Normally, I don’t give a damn who’s renting my house (mostly because I don’t rent out my house that often), but I let my agent talk me into listing it.
He claimed it was more exposure for my artwork, which was funny for two reasons. One, I’ve already become a recognized name in my industry and I don’t need the money. And two, considering none of the paintings in my personal collection are signed by me, I’m not sure how they would ‘help sell’.
Either way, giving a damn about who is in my house is what I pay the property management company to do, and they do a fine job of it.
Usually.
It’s not like they could’ve known they’d rented my house to my ex-girlfriend’s sister and her family.
After all, Margot and Stirling meet all the criteria as luxury rental clients: they have the financial resources, of course. And unless there’s some family secret I don’t know about—other than Amanda’s inability to love someone who doesn’t live up to Gray Sutter’s standards—there’s no reason why they would have failed the background check.
I broke with my tradition of not caring who my renters were when I knew I’d have to spoil their vacation by returning home early.
I really only planned to stay one night and then move into a hotel suite for the rest of their stay. And I was still considering that when I saw “Margot Sutter Fordham” on the signature line of the agreement. But now that I know Amanda is here, I refuse to go.
She doesn’t get to break my heart into a million fucking shards that keep shreddingevery timeI think of her, and then expect me to vacate my own home because her ‘too good for me family’ expects it.
Now, she’s suddenly standing in front of me.
Mandy.
Except she’s not Mandy, anymore. She killed that beloved part of herself for me five years ago. My heart clenches with pain and rage all over again.
I’ve been an artist ever since I illustrated my best friend’s book in the third grade. They weren’t good by any stretch, but they were promising. Anyone who looked at them could tell what the objects therein were, as opposed to meaningless shapes. “Remarkable definition” for my age was what my third-grade art teacher said.
So I kept at it, and eventually I realized that art is in my DNA. It’s who I am. I refined my aesthetic under excellent tutelage and mentorship during my college years. I graduated from art school and stayed in New York. I even made my mark on the SoHo gallery scene and started to enjoy some commercial success.
But it wasn’t until I lost Amanda that art became therapeutic for me, a vital conduit of personal growth and healing. And even though the night she walked out on me continues to haunt me, it’s possible that I lost her long before then. Hell, maybe she was never mine to begin with, not really.
At that point in my career, though, I could afford to live and paint anywhere I wanted to. I gave up my loft on the Upper West side for a smaller live-work studio space in Tribeca. I spend about a third of my time there. I was also granted a permanent artist-in-residence space in Los Angeles, so I go there quite often as well. It’s always fun to have gallery openings and installations on both coasts.
I bought the house on Kauai few months after Amanda ended our relationship. It was just in the nick of time, too, because I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to heal my heart. Before I was even completely unpacked, I holed up in the studio I made out of the third-floor loft space and just painted anything and everything.
I was never any good at landscapes, but I have a beautiful view of the ocean from the studio, and for a while I played with abstract of the ocean and the horizon. Eventually, I hit a new stride; I poured out my heart—and my pain—onto the canvas. Much of the work went in to my first gallery show on the island, and I sold quite a few of them. But my favorite ones of that period, the most raw and emotional ones, I showcased unsigned in the house.
They’re for my eyes only, along with whomever I choose to invite, and the occasional stranger who rents the house when I’m not at home.
Now everyone can see them.
Amanda can see them.
Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all this time?I ask myself.For her to see the pain she’s caused you?
She says my name and for one beautiful, horrific moment, we lock eyes and time stops.
It’s the best thing and the worst thing that could happen to me right now, having the woman who I loved like I’ll never love again, and who broke my fucking heart, right here in the foyer of my home after ten years.
It could be the chance that I’ve been waiting for, to punish her for the way she hurt me.
The knot in my chest unclenches when Stirling takes over, and I make it a point to focus on him, which I manage to do quite successfully, until his oldest daughter appears at the top of the stairs.
Holy Mother of God.
Sylvia was never a gangly teenager by any stretch of the imagination. But the pretty, mildly annoying fifteen-year-old I knew has disappeared. In her place is a tall female in a body that’s far sexier than any twenty-year-old has a right to legally inhabit. My eyes take her in—more like drink her in—from head to toe as she practically melts down the stairs. I can’t seem to help it, and I’m not even sure I want to.
After a long, uncomfortable moment, I’m finally on my way up to the third floor. I’m exhausted, and Stirling is right, if I can just lay my head down, maybe pour myself a stiff drink once I lock myself inside my studio, then I can survive this whole debacle.
But sleep eludes me even after I drink nearly a fifth of Johnny Walker Red Label straight from the bottle. I stare at the ceiling and wonder how the hell I got here: an accomplished artist, with beautiful homes, in New York and Kauai, more money than I’d ever hoped to make in my lifetime—and utterly, and completely brokenhearted.
