Chapter Three
Over the next several days, both Megan and Henry were on one another's minds far more than either of them could have imagined. Henry found himself foolishly swooning for this mystery girl, stumbling along the same avenues he'd once made his way through when first loving Ashley. His wife, for the next couple of weeks, was away doing an important photo shoot- and, if his suspicions were to be believed, screwing the director of the shoot all the while.
Maybe it was time, he began to tell himself, for him to begin considering options for his love life outside the confines of his hollow and passionless marriage. Although most would have accused him of knowing next to absolutely nothing about this mystery girl Megan, that single meeting when she'd returned his wallet to him had spoken volumes as to her personality and character. He found himself largely consumed with desires for her that were almost excessive in nature.
He longed for her, felt his heart aching with uncertainty as the time between their meeting and the present fell further and further apart, and he despaired with his inability to come up with some excuse for meeting her again.
Megan, for her part, was entertaining similar fantasies, and her own emotional state could be said to be almost more conflicting than Henry's own.
She'd done her best to move on with her day after their initial meeting, showing up on time to one of her three jobs which she kept in a desperate, insane effort to make ends meet and be able to afford rent. But her mind had scarcely been on her job as she went about her usual mundane tasks with a stunned look on her face, letting her fantasies take her into territories she knew were nothing short of pure delusion on her part.
Her life, at times, seemed like absolute shit. She'd been born into circumstances that were in fact largely similar to Henry's own, but unlike Henry, she'd never had the proper luck or knowhow to make it anywhere near the point where he found himself. She'd always done her best in life, but still she found herself scarcely capable of getting by. She was so tired, so sick of her numerous jobs, her shitty co-workers, and the terrible treatment she endured. The long hours, the meager pay, and the extent to which people seemed willing to wring her dry for every cent they could possibly get out of her were sometimes overwhelming.
Reasonably, she should have had no real impetus for returning that fucking billionaire's wallet to him. Surely, he wouldn’t have missed the relatively meager amount of cash contained in that wallet, and keeping the money would have eased the burden of her finances considerably in the coming weeks. Hell, for that matter even the reward money would have been a welcome boost to her income, had she accepted it.
After turning it down, she found herself wanting to kick her own ass for doing so. There was no justifiable reason not to have accepted his offer, but even now she was certain that she would have done the same thing had he offered it again now. She was just too proud, she supposed; too unwilling to accept that which she hadn't earned as her own. She'd been stepped on enough in life that it had filled her with a strange morality about that sort of thing- she didn't take what she didn't earn, as stubborn and as resolute a notion as that may have been. She wouldn't want others to do so, and so she saw no right for her to take what didn't belong to her either.
God, was she a moron sometimes.
When the hell would she ever learn?
But it wasn't just the money that was occupying her thoughts. Not at all. Mr. Jones, that illustrious billionaire who was worth infinitely more than she would ever be, filled up a great portion of her thoughts in the ensuing days as well. The way he had looked at her, over the course of their interaction... There had been something more in his eyes than simple gratitude, she felt certain. Frankly, she had to confess to herself, she'd felt a similar way in return to what she fancied he'd been experiencing in those long, hypnotized moments of silence.
But even as she entertained the notion of some magical love connection between a poor girl and a wealthy billionaire, she chided herself for doing so on any number of levels. For starters, it was rather an ugly and exploitative notion. Surely she was just attracted to him for his money, after having lived a lifetime in poverty and becoming sick of her inescapable circumstances? She despised herself for the possibility that she had become this sort of woman, more interested in comfort and luxury than she was in finding the sort of person who could truly make her happy in life.
Or had she, in fact, become this sort of woman?
Perhaps she was becoming too hard on herself, and accusing herself of such attitudes without having any real reason or basis for doing so. She'd done nothing wrong, and wasn't it entirely possible that the strange and unpredictable feelings she felt for this man were more substantial in nature than simply revolving around money?
The way he'd looked at her had made her feel encouraged, hopeful. It had filled her with longing for someone who would actually appreciate her, who seemed genuinely glad to be in her company.
She hadn't really felt that way for a long, long time.
She'd had a number of failed relationships over the years, almost always with men she should have known better than to be with in the first place. No one had ever treated her with the genuine respect she sought, and yet she'd scarcely remained single for any extensive period, feeling emotionally dependent on others to help bolster her self-esteem. Her most recent relationship had ended in turmoil. Her ex, Danny, had been a terrible person, never hurting her , but engaging in various criminal enterprises that put her at risk. She'd been about to leave him when suddenly she found herself in the midst of a pregnancy scare, thinking that her protection had failed and that she was carrying his child. Danny was finally busted by the cops, his many misdeeds at last catching up with him, and Megan had had to fear the prospect of raising his child all on her own.
It had been one of the lowest periods of her life, and she had anticipated a future in which she had absolutely nothing to look forward to. Thank God, though, her period had at last come, apparently thrown off somehow by her birth control, and any other symptoms of the supposed pregnancy all in her head.
She was freed at last of Danny's hold over her life, and she'd decided, from there on out, to avoid dating anyone so long as her life remained in such a state of disarray.
Months had passed since the breakup, and Megan had stayed true to this promise to herself throughout the ensuing period. However, it became harder and harder for her to remain so alone for so long, and that day at Henry's house, where he'd been subtly flirting with and showing interest in her, had been like a breath of fresh air.
She'd read up on him online prior to the return of the wallet, simply as a means of knowing just what it was she was walking into. In the process of doing so, however, she'd discovered a lot more about him than she'd intended. She'd uncovered a lot of redeeming qualities -assets to his personality- which served to establish him as a decent and trustworthy individual in her mind. She knew about the circumstances under which he'd grown up, the amount of hard work and effort it had taken for him to make it to the point where he found himself today, and she let herself believe that, somehow, this served to establish a strange sort of kinship between them. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would be like one of those magical relationships that you read about in fairy tales. A rags-to-riches princess who falls in love with the man of her dreams, catching his eye for being so different, so pure, and so honest compared to other girls; the two of them living happily forever after on the throne of his kingdom.
But God, it made her feel like such a moron to even entertain such notions. She felt so pathetic, so narcissistic. For Christ's sake, the man was married already. And not that that was anything that could really stand in the way of a man with the world at his feet who resolutely set his mind on infidelity, but his wife was a goddamn supermodel. What the hell could he possibly want from a girl like herself, when he was married to a platinum blonde bombshell who routinely graced the covers of famous magazines?
Megan, herself, wasn't all that terrible to look at, she knew, but more often than not she found herself underestimating her own beauty. She was nothing in contrast to the beautiful and talented Ashley Jones, she told herself, and it was time for her to stop entertaining these ridiculous fantasies and come back down to reality.
One day, however, her phone rang. The number was one with which she was unfamiliar, and yet she felt certain, before even picking it up, that she knew precisely who it was.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Megan? This is Henry. Henry Jones. I was wondering whether you might be able to come over this Saturday afternoon. It's about the wallet. Nothing serious or anything, it's just, well, I just wanted to talk to you about something. Do you think you might be available then? Or maybe some other time if you’re busy.”
“No, no, that should be fine,” she hurried to say, although this was a lie. She had work on Saturday, and her ass would be on the line if she missed her shift. But the chance to meet with Henry again, to see him and have the chance to do things right this time, was simply too great an opportunity for her to pass up.
“Okay, great, I'll see you then,” he concluded, and the two of them hung up.
Her heart was thundering in her ears as she contemplated the prospect of going to see him again.