Slave to Love (27 page)

Nodding, it feels good to be having this random conversation with this very unlikely woman. “I am very sad, Annette. I wish I could make this right.”

“Don’t give up hope. If you want to make it right, you will find a way.”

I laugh, “She’ll tell me to go fuck myself.”

“I like her,” Annette laughs. “As long as she’s not married to someone else, all in love is fair. Remember that, Mr. L.”

Later that week at a dinner with Kemp, Susan and Robyn, I feel like I’m cheating on Sierra. I know I’m their client. This is business, but it is difficult to pretend that I’m happy being there. That I’m happy being with them, like nothing’s changed. Because everything has changed. The excitement of those months getting to know her, working side by side, sharing in each other’s worlds with the Universal and Texas events. The time leading up to when we could be together. And those four days I cared for her. Four days in my bed. I’d saved her. And I’d saved myself.

The most painful moment was going back into my apartment that night. I’d walked in there so many nights and never had it feel that empty. I walked the rooms secretly hoping I’d find her curled up in a chair asleep somewhere. My bedroom felt like a portal to Hell with a big black hole at the center sucking the life out of any breathing matter. My heart hurt being in there. Literally it ached to the point where my breathing felt labored.

The pillows and sheets smelled of her. The scent of us remained long after she was gone. But the single most painful thing was glistening on the nightstand on her side of the bed. Puddled in a small mound was the gold chain I had given her for the mermaid. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I let it run through my fingers over and over again, like sand running through an hourglass, marking the inevitable. Sierra taking the necklace off and leaving it was a symbolic gesture. She’d removed my chains, but I was still bound tightly in hers. I wasn’t ready to remove them.

“Where are you tonight, Hale?” Robyn squeezes my hand, bringing me back.

Laughing, “Thinking about things in Austin.”

“I cannot wait to go there. I’m thinking about coming in for that music festival in the spring. What’s it called again? It’s a bunch of initials.”

“South by Southwest.”

“That’s right.” Her hand is now on my forearm. “SXSW.”

Kemp cuts in, dragging it back to business and my comfort zone. “We’re planning our annual sales kick-off meeting agenda. It takes place in January and we rollout all new products and services to the sales team at that time. We also do the annual awards dinner and our President’s Club winners are announced. It’s a fun time and we would really love to have you there to give a speech to the sales force on growing symbiotic relationships. It’s going to be down in New Orleans, so it will be a blast.

“Have Blair check my calendar to see if it’s viable.” I don’t want to commit either way while sitting here.

Moving to the bar after dinner, Kemp pulls me aside. “Have you spoken to Sierra?”

“No. Have you?” It was a question I was dying to ask all night long and obviously so was he.

“No. Not a word. I’m sure Monica and Beverly have been in touch, but I haven’t talked with either of them directly. I didn’t think she’d quit.”

“There was no way it was going to work with Susan trying to micromanage her.”

“I thought she’d end up with you.”

I thought she’d end up with me, too. But I lost her.
I can’t tell him that.

Kemp orders a beer and I take a Sazerac. I can’t stomach the thought of a Manhattan.

“Do you think she’ll stay in Austin?” I ask, leaning on the bar’s polished brass rail.

“Oh yeah, she loves it there. I can’t imagine she’d leave. There’s currently so much growth there and a lot of opportunity. I’m surprised you haven’t run into her.”

Laughing, “It’s not that small a town, dude.”

Taking a sip of his beer, “I really miss talking to her. Things just seem so out of balance without her.”

You can say that again.
“Do you think you made the right decision?”

“Time will tell. But I do wonder,” Kemp admits.

Clicking through my inbox, I
open the email for my Austin Business Journal and there he is, front and center. And he’s not smiling. But he’s staring at me. Intense. Serious. And so fucking hot I don’t know whether I’m going to cry or melt.

Miserable doesn’t even begin to describe my state of mind since my phone call with Kemp. Devastated that I trusted Hale and he had a freaking agenda the whole time. I was just something to be checked off a list.

I really fell hard for him. He was a man, not a boy. A man who stimulated me intellectually and emotionally. I wanted to know everything about him. Yet, in reality, I knew nothing except the expertly crafted image.

Forwarding the email to Monica and Beverly, I write, “As if Monday’s didn’t already suck.”

“Too bad he’s a dick,” is Monica’s response.

It’s another forty minutes before I erase the email, just not ready to stop staring at those deep blue eyes.

“Do you guys want to go somewhere for New Year’s?” I email later. It’s kind of a rigged question because these two would prefer to be in a casino than anywhere else.

“If my darling husband doesn’t throw a fit,” is Beverly’s response.

“Vegas?” I toss out the bait.

“I’m in.”

“I’m in.”

Two emails arrive in rapid suggestion.

