James
The phone just kept on ringing. I’d been trying him all day. Sometimes Caleb just wasn’t available.
I was sure Ava had spoken to him about the documents. She’d said she would. I didn’t know what she’d said to him, though. What if it was terrible? What if she’d told him straight that I was behind all this?
I was angry. Furious. I didn’t know what to think of her. She doubted me. I knew that I had been a dick to her and that I had messed up her life in a lot of ways, but I wasn’t a cheat. I would never do something like this.
When the phone rolled over to voicemail for the fourth time I slammed my phone down and cursed. I was at home and I felt like the walls were closing in on me. It didn’t matter that I had one of the largest, most expensive apartments in Tampa. It didn’t matter that my company was one of the biggest companies in the state, perhaps even in the northern hemisphere if I was going to be cocky about it. When my life felt like I was falling apart, none of that mattered.
And I was there again, feeling like everything was falling apart. This happened too many times in my life. When I’d lost Ava. When I hadn’t been good enough for my dad and Charlie had gotten the business. When I had created my own company had been successful and my dad hadn’t blinked an eye. And then, when he’d died and I had felt like my time was up, I would never be good enough for him now that he couldn’t change his mind about me anymore.
I poured more whiskey. I was on my third glass already. Or was it my fourth? I couldn’t remember. Three fingers. Maybe four because I slipped and it spilled a bit more. Who was counting?
I threw back the drink and swallowed hard, gulping it down quickly. My head spun and my stomach protested. I wasn’t going to stop, though. Alcohol was the only damn thing that numbed me out enough to think straight. Usually.
Tonight, it just didn’t work.
I tried Ava’s phone but she hadn’t wanted to speak to me at all. Not after the way I’d attacked her in the café. I shouldn’t have done it that way, I knew that. I had been terrified that she would think the worst of me. And now, I was scared that she did.
I paced around my living room, feeling like an idiot. I was stranded in a life I couldn’t live. I couldn’t breathe. I cried out and threw the empty whiskey glass against the far wall, narrowly missing a painting the decorator had suggested. Shards of glass scattered across the room.
I sat down on the coffee table with my head in my hands. The alcohol was making it worse, obviously. I shouldn’t have had that much to drink. I didn’t want to face the facts, though.
My head spun slowly and I swayed on the coffee table. I had to stop this. I had to… talk to Caleb. He would be home. He barely went out in the beginning of the week. I got up and grabbed my car keys. I shouldn’t be driving but I wasn’t going to wait on the curb to get a cab when I was perfectly capable of carting myself around.
I was James Weber, goddammit.
It wasn’t a very far drive to Caleb’s house – partly because I knew the road well enough to drive it with my eyes closed, and partly because my foot was heavy on the gas and my eyes only took in something that whizzed past me now and then. Caleb’s neighborhood was on the edge of town, not too far from Amanda’s place, and easy to find.
The streets were lit, the streetlights partially covered by leaves from the trees surrounding them. I pulled up in front of Caleb’s house and tried to pull into the driveway. I turned too early one of my front tires popped over the curb, making the car shudder.
“No, no,” I told myself. I didn’t try to straighten out the car. I parked halfway on the curb with my ass on the road and closed the car door. I walked to the front door and leaned against the buzzer.
Nothing happened. Was Caleb deliberately avoiding me? It couldn’t be. I pressed the buzzer again and again. Still, nothing. That housekeeper of his had to be sleeping already or retired, or something.
I turned, ready to leave when music drifted toward me on the music. It was music I recognized, music that only Caleb would play. He was outside on the patio.
A small path led around the house and I followed it, stepping on the stones that had been set apart from each other the distance of a grown man’s steps. When I turned the corner, I was in the dark, the grass stretching away from me. The patio was lit, music playing. The door to the bar was open. Caleb was drinking. Maybe he felt as miserable as I did.
I walked toward the patio. I paused before I stepped into the pool of light. Caleb was on the couch with a woman, their bodies fused together as if they were one. His hands roamed over her as if she wasn’t wearing clothes. I didn’t want to interrupt them. I turned to leave when Caleb moved and I saw a brunette hair. The clothes she was wearing looked familiar, too. Jeans, a blouse.
I cleared my throat. Caleb stopped kissing the woman and looked up.
“What’s wrong?” Ava asked, pushing on her elbows. Her cheeks were flush, her freckles incredible. She looked like a vision. And she was making out with another man.
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting something,” I said, stepping into the light. Ava paled. Caleb jumped back as if her skin was scalding. “You weren’t answering your phone.”
“James,” Ava said in a breathy voice. “This is not what it looks like.”
Caleb glanced at Ava, unsure. What had she told him? Or rather, what hadn’t she told him?
