I Found You (39 page)
“I want that,” one of the girls said, as they all clustered around the jewelry. “It’s beautiful. Do you think anyone would notice if I put it on and just walked out.”
Justin laughed.
I didn’t. My discomfort was growing.
“Anyway I want to go swimming, I’m looking for bikinis.” Portia turned to the drawers, and pulled another out. Then the next thing I knew she was yelling, “It’s here!”
What?
These girls were––
What!
She was holding a picture up.
Fucking hell. “Let me see.” I’d moved forward without even knowing. I grabbed it out of her hand, not really believing what I was seeing. My eyes must be wrong.
It was, Rach
. I mean; what the hell? It was Rach…
It was a black and white picture. She was lying on her back, looking up at him. She wasn’t smiling and her eyes were dull and dark. You could see her breasts. His hand rested below them. He was leaning over her, but all you could see of the asshole was the back of his head.
It was like Justin said; he was playing chicken with his wife, taunting her with Rachel’s naked image. He could claim it wasn’t him in the picture, and the picture was just art.
I wanted to go back into the living room and rip the asshole’s head off.
My heart slammed against my ribs and I was fighting to keep my breath even as I gave the picture back. “She’s pretty.”
“Pretty? Open your eyes, man. She’s amazing,” Justin said.
I turned to look at him. Yes she was. And she was
my
amazing wife. She’d told me all of this, just how she’d lived and how many men she’d been with. She’d been totally honest. But it was one thing to hear it. It was another to see it. And the man involved was the man I hated. I glanced about the room. Shit, these were her clothes, this was her jewelry.
“I need the bathroom.”
It was marble lined and gilded with gold.
I took out my cell once I’d locked the door, I wanted to ring her, but she was working. I texted. ‘Call me when you can.’
The guy I’d named ‘asshole’ for the last five months was the father of the child I’d been calling mine. Fuck. He’d seen his child on my screen today and not given a damn.
I sat on the edge of the bath and waited. Imagining Rach here, wearing all that stuff.
I thought of us shopping in the store on the second day I’d known her, and her teasing me with the underwear she was buying. She’d left all of this behind the day before.
I wondered where the mirror she’d broken had stood. In here, or the bedroom? In the bedroom, surely, they’d have rowed in there, not in here.
Shit. She’d shared that bed with him for a year.
She’d said Declan had money but I hadn’t really registered what that meant. The bracelet and the engagement ring I’d got her had been nothing compared to the jewels she could have taken from here. Yet she hadn’t taken his, and she hadn’t turned her nose up at my ring.
When Rach left, she could have sold all that jewelry and lived without working probably for more than a year.
That asshole had just used her, and Rach’s illness had eaten away at her, and meant she’d not had the belief in herself to avoid bastards like him.
Someone knocked the door. “Jason, you okay?” It was the girl who’d spoken to me after Rach had texted.
I looked at my cell. Willing Rach to call.
It didn’t ring.
I sighed. “Yeah, just drank too much without eating. I’m feeling a bit trashed.”
“You been sick?”
“No, I’ll be okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Come on, Rach.
She still didn’t call. But I knew she was busy.
The door-handle turned. The lock stopped it opening.
It was no good. I had to go back out there.
I made an excuse to go back into the living room to get some food and left them hunting bikinis. Mr. Rees, Declan, stood across the room in a knot of his influential friends. I wanted to walk over there and slam him up against a wall, and smash his face in, the bastard.
No one noticed me. They were all drinking and talking constantly.
Rach must have hung out with the people he was speaking to, wearing that dress which would have shown half of her off, like she was fucking selling herself. This time last year, she’d have been walking around this room, being used as a chess piece in a game against his wife.
Not anymore.
I just wanted to go to her.
My hand gripped my cell in my pocket to stop me forming a fist that ended up in Declan
’s
face.
Last year, I’d been with Lindy at her parents. We’d been playing charades, and she hadn’t been able to guess the film I’d picked. She’d called me useless.
While I had been there, Rach had been here, needing me.
Thank God she’d left him. Thank God I’d found her.
