| |
The days seemed to blend into one another, one right after the other. I’d stay in my bed for days on end, only getting up to pee and get something to drink. I didn’t shower unless Lydia dragged me out of the bed and tossed me into it. Once, she even had to turn the water on and soak through my clothes before I mustered enough energy to wash the scent off my skin.
A scent that wasn’t Ray’s.
I felt like shit. Lydia said I was depressed and that I needed to put my focus elsewhere. But, “depressed” seemed like an understatement. I had no will to do anything. I didn’t care about work or finding jobs. I didn’t care about my general hygiene or eviction because I wouldn’t be able to pay rent in a few months. I didn’t care about the future of a business that had been ransacked, and I didn’t care about my appearance. Or eating. Or sleeping. Or doing anything.
I felt like shit. Worse than shit. I felt like the asshole constantly regurgitating the shit, having to taste it day in and day out for my actual job.
A job that never paid.
Every once in a while, I felt Lydia come in and rub my back. She’d sit on the edge of my bed, stirring me from my slumber before putting her hand onto my back or leg, or running her fingers through my greasy hair. The motions would put me right back to sleep. I’d slip into a world where only Ray and I existed. Where we could laugh and cuddle and eat and sleep and make love in front of a fire and spend our afternoons swimming around in the mysterious warm lake we found while exploring.
And every time I woke up, a surge of regret was there to fill my stomach with the food I neglected to provide it.
Ever since I broke things off with Ray, I’d wanted to take it back. A million times over, no matter what. I dreamed of it. I dreamed of going over to his apartment, surprising him with dinner, and getting down on my knees to beg him for mercy. To beg him to take me back. To give me one last chance not to overthink things and get so scared.
Then, my conversation with Lydia would always creep up in the back of my mind. And it would remind me why I did it in the first place.
I knew the reasons still stood. His family would always be his family, whether he chose to walk away or not. They’d continue to make my life a living nightmare, and so would Vivien. Sure, I’d never have peace in my life. But that didn’t mean Ray didn’t deserve peace, either
Maybe, this way, he at least stood a chance at finding it.
I couldn’t be trapped between Ray and his parents. I couldn’t be part of that world. I knew Ray felt just as torn. I knew it plagued him as well. But I also knew he’d try to reconcile everything, if he could. I knew people like his parents wouldn’t budge. They didn’t understand what compromise and reconciliation was. They were who they were, and their money provided them with the luxury of never having to change to be accepted or even enjoyed.
That was the comfort money bought.
There were moments where I thought about being the brave one. Moments where I figured I could keep sacrificing if it meant keeping Ray. But as I lay there in bed, I realized that maybe he didn’t know how to compromise, either. Maybe he simply expected me to tolerate their treatment like he did just so we could be together.
And that wasn’t fair to me.
It didn’t make me miss him any less, though.
“Come on, Vee!”
The light in my room flipped on and I groaned.
“Lydia.”
I felt her rip the covers off me, and I curled up into a ball.
“Come on,” I grumbled.
“Nope. This has gone on all week. It’s cold, so you can bundle up and stave off the smell coming from your armpits from the people around us. But we’re getting you out,” she said.
“What?” I sighed.
“Out. Come on. I’m taking you to Texas Mexas.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please don’t do that. And you know that’s not the name of that place.”
“I know, but I can never remember their actual name. All I know is that it’s your favorite Tex-Mex place, so I’m taking you. My treat. Get up.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“No, Lydia.”
“If you don’t get up, I’m throwing open the windows and tossing your panties onto the street,” she said.
“No.”
I heard her stride over to my window and throw it open. The bitter cold from the outside world wafted in, and I scrambled when I heard her pull out my drawer. I leapt off the bed just as she pulled my entire fucking dresser drawer of underwear right out of the damn piece of furniture, and she grinned as I ripped it away from her.
I tossed the heavy drawer onto the bed and sighed.
“Fine. Just... give me a second?” I asked.
“I’ll stand and watch you get ready,” Lydia said.
“Seriously?”
“You’re not getting back in that bed, Vee. Not until I see you eat a decent meal.”
I grumbled as I got dressed. Lydia watched me like a hawk as I washed myself down at the sink. It was embarrassing as hell, but I got why she was doing it. She knew me all too well, and she knew that if she left my room again, I’d lock her ass out. I cleaned myself up as best as I could, and then the two of us headed out. We got into her car with our teeth clattering in the cold, and then she blasted the heat as we made our way to Pedro’s Chile y Tacos.
I don’t know why she couldn’t ever remember the name of the place.
The second we walked into the restaurant, the loud-ass mariachi music almost blew my eardrums out. I covered them and winced, not used to the sounds of being out in the world. I’d been cooped up for damn near two weeks. Two weeks without Ray, and it had been a nightmare. The only saving grace of the restaurant was the fact that they had cheap beer specials going on, which meant I could enjoy my fair share of alcohol to dampen the loud-ass trumpets off in the corner.
“One round of your beers on special for us, and keep them coming,” Lydia said.
