When we arrived at the after-party, we didn’t stop to pose in front of the cameras that ambushed the invitees as they came. Mable, wearing a short black cocktail dress, dashed right inside the club, and I followed her, not far behind. This was killing me; we couldn’t be ourselves and instead were keeping a low profile. I knew this day would come, when the world would take notice of the woman I loved, and that worried me. They would soon want in, into her life, and I felt anxious that I wouldn’t be able to protect her from it.
Maybe it was my fault that she found herself in this predicament. I had led her down this path, but there was only so far I could go, because the spotlight only had room for one. Is it wrong I want to keep her all to myself? Maybe it was, but with me, she could be any version of herself, no matter how small or big her insecurities. I will always love her for who she is. Love sometimes can be made to feel like a competition, with no one to adjudicate who wins or loses. And so we remained where we remained—no rules—only to anticipate what would happen next.
“Don’t you dare think you can maneuver yourself out of this.” She laid the magazine flat out on my desk.
“Huh?” I glanced up at the sharpness of her voice. “What am I looking at?”
“Take a good hard look, Simon. I think you owe me an explanation,” Mable said, flustered.
There’s a catch-22 to living under the lights: it could work in your favor, and it could also give you a ninety-degree burn. You couldn’t take your pick on which way it would go— only hope you weren’t the deer caught in the headlights. As a photographer, your job was more than to take good shots that told a story. It was about reflecting something most profound. It was my lens that disclosed life in a pure light, the way it was or the way we desired it to be. And then there was the ugly—paparazzi, their lenses distorting the truth. They were not artists; they were turds hiding in the shadows. Paired up with trashy magazines, they would take everything out of context if it made a juicy story that would sell their publication.
“Simon, aren’t you going to explain?” Mable looked at me as if I’d done the most horrible thing—maybe I had.
I took a second to process what she was showing me, and then I saw it. Shit … There you had it. Now I was the deer in the headlights. I was not totally fucked, at least … not after I explained to her about the picture.
Disappointment set in, and I didn’t know if I could ever forgive myself, that I had been deceitful to the woman who I loved with every fiber in me. Not that I was trying to get away with her not knowing, but I had thought it would be best. There it was, slapped hard on the glass window, like a bird that hadn’t seen it coming. I had a legitimate explanation—I did—on why Vanessa and I were on the front cover of a celebrity gossip rag. It was not what it seemed. It never is, under the lights.
“So.” Her voice was steady, but I had known her long enough to know she was talented at holding back. She picked the copy up, studying every detail. “I will give you the benefit of the doubt, Simon, because I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.” She raised her eyebrows. “But you need to tell me what this is.” Some of her green rollers had come loose. Noah was prepping her for a shoot we were to start in an hour. “Is this true? Is this her apartment you’re coming out of?”
“I promise you, it’s nothing to worry about. Can we talk about it after?”
“After what? So you can come up with a better excuse to cover up the possibility that you’ve done something to hurt us? I won’t make a scene in front of everyone … I want to know … Simon, what’s this about?”
Her glassy eyes pegged me, and my stomach twisted in knots. I had never meant for this to happen. At the moment I had thought I was doing the right thing.
“You think I’m cheating on you?” I came closer, and she moved away.
“I don’t know, you tell me.” She glanced at me briefly before looking away, the magazine half-crumpled in her hand. “Apparently, Vanessa gave the interview herself …” She vigorously flipped through the pages, trying to find the article.
“Can you let me see it, please?” I wanted to tell her to relax, but I had a hard time doing that myself. She stuck the glossy paper hard to my chest and walked further away. I didn’t need to look at the picture. I know it was of us coming out of Vanessa’s apartment, but what the picture didn’t show was that three of her friends, two males and a female, had followed us right out after that picture was taken. What I didn’t expect to find next to that one was one of Mable and me on the rooftop that night at the Gala Fashion Show. The caption read: Vanessa slams cheating Simon. Then a smaller caption was underneath: “I thought we had a future together. This is the worst betrayal. I will never forgive him.”
I either wanted to laugh out loud or cry. Only Vanessa could mastermind this. I’d been helping her out, and this was the thanks I got. This was easy to feed to the press. No one knew Mable and I were dating except close friends and family … and, of course, Vanessa. She’d been trying to sabotage everything in my life since she found out Mable and I were together. Now Vanessa was trying to destroy the thing that mattered the most.
“You know this is pure rubbish, right?” I looked back at Mable.
“What, you’re going to tell me you were Photoshopped in?” Her tone was crude, but it had every reason to be.
“No, I was there … It’s definitely me,” I replied, feeling myself deflate.
“When was this taken?” She swallowed hard.
“In Los Angeles, a few months back.”
