“Bastian had no idea what they were going to show. He wouldn’t expect—” He stopped mid-sentence. His jaw worked, and I saw how his muscles tightened as the truth plowed into him. “You told Bastian.”
I didn’t have to agree or disagree. My silence amplified his rage. It rolled through the room, building like a snowball, like an avalanche, ready to suffocate and swallow us whole.
“You told Bastian! Fuck, woman!” he yelled and his fist flew down onto the table. The crack of bone hitting solid wood didn’t deter him from pounding it again.
“You’re going to break your hand,” I murmured.
“Will that wake you up?”
“Wake me up to what?”
“To the fact that you jeopardized our relationship before it even started. You didn’t come to me about this. You went around me and under me and over me but nevertome. You never gave me the option to have an opinion, and you never showed me the respect of telling me what was really going on with this deal.”
“So, it’s about the business now?”
“It’s about everything.” The pain of his stare ripped through me. “You had cancer, Pix.”
He emphasized the word, and I knew it was gutting him. My mother and father got that same look when they couldn’t help me but wanted to, when they wanted to mask their pain and fear but couldn’t.
“I’m still here, Jett,” I whispered. I wasn’t dying any faster than before, I wasn’t any different. I was just me with a past he hadn’t been expecting. He scanned me up and down like he would be able to see the disease, like the scars were visible, like the cancer that had lived deep down in my bones might crawl out and attack. “It’s just me.”
He walked up so close, his chest was a hair’s breadth away. I smelled his cologne, and his exhalation was a whisper on my lips. He lifted one hand as if he was going to hold my face.
Yet, he didn’t touch me, my skin was different to him now. Maybe it was tainted; maybe I was too ruined, too damaged. He curled his hand up and fisted it as he drew it back to his side and squeezed his eyes shut.
“I was trying to get to know you, I was falling for this vibrant being who lived on the edge, not knowing why. And then”—his eyes shot open—“I find you didn’t trust me with some of the most important pieces of your life. You trusted a stranger though. You trusted someone I don’t even trust with my business. You gave him sensitive information about yourself—my girlfriend—and the deal.”
“You make it sound so bad.” I shook my head and tried to process how to meet his argument head-on. “The information was on a need to know—”
“Don’t come at me with some bullshit. I don’t care what it was.” He collapsed into his chair like I’d defeated him, like he wasn’t the most ruthless businessman in all the world. His face had fallen. His downturned mouth and his closed-off eyes made me wonder if we could come back from this. “You were supposed to be the light with no dark. You weren’t supposed to have all the complicated bullshit of reality, Pix.”
“And you were supposed to be able to handle all the complicated bullshit, Phantom.”
He grunted but didn’t look my way. He stood from the table and started toward the door. “Do what you want with the commercial. It’s your life.”
My heart splintered. His words felt final. The darkness that had crept in over the weekend seeped further into my soul. The depths of despair clawed at the surface. Shadows stole in, doubts and fears and things that shook me awake in the night.
He asked everyone to reenter the room and apologized for his outburst as they filtered back in.
I nodded as the meeting continued. I said all the right things. I smiled. I put on the show I needed to put on as the grief swallowed me whole.
My mother stopped me after the meeting. “I’m sorry, Vick. I had to come. Harvey called. I tried to contact you. I tried to see you this weekend. But you didn’t answer or text me back.”
“It’s fine.” My tone was clipped, but I knew I’d pushed her away. I had ignored her so much that this was my fault. My heart wasn’t in it to be mad at her. My heart wasn’t in anything anymore. It was broken, shattered on the ground, smashed to little fragments I was sure I wouldn’t be able to piece back together.
“Honey,”—she cupped my jaw the way I had wanted Jett to—“I love you. You’re hurting, and it isn’t that commercial that hurt you. Maybe you should come home for a few days.”
I sighed and tried my best not to let the tears fall. I looked toward the ceiling. “I should get back to work.”
I didn’t talk to Jett the rest of the day. He disappeared into his office, and I couldn’t find the strength to face him, to know he was done with me, to know we were over.
I went home early that night. I didn’t stick around to talk with anyone. My phone rang once or twice, but I didn’t answer.
I took a long shower. I drank a few glasses of wine. I cried quietly.
I didn’t break though.
I told myself the next day I would get up and go to work with a damn smile on my face even if the boss was my ex. I’d had him and not even really known.