Milo watches me accusingly from the couch. He’s been trying to nap with his head on a pillow next to me, but I keep jostling him.
“Sorry,” I tell him when I get up from the couch for the tenth time in an hour. I’m too jittery to stay still.
“For what?” my sister says. Her voice through my headphones makes me feel painfully homesick.
“Sorry, I was talking to the cat.”
She laughs. “That’s where we’re at now?”
“It’s your fault,” I say. “You’re the one who forced him on me.”
“There’s no forcing a kitten on anyone.”
“Yes, there is. You forced me to look at the absolute pinnacle of cuteness, and then I was lost.”
“He was the sweetest of the litter.”
“Perfect for me, then,” I say. “Famously the sweetest of women.”
She chuckles. “You are when you want to be, you know. The people who know you know that.”
I pour myself a cup of tea. It’s my fourth, and I’m not really in the mood for one, but I need to do something, anything, to quell the maelstrom inside me.
“Soph,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
I sigh. “Yeah, so am I.”
“Do you know the circumstances around it? Maybe they had an open marriage, you know. The trophy wife and her husband.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I sound unconvinced even to my own ears. “But I think he would have told me that right off the bat if it was.”
“At least he wasn’t the cheater,” she says. “I know, I know, but… that’s something.”
I shrug. Maybe it is, but right now I can’t think around it. All of it. Beverly, Isaac, and Percy, the world they all belong to, the world that comes with its own set of twisted rules.
“I shouldn’t have gotten involved again,” I say. “That’s the real mistake, and that’s on me.”
“Nope. I told you to get out there a month ago, remember? So it’s my fault. I take full responsibility.”
“Rose, absolutely not.”
“Yes, mea culpa. Now stop feeling like you messed up, because you didn’t. You were brave! You trusted again! You had a relationship with a man, and you opened yourself up, and that’s fantastic.”
I twirl my spoon round and round in my cup of chamomile. “Feels like a pretty hollow victory.”
“Right now, maybe, but not in a few weeks. I promise you that.”
“You know, maybe I need to leave New York.”
There’s a brief pause. “Like leave, leave it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’m getting worried now. Should I get in the car and start driving?”
“No, I’m clear-headed. Maybe for the first time in over a year.” I lean my head against the kitchen cabinet and look up at the ceiling. “I’ve tried for a year to make it work. To fit into the Sophia Bishop-shaped hole left behind in the blast zone of my marriage… but I just can’t seem to find my place.”
“Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Exciteur has a big office in Chicago. Maybe that could work.” I take a sip of my too-hot tea. It burns. “New York is the biggest city in the country, but it doesn’t seem big enough for both me and my past. I keep running into it.”
“Sophia,” my sister says. “Do you want to run from him?”
I sigh. “Maybe. I was so sure I’d manage it before, but now… I can’t imagine working together with him. I can’t even imagine living in the same city as him.”
It seems painfully cruel, the idea of living in the same city as him, and working on the same project as him. Just a few blocks away.
“Maybe it’s time I stop trying to become a New Yorker. Everyone reaches a point when it’s just better to give up, you know? I think mine’s come.” My eyes burn, and I blink to try to clear them. It doesn’t help.
I see his face, the way he’d looked beneath the streetlamp. Like I’d hurt him by getting into that cab. Like he was breaking, too.
“Sophia,” my sister says. “You have always loved New York. You had a poster of the city skyline in your bedroom, remember? The one Dad got you when you turned ten? It’s where you always dreamed of living. After school, you and I used to lie on the couch and rewatch New York TV shows and talk about whether we’re a Miranda or a Samantha, or laugh at Joey and Chandler.”
“Every day,” I murmur.
“That was just entertainment for me, but you saw it as a manual. You’ve wanted to become a New Yorker your whole darn life!”
“Maybe that was the wrong dream,” I say. “Maybe New York doesn’t want me.”
She snorts. “Bullshit. You’re constantly getting promoted, you earn the big bucks, and you walk really fast now. Look, there’s no shame in deciding a dream’s no longer for you. But I refuse to let you run away from it because you’re scared or hurt. You have every right to own the city, just like Percy or this new guy.”
“Isaac,” I whisper.
“Yes, Isaac. So you had a setback in the last year. That doesn’t mean this isn’t your home. Would it be easier in Chicago? Knowing no one, nor your way around?”
“No, probably not.”
“I’m not saying don’t do it. Just… know why you’re doing it.”