“It can’t be much else, can it?” I asked.
I wasn’t angry. Not yet. I had just walked in on the woman I love with another man, but I wasn’t angry. I was numb.
“What do you think, Caleb?” I asked. I climbed the steps to the patio and stood in front of them.
“You should have called,” Caleb said. His face betrayed nothing but his voice was strained. I looked at his neck. His heart pulsed against the skin, betraying his cool poker face.
“I did,” I said. “Several times. You didn’t answer.”
I glanced at Ava. “I see why.”
She swallowed. “James,” she started.
I shook my head. “I don’t really want to hear it, Ava.”
I was suddenly so tired. I wanted to go home and crawl into bed. I wanted to sleep and wake up tomorrow morning and realize it was all a nightmare, a terrible dream.
She got up. “Please, just let me explain.”
“Explain what?” I asked. “That you’ve grown tired of me and now you’re moving on to the next one?”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “Don’t pretend like you hadn’t pushed me away first.”
“When we were kids!” I cried out. The veneer of calm was slowly cracking. My anger shone through in thin strips, tainting the picture in front of me, making it all look that much worse. “I fixed it since then. I told you what I meant, what I felt, and what’s real, now. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
She blinked at me without saying something. I was right, then.
“So, what?” I carried on. “Was your plan to sleep with him, too, before you went back home? You’re really stringing them along, aren’t you?”
Caleb snapped his head toward Ava.
“You slept with him?”
Ava opened her mouth, gasping for words. She shook her head while she was searching for excuses.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know,” I said to Caleb.
“I didn’t,” he said. To Ava, he said, “you told me that working with him would be fine, that whatever happened long ago was over.”
“This is a bit messy,” Ava finally managed. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Which one of us didn’t you mean to happen?” I asked. Caleb and I both looked at her. I wanted an answer.
“You’re just like the rest of them,” I said to Ava. “I thought you were different, but this was just about what you could get from me. What else were you after? My money?”
Caleb looked at me. “Don’t do this, James,” he said.
“Why not? She’s been looking at the finances all day since she arrived. You don’t think that maybe she thought of taking some of it for herself?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ava cried. “How was I supposed to get a hold of any of if that was my intention?”
Caleb looked at me, scrutinizing.
“I think you’ve had a bit much to drink, buddy,” he said. “Why don’t you go home and sleep it off, we’ll all talk about this in the morning?”
I shook my head. “So, when I’m gone you can sleep with her? I don’t think so.”
I attacked him. The anger, the resentment, the alcohol, all fused together into aggression that I couldn’t control anymore and I attacked him. I grabbed him by the throat, tackling him to the ground. Ava shouted somewhere in the distance but I had shut off. I couldn’t think straight. I was fighting my best friend over a girl and I couldn’t think about stopping.
We tumbled to the ground, our bodies colliding in a tangle of limbs. My hands weren’t as sure as they always were and Caleb wriggled free without much effort. I punched him in the jaw and he groaned. He managed to wrestle his way out and elbowed me in the head. Everything spun and I hit the floor with my elbow first. A pain shot up into my arm but I ignored it and it disappeared almost immediately. My head spun, the edges of my vision going black.
“Stop it!” I heard Ava cried out. Nothing happened. I lay on the floor without Caleb kicking me in the ribs. I half expected him to kick me while I was down. I couldn’t think of anything more foul that going for your best friend’s woman behind his back.
“Let me help you up,” Caleb said. He held out his hand to me. It took concentration to find my coordination and take his hand but he pulled me to my feet, planting me on wobbly legs.
“This isn’t necessary,” he said.
I shook my head.
“You have no idea what this is,” I said. I noticed his nose was bleeding. My head ached dully.
“What are you talking about?” Caleb said.
I shook my head. How was I going to explain to him how it felt, what I meant, when I wasn’t even sure, myself.
“You,” I said, turning to Ava. “You bitch.”
Caleb put his hand on my arm.
“Don’t call her names.”
I shrugged off his hand. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Calm down, James,” he said. “I know I was wrong. But we don’t have to do it like this.”
“Why are you defending her?” I asked.
Caleb shook his head. “I’m not. I’m trying to stop us from fighting.”
What was the point of all this? I didn’t know. I had no idea which way I could turn anymore. Everything felt like it crashed down on me, everything had gone wrong. From the business to a relationship to my friends to my partnership. It was all crashing down around me.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked. I was about to answer, to tell him no, when I realized he wasn’t speaking to me. He was looking at Ava.
“Don’t talk to her!” I shouted and pulled my hand back. I swung. My knuckles met Caleb’s face and Ava screamed.