“Evan, my boy!” he boomed into the phone. “We were all so concerned about you. I’m glad you got in touch. Camilla has been trying to reach you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ll tell her you’ll call her back.”
“I won’t.”
Camilla’s father sighed into the receiver. “Now Evan, Camilla made a mistake—”
“She cheated on me,” I said flatly. “Multiple times.”
“Weddings are stressful for women.”
“Yes, but none of them use it as an excuse to cheat.”
“Evan, you were raised in this world. You know how it is.”
“I do, but I don’t agree with it.”
“But you still want to benefit from it. After all, our deal is still on the table.”
“Yes, I was wondering if you had also decided to break your promise,” I said coldly. I didn’t even care if I was pushing too much.
“Of course not,” Camilla’s father insisted. “Come see me; we’ll talk man-to-man.”
The phone rang again after I hung up. It was Camilla. I sent it to voicemail, but it immediately rang again. Furious, I answered it, pressing the button on my Bluetooth headset without looking at the screen.
“What is wrong with you? You’ve been calling me nonstop. Can you not take a hint? Stop asking for an apology. I will never forgive you, and I never want to see you again in my life.”
“Trust me, the feeling is mutual.”
Crap. It wasn’t Camilla.
“I was a wonderful houseguest,” I growled into the phone.
Ivy made a disgusted noise on the other end. “You left your clothes strewn around, there was water all over the bathroom, and you ate all of my lasagna.”
“Seriously, are you still harping on the lasagna? I will buy you more lasagna.”
Ivy was quiet. I probably shouldn’t have yelled at her, but honestly, had she just called to harass me?
“Actually, I need you to do something else for me,” she said. “Could you talk to Camilla?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I hissed into the phone. “So she has you doing her bidding now, huh? Fucking figures. I knew you were no good. Well, guess what. I will never talk to her, and you can go tell her to go back to one of the other men she was fucking, because I don’t give a shit!”
The phone was silent. Then Ivy said coldly, “I don’t know who the hell you think you’re talking to. I hate cheaters, and I would never stoop so low as to tell someone to forgive a lying cheater. All I want is my money. You still owe me twenty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” I told her. “I never wanted that wedding. I didn’t want the flowers, the gift bags, the reception—I never wanted any of it. If you want money, you can go talk to Camilla or her father, because I am done with her and done with weddings.”
For a half second after I hung up on Ivy, I thought about throwing the phone across the room. But then I calmed myself down and instead stood out on the balcony. Though it was early spring, it still was chilly outside. As the air cooled my anger, I started to regret how I had talked to Ivy. She hadn’t deserved it. But there was no way I was paying for that wedding. It would be the ultimate insult to pay for Camilla’s dream wedding while she had been cheating on me the whole time.
It wasn’t even lunchtime, and I hadn’t accomplished anything that day. I also wanted to leave. I peered out through the glass walls of my office to survey my employees. They were probably gossiping about what had happened at the wedding that weekend. Several of the higher-ups had been invited, and I was sure they had given their subordinates all the gory details.
I just wanted to go back to Ivy’s apartment. She was kind of a shrew, but I did like her cat.
She never wants to see you again. You yelled at her and ate her food.
I sat down at my computer. There was one thing I was going to accomplish today, and that would be to alleviate the small shred of guilt I felt about Ivy.