I didn’t think the room filled with clothing and jewelry was glamorous, and to be envied. It had been a prison she’d left behind, a façade she’d been forced into.
My cell rang.
I took it out my pocket, and turned to the doors leading out to the patio area.
The night was cold but bright. “Rach?”
“Jason,
I’m working
.”
“I know honey, but I needed to talk to you.”
“Rachel!” someone shouted her in the background.
“Can I come now?” I urged.
“Jason, we’re booked out with––”
“I know, but I need to see you.”
“Rachel! Come on!” The call in the background grew more aggressive.
“Look, Jason, I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Rach, I’m at the place where you used to live. My boss is your ex. Declan.”
“What?”
“
The asshole,
is Declan,
your ex
.”
“Rachel! These meals are getting cold!”
“Oh, Jason, I can’t deal with this, now. I’ve got to work.”
“I’ll come over.”
“You won’t be able to come in.”
“I know but I’ll come.”
When I went back in, I didn’t try and speak to the asshole, or Keith, or Hilary, or anyone else. I just left.
The streets were packed full of people who’d come to New York to celebrate the New Year, and they all seemed to be going the opposite way to me.
Brooklyn Bridge would be packed. I walked over Manhattan Bridge, and past the place I’d first met Rachel. I could remember the moment I’d spotted her, and how I’d felt as I ran closer, watching her figure outlined in the streetlight, lost and desperate.
Thank God I’d found her.
My cell rang. I fumbled as I drew it out my pocket.
It wasn’t Rach. It was Mom.
I pulled my glove off with my teeth so I could accept the call.
“Mom.”
“We thought we’d ring now, Jason, to wish you happy New Year early, it’ll be mayhem at midnight.”
“Yeah.”
They were at Lindy’s parents.
For the last three years, in answer to my parents’ Christmas Eve party, Lindy’s had thrown one on New Year’s Eve, though the atmosphere never compared. Lindy’s mom always drank too much, and it felt awkward somehow, so less people went.
Mom wouldn’t be able to call at midnight, not because it was too busy, but because others might overhear her calling, or notice her sloping off to make a call. Either way, it would be obvious she was ringing me.
I guess she’d snuck off somewhere now, half an hour early, so I wouldn’t think she’d not bothered when midnight came.
“You sound upset, Jason…” She knew me too well, even from the tone of my voice. “Are you okay? Are you with Rachel?”
“Not yet. She’s working. I’m seeing her at midnight.” I took a breath, but when it came out as I left the bridge and walked toward the steps, I felt the barriers inside me tumble. I couldn’t keep withholding the truth from her.
“Mom…”
“Yes, darling.”
I stopped walking and leaned a hand on the stone balustrade.
“I don’t know––”
“Jason, is everything okay, you sound––”
“No, Mom, I’m not okay. I…” I felt awful. Seeing Rachel’s old life frozen in time as though waiting for her to go back to it, had shaken me. I understood everything I hadn’t understood before––just how lonely and messed up she’d really been.
“Honey, wait a moment.”
I could tell she’d pressed the cell closer to her ear, and I heard her moving, no doubt seeking somewhere which would be more private.
I just wanted to speak now I’d made the decision.
“Mom?”
“Yes, tell me, Jason.” Her voice echoed a bit. I guessed she was locked in the bathroom or something.
“I’ve just been to a party at my boss’s apartment, the guy who owns the magazine…”
All I heard was Mom breathing, waiting for me to continue. She’d always been a good listener.
“…I saw a picture of Rach there.”
“What?”
She sounded horrified and I realized she’d misunderstood. “He’s her
ex
, Mom,
my boss
.
He’s
the father of Rach’s baby. You were afraid she was with me for what she could get… Mom, you should see what she walked away from. She had everything you’d ever dream of, if money could buy everything. Jewelry, designer dresses and shoes, a penthouse apartment. I never thought she was with me for any other reason than she liked me, Mom, but would you believe me now. If you won’t I’ll go back to the party and take pictures if you need me to prove it.”
