Scared of Forever (Scared #2) (22 page)

Tears blur my vision as
the New York cityscape glides by. The sun has set. The bright neon
lights glare holographically through the salty dampness of my eyes.
All I want is to see Tyler. I need him to wrap me in his strong, safe
arms and make all this go away. I hate Blake for hurting me, but I
hate myself more for questioning Tyler. When I reach the apartment
building, I speed past the doorman and take the elevator up.

I knock furiously at
his door, my fists releasing all of my rage onto the hard wood. But
there’s no reply. Going back downstairs I race up to the doorman.
“Please, I need you to open a door for me.”

The doorman places a
hand over his master keyset suspiciously. I stand before him, eyes
pleading, tears streaming down my face. Without a word, he walks over
to the elevator. He’s a little stunned when he realizes that it’s
not my door I want opened. After much begging, he agrees to open the
door to Tyler’s apartment. Immediately after it swings open, I
burst inside. My eyes fall to the hallway, looking for the suitcases.
My heart drops like lead when I see that they are gone.

In a miserable trance,
I walk over to the pod chairs and drop wearily into one. My heart is
broken.
Twice in one day, by two
brothers
. I was nothing more than the prop in their
pissing contest.
Why would Tyler
leave? Why would he send me to that girl’s place, knowing what I’d
find? Knowing that it would shatter my heart?

Because I gave him no
choice. He tried to tell me, yet I somehow still expected him to be
here to pick up the pieces. I spend a good while indulging myself in
this pity party for one, before I let myself into my own apartment,
take the few clothes and personal items that I arrived there with,
and leave.

Another cab drops me at
the salon. Thankfully, the lights are still on. I walk in, small
duffel bag in hand, mascara smeared mercilessly across my face, eyes
burning.

“Emily?” Janie
calls, rushing towards me. Mac leaves the towels he’s rinsing and
he, too, comes rushing to me.

“What happened?”
Mac asks. “Blake?” I just stare. “Tyler?” I nod slowly, my
eyes welling again with fresh, painful tears.

Mac leads me up to his
apartment, holding my elbow delicately, like I’m breakable fine
china. He lets me in and sits me on the sofa. Violent sobs wrack my
body. Each time an image of Tyler’s empty apartment finds its way
into my mind, the tears stream like torrents down my face.

Mac sits opposite me,
handing me tissue after tissue. Eventually, I’m calm enough to
breathe. And I start talking. The words, once they start, speed out
of my mouth at a hundred miles an hour. I tell him everything that
happened with Blake and Tyler. And when I reach the end, the part
where I realized that he was gone, I convulse with small, labored
sobs. Mac, like a true best girlfriend, voices his feelings about
both Tyler and Blake by way of profanity, and then folds me into his
arms. And there I stay, for a good long while, hoping above all hope
that I can somehow will my pain away.

The next days will go
down in history as the eight days of Christmas, so dubbed by Mac.
Every day for the next week I answer the door to large, ornamental
floral arrangements, all from Blake, which I then toss
unceremoniously out of the apartment window and into the waiting
dumpster below. Then there are the cards. Letters. I rip those into
shreds and throw them down the trash compactor. I throw every jewelry
box and Tiffany bag in the bin as well. Mac forages through each
night, retrieving the unwanted gifts and scolding me for throwing
away good jewelry.

“Are you honestly
going to wear all those things?” I ask him as he fingers a delicate
filigree chain one day.

“Fuck no!” he
answers. “I’m going to pawn them. Your cheating bastard
ex-fiancée will be paying
our
rent for the next year, at this rate.” He shoots me a
mischievous smile.
I like the
way he thinks
.

A knock on the door
interrupts the conversation. I roll my eyes, dreading the face of yet
another florist’s delivery driver. I’m startled when, upon
opening the door, I am standing face to face with Eliza Carson.

“May I come in?”
she asks when she receives little more than a gaping-mouthed stare
from me.

I stand aside and she
walks in. Mac excuses himself to his bedroom.

For a few moments,
nobody speaks. Then Eliza breaks the awkward silence.

“Blake told me what
happened,” she says.

“I’m guessing he
would have had to. Given that he needed some way of explaining his
missing fiancée. So it was either the truth, or tell you that he
murdered me,” I retort. I no longer have a reason to be nice to
this woman.

“Contrary to what you
may think, I do have a sense of respect for you. That’s one of the
reasons why I thought you were good enough for Blake. And I saw the
way you and Tyler looked at each other at that ball. I’ve never
seen my youngest son so taken by anyone. And I’m not here to plead
his case,” she rebuts. “Just to give you this.” She hands me a
slip of paper with a phone number. “It’s Tyler’s new number.
His father gave it to me. I am sorry for what happened with you and
Blake. The day he left, Tyler came to see me. I’ve never seen him
so passionate about anything in his life, until he spoke about you.
Contrary to what he believes about me, I do want him to be happy.”

“And Blake?” I ask.
“Why did you insist that Blake leave that other girl? You knew he
was seeing her, didn’t you? Yet you still pushed him into marrying
me. Why?”

She lets out a pained
sigh. “I thought I was helping him, giving him focus. Blake was
never very good at making life decisions. I thought he needed my
guidance. And whatever you believe, you have been the best influence
on his life to date.”

