it wouldn't be a reoccuring nightmare.
"What are you doing?"
I whirled around and saw Blake standing in the doorway. I didn't even know that he had come inside the house and somehow he had managed to sneak into the room without me noticing. Part of me wondered how long he had been standing their watching me.
"I can't really get into it right now. I need to leave right now. You can keep all of the rest of the art. I'm only going to take the ones that I feel are best. I really do appreciate all that you have done to help me, though," I said, moving toward the wall to gather my art pieces that I was going to take for the showcase, trying hard not to make eye contact with him. I didn't want him to notice that I had been crying.
He walked over to where I stood in the middle of the room. He reached out his head to try steadying me, to get me to stop moving long enough for him to try to piece together exactly what was happening.
"Talia, talk to me. Whatever it is, I'm sure that we can fix it. I've done everything that I could possibly think of to make you comfortable and happy here. If there's something that I don't know about that's bothering you, just let me know and I will fix it. I promise. Now, what is it?"
I looked up at him. His eyes looked worried, a still sadness filling them more and more by the minute.
I couldn't tell him. I moved toward my things and started walking out of the room.
"I'm done," I announced, taking large steps through the doorway. "I need you to call the plane right away."
He sighed, shaking his fists heavenward, and yelled.
"So, this is it? After everything? You aren't even going to give me an explanation of what went wrong? You're just going to sail off into the sunset, so to speak? Alright. Fine. I don't want to make you stay somewhere you don't want to be."
I couldn't hold back the tears. They started like a slow leak and then picked up to a speed much like a running faucet.
"I...can't...stay..." I said, struggling to get the words out between hiccups. "I think that I'm falling in love with you."
I turned my back to him, sure that he would be backing away, running off in the opposite direction to call the plane.
Peeling the band-aid off fast was the best and only option at this point and I knew it.
It was just a matter of doing it.