“And some queso for the chips,” I said softly.
“Que?” the waiter asked.
“Queso!” Lydia exclaimed.
I wrinkled my face at how she had to yell over the damn music. I looked around at the bright colors of the interior and the neon margaritas sitting on tables. There were people dancing near their booths and swinging their partners around to the music. There were even some college kids in the back, drinking away their spending money and laughing so hard they belched and shrieked.
I felt out of place in the jovial environment, and that was a first for me.
“So, any plans for your business?” Lydia asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“You’re gonna have to speak up.”
“No!” I exclaimed.
Our beers were quickly set in front of us, along with the chips and queso. Lydia and I rattled off our orders to the waiter, then he disappeared again and left us to the awkward conversation my best friend was intent on having.
“Have you tried looking for anything?” she asked.
“You mean while I’ve been sleeping?” I asked.
“I don’t know, you’ve been hibernating for almost two weeks. I figured you were doing something under those covers other than dreaming o—”
I stared at Lydia blankly as she cut off that sentence. But I knew what she was about to ask.
“Yes, it’s going to be hard to focus on non-Raymond-related things,” I said flatly.
“Vee, I’m sorr—”
“Look, yes. I’m heartbroken. Yes, I feel like I made a mistake. And while we’re on the topic of my business, it’s dead on arrival. I’ve got money left from what James paid me, but this city is a fucking expensive place to live. My reputation in Manhattan is trashed, so I won’t be able to stay here for much longer if I want to build my damn business. I paid my rent ahead two months in advance, but that’s about all I can afford to do if I want to do something like, you know, eat.”
“I’m sorry, Vee,” she said.
“I get that you don’t like how I am right now. Totally understand. I don’t like how I am right now, either. But trying to distract me and ripping me out of my bed and generally annoying me isn’t going to help, Lydia. I can’t live off my savings for very long, so I’m forced to figure out where the hell I’m going to relocate so I can spend my long, unemployed days thinking about how much I miss the man I fell in love with and had to leave because of his selfish family!”
The second I exclaimed that statement, the mariachi band wound down. People looked over at our booth, quirking eyebrows and wondering why the hell some raggedy-ass woman was yelling at this girl across from her. Lydia gave me a pitiful stare before our food touched down in front of us, and she didn’t bother talking the rest of the meal.
I was thankful for it.
I didn’t speak again until she was calculating the correct percentage for the tip.
“I could go back to waitressing,” I said.
Lydia shook her head. “It’s a step backward. You’ll never be happy with it.”
“It’ll be money, at least.”
“Why don’t you find something related to your career, at least. You could go back to being an assistant. I’m sure there’s someone not in Manhattan that would hire you.”
“That might work,” I said softly.
Lydia left the tip before she whipped her eyes up at me.
“Vee?”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“No need to be sorry. I’m finally glad you unloaded a bit. You might feel like shit, but you don’t look as tense as you did when we first stepped in here,” she said.
“I also had four beers.”
“That, too,” she said, grinning.
“Come on. Let’s get back to the apartment and eat our leftovers while watching a Disney movie, yeah?”
“You hate those things.”
“But you don’t. We’ll watch one, and then we’ll find a sitcom that’s streaming or something. Play it mindlessly in the background and chill on the couch. Together,” she said.
I nodded slowly. “That sounds nice.”
“Good. Come on. I want to find a grocer and get more beer before we head home. Walk with me?”
The two of us grabbed our leftovers and started out into the cold. We shivered as we walked down one block, then two. I saw the sign for the store Lydia was headed toward, but that wasn’t the reason I stopped. Some bouquet of flowers caught my eye in a store window, and a thought occurred to me.
“Vee?” she asked.
“You go on. Pick me back up here,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go. I’ll be right here.”
“Okay. See you in a few,” she said.
I studied the flowers and smiled softly. I’d worked with plenty of vendors while I was doing the freelance event planning thing. I’d made a lot of connections with caterers and florists. Venues that needed maid staff and managerial coordinators for events in those areas. Maybe one of them could offer me a job while I worked on building another client base that didn’t sit around the high-society families in the area.
It would be a mutually beneficial relationship, since I could also recommend the vendor to my own clients.
“This is when you stop moping, Violet,” I said to myself.
I looked at myself in the reflection of the window and made myself a vow. I promised that this was the last night. This was the last moment I’d take for myself to feel sorry for my circumstance. I needed to get my career moving, otherwise I had nothing. Less than nothing, if it meant I had to give up my apartment and go somewhere else.
Lydia patted my shoulder. “Ready to go?”
“I think I know what I’m going to do,” I said, smiling.
“It’s nice to see that spark in your eye again, Vee.”
The ingenuity of those ideas kept me going through the night. Lydia and I stayed up talking, not once focusing on the movie in the background. But when we both slinked off to bed and the only thing I had to cuddle was Irving, my cat, I felt myself slipping backward just a bit.
I lay awake into the early hours of the morning, thinking about what Ray and I could have been. What might have been.
What should have been, despite his parents’ idiotic ways.