I sigh. “Damn it, when did you become the voice of reason?”
She chuckles. “You were that voice when we were teens, so I have to return the favor.”
“But it was so much easier when it was underage drinking or bleaching your hair.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” There’s faint wailing in the background. “Shoot, Mia’s woken up.”
“Give her a kiss from me.”
“Will do,” she says. “And don’t forget what I think about the whole thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you’re my badass big sister,” Rose says, “and you can do anything you put your mind to, man or no man, New York or no New York.”
A tear runs down my cheek. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” she says. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I return to the couch with my big mug of tea. Milo opens one slitted eye, suspicion rife in the look.
“I’ll sit for a good long while now,” I say and snuggle up beside the pillow he’s using as a bed. I run my fingers over his striped fur and listen as his warm body begins to purr. I do have a life in New York. I have a job I love and co-workers that make every day fun. I’ll just have to make sure I stay far away from the men who take more than they give.
“Good thing I have you,” I murmur to Milo, and rub my thumb over the soft fur between his ears. “You’re all the man I need.”
***
I ignore Isaac’s first call.
It came two days after the fateful party, but I wasn’t interested in talking or hearing another excuse. The next call came two days later, accompanied by a text. Let’s clear the air. Please, Sophia.
That’s something I see a begrudging amount of common sense in doing. We will be working together, even if I’ll talk to his second-in-command and not him.
Let’s go for a walk, I text back. My hands shake as I type the words. In my mind, I see her—I see Beverly—I see her standing next to her husband. And I hear the words Isaac had spoken. Sophia, I’m sorry. Because he’d known just how much damage that realization would do.
Maybe that’s why he’d kept quiet about it.
A chilling suspicion races down my spine. Isaac had been single for a long time. Before that, he had been engaged to a woman who he, admittedly, had dated partly for strategic reasons.
To further the hotel and to further the family.
So he’s already proven he’s in the market for a wife. Maybe he wants someone like his mother or his grandmother, who served as the social limb of their husbands. Someone who can help further their place in the social circle and produce the next generation.
Isaac had seen me work first, challenged me on my thoughts about the hotel. He’d introduced me to his family and seen how I acted in society under the guise of our fake dates.
All before anything genuinely happened between us.
The man is a brilliant strategist. He deftly course-corrects, evaluates things five steps ahead, and has used that skill to grow the company to unprecedented heights.
And he’s never hidden his single-minded goal of expanding the company. The strength of his family and that of the company are one and the same in his mind.
Maybe I’ve been evaluated from the start. Evaluated as a potential partner, judged based on my performance and my strengths.
Maybe, I think, I’ve been pitching for another project entirely, and I didn’t even know it.
In the end, we meet by the river. There’s a great length of sidewalk to pace, and I don’t want to walk in Central Park. I don’t want to be close to the hotel, or the Upper East Side, or the familiar paths I once walked every day.
Isaac is already there when I arrive. He’s standing with his back to the water, his dark hair tousled by the wind. I wrap my own coat tighter around my body. Seeing him is a relief, like a balm to an open wound, and then it hurts. Because there’s no more relief to be had with him.
“Sophia,” he says, voice cautious. “You came.”
I put my hands in my pockets. “Yes.”
“Thank you.”
I nod again. We start walking north, falling into comfortable step with one another.
“I saw that your company signed the contract,” I say. “Winter Corp and Exciteur are officially in business together now.”
“Yes,” he says. “What I said earlier stands. Andrew will run point on the project from our end, and will be your only source of contact.”
“Thanks,” I say. Funny how that was meant as a backup plan, but we’d needed it immediately.
“Sophia,” he says. “I’m sorry about last weekend.”
“Sorry she was there? Or sorry it happened at all?”
“It wasn’t something I planned on keeping from you forever,” he says. “But I need you to know that I’ve never been unfaithful to anyone. Not once.”
“Congratulations,” I say. My tone sounds acidic, and I hate it. I hate this, and I hate the painfully tight knot in my stomach.
“It’s not something I’m proud of, and I wasn’t even when it was happening.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Isaac is quiet for a long time. “It was after Cordelia. She’d cheated, and I was… nihilistic when it came to relationships. It seemed like they didn’t work, not for anyone, but least of all for me. Doing something that confirmed my own belief was… comforting, I think.”
“It was still wrong.”
“Of course, it was,” he says. “She’s unhappy with her husband, despite the crass agreement they have, you know. He got a younger wife, and she got security and stability, but it’s not a good marriage. Beverly and I? We were just amusing one another. At the time, I suppose I thought it was companionship, too.”