“So that was how you
showed maternal love, by manipulating and controlling his life?” I
spit angrily. “And using me as a pawn.”

“You are entitled to
your own perception, but you and I both know that Blake did love
you.”

“No, Blake only loves
himself, a side effect of his mother telling him he had the right to
be God. You turned him into a narcissist.”

Eliza eyes me with
contempt. This conversation is horribly nauseating. Bile rises
thickly in my throat. I suppress the urge to gag. Eliza bids me
farewell and its moments later that the sickening conversation has me
with my head over a toilet bowl.

Weeks drift by. Slowly,
the letters, cards, flowers and gifts from Blake taper off, when it
becomes apparent to him that he won’t be receiving a positive
reply. He didn’t ever even knock on my door once, just tried to buy
me from a distance. The unwanted items start arriving every second
day, then every third. By six weeks later, I receive only one gift
and one huge bouquet of flowers. But strangely, I also receive a
second bunch that week. This bunch is very different from the huge
ornate rose and lily bouquets that Blake has been sending. This one
has African proteas, deep red carnations, brilliant white baby’s
breath, and kale flowers. It’s exotic, yet simply arranged, tied
together by only a piece of olive green rattan string. I don’t
throw those into the dumpster. Those I place in a vase on the coffee
table.

Mac has thankfully
agreed to let me lease out the spare bedroom on a permanent basis. It
saves me from having to return to Cuba with my tail between my legs
as the girl who didn’t make it in the big city. Or worse, rent a
bedroom in a crack house or whorehouse, which is all I can really
afford in this part of town at the moment.

Each day, something
reminds me of Tyler. Whether it’s the smell of a hot dog, the play
we sat in on, or the times where I go to Brooklyn Bridge Park to
leave the world behind and daydream about him.

One day, walking
aimlessly through the city, as I find myself often doing these days,
I walk past the old, dilapidated theater. The signage above the
building has been replaced with a new one. I notice the graffiti on
the door and outer walls has been removed, and the glass in the
gilded doors replaced.

The new marquee boasts
the name of the theatre’s latest production.
Romeo
and Juliet: A Modern Day Love Story.
Squinting, I try to
make out the smaller print beneath. The writing is ornate. I can just
barely see the words.
TE Amo.
I’ve seen that exact same font, those words, somewhere else. I just
can’t think where. My brain has been like a sieve these past few
weeks.

Occasionally I run into
Eliza, and sometimes she calls me to check in, in a very bizarre
twist of events. Every time we speak, I ask her if she has heard from
Tyler. And every time, she says no. I ask Jackson as well when I see
him. Same answer. The number that Eliza gave me all those months ago
is still tucked safely away in my drawer. Still yet to be dialed.
It’s a stupid notion, I know. To have the number, to want to be
with Tyler so badly, and yet to never pick up the phone. The stubborn
side of me doesn’t want to dial it. The stubborn part of me wants
him to come back for me of his own volition, not because I asked him
to. I have seen Blake once, which was necessary. He looked miserable
and lost. That made me both happy and sad at the same time. The
feelings I had once felt for him never returned when I saw him. But
the memories of Tyler and I, the memories are the things that truly
bring me to my knees.

What
happened to my fucking life?
It all got so fucked up so
fast. Now, sitting in the empty studio that once belonged to Aria,
there is no place for me to be. True to her word, Aria packed her
shit and left. And I arrived a day too late to go with her. I guess
the last time we spoke solidified in her mind that our relationship
was over.

Emily ignored my calls
for weeks after she left me. I can only assume that she threw every
gift I sent her away. Tyler, the fucker, has stayed gone. To be
honest, I feel so fucking broken that I don’t even have the desire
to fight him anymore.

And my mother, now
there was the shock factor. The woman who I had spent my whole life
trying to please, the very woman who’s family name I was trying to
protect by living a lie. Even she wants nothing to do with me now. It
may have something to do with the way I spoke to her about Emily last
week when she called me. And probably even more to do with the way I
spoke to Emily.
But what fucking
right does she have to choose Emily over her own son?

So here I am, drinking
wine that comes in a box, because that’s all I can currently
afford. Chayse hates me. I called the hospital and asked for my job
back, but of course Jules, being the bitch that she is, said no. I
can’t set foot in my apartment anymore, although when this box of
wine finishes, it’s probably going to be necessary. I’ll need to
find some shit to sell.

But
how do I even show my face in my neighborhood again?
Face
the people that I once golfed with as a humiliated man?
I’m
probably just a joke to them now.

Emily.
Her name floats through my subconscious often, reminding
me of what I had. And lost. Now though, now that I know the true
depths of her and my brother’s relationship, I don’t want her
anymore. She’s tainted, spoiled.
Used
.
Still, that girl had loved me unconditionally.
No,
cancel that
. She had loved her perception of me. The one
that I presented to the outside world. Never the real me. She never
knew him.

Aria.
I needed to find Aria. I think back to what she liked, the
places she would go if she left here. She has family in Phoenix. I
jump to my feet, excited for the first time in weeks about something.
But how do I get there?
I grab the keys to the BMW and race out of the empty space. First
goal: get some cash. Second goal: find Aria.
And
I’m not stopping until I do
.