TRUE TO HIS WORD, VICIOUS waited for me at the subway every day at eight p.m. sharp. That’s when I’d appear from the freezing station and join him on my street. We would walk in silence.
At first, he tried talking to me about my day, my new job, my new boss, trying to milk info out of me about my life. I was having none of it. Finally, we settled into a routine where we didn’t say a word until I got to my door. Then, he’d watch as I fished out my key and opened it. Every day, exactly a second before I closed it behind me, he’d asked the same thing.
“Hear me out? Ten minutes, that’s all I’m asking.”
I’d say no.
And that would be the end of it.
After the first couple of weeks, he changed his script from “ten minutes” to “five minutes.” I still said no. I probably should’ve been more insistent about telling him to get lost and stop following me, but the truth was, it really was a bad neighborhood, and I was grateful for him seeing me to my door every night.
It surprised me, his determination and dedication to the cause, whatever that cause might be. We’d only spent a couple of days of bliss in bed together, so the fuel to his lust was bound to run out any day now, right?
A part of me still suspected it was just another one of his games. Vicious was a terrible loser. He’d proven this over and over again. When he wanted something, he took it, leaving bridges burned and scorched-earth battlefields behind him. I could only imagine what he had planned for Josephine now that he’d read the will.
I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. Even more, I didn’t trust myself not to give it to him again. But it soothed my sore pride that he was there every day. Especially after Georgia. Still, not enough to hear him out.
A month after we moved out, Dean came by our new apartment. He looked good, if you liked the hot-shot, all-American Bradley Cooper look. Which I thought I did, but apparently, I was more of a brooding, all-consuming-jerk Colin Farrell type of girl. It was a Saturday, and I was just getting ready to go to the corner grocery. I swung my door open, and he stood there, with his huge smile and wavy Hollywood hair.
“Sweet Jesus! Dean,” I said, clutching the door tighter, remembering the Post-It note he’d left me. “If you’re here to taunt me, don’t worry, Vicious beat you to it, and he is pretty persistent.”
“Millie,” he said in a tsking tone, pushing my door open and walking in like he owned the place.
He was wearing a white turtleneck, dark denim, a gray tweed overcoat, and that I’m-better-than-you smirk the HotHoles were probably born with. Dean stopped when he spotted Rosie sitting on the couch, reading something on the old iPad her school had provided her. His eyes narrowed at her and mine narrowed at him.
Oh, no way.
“Well, hello, Rosie. You grew up to be eye-candy.” He winked at her. I gagged.
“Well, hello, Dean. You grew up to be an arrogant bastard.” She winked back at him, wiggled her shoulders in a sassy way and added, “No, wait, you were always an arrogant bastard. My bad.”
“Why are you here?” I demanded, swiveling Dean’s shoulders so he faced me. I didn’t like it. The electricity in the air when Dean looked at Rosie. It was the same thing I felt when I was standing next to Vicious.
I thought a lot about how I’d feel if Dean walked into my life again, especially since I’d started sleeping with Vicious. I thought I’d feel shame, hurt and regret, maybe even sadness. But with him standing in my living room, all I felt was anger and a little annoyance. He looked at me like we were strangers, not exes.
To some extent, we were both.
Dean trained his gaze back at me reluctantly, like Rosie was the reason why he’d come here in the first place. “Right. I just wanted to let you know that for what it’s worth, I fully support your relationship with Vic, and I’m not saying that because he kicked me out of New York to stay here and chase you like a puppy and begged me to talk to you.”
It sounded more rehearsed than a Broadway show.
I cocked an eyebrow at him and folded my arms over my chest. “You don’t care?”
He shook his head. There was something light about him. Not just his body language, but his expression too. I believed him.
“We were kids. He was jealous, and you were…” He licked his lips, considering his next word.
He was still my first. My first lover. My first boyfriend. My first sexual partner.
Dean’s eyes dropped down as he finished softly, “And you were with the wrong guy. I never should have stepped between the two of you, but I did, and I don’t regret it for a second. We were a good couple, Millie, but Vicious and you…”
Another pause. Rosie listened closely behind us. Her face told me she was pretty sold too. Dean just had it in him. The ability to sound genuine and believable, no matter what he said.
“You were obviously meant to be together. Even if I didn’t completely believe that before, I do now, because of the sacrifices he made for you. That’s a first. And a last. Give him a chance, Millie. He deserves at least that.”
I loved the silence that followed Dean’s speech. We all processed it. Everything that had been said. Without being dramatic, Dean told me that he was okay with what Vicious and I did. With what we were, and weren’t. With what we could have been or could be, if I still wanted to.
“You should probably stay for coffee,” Rosie said then, still reading on her iPad.
