“Forget them!” Sara snapped. “Get rid of all social media and forget it all. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about rumors.”
“How am I going to survive?” I replied. “My business is ruined, this job is ruined and now my reputation is going to be even more awful than it already is!”
“You’ll figure it out,” Sara said, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. Even she knew I was in big trouble after this.
I’m going to have to move and get my bartender’s license, I thought miserably, thinking of all the obnoxious men I’d have to put up with to earn my living.
“We both know I’m fucked, Sara,” I sighed. “And with you moving…how am I going to pay for this house?”
We both knew I couldn’t move home, being that my parents were dead, and Sara wasn’t staying here either. She’d found a job across the country and had a hard start date that she couldn’t miss. I didn’t have a single safety net to catch me.
“I’m going to have to take the job, Sara,” I moaned. “I’m going to have to still work for Alden and somehow pretend that none of this happened.”
“You can do that!” she said emphatically, but it came out more like a question than a statement. My only response was to guzzle more wine.
I was screwed and we both knew it.
“Babe, I’ll stay up with you tonight,” Sara said, pulling me closer. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. You just tell me what you want. Pizza? Ice cream? More wine? I’ll go out if you want anything.”
I turned and looked out the window as I heard the rain begin to fall, streams of water mirroring the tears running down my cheeks.
“I just kind of want to sit here for a while,” I admitted.
“Okay, babe,” Sara smiled. “That’s just fine. And if that psycho bitch even tries to show up here, I’ll go Hunger Games on her ass!”
Something approximating a laugh squeezed itself from my lips and I set the wine bottle aside on the coffee table as a moment of even greater self-criticism came over me.
What was I doing? Running home and getting drunk like this? I was a professional woman! A survivor! This wasn’t going to break me!
But as hard as I tried to convince myself that that was true, I just couldn’t believe it. This was the darkest moment of my life. In metaphorical terms, I was in the “belly of the whale,” that part of the Hero’s Journey where it seems like all hope is lost? Yeah, that was me.
I don’t know how long it was that I lay there on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and curled up in Sara’s arms, but eventually I heard my phone buzz and picked it up to see Alden calling.
“Is it him?”
“Yes,” I replied, ignoring the call. “Fuck that.”
Stupidly, I threw the phone over my head and heard it hit the wall and clatter to the floor. Sara gasped
but didn’t say anything. It was probably broken, but so was my heart, and there was no fixing either of them.
It buzzed again a few seconds later, chattering across the faded linoleum floor that I had once found to be vintage and charming but now hated with all my heart. Compared to Alden’s lush marble floor in his Hamptons mansion, I was living in squalor. And he was up there with his wife, having one of their rich-people-problems fights that they would undoubtedly get over, while I was lying there wondering how I was going to survive the coming months without ending up on the streets.
“Do you maybe want to talk to him?” Sara suggested. “See if he still wants you to take the job?”
“Fuck him,” I spat, not really meaning it but wishing I did. “If I decide to go to work tomorrow, he can tell me whether or not he wants me then.”
Sara nodded but didn’t reply. What more was there to say? This was just one of those moments you had to stew in and be miserable until it passed—if it passed.
As much as I wanted to hate him, I couldn’t.
When I pictured him, I still got butterflies. When I thought about the things he’d said to me, how his touch felt, how his lips tasted and his tongue felt on my body…
…I melted. It wasn’t fair!
How could I still have these feelings for him after what happened to me? He’d lied to me and I’d been assaulted by his freaking wife! I should have been able to cut the cord immediately, but something was holding me back.
Don’t love him, Belle, I tried to tell myself, but I would have had better luck telling a lion not to hunt the gazelle.