“Jason, I don’t need you to do that, honey. I believe you. Calm down. I have believed you since watching the two of you together on Christmas day, anyway.” I took another breath. She continued. “…But it must have upset you. You sound worried. Has it come as a surprise?”
“Only that it’s him. Rach told me about him, how she’d lived and what she’d done, but it’s just…
it’s him
, Mom. How am I going to work there? He doesn’t know I’m with Rach, but he saw the scan images today. The baby is
his
…”
“And you’re going to have to tell him about it, Jason.”
No.
“Jason, if he’s the father, he should know,” she answered my unspoken refusal. She must have heard it in my silence.
“Rach said he wouldn’t care, he’s married. She’s right, he told me I was stupid to get married, and he was really disparaging about the scan. He won’t be interested.”
“Well even so, if you do the right thing, now, he can’t fight for the child later, can he?”
I sighed. “Mom, that’s not all. Rach is sick.”
“Oh, Jason, what about the baby?”
“It’s not that sort of illness, Mom. She has bipolar disorder.”
“Manic depression?”
She sounded shocked.
“That’s what they used to call it, yeah. She’s okay. We’re getting her back on medication. But she lost it when she left this guy. She attacked him with a piece from a broken mirror. That’s why her hand was cut when I found her.”
“How long have you known this, Jason?”
“What she did? A while.”
“No I mean that she’s ill. Why didn’t you say? I might have understood her behavior more easily if–”
“I’ve only known since Vegas, Mom. And I didn’t like to tell you then because I thought it would just give you one more reason to dislike her.”
“I am not going to dislike someone just because they are ill, Jason. I disliked Rachel because I couldn’t understand why she was wandering the streets late at night, with nothing, and why she then pushed herself on you––”
“She didn’t push––”
“I realize that now, Jason. She was probably simply extremely grateful to have found you.”
I sighed. “I don’t know what to do now, Mom.”
“What do you mean?”
“How can I keep working there? How are we going to live here with the baby? We won’t all fit in the apartment for long? How am I going to get the baby stuff in there? And when the baby comes, I think Rach will need more support than just me, in case she’s having a bad day when I’m at work. And we’re never going to see each other because I’m going to be working days, and she’ll be working nights––”
“Jason, honey, it’s too much, too soon, that’s all. Give yourself a couple of weeks to think all this through. You and Rachel seem to be doing just fine at working things out, sweetheart. Talk it all through with her and you’ll find a way to manage everything, you’ll see. That’s what people do, that’s what your Dad and I had to do when we first got married.”
I nodded, even though she wasn’t there to see.
She’d always been good at calming me down, too, and helping me work things out. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Well, happy New Year for when the time comes, Jason. It’s going to be a big year for you, isn’t it? It will all be fine, but don’t forget you can call me whenever you need to.”
“I know that, Mom. And happy New Year for later.”
“And say happy New Year to Rachel, won’t you, honey.”
“Yeah, Mom. Bye. And say it to Dad, too.”
“Yes. Goodnight, Jason.”
“Night.”
She rang off first.
She’d accepted Rachel. I looked at the electric light stained sky. I wanted to shout it. She’d accepted Rachel!
I straightened up and then took another breath. I was impatient to be with Rach. I started walking again, hurrying. I felt like running but I was in the wrong shoes and the pavement was icy.
When I got to the restaurant I looked at my watch; eleven-forty, I was only a little early. I hovered outside for a few moments and then thought
fuck it
, and went in.
I was collecting another dessert order when the outside door leading into the kitchen opened.
I looked over.
“
Jason?
”
The chef turned. Nearly everyone had been excited over my news, when I’d got back from Vegas. But the chef had said, “Whirlwind romance? They usually end on the rocks.”
He cocked one eyebrow at me now.
I left the desserts on the pass and moved toward Jason. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
His brown eyes were bright with emotion, glowing. I couldn’t tell what emotion it was though, anger or distress?
“Jason, you can’t stay. You have to wait outside.”
“Rach?”
His hand came out to grab my arm. I moved it out of his way. “
Jason, please?
”