“Nah.” He shrugged, jerking me by my shirt into a big suffocating hug.
It felt nice.
It felt safe.
But mostly, it felt platonic.
“If I stay, I’ll hit on your sister, and that’d be really messed up, now wouldn’t it, Millie?” he whispered into my ear.
And just like that, the touching moment was gone.
I had a blast at my new job. Brent was talented and worldly and knew everything about everything. We talked art every day and got ready to throw another event, an exhibition in which we planned to show twenty contemporary paintings about nature and love.
One of those paintings was going to be mine.
And it was going to be quite interesting, too. It wasn’t a cherry blossom tree, like I’d thought I’d paint.
But it was definitely a true definition of the word love.
Rosie had started working as a barista again. She was feeling well. We ate pasta a lot, but sometimes bought ground beef and made meatballs. She understood how much the exhibition meant to me, so she let me paint into the late hours of the night while locking herself in our bedroom. (We only had one and we happily shared it.) I opened all the windows, even though it was still cold, and hoped for the best.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask Vicious. How come he was still in New York? What happened with his father? Was he poor now? Well, not poor, obviously. More like un-rich. And what were his plans for Jo?
But I bit my tongue and said nothing every time I poured myself out of the station and saw his tall, broad frame, wrapped in a delicious suit and overcoat. He’d nod curtly and join me as I walked.
Two and a half months after he started escorting me home, it happened. The inevitable moment I’d expected, but dreaded.
He wasn’t there to see me home.
My face fell and my muscles slacked when I realized he wasn’t waiting for me. It wasn’t so bitterly cold anymore—though nowhere near warm—so I shook myself out of my coat and walked a little too fast out to the street to inspect. Maybe I’d missed him. Maybe he’d gone around the corner to the Turkish grocery store to get himself a cup of coffee. He liked their bitter, muddy coffee. Every time he came early enough, he treated himself to a cup and drank it while he was waiting for me.
He also read the Wall Street Journal and checked the Asian stock exchanges on his phone. It was almost like he made this arrangement about his downtime with himself.
I looked around, my eyes gliding over the brick buildings, the throng of people hurrying everywhere, the old brewery staring back at me, and the industrial buildings rising from the dirty crumbling concrete.
He wasn’t there.
My heart sank. I should’ve known his little mission had an expiration date. There was only so much a man could take, and especially a man like Vicious, who’d never had to beg for a date before. I’d refused to give him ten minutes of my time to listen. Not even five. He had every reason to stop coming.
I knew all that, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
I plugged my earbuds back into my ears, shoved my hands into my pockets and made my way to the apartment, passing by all the junkies sitting on the sidewalk against walls and holding cardboard telling their sob stories. I always fumbled in my pocket and gave them some change. And I always tended to give the change to the people with the dogs.
I crossed the street and jaywalked back to my apartment, almost reaching the entrance of my building, when I saw him. He jogged from the direction of the subway, looking a little flushed. Vicious. I bit down my smile and tugged the earbuds out of my ears. When he was about a foot from me, he stopped, straightening his tie with his hand.
“Hey,” he said. His hair was a disheveled mess, and I liked it. I liked it a lot.
I remembered how it felt in my hands when he went down on me in Dean’s office. I cleared my throat and nodded. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to let you know that next week, on Thursday, I won’t be able to make it. Something came up. I’ll call a taxi and make sure it picks you up from work.”
“No need,” I said. “You owe me nothing. And besides, I have an exhibition at work that night. I’ll probably stay until late, anyway.”
He shot me a weird look, tearing his eyes from my face and focusing on the building behind me, like he was trying to remember something. “Give me five minutes of your time?” he asked, as he did every single day, five days a week, excluding weekends.
“Nope. Bye, Vicious.” I turned around and slammed the door in his face. Admittedly, it didn’t feel good. It felt really bad the first time I did it, and as time passed, it had become worse and worse. I now absolutely hated myself for doing this to him.
But still, I did it.
Because protecting my heart over his had become my priority.
The problem was, I had been right all along. Loving someone was essentially wanting to make them feel good, and not the other way around.
No matter what Vicious felt for me, I knew exactly how I felt about him.
And I didn’t hate him. Not by a long shot.
It was almost a week later when I received the call. Afterward, I took an early lunch break, jumped into the subway, and bolted straight into Vicious’s office building. The receptionist in the lobby knew me from my brief time as Vic’s PA and let me in. When I walked into the reception area of FHH, however, I was met with a new face of a young receptionist who’d replaced Patty.
I knew Patty had already retired because I kept in touch with her, mainly by email, so this wasn’t news, but I didn’t have time for pleasantries.
