“Mm. Yes. You know I like things in sets. A companion piece to this one might be nice.”
“I’ll look into it,” Tom replies, keeping his voice even. “I’ll look into it.”
* * *
It becomes a hobby over which Tom has little control. Ari, he learns, has an online shop where she sells a few of the canvases she’s created. He buys one before he thinks the better of it, before buying another just a few days after that. Within a month, he’s emptied her shop. He then waits for her site to update, waits for her to sell the pieces she must currently be working on. But the site seems neglected, and a worrying thought builds in Tom’s mind, that maybe — just maybe — Ari’s given the whole thing up.Maybe the baby takes up all her time, Tom thinks with a painful swallow.Or maybe her good-looking, well-built husband does, his mind adds bitterly.
So, he starts to seek out her earlier work. He finds a few pieces from a seller who operates out of Greenwich market, and another few from a small gallery in Brighton. Soon his collection of her work spirals from three to twenty-two, and then swells again to thirty-one. He has them framed, catalogued and hung, keeping his favourites in his Brooklyn apartment and loaning the rest to small, independent galleries in New York. A few buyers contact him, looking to buy some of Ari’s work, offering him double, even triple what he originally paid for each. But he always turns them down.
He let Ari go. He lost her. But he won’t lose her work. He won’t lose all he has left of her.
He learns from an art contact that one of Ari’s paintings sold to an American stockbroker, and Tom makes a point of traipsing to a polo match to buy it from him. The guy’s an absolute shit, cocky and smarmy, and through gritted teeth Tom negotiates a buying price. The guy seems to realise Tom’s determination to own the piece, and as such haggles like afucking pro. Tom ends up offering a five figure sum, just to shut the guy up, and he stands in the sun afterwards, holding an ice-cold glass of water to his head, wondering just what sort of madness has infected him.
He has to admit that if this is his attempt at letting Ari go, he’s not doing a very good job of it.
It’s then, while a headache builds behind his temple, that he hears a voice he recognises. He turns when it calls his name, and comes face to face with Sasha.
“Hello stranger,” she practically purrs. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
* * *
Sasha looked as immaculate as always, examining her perfectly manicured nails with a remarkably detached expression, given her anger the day before. Tom paced around her, his mind racing, with what felt like a hundred thoughts striking him at once. He turned them over and over in his head, trying to decide which one to tackle first. Ari, Reine, Sasha, his mother... Tom collapsed onto the sofa in the room he was sharing with Sasha, running a hand tiredly over his face.
Above everything, he knew it was time to do what he’d been putting off for days. No, weeks.
No, he thought again, as realisation hit him. Something he’d been putting off foryears.
“Sasha,” he began, his voice low but firm. “Look—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sasha cut him off, leaning back on her hands and staring at him with an irritated expression. “Don’t say what I think you’re about to, Tom. Don’t be that stupid, okay?”
Tom stared at her. “What do you think I’m about to say?”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “I’m getting the feeling that you’re about to try and call off our wedding.”
“Sasha—”
Sasha held up a hand to stop him. “But you must know how utterly ridiculous that would be, don’t you?”
Her words made him pause. “Ridiculous?”
Sasha gave him a pointed look. “Utterly and completely ridiculous. I mean, I know you’ve always had idiotic tendencies, despite being a mostly intelligent and well-thought-of person, but to cancel our wedding would be beyond stupid.”
Tom shook his head, trying to stay calm. “Sasha, for you and me to still get married — now, with everything that’s going on, everything that’sstillgoing on...thatwould be the stupid thing to do. Not calling it off.”
“Everything that’s going on?” Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Let me just clarify the situation for you, Tom. We’re atyourmother’s house. We havemywedding dress designer here. We havemywedding photographer here. We havemydream wedding planners here. Now, just because you happen to have slept with one of those wedding planners a million-who-cares-years ago, does not mean anything between us has to change.”
Tom stared at her. “I have a child with that wedding planner, Sasha. That changes things.”
Again, Sasha rolled her eyes. “This is just another one of your idiotic tendencies showing, Tom. You don’t even know for a fact that the kid is yours. You’re just taking the mother’s word for it. For all you know, the kid belongs to someone else, and Ari just saw this place and the money you have and decided she wants a piece of it. I don’t blame her. I’d do the same, if I were in her shoes.”
Deep inside Tom, something hot and ugly erupted.She’s awful,a voice in his head suddenly said.Sasha is a truly awful woman.
“Don’t talk that way about Ari,” he said, his tone sharp. “Reine is mine.”
“Okay, so let’s say she is,” Sasha shrugged, as if it were no matter. “You and your mother have enough money to buy Ari off. We ship those two back to merry olde England and you and I can get on with our lives. Simple.”
Tom’s hands clenched, and he felt his jaw tighten. “I want to be a father to Reine. I don’t want to buy anyone off.”
