Page 91 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“Yeah,” I heard.
“Do you have Hope with you?” I asked.
“Not any more.”
His silence was an asset. Usually.“Didyou have Hope with you?”
“Yeah. I did. She didn’t want me to take her, but Karen got in first.”
A dissertation, for Charles. “Where?”
“Outside the apartment. To go to the Y.”
“NotKaren.Hope. Where did you take her?”
“To the apartment.”
I was actually going to lose my mind. “What? You took Karen to the Y, and then you took Hope back to the apartment? Then why the hell did Inez call me?” Was this some kind of female conspiracy they’d cooked up between the three of them to make me sorry? All right, I was sorry. And bloody furious, too. Both things. Hope didn’t play games. Why was she playing this one, just when I most needed her?
“To her apartment, I mean,” Charles said. “Hope’s. And Karen asked me if I’d teach her to drive.”
What?“I don’t expect you to teach her to drive,” I said, even while the cold truth hit me straight in the solar plexus.
Hope had left me.
“I said I would,” Charles said. “I like Karen.”
He did? “Right,” I said. “Fine. Whatever you like.”
“I told Hope to call me,” he said. “If she needs a ride anywhere else. That neighborhood isn’t great. She said she was—”
“Fine,” I said. “I know. She said she was fine.”
“Yeah,” he said. “She did.”
Hope
It had taken me a while to start unpacking. By the time I’d finally gotten into the apartment, had seen my mother’s furniture and my mother’s dishes and the easy chair I’d sat in with Karen to snuggle when our mother had been dying, I lost it.
I’d veered between weepiness and conviction ever since I’d climbed reluctantly into the car behind Charles. Some show of independence, being driven away by him, having him carry my suitcase up the four flights of steps to the apartment. I’d said no, and he’d just looked at me, hauled my suitcase out of the trunk, and started walking. Short of trying to wrestle him to the ground, I’d been stuck.
But after that…there was just too much emotion. Too much pain, too much anger, too much fear. Too much of everything, and no Karen, and no Hemi.
Well, of course not. I’dleft.
It didn’t seem to matter what reasonable story I told myself. I’d closed the door on Charles, tried to hold it all back for about ten seconds, and then the first sob had escaped anyway. After that, all its friends had come to the party, and before I knew it, I’d been lying on the musty sheets of the bed that had been mine for so many years, sobbing my eyes out, crying until my throat was raw and my face was swollen and my heart was wrung dry. Crying more tears than there were in the world.
For a dream. For my hopes. For my beautiful, tender man and my proposal on the beach. Every time I thought of Hemi dropping to a knee under the huge, ancient tree, the sound of the wind and the waves filling my head as he looked up at me and told me he loved me, that he would be mine forever…I lost it again.
After that, I’d love to say that I staggered to my feet, raised my arms to the sky, and made some Scarlett O’Hara declaration about never being weak again. I’d love to, but it would be a lie, because what I’d actually done was fall asleep.
I woke up groggy with heat and thirst, disoriented at the sight of the jagged crack in the faded off-white paint of the ceiling, so familiar and yet so completely wrong. It took me a few seconds to remember what had happened, and more than a few minutes of pressing a cold, wet washcloth to my eyes to come to terms with it.
A break. Not a breakup. I was still wearing Hemi’s ring. I hadn’t flung it at him and flung myself into the night. I had taken a reasonable, rationalbreak.I had to get it together, for heaven’s sake. Or for Karen’s, and Hemi’s, and mine. I’d taken a break because I wasn’t thinking straight, because I was too emotional and everything was confused, and I needed some time to get myself back on track. That was all.
Step One. Unpack.
I was doing that, thinking that I’d have to go to the corner store to buy some yogurt or something to settle my stomach, already missing the luxury of a stocked refrigerator, when I heard the banging on the door.