Laughing, I feel the clouds part for the first time in forever, exposing a thin sliver of blue sky. A beautiful azure stripe reminding me that better days lie ahead.

Consulting for one of the incubators in town has turned into an amazing gig. I’m helping four start-up companies to get off the ground. One non-profit, two small tech companies and a farm-to-table distributor specializing in meat, dairy and produce from local, family-owned organic farms.

Being able to help them in all facets of company set-up and launch is pure fun. While I’ve developed and introduced many new products and services in my career, I’ve always had a big corporate budget behind me and never had to do it in the traditional way of start-ups, by bootstrapping.

Calling on creativity, moxie and contacts, bootstrappers will launch a company seemingly with sheer will and a good, viable idea. There is something so pure about it, versus big business, it becomes a mission, and failure is not an option.

It was scary giving up my golden handcuffs to experience entrepreneurism at its purest. No big salary, no stock options, no first class seats and upgraded hotel rooms, gone is the big expense account and the corporate card. Losing my golden handcuffs has been wildly liberating and I know now, I never, ever want to be bound by a pair of them again.

Working at the incubator has saved my soul, if not my heart. My daylight hours are spent building and growing and creating. It’s just the night time that has become interminably long. I miss him. I miss him so much. He permeates my every thought and I want to be sharing everything I’m doing with him. I want his input. I want him to be proud of me. I want him to be excited about my successes. But I can’t trust him. And I spend my nights waiting for the dawn when my soul is saved by the salve that daylight brings.

It’s dark when I pull my car into the driveway and I can smell the wood burning in neighbors’ fireplaces. It’s one of those cold December nights that makes me forget I’m living in Texas and I look forward to my flannel pajama bottoms and UGG slippers. Sitting outside my front steps is a box. I scoop it up and unlock the door.

The house feels so toasty and I can smell the pine from my little four foot live tree. Tonight is a soup night, I decide. Opening the box, I realize there is no label on the outside, nothing saying
Harry & David’s
, which would immediately clue me in that it was a package from my mother.

There’s an inner box, which I slip out. The paper is adorable and I smile as I read it. Covering the box are recipes: Hot Apple Cider, Fruit Cake, Pumpkin Bread, Hot Mulled Wine. Carefully, I remove the paper, so that I can save the recipes. Gasping at the lid of the Kraft colored box emblazoned in white script
Christian Louboutin Paris
, my hands begin to shake.

Opening the box, any slight doubt I may have had as to the sender, dissipates. The box contains the same style black pumps I lost in the flood. Clearly not a coincidence. Searching the box, there is no note, anywhere.

I really don’t want to contact him. If I reach out it could be misinterpreted that I want a dialogue. And I don’t. I want to heal, rid myself of the unceasing thoughts I have trouble controlling. And they are OCD-like obsessive. I can’t extricate him from my heart and he remains, steadfast, an unwanted criminal, who has stolen from me more than I ever thought I possibly possessed.

Do I send them back? Wear them around the house naked as a big fuck you? Throw them out (no, that’s a stupid thought).

There was a box outside my front door when I got home.
I text Monica.

What was in it?

Black Louboutins. Same ones I lost in the flood.

Hale?

It’s got to be.

Have you called him?

No.

Are you going to call him?

No.

Are you going to thank him?

I don’t know.

Are you going to keep them?

I don’t know.

What size are your feet?

8

Those aren’t feet, those are banana boats

Bitch

Hehe. Well wrong size for me or I would have taken the burden off your hands … or feet ?

Why would he do this?

It’s his Christmas present to you.

That’s so weird.

No it’s not. He’s obviously thinking about you, Sierra. He wants to talk to you. Maybe you should talk to him.

If he wants to talk to me it’s only because I was the one who said fuck you and he likes to be the one in power.

What he did was very fucked up – on a lot of levels, but I think he had feelings for you and obviously he still has.

Ugh. I can’t wait to go to Vegas.

New Year’s is going to be EPIC.

I need epic. I think I’ll wear my new Louboutins out on New Year’s Eve.

You’re evil.

Thank you for the replacement shoes. That was really unnecessary.

I didn’t do it because it was necessary, Sierra.

Well, thank you anyway and Happy Holidays to you and your family.

Same to you and yours. Will you be home during the holidays?

No. I’ll be traveling.

Stay safe, Sierra.

Thank you.

I stare at that conversation and cry. Part of me wants to get in my car and drive across the river to his building. But I don’t even know if he is in town anymore. Showing up there would lead to one thing. Sex. And afterwards I’d feel shitty and weak. Totally pathetic that with a gift I go running back to a man that lied about loving me. Lord knows I should’ve learned about him and his gifts from the chain he gave me.

It isn’t worth setting back my heart’s healing any more than the shoes have already done. So I just stay home and cry and swear I am going to have a wild time in Vegas and come back with a new outlook and ready to start the new year living again.