Sasha sighed. “Fine. So, you’ll fly across to London once a month, give the kid a few gifts and take her out for lunch or something, and then come back. We still don’t have to change in this situation, Tom.”
Tom swallowed down a rising lump of bile. “Okay.” He leaned back in his chair. “So, say we get married, and one day have children of our own? I’ll want Reine to know her siblings. I’ll want Reine to spend time with us as a family.”
“Sure, fine.” Sasha stood, going to the mirror and running her fingers through her hair. “She can babysit for us. She’ll be old enough by that point anyway.”
At that, Tom closed his eyes.She’s horrible,his mind said again.What have you been doing? What were you thinking?“Sasha,” he said slowly, opening his eyes. “I don’t want to marry you.”
“Well, I don’t particularly want to marry you either, but that’s my own idiotic tendency I’m willing to work through.”
“You don’t want to marry me?” Tom asked her in disbelief. “If you don’t want to marry me, why the fuck are you still here? Why the fuck are we having this conversation?”
Sasha sighed again, spinning on her heel to stare at him. “Please get real here, Tom. You and I have hardly been couple of the year, have we? We’re very different people with very different needs. But you know something, in many ways we work. We’re of a similar background and we look fabulous together in photographs. We aren’t meant for one another, but we work together. We make sense.”
“But if you don’t love me, and I don’t love you—”
“Love.” Sasha rolled her eyes, opening her make-up case and pulling out a lipstick. “Please. You think I’m here because Iloveyou? Of course I don’t love you, Tom, and I’ve known for a long time that you don’t love me.”
Tom stood, looking down at Sasha angrily. “If you don’t love me, then why are you here?”
Sasha applied her lipstick without even looking back at him, the scarlet shade making her mouth look sweet and appealing.
How can something so beautiful spew such ugliness?Tom thought.How can something so lovely be so ugly inside?
“Well,” Sasha replied evenly, blotting her lips on a tissue, “I’m here because you were a catch, Tom. With your money, looks and background, you’re the prize fish in the pond, believe it or not. So, I caught you.” Abruptly she turned to him, giving him a long and appraising look. “But just because I caught the fish doesn’t mean I want to eat it, Tom. It was never about the fish for me. It was aboutcatchingthe fish, which I did. Now, how does this shade look on me? Good, right?”
Tom stared at her in disbelief. “I don’t want to marry you, Sasha.”
Sasha pressed her lips together, a touch of anger seeming to strike her. “Oh, for fuck’s sake — look, Tom, please get real here. If this is about Ari—?”
“Don’t bring her into this,” Tom interrupted. “This isn’t about Ari, not right now at least. This is about you and I being completely unsuited for one another.”
“Of course this is about Ari,” Sasha spat, walking over to the cupboard and pulling out a dress. “Admit it, if she hadn’t walked through the door this weekend with her little brat you would’ve married me and never thought the better of it—”
“I would have thought the better of it one day,” Tom said violently. “I would’ve woken up from my stupor eventually.”
“Fine, if you say so, like I care anyway. But let me tell you this.” Sasha stepped closer to him, jabbing a finger in his chest. “If you think Ari’s going to take you back just because you’ve ditched me, you’ve got another thing coming. She doesn’t love you anymore, Tom. She never loved you, in fact. Just the man you pretended to be. She hates you, Tom. Really and truly.”
Tom felt all the air pulled from his lungs as he exhaled hard at Sasha’s words. Her cruelty was like a punch to his stomach, and he recoiled away from her, stumbling back towards the wall.
Abruptly, Sasha’s face changed. “You’re going to end up a lonely man if you break up with me, Tom,” she said, suddenly sweet. “And you know how you hate to be lonely.”
“Sasha, don’t—”
“I’ll keep you company,” Sasha promised, stepping towards him, running one of her long nails down his cheek. “With me, you’ll never be alone.”
“Don’t, stop—”
Sasha stepped even closer. “You know you can’t cope when you’re alone, Tom,” she carried on relentlessly. “You know you don’t make good decisions when you’re lonely.”
“Yeah,” Tom croaked, shaking his head. “That’s how I ended up with you in the first place.”
He collapsed into the chair again, where he suddenly began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed, until Sasha began to look at him with concern.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, her tone sharp. “Why are you laughing?”
“I’m funny,” he told her, “I’m the reason I’m laughing.”
“Tom—”
