“Holy shit.” Alice’s exclamation pulls me out of my trance to see a half-unwrapped painting in front of me. A flicker of familiarity hits me as more brown paper is pulled away to reveal a five-foot-by-four-foot canvas. Recognizing it instantly, my eyes widen. Holy shit indeed.
The painting, shadowed by piles of packaging, is the same one we saw in the gallery. The one I said I liked.
“What is it?” asks Yemi, taking in the abstract brushstrokes that form a brightly colored figure of a woman.
My mouth ajar, I say, “I can’t believe it. It’s a painting I said I liked at the gallery.”
“Woah. It looks expensive,” Alice adds in awe.
“Very,” I confirm with raised eyebrows. Remembering the price on that little plaque next to the piece in the gallery jolts me out of my nonchalant haze. I shake my head. “Too expensive—I can’t accept this.”
“But do you accept his apology?” Yemi adds, not taking her eyes off the painting.
I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “He didn’t need to apologize. I don’t think it was ever really about him in the first place. I think it was about me.” I rest the note on the counter, reading the last sentence one more time before pouring water into a ribbed green glass. “I’m angry at William for being such an arsehole but most of all I’m angry at myself for falling for it.”
I deleted William’s number when I got home, I couldn’t trust myself to not send him a barrage of angry texts or drunk-scream at him down the phone. My brain feels like a glass being held under freezing cold and then scalding hot water, destined to end up as jagged pieces.
Alice continues to stare at the painting, following the flowing lines around the canvas. “This is gorgeous. He must like you a lot.”
“Or feel really,reallybad,” Yemi adds, bringing me back to reality.
“Well, he’s not the only one.” I sip my glass of waterto clear the shaky voice from my throat. “He’s probably just trying to reestablish our truce before his big hotel meeting tomorrow.”
You deserve so much better.
Trying to put my thoughts in order is like trying to rearrange a deck of cards while wearing oven gloves. Attempting to find the reason lodged somewhere in the creases of my brain that can explain why I still feel more betrayed by Bancroft not telling me than William actually doing the deeds. More than anything, I feel like an idiot. Was I so fragile that he thought I couldn’t handle it?
“As much as I hate to agree with Eric, it sounds like not telling you was for the greater good. He was trying to protect you from suffering even more than you already were after your breakup,” Yemi concludes, perching on a metal stool at the kitchen island.
“But maybe knowing would have helped me get over William faster,” I say into my glass, my free hand resting on the card. “And saved me the humiliation.”
Alice stretches her hand out across the island and places it on top of mine. “Babe, I don’t think you realize how bad it got after William broke up with you. You were on the edge. You were barely eating, not talking to anyone, you basically had high-functioning depression.”
I cringe at the image of me lying in bed every night crying so hard I wanted to be sick. At the memory of how Yemi would make me dinner most nights and practically force-feed me. How Alice would make meparticipate in regular beauty nights with her, testing out the latest skin, body or hair-care product her boss had been gifted and discarded. In the office, I was just a more intense version of my usual self, but outside of the work bubble, I was barely keeping myself alive. The realization sinks to the bottom of my stomach like an anchor finding purchase.
Yemi stares at me, a crease slowly forming as she studies me staring at the card. “It wasn’t William you couldn’t get over all these months, was it? What actually happened that night?”
“When?” Alice asks, her head turning back and forth between Yemi’s and my stare-off.
Yemi, not breaking eye contact with me, says to Alice, “Last December, at the Catch Christmas party.”
My eyes prickle. “I guess I didn’t tell you guys the full story.”
I was freshly single, having been dumped by William and thrown out of his apartment just five days prior. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the party, but Catcher had insisted that all employees attend, and Susie specifically said I needed to be there with her. It was a disgustingly expensive event on the top floor of the Gherkin to celebrate the successes and growth of every company under the CG umbrella. My main objective for the night: drink as many festive cocktails as possible to forget all about my gut-wrenching state of loneliness and misery. My main achievement of the night: pure, uncensored embarrassment.
London lights glittered behind the crowd of people laughing, drinking and bobbing their heads along to the beat of the throbbing DJ set. After my seventh or eighth (or maybe ninth) Mistletoe Mojito, my head was spinning, and I could feel the music pounding through my bones. Susie had left earlier in the evening, thankfully missing my turn in the disco-ball-adorned karaoke corner belting out a slurred version of “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That),” doing the male and female parts and doing them both poorly. I was forcing Yemi to take photos of me in the decorative bathtub by the bar because it was filled with ice and expensive champagne bottles. Routinely scanning the crowd in the dark room framed by the London skyline for familiar faces, I watched as the more senior members of the Catch Group teams began trickling out, going home to their families and partners, causing the crowd’s shoulders to finally sag and loosen now that their bosses had disappeared. Yemi went to meet her boyfriend and I wanted to leave too, but all I was going home to was sadness. I also had this alcohol-fueled feeling that my night wasn’t complete yet, urging me to stay. I avoided my own gaze in the patinated mirrored bar as though catching it would mean acknowledging the self-awareness trying to crawl its way to the surface. The goal of this night was to forget how I was, why I was and who I was. My reflection was merely a snakeskin that would shed and be left on the dance floor to disintegrate.
Leaning against the bar, mostly because I wasn’t sure I could stand up without it, I could feel when Bancroft entered the room. Everyone shifted, as though putting their best faces on for his grand arrival. People like him have always fascinated me: what it would be like to arrive late and command a room with a look, a word, a furrow of the brow—which was exactly what he was doing when I turned around. And unfortunately, that brow was pointed directly at me. I met his intense yet playful stare.
“Look who decided to grace us with his presence,” I said louder than I intended as he glided toward me, giving the occasional nod of acknowledgment to his colleagues in the crowd. Looking him up and down, I clocked a jacket he’d never worn to work before. A tan leather moto jacket with sharp lapels. He always had an eye for what looked amazing on him, mostly dark neutrals, but I theorized there must be some sort of female influence in his life that kept his wardrobe in check. No straight man could look this good on his own.
“Were you waiting for me, Hastings?” He took the drink out of my hand and took a sip, putting his lips where mine just were, not breaking his gaze.
“You think too highly of yourself.” My fingers gripped the cold bar behind me briefly and then swished a rogue hair from my cheek. “I’m having fun.”
“For once,” he added through a tight-lipped smile.
“You’ve been having fun elsewhere, I presume?”
