His hand comes up, curving around the corner of my jaw, pulling my gaze to his, our mouths inches apart. “You drink two cups of coffee every morning, always with milk, not cream, and a ridiculous amount of sugar. You’ll eat an acai bowl at any hour of the day, and you’re the only person alive who prefers strawberries to donuts, which is why I’ve been buying them for staff meetings for the past year.”
I stare at him, asking myself how he knows all this, how long he’s been watching me this carefully, and realizing the answer almost at the same time:
Always. He’s always watched me, always documented my every move. I assumed it was for nefarious purposes, that he was looking for a crack in my armor or a moment of weakness, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he watched me for the same reason I watched him.
Because he enjoyed it.
He leans forward and his hand curves around my neck as he presses his lips to mine.
It could be a really sweet moment, or it could be a story I later see was full of red flags.
The problem is you never really know for sure.
27
The therapist I began seeing at Kyle’s urging—twice a month, three-hundred dollars a session, and dumped on a credit card I couldn’t pay off—had a lot of good advice.
“It’s okay to tell Kyle you’re disappointed,” she said, when I told her Josie had grown increasingly unreliable.
She’d helped me understand how scared I was of being destroyed the way my mother had been, and how scared I was that if I let Kyle see the mess in my head, he’d run the other way.
So, the next time our plans got ruined by Josie—drinking too much, as always—I told him I was tired of leading separate lives, of not knowing his colleagues, his friends, his family. That I was scared nothing was going to come of this and he’d end up staying with her.
“Fuck it, then,” he said. “Let’s just go public. I’m as tired of it as you are, and I want you to really know where things stand.”
For a moment my heart leapt. I’d be able to come to him on the weekends Josie flaked out, I’d finally meet his kids and tell Meg and Kirsten the truth.
Except Kyle was no longer working out of the LA office, so it would probably be obvious to everyone that we’d been violating the firm’s rules.
“You don’t think Stadler would rescind my offer?” I asked. I needed the job. God knew with the amount I was putting on credit cards now and days of work I was missing, I really needed the job.
“Fuck,” he sighed. “They might.”
So we were back to keeping it to ourselves, but now it was my fault.
The next time he came to LA, though, he drove to Sherman Oaks—quiet and tree-lined—and asked which house I’d want. I pointed at one, then changed my mind and pointed to another. We passed a sale sign and suddenly he was calling the realtor, grinning at me as he did it: My fiancée and I are interested in your listing. It was his way of letting me know that the end of all the lying and hiding was coming, and when it did, he wanted everything with me. Fifteen minutes later she was showing us a house we couldn’t dream of affording, not when he’d soon be giving Josie half his income.
But as Kyle started mentioning a nursery, his fingers slipping through mine, I decided to let myself believe him. The therapist had told me, after all, that I’d never love someone deeply if I couldn’t let myself be vulnerable.
In retrospect, I wish she’d at least mentioned that sometimes you are scared for good reason.
28
I’m trying very hard to focus on Sophia Waterhouse and the numbers she’s given me, but I’m only half here, the other half focused on that ache between my legs. It’s so like Ben Tate to make my job difficult.
My cell is on silent, but Ben’s name pops up when he texts, and that alone is enough to distract me. I turn the phone facedown and focus again on the task at hand—Sophia’s monthly expenses.
People have no idea what they spend. They pay a credit card bill, or their husband pays it, and they look the other way. When I ask them to itemize it all—how much did you spend on groceries? How much did you spend on your kids’ after-school activities?—they either go way too high or way too low.
Sophia has either gone too high, or she and her husband have been spending far beyond their 400k income.
“Is this correct?” I ask politely, trying to hide my incredulity. “You spend five hundred a month on manicures?”
“It’s pedicures also,” she says. “Gels, so it’s more expensive.”
“And doctors’ visits—two thousand a month,” I continue. “Can you tell me what that’s about?”
It’s probably wrong that I’m hoping she’ll tell me she has a serious medical condition. In my defense, though, I have a better case if she does.
“I see an alternative practitioner for my food sensitivities, so that’s about a hundred a week because I need these infrared colonics and supplements.”
My optimism dies. No court is going to look at food sensitivities the way they might Parkinson’s. “Okay, and the rest?”
“Well, facials and Botox and filler, mostly,” she says. “It really adds up.”
“Right, sure.” So far, she’s spending three grand a month just on her face, hair and nails, an additional eight hundred on personal training and a gym membership, and two grand a month on clothes. We haven’t gotten to her mortgage, her car, insurance or her phone—we haven’t even gotten to her kids—and she’s already spending far more than I’ll be able to get from her husband.
Sophia is telling me she needs acupuncture every week for some disorder few doctors believe is real, and my mind wanders back to Ben. Ben, moving over me in a dark room. Ben, cupping my face and kissing me like I matter to him. Admitting he’s been bringing strawberries in, just for me.
Is this real, or is it just a castle of cards he’s constructing, careless of the mess he’ll make when it inevitably falls apart? My throat tightens the way it always does when the past creeps in.
“Don’t get married,” Sophia says. “At least not to an LA guy.”
I blink, as if I’ve been caught at something. “I don’t intend to,” I reply.
Ben walks into my office at dinnertime, looking scruffy and slightly day-weary: tie loosened, some serious five o’clock shadow along his jaw.
I rise and walk around to the other side of my desk. I want to tell him I’m busy but I just can’t. “Shut the door.”
His eyes flicker over me, head to heels. His hand goes to his belt and his mouth opens slightly as he considers it, but then he winces, and his hand falls away. “Let’s go, Gemma.”
He’s obviously going to be tedious about this. “I need to work.”
“On what?”
“I—”
His tongue taps his upper lip, and I lose my train of thought. God, I love when he does that.
“Stuff,” I conclude.
He gives a low laugh. “Stuff? Must be important. I’ll be at your place in thirty minutes.”
I have every intention of saying, “that was a one-time thing”, but I’m already shutting down my laptop.