Page 25 of Stuck in Paradise with You

I glance back to the meeting room, where I can see Luke is sitting on the tabletop, talking to Alisha, who is standing close by, listening intently. I wonder what they’re talking about. I wonder how it looked when she walked in and we were laughing together.

I don’t know that we were laughingtogethermore than generally finding an outlet for some real pent-up pasts.

‘Don’t sugarcoat it, Mom, will you?’ I ask, unable to stop watching the scene of domesticity in front of me. Hating the fact that I’m jealous of it.

Mom whispers something in the background. I think she might be in a coffee shop and ordering.

‘Is now a bad time?’ I ask.

‘No, and don’t you dare drop a bombshell and disappear like you usually do. There’s a reason you called me, Carrie, and generally we know the answers to our questions before we ask them.’

‘Please don’t Psychology major me, Mom.’ Mom is a part-time lecturer at NYU.

‘I’m not Psychology-ing anything. But Iamgoing to get a coffee to go and wearegoing to talk this out.’

I sigh but I think I’m relieved. Mom can generally stop me from spiraling and that’s precisely what I need right now.

She moves through a hive of louder chatter, then it’s quieter again and she asks, ‘Why are you working with him again?’

‘Urgh. Circumstances. He’s the chief financial officer of one of the firm’s clients and the client relationship partner is sick.Given I’m a big yes girl at the moment, I agreed to step in and didn’t realize I’d be working with Luke until it was too late.’

‘Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?’ Mom exits stage left. ‘Lovely, thank you. I’m Lily, nice to meet you.’

‘Mom?’

‘I’m here, honey.’ And re-enters stage right. ‘I have a seat next to a nice gentleman on a park bench and I’m all yours for the next… nineteen minutes until my next lecture.’

‘Well, it shouldn’t take that long. I’ve told you what’s going on,’ I say, rubbing my fingers over the shiny terrace rail. ‘I don’t even know why I called, really. I’m just— It’s just that— Garghhhhh.’

‘It’s obviously a good thing that this is a one-off. You just need to power through, honey. Be your conscientious, professional self for the meeting, get the job done, don’t engage with him in any matter that isn’t business chatter and you walk away with your head held high. That man deserves nothing more.’

I nod, I think reassuring myself because Mom certainly can’t see or hear it. ‘You’re right. I can do this.’

‘For sure you can, honey. You’re stronger than you think. You’ve got this.’

‘Enough with the affirmations, Mom.’

‘Sorry, darling. Habit.’

I sigh, not really meaning to but defaulting to being a daughter, Mom’s little girl, anyone I need to be and want to be because I can be myself. ‘He isn’t married anymore. Not to the woman he was, anyway,’ I tell her. ‘He doesn’t have any kids, either. Not that either thing matters. And he is seeing someone; he has a girlfriend.’

‘Carrie.’ Mom’s tone is warning. ‘You shouldn’t care one way or the other. You need to let nasty sleeping mongrels lie.’

I might laugh if I didn’t feel so flat. ‘I don’t care.’

He has a girlfriend and even if he didn’t, I could never forget and certainly couldn’t forgive what he did to me.

Yes, I ghosted him, I moved home, I changed as much about myself as I could. The only thing I kept was my job and that was the beginning of a battle of having to prove myself indefinitely. But it was all because of himrunning, using me and leaving me.

He went back to his wife and moved state. He never stuck around so we could get through the backlash of being outed at work together. A text message, that was all I got. A text message to tell me his wife was pregnant and he was going back to her.

Couldn’t we have legitimized our relationship if there had been longevity in it?

That’s the point, isn’t it? Wecouldhave stuck it out, fought to have something. If I’d been asked back then, maybe I would have quit my job if it meant we could be together.

But he didn’t give me a choice. He didn’t give us a chance. He was so quick and desperate to go back to his wife.

‘It’s just…’ I say. ‘He loved her enough to go back and she was having his child. So why no wife now? Why no child?’

---