I don’t want to let you go, not now, not ever.
But what if we tried again in a year? What if we made a promise to reconnect in a year? I’ll be in a better place on the show, and who knows? Maybe you’ll be back in the States.
I know we can find a way to make us work again.
Just maybe not right now.
But soon, and again.
I love you, but sometimes we can’t have it all.
What do you say to trying again next year?
Love,
Brent
1
Shannon
Present day
“He’s not going to be there tonight.” My twin brother spoke as if he were a soothsayer, as if he’d spoken to an oracle and been granted a view into the future—three hours from now when we were to meet with Edge nightclub to seal the deal.
But his certainty didn’t quell the vicious butterflies in me.
Because holy ten years.
It had been ten years since I’d seen him.
“How do you know for sure?” I asked as I rested my ankle atop the barre in the studio at the Shay Productions offices, a few miles from downtown.
I peered outside. The late-afternoon sun dipped in the sky, blasting blinding light through the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on, oddly enough, sidewalks and trees. Outsiders were often shocked that my Vegas-based company was actually located in an office park, not amongst the glittering skyscrapers and hotels that greeted visitors with neon and lights. No need for spark and dazzle during the day though.
Besides, Vegas was so much dirtier than the night led us to believe.
I looked at my brother as he answered me with a soft, understanding smile. “I know he won’t be there because the meeting is with James, his business advisor and main investor. James is the guy at Edge who I’ve been working the deal with,” Colin said. A venture capitalist, he ran his own firm but also handled the business partnerships for me, including a potential one with Brent’s nightclubs to integrate my choreography into their in-house shows.
Such a strange thought to be doing business with Brent. I stared at my left hand, my ring finger as bare as it was the day I twisted off the ring and sent it back to the person responsible for the second shattering of my heart.
The first time it broke was in a driveway late one night when I was thirteen.
And Brent took the healed remains and stomped on them ever so cruelly.
I drew a deep breath, shoving that far behind me.
He was the past.
I hadn’t followed my ex’s every move, but I was well aware that after a wildly successful career in comedy, during which he’d moved from junior writer to late-night host himself, he’d opened a string of popular nightclubs. Those clubs needed dancers, and dancers needed routines.
“So it’s just James going tonight?” I asked, triple confirming. I didn’t care if James brought his poodle, if he had one. As long as Brent wasn’t present, I’d be good to go.
“Just James. Besides, he said Brent’s not even in town. He’s in the Caribbean or something, and I have a date at nine, so it’ll be short and it’ll be just the three of us,” Colin reassured me as he tugged at his wine-red tie, already close to unknotted.
I rose, walking to him. “Stop it,” I said, tsking my brother gently. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Tug at your tie.”
He scoffed. “I hate these stupid things.”
“Then why do you wear one?”
Colin shrugged and ran a hand through his dark, nearly black, hair. “It’s expected,” he grumbled, as I straightened the knot. “I swear sometimes you treat me like I’m still the baby of the family.”
“You always will be,” I said with a grin, as I finished the task and held up five fingers. “You’re five minutes younger than I am.”
“Thanks, as always, for the reminder. Anyway, James wants to meet you, since you’re the face of the company. You’re the star.”
I stretched my neck from side to side. “I’m absolutely not a star,” I said, though I’d once wanted to be the one on stage, dancing for audiences. “Does this investor guy know it’s me though?”
Colin arched an eyebrow. “As in, does he think he’s contracting entertainment services from Shay Sloan, or from the woman who’s the object of Brent’s desire in ‘King Schmuck,’ one of the most popular viral videos in the last year?”
At the mention of the video, I rolled my eyes and walked to the other side of the room to grab my water bottle. “I presume he knows the first,” I said, taking a sip. “How about the second?”
Colin laughed. “I’m guessing no. Ironic, huh? Brent has no clue you’ve been under his nose all these years.”
“I had no clue he was here either, until you started talking to his business guy. I didn’t go looking him up,” I said, though that wasn’t true at first. For the first few awful months after we’d split, I’d googled Brent nearly every day. Devastated in too many ways, hungry for breadcrumbs, I’d gobbled up each and every bit of information I could find, reading posts here and there in the entertainment trades about his show.
But in time, I’d stopped searching for him regularly. What was the point? He didn’t ask why I’d sent that last email.
He’d accepted it.
Since, clearly, he’d wanted it to be the end too.
He had her.
And eventually, I’d stopped looking him up.
Then earlier this year, the “King Schmuck” video had surfaced, making the rounds online and catching Colin’s eye. He showed me some of it too—a bit of Brent at a comedy club talking about Facebook-stalking his college girlfriend who he let get away, then getting busted for said stalking in the middle of a business meeting.
Letting me slip away, my ass. He got that wrong too.
He got it all wrong.
But I was secretly delighted in the wild-goose chase he’d taken himself on via Facebook. He might have found Shannon Paige-Prince and been checking out her profile, but I wasn’t that person anymore, and I barely maintained that page. I didn’t even have the same hair color.
That was the real King Schmuckery.
Take that, Brent Nichols.
I didn’t maintain any profile, because I didn’t want to be known, or to be found. I preferred my new name and my new life—and living it off the internet.
“Anyway, Shay.” My twin brother lingered on my business name, mocking me playfully as he said it. “The guy you hate won’t be there.”
“I don’t hate Brent,” I said quickly. But maybe I did? After all, I hated that he didn’t fight for me. I hated that I wasn’t enough for him. I hated that I’d lost once again.
“And no, I didn’t tell James you were engaged to King Schmuck back in college.” But even those words and the weight of our promise—engaged—seemed like a terrible understatement of what we’d shared. We’d been everything to each other. “It’s not germane to the business deal we’re striking. It’s a private matter. Like other things that are private.”