“I need to see Mr. Spencer.” I knocked on the reception’s counter with my knuckles, not offering any further explanation. Every hair on my body stood on end and hot shivers ran down the length of my spine. I was that angry.
The receptionist, pretty and bored and disinterested, batted her eyelashes a few times at me. “I’m sorry, ma’am, do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t need an appointment,” I breathed out, flinging my arms in the air. “I’m his…his…” What was I to Vicious, exactly? Friend? No. Lover? Ha! Ex-neighbor? But I was more than that. I shook my head, not really feeling like dwelling on the subject right now. “He’ll want to speak to me. Please, just tell him Emilia is here.”
“I can’t do that, I’m afraid.” Her tone was not in sync with my mental and physical state. She looked so jaded and sleepy, and I felt like a kernel of popcorn about to pop at any moment. “He doesn’t want any interruptions when he’s working.”
“Look…” I leaned over the counter, seriously tempted to grab her by the collar of her white shirt. “I know he’s a jerk, and you’re afraid that he’ll be even more of a jerk to you if you disobey his rules. But I’m telling you. If he finds out I was here and you didn’t let me in, he’ll fire you. Just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “So please, just tell him I’m here, waiting for him.”
She stared at me with a peculiar expression before punching in his extension and bringing the phone to her ear.
“Sir? I have a woman named Emilia here for you. She says it’s important.” She waited a few seconds, muttering a “mmm-hmm” punctuated with a nod, before her head snapped up, her gaze meeting mine.
“He said he doesn’t know any Emilia, but he does know a girl named Help.”
Darn you, Vicious. I rolled my eyes and leaned my elbows against the counter. “Tell him it’s important and that he’s a bastard.”
Her mouth hung open and her light brown eyes stared at me like I’d just tried to recruit her to the SS.
I repeated myself calmly. “Tell him that.”
She did.
And it almost made me forget how angry I was for one second. A faint smile tickled my lips.
A minute later, Vicious pushed his door open and appeared in the hallway in front of his glass wall. It took me less than a second to realize his new receptionist had a serious crush on him. She swallowed hard when her eyes swiped over his body, and then she shot me a hate glare when she saw the look on his face when we locked eyes.
“Missed me?” He offered one of his cocky smirks as I strode toward him.
“Not quite.” I gave him a shove back into his office.
He didn’t put up a fight. If anything, he grinned like an idiot and winked at the receptionist meaningfully while my back was to her as he walked backward. I slammed the door in her face, then pushed him to sit on his office couch and crouched down so that we looked at each other. He was still grinning like I came there for another make-out session.
“Your stepmom fired my parents because I worked for you,” I said evenly.
A frown replaced his smile. “What a bitch.”
I nodded, feeling hot tears welling in my eyes.
“How did she even know?” he asked
That one was easy. I thought about it on the train on my way here.
“My mom mentioned it to her. Look, Vicious, they have nowhere to go. Your stepmom’s their only reference. They’ve lived and worked on your estate for ten years. What do I do? I’d fly to them, but the exhibition…I mean, I could. I would. It’s just…” I shook my head.
Vicious considered my words for a few seconds, looking down at his hands, before shooting me a resolute glare. “I’ll take the next flight to San Diego and sort it out.”
My eyes widened. “Didn’t you say you have something on Thursday?” It was already Tuesday afternoon, and no matter what his plans were, it was a long shot to make it in time for whatever it was he’d wanted to do by then.
He shrugged. “I’ll postpone my plans.”
“What were they?”
“Does it matter?”
I considered his question for a second. Did I have any right to ask him what he was doing? No, seeing as I kept pushing him away, not even giving him the chance to explain himself to me for five minutes.
I shook my head. “Thank you. Can you keep me posted?”
He arched an eyebrow, which I imagined meant “what the fuck do you think?” and strode to his glass desk.
Being back in office reminded me that not long ago, we were different. For a fraction of a second, we were together, and it had felt divine. Not nice. Not safe. Not taken for granted. It was short and beautiful and painfully memorable. Like the tree I was obsessed with.
“Anything else?” He fell into his executive chair and didn’t try begging for more of my time. He pressed a finger to his intercom. “Sue, book me the earliest flight to San Diego and get me my turkey and cranberry sandwich. Also, for fuck’s sake, tell the girl at the reception to stop sending me “Have a Good Day” cards. We all know my days are shitty because this city is a motherfucking downer.”
He hung up the phone and tilted his head back to me. “You’re still here. Do you want your PA job back?”
I shook my head quickly. “I’m just not sure how you can be both nice and compassionate and a terrible asshole all at the same time,” I muttered.
He smiled. “It’s a hard job, but someone’s gotta do it.”
