“Yeah.” Fika clutched the chair handles, the same exact spot Dick had after picking at his nose. “Yeah, he did. Shit, this is depressing.”
“And Emery is paying for his daughter to go to college?”
“Yeah, Demi’s a good kid. They both are. Don’t go after Emery, Nash.” His hesitation invaded the space between us. “She has no money.”
I could list Emery’s sins, but I locked my jaw, counted down from three, and said, “She has a massive trust fund.”
“She doesn’t touch it.” He leaned forward until the only thing that separated us was the ebony-stained desk. “I know that makes her an easier target, but don’t you dare touch her. You get away with a lot of shit when it comes to me, but I wouldn’t be okay with it if you hurt her. Not one bit.”
“She knew about the embezzlement while it was happening.”
“No way.”
“I heard Virginia say it.”
She already knows. Why do you think I sent her to that shrink to set her straight?
Word for word, I remembered it.
“Well, you heard wrong.” A sigh laced his words, along with a determination I recognized but not on him. “Poor girl can’t even afford a damn meal.”
My eyes snapped to his. I searched his face, didn't find what I wanted, and searched it again.
I didn’t hear wrong, Fika. She met with a fucking S.E.C. agent.
I left that argument out, because if she had, I definitely deserved it.
My brain kicked into overdrive, recalling all the fucked-up things I had done to her because I had thought she was complicit in the Winthrop Scandal.
Being a general dick.
Laughing in her face when she accidentally screwed me instead of Reed.
Stealing her wallet.
Making her buy me coffee with her twenty-dollar bill.
Forcing her to give me the change.
Ripping her photo of Reed in half.
Watching her shower.
Threatening her.
Getting her off when she was barely older than half my age.
Ripping her clothes.
Leaving her naked when we both wanted to fuck each other’s brains out.
Embarrassing her in front of her coworkers.
Giving her grunt work.
Depriving her of a meal.
Shit, the list went on, flashes of scenes I’d been able to justify at the time.
Fika’s revelation haunted me.
She can’t even afford a meal.
And I’d taken one from her.
The thing about revenge is, people feel entitled to it. Being wronged is an invitation to retaliate, but the cycle never stops. I had justified everything I did to her at the time with one sentence—Dad died. My morals didn’t exist, though I told myself I thrived on them.
I tried to fix myself by breaking her.
Fika made me promise to leave Emery alone before he left. I didn’t remember what I had muttered back, but it must have pacified him because he placed a palm on my shoulder, said something I didn’t hear, and left right after.
My new phone hit the wall as soon as the door shut behind him. It clattered to the floor, chunks of glass flying off, the screen looking eerily similar to the one Emery had crushed to pieces.
She can’t even afford a meal, and you took her money and publicly shamed her for eating a pathetic slice of turkey. She can break all your damn phones until you die, you miserable bastard.
I stepped on the glass, uncaring that the shards dug into my heels and drew blood. Kicking my broken phone to the side, I stripped off my suit, scattered it to the ground like littered trash, and stood under the shower head. It hammered scalding-hot water onto my scalp and shoulders.
My skin turned red beneath the blaze, but I didn’t let myself move. I ground the glass deeper into my skin. Blood drifted from my feet. The dark red faded into the water, diluted to pink, and swirled down the drain.
Two palms pressed against the wall, I studied the floor, placing my feet exactly where Emery had stood when I’d watched her finish her shower. My dick instantly hardened, and I was so fucked up for grabbing it.
Stroking it.
Picturing her.
For the first time in my life, I accepted the truth.
I am the villain in this story.
Freshman year of college, I realized I would forever spend my life chasing redemption. Finals week came to a conclusion, the winter frost biting my cheeks until they turned a bright scarlet. The paper clenched between my fingers bore a capital A in red marker. It had taken me all semester to write it, the grade a culmination of an entire semester of effort.
I should have been happy.
I should have been a lot of things.
Instead, I walked like a hollowed-out tree, arms swaying with life, but inside a gaping cavity. Dad would have thrown a party and shouted my accomplishments until I hid my face into his side and begged him to stop embarrassing me.
Virginia would have scoffed at our loud, uncouth behavior, but when cocktail hour rolled around, she’d brag about my grades to her friends, tittering when one of them complained about their child’s failures.
With the essay clamped in my palms, the weight of loneliness struck me until I ran to the nearest trashcan and dry heaved. Nothing came out. A semester with minimal food had turned my corpse to skin and bones.
Spit flew past my lips. I fell to the concrete and leaned against the sticky can, trying to get ahold of myself. Magic words didn’t work. They evaded me, my brain suddenly feeling like a dangerous place to be trapped in.
Ironic that I sought reality on my phone, pulling up Instagram as if it was my sole tether to the real world. No new pictures from Reed. I talked to no one else. Told myself I needed no one else.
Pictures of book spines kept me company, my heart almost seizing at the incoming message alert.
“Die. Just die.”
I remembered the words, often rolling them around my tongue, feeling how they formed on my lips with so little effort.
I had gotten death threats in the past, but something about this one felt different.
Two words.
Just and die.
The threat shouldn’t have given me pause, not after the long paragraphs and soliloquies I had received, creative fantasies of my death that, honestly, deserved to be featured in some Chris Mooney thriller novel.
Blaming Reed seemed like the perfect route whenever I scrolled through a series of messages that should have struck me with their brutality but didn’t. I had never been a fan of social media, but one night, Reed had posted a picture of his lips locked with Basil’s, and I had caved to masochistic needs.
Basil had always been the one to post pictures of herself with Reed, captioned with hashtags like #Forever, #Soulmates, #DatingTheFootballCaptain, #QB1, and #MineAlways stamped on each one.
But Reed? His feed consisted of the three Fs—food, family, and football, an endeavor to impress college scouts with his dedication. Posting this picture equaled some stamp of approval, a sign of commitment I couldn’t ignore no matter how much I wanted to.
I stalked them both for months, following Reed and a few logophile accounts to cover the fact that I had opened a social media account for the sole purpose of stalking my best friend. I posted quotes twice a month, the occasional t-shirt, and one time, a potato from the garden in the shape of Abraham Lincoln’s head.
The day after the Eastridge Daily published an article on the F.B.I.-S.E.C. raid, I had woken to death threats scattered across my posts. They ebbed and spiked with the news cycles, reappearing each time something about the case came up.