She closed her eyes like I had just confirmed what she suspected. “I thought you were on location for a shoot.”
“No, I wasn’t.” My voice came out hoarse, and I tossed the magazine on the desk.
“You lied to me?”
Her voice didn’t come out as anger, but as a disappointment.
“Did you sleep with her?” She asked me like I’d known she would. The light in her eyes diminished with each second, and my heart plunged. This is my fault. I created this. I wanted to come clean, but somehow I thought things were better left unsaid … unknown. For me, it was an unfinished business I had to take care of.
“You know I love you—only you—and I would do nothing to jeopardize what we have.”
“But yet you went behind my back … visiting an old girlfriend? What is she to you? Why does she have this pull on you?”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Just sit down.”
“No, I’ll stand, if that’s okay with you.” Mable wrapped her arms around herself as I leaned into my desk.
“Vanessa Todd—she’s my sister-in-law … or was.”
“What?”
“Racheal and Vanessa are sisters … identical twins,” I said.
“Your wife Racheal?” And when I nodded, she settled down in the chair behind her. I could sense the wheels turning in her head.
“Oh God, don’t tell me you cheated on Racheal with Vanessa?”
“No. No, I would never—I thought you knew me better.”
“You lied to me. I never thought you’d do that either,” she responded coldly, and her eyes avoided mine. She was furious, and I wouldn’t hold it against her if she despised me.
“Look, Vanessa had always been a mess, and after Racheal died, it only escalated. She was the only one who understood what I was going through. And we hung out a little more than usual. Then one night she kissed me and I kissed her back. She looked like Racheal, but it didn’t feel right, so I stopped it from going any further. I swear. We were never together—nor ever will be, but Vanessa never accepted that fact. That time I flew to L.A. because she agreed to check herself into rehab if I was the one to bring her there. I told Vanessa that this was the last time I would help her out. After that, Vanessa needed to stay out of my life. But she never kept her word, checking herself out and following me back to New York. I should have known better. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you trust me enough I would understand? I thought we were a team; we would have worked through it together.” She stood up abruptly.
“I didn’t want to involve you in my past because Vanessa is not your problem. After my wife’s death, I felt like I owed Racheal to look out for her sister. It’s the least I could do. I know this puts you in the wrong light.”
“You mean my integrity?” She sarcastically laughed. “All my efforts to advocate for my charities—have you any idea what I look like now? I will be criticized as the other girl who broke up a relationship … one that never existed.” Her eyes lit up like it had just hit her. “I don’t think my career will recover from this.”
“I could fix this.” I quickly added.
“How are you going to do that? Get her to confess? She’ll never do that; she hates my guts.” Mable threw her arms up. “Vanessa was out to get me from the start, and you have been covering it up. Vanessa was the one who vandalized your car—and the calls on my phone in the middle of the night—you knew all of it.”
I couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“This magazine sent this morning—it was Vanessa—wasn’t it? You knew what she was capable of, and you never let me in on it because you thought … I don’t know what you thought.” Her voice got louder with every word.
“I was doing it to protect you. I thought I could take care of it on my own.”
“No—you’re selfish, Simon.”
“I made a mistake—okay. It’s one stupid mistake, and I don’t want it to come between us.”
“You chose Vanessa over me,” she said under her breath. “I can’t believe I took this long to realize it. It’s always been her.”
“What? No.” It came out sharp. “I chose no one over you. It’s just you—only you.”
She got up, regarding me for a moment, and something happened behind her eyes. The anger that was there a second before faded away, replaced with sadness.
“I’m not someone who will tell you what you want to hear. I love you, and that’s why I have to be transparent and give you the facts—you’re a mess, Simon. You’re struggling with guilt, and you think the solution is to help everyone you can because you don’t know how to save yourself, but it doesn’t work like that. You’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing you could have done to change things. Trying to save Vanessa will not bring Racheal back. Cut the cord, because she will take you down with her.”
Mable was right. I’d been trying to make things right through Vanessa. Nothing I ever did would change the past, but I couldn’t help but want to try.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
Her voice became bold. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe with time … but how can I trust you again?”
“Where are you going?” Mable was making her way out of my office.
“I can’t … I can’t think when I’m around you.” She shook her head.
“Mable.”
I tried to get her to look at me, but she only placed her face in her hands before looking up again. “No—Simon, I’m so pissed at you. I think we need space, you know—to breathe.” She took one step back and regained her composure, holding on to her tears because she was too proud to give me that privilege.
“Okay,” I said, and she took her final step toward the door.
“I hope you can forgive yourself, because this will eat you up if you continue like this. I care too much, and that’s why I can’t watch you crash and burn.” She spoke softly. “I can’t be around when that happens.”
Then I watched Mable disappear through the doorway, and most likely from my life.