I cross my arms over my chest. The reasonable words falter against the bulwark of my defences. Not again. Never again. “Does her husband know?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I never asked. But Sophia, it’s in the past. I haven’t been with her for almost a year. It’s over, and that part of my life is over.”
I shake my head. Just like Percy, I think. They all are. “Nothing’s ever truly in the past.”
“No, I suppose not,” he says, and there’s a rough note in his voice.
“What does that mean?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. I’ll answer any questions you want about it, about myself, about my past relationships.”
“No,” I say. “There’s no need.”
“There isn’t?”
“This isn’t a good idea, anyway. You and me. This.”
“And why not?”
“Because you want a wife, a proper wife, and I can’t be that.”
His voice turns monotone. “What do you mean, a wife?”
“Yes, you want a marriage like… like your parents,” I say. “Like your friends, and your family, and your entire social group. A marriage just like the one Percy wanted us to have, but I couldn’t do it. I’ve tried that, and I can’t do it again. I won’t do it again. I won’t give up my job and I—”
Isaac stares at me. “When have we spoken about marriage?”
I shake my head again. There’s a manic quality to my words, to the unloading of emotions. “I really love my job.”
“I know that,” he says. “Fuck, don’t you think that’s—”
“You’d say that, but how would I know if you really mean it? I won’t come work for the Winter Corporation. I won’t be a trophy wife, I can’t, and I won’t deal with the pressures of in-laws again and you slowly resenting me because I can’t cook you warm meals, and then finding you with her again or someone else because you think marriage is just a contract and not a—”
“Sophia,” he says. His voice is harsh. “What the hell is all this?”
“It’s our future,” I say, “and I don’t want it. This is for the best.”
“That wouldn’t be our future.”
“Yes, it would. I know it would,” I say, but I can see that he doesn’t believe me. Why can’t he see what I can so clearly?
His mouth tightens. “So you would just give up, then? On us?”
“We were never an us,” I tell him, my steps speeding up. We’d started by faking it, and then it had been a day-by-day thing. A go-slow thing, and a test-the-waters thing. Well, the waters have been tested, and they’re shark infested.
“Then what were we?” he demands.
“Something fun on the side while we worked together.”
“That’s not how I saw us,” he says. “Not once.”
I think of his mother’s party, and of the comment about the two of us having kids. I see myself trying to appease his mother and around me, the sound of a cage rattles. “This just isn’t a good idea,” I say.
His voice turns colder than I’ve ever heard it. “I see. This is because of Percy.”
“What? He has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, but he does, doesn’t he? Because you’re still in love with him.”
I turn to look at Isaac. “What?”
“Your reactions, every single time we’ve met him, clued me in. But I had hoped…” He shakes his head. “So that’s it, then. You’re still in love with him, and now you’re using my mistake from years ago to run away from a good, new thing.”
“You’re delusional,” I say. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“I don’t think I have. I think I’m finally seeing all of it clearly, for the very first time.”
“Then you need to get your eyesight checked,” I say. Beneath my coat, my blood boils. I want to run away and I want to fight him.
But then Isaac’s eyes widen.
Shit. His brother.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say.
“I know,” Isaac says, but his voice is harsh. “I wish you could just forget about Percy. I wish you could let him go, finally.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I have. The only thing Percy has to do with this is how much I’ve realized you’re just like him.”
“I’m nothing like him,” Isaac says. “And I’m sick and fucking tired of you comparing me to him.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are, and you have been since we met.”
“Correctly, then, it seems.”
He shakes his head. “I hate that man. I hate that he was ever married to you, and I hate that he hurt you, and I fucking hate that he still shows up in your life.”
I turn and walk, my footsteps echoing against the concrete beneath my feet. Faster and faster, I walk as if I can outrun him. Or maybe I’m trying to outrun myself.
He keeps up easily. “Don’t you dare use this as an excuse to run from something good.”
I shake my head. Words won’t form, can’t form, or the tears behind my eyes will spill over. It’s so easy to see the slow resentment building, the demands, the desires. The gradual need for me to become someone else in order to be the wife he wants.
I won’t be able to do it. And I refuse to fail again, refuse to see the love in his eyes dim, and then watch them start to wander.
“Sophia,” he says. “Damn it, just stop.”
“Don’t call me,” I say, my footsteps speeding up. “Bye, Isaac.”
He stops following me.
