“It felt wrong to text him for something I needed when I haven’t for anything else. I didn’t even text him on his birthday.”
“Chase took good care of him on his birthday. I promise.”
“Still.”
“Maybe I can try,” Dani said. “I’ll text Darius and ask him.”
I held her gaze. “You’d do that?”
“I mean, I don’t expect it to work, but sure. Darius will be straight with us about whether or not he thinks it’s an option. I don’t know. It can’t hurt, right?”
“If you wouldn’t mind trying, that would be amazing.” I stood there, in between her and the door, wondering if there was anything else I should say.
She leaned her head back against the cushions and closed her eyes. She looked sad. Broken.
I hadn’t heard everything she’d said to Isaac about why she was in Charleston. I really had tried to give them their privacy. But she was here. With suitcases. And Isaac had said she was down on her luck which could only mean one thing.
I took a step forward and lowered myself down beside her. “Dani, do you want to talk about what happened? I know I’m probably not your first choice, but I’m happy to listen if you need it.”
She opened her eyes. “I probably should talk about it.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “But honestly . . .”
“You don’t want to talk about it with me?”
“That’s just it. There probably isn’t anyone who would understand quite as well as you, which is frustrating. Because you’re you,, and I really didn’t want you to be right. But you were. Sasha is a lying, cheating, conniving woman and I’m so angry that I fell for her lies. That I believed her for so long. She cost me everything. My career. My life in New York. Everything.”
I tightened my hands into fists, wishing I could punch out the anger surging in my chest. I wasn’t surprised, but I’d always hoped Dani would manage to escape LeFranc relatively unscathed. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. For a while, I’d hoped she’d go down in flames with the rest of them. Time, at least, had dulled the sting of her choosing LeFranc over me, enough that I felt bad for her present circumstances. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a tiny part of me that still wanted to say I told you so.
“I’m really sorry, Dani.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you are. It’s fine if you want to say I told you so.”
I winced, not happy that she’d hit so close to the mark. “I don’t want to say I told you so,” I said, happy I sounded like I meant it. “For your sake, I would have much preferred to be wrong about Sasha.”
She shook her head and breathed out a tiny laugh. “I don’t believe that’s true, Alex.”
I didn’t say anything. What was there to even say?
She reached over and patted my knee. “Listen. We have to get along for the next couple of months.” She motioned to the room around her. “Obviously this isn’t a permanent solution for me. Let’s just agree not to talk about how everything went down between us. I’ll cook for the seven dwarves and then as soon as I can afford it, I’ll be out of everyone’s way.”
Her words were dismissive, condescending, but laced with a measure of hurt that made her seem vulnerable, even in her anger. It was as if she longed to be comforted but would prickle at the first touch if anyone actually offered that comfort. Maybe she would just prickle if I offered her comfort.
Also, dwarves?
It wasn’t how I wanted to leave things. But if I pushed the conversation, I might end up saying something I would regret. I didn’t want to leave things like that, either. I clapped my hands against my knees. “Fine.”
“Fine,” she said back.
“Fine,” I repeated again. Not surprisingly, as I stood to leave Dani in the pathetic, empty room, nothing actually felt fine.
Three weeks in, I didn’t want to admit to myself how much I was trying to be wherever Dani was. Particularly when considering how gutted being around her actually made me feel. It hadn’t been easy to get over her. She wouldn’t believe me saying so; I’m sure she thought since I was the one who had walked away, I’d felt little and had recovered quickly. But leaving had killed me. Even knowing that I’d had to do it. At least at Isaac’s, there had been plenty to distract me, to keep my mind off how miserable I felt. Then time had done its work and dulled the constant ache.
But now I couldn’t escape her. I saw her every day.
Worse, I wanted to see her.
I stopped working at the desk in my bedroom and instead opted for the kitchen table where I might run into her. I ate three meals a day out of Isaac’s kitchen, cutting back on the lunches out that had become part of my regular routine. If Isaac or any of the other guys noticed my sudden eagerness to always be around, they kept their mouths shut. Fortunately, Dani had no baseline for my previous behavior so she couldn’t know I’d never spent quite so much time at home.
Admittedly, home had an entirely different meaning now that Dani was around. The house was actually beginning to feel like one. There were new throw pillows in the living room and a rug in the entryway. She’d hung a seasonal wreath on the front door and had a row of hooks installed in the hall where everyone put their coats. New dinnerware showed up in the kitchen. She was even planning a Thanksgiving dinner for us.
I wasn’t the only one appreciating her presence. The rest of the guys, except Isaac of course, were clearly mesmerized by her. Running her errands, completing odd jobs at her request—it was Mushroom who had installed the hooks in the hall—and just generally behaving with a little more decorum. They were all showering more frequently and wearing clothes that actually looked clean.
Observing the shift in behavior would probably qualify as a fascinating study for any anthropologist. I was just grateful everyone smelled better.
As for Dani and Isaac, they danced around each other in a careful choreography; they were kind and courteous, but their interactions were safely surface level. It couldn’t last, I was sure, but I did hope that when one of them finally cracked, it would be a positive change and not one that brought the whole, fragile set-up crashing down around all of us.
I leaned back onto my bed and scrolled through old photos on my phone—old photos that had become newly familiar since running into Dani at Java Jean’s two months before.
Every time I looked at the images, I was struck again by how different and far away my New York life felt. I stopped on a shot of Dani and me, arms around each other. I wore a designer suit, Dani a dress I remembered she’d made herself. She looked killer in it; she always did when she wore her own stuff. We held glasses of champagne in our hands and had huge smiles on our faces. I couldn’t remember anything else about that particular night. There were so many nights just like it, they had all blended together. Nameless clubs, private parties, fashion events we’d only ever had tickets to because of who my stepfather was.
It had always thrilled Dani to go. Even after she got the job at LeFranc, her role as an administrative assistant hadn’t warranted exclusive invitations. Only I could provide those. It had been a heady feeling, in the early months, to realize I could give her access to the world she found so captivating. I had been her golden ticket. And I’d relished making her happy.