The Reality of You (26 page)

Refusing to deal
with the fallout I’d glimpsed in my imagination, I stood up, almost knocking
over my chair.

Must escape.

I reached for the
little purse Jules had borrowed me that was lying on the table, and I did knock
over my wine, but at least it splattered across the middle of the table instead
of on people.

“Sorry, but I have
to go,” I muttered while turning away, desperate not to even glimpse Reese’s
face.

Must not stop
.

On a mission, I
hightailed it out of there ignoring the ruined tablecloth. I raced past people
mingling, a few glancing my way as I rushed past them.

Must go.

I paused for about two
seconds in the lobby. Fear and guilt had me rushing outside. In the cool spring
night, I realized I’d forgotten Jules’s wrap—which would help Reese assume that
I’d simply left for the bathroom—but I had become Cinderella and Ray Burns the
chime of midnight. There were a few cameras hanging out along the red carpet
leading to the entrance. Some flashed, catching my disorientation and dejection
as I flew by. But luckily for me, two steps around the corner, I was able to
hail a cab immediately.

The cab driver
frowned at me as I rocked in the back seat like a basket case. I was trying not
to cry. At least not yet. Not until I was home and in bed. Then I would drench
my pillow and fall fully into drama land.

Amid rocking, I
typed with shaky fingers,
I’m so so sorry
,
to Reese, hit send, and turned off my
phone.

I should have come
clean before this. Reese would have probably ended things, but now I looked
like a total jerk. And really, I had been a total jerk, pretending to be a
secretary.

I was a stupid,
stupid now heartbroken woman.

Chapter 29

I
rushed into my darkened apartment but paused at the sight of two people in a
heavy kiss in the kitchen. Great. Nothing like a little love in the air after
getting your heart shredded. Kara was sitting on the island counter, and a man
was standing between her legs. They both jerked back from each other, whipping
their heads to the sound of the door slamming. It was the perfect payback for
Kara’s ruining my date with Reese. I couldn’t find the will to care.

“Naomi!” Kara
screeched like the cat in heat she probably was
and pulled her shirt down. “What are you doing home early?”

My lip trembled as
they both stared at me. “Ah…Ray Burns. That’s what happened. Sorry. Sorry,” I
repeated, rushing past them and into my room.

The tears starting
falling before I struggled out of the dress. I’d gotten it off, dragged on a
tank, and fallen into bed when I heard Kara come into my room via the sound of
the door whipping open and slamming into the wall.

“What the hell is
going on?”

Facedown in a
pillow, I didn’t answer right away.

The bed bowed as
Kara sat on the edge. “Don’t tell me that asshole ended things in the middle of
a charity ball!”

“Go back to your
date,” I said into my pillow.

“I sent him home.
Now, what the hell happened?”

I flopped over. “Ray
Burns showed up,” I said, wiping at my face with the back of my hand.

“Who the hell is
this Ray guy?”

“He works with me.
Showed up at our table to say hi. Reese was about to learn that I’m not a temp.
That I’m a liar. That I work for him. I-I took off!” I beat my head against the
pillow. “I’m such an idiot. I should have told him. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” I
repeated to the beat of my head.

Kara got up and,
after some shuffling, turned on the lamp next to my bed. She stared at me for
several long seconds, her face conflicted, her lips a thin line until she
blurted, “Reese already knows. He’s always known.”

My head paused its
pillow beating. “
What?
”

She bit her lip,
just about gnawing it off. “He knew from the start.”

Impossible! I slowly
sat up, drawing my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. “How?” I asked,
even though my brain had stopped functioning properly.

Glancing away, Kara
drew in a deep breath. “I didn’t know what to do. You got better and then you
were…like stuck. I could get you out of the apartment. But it was always like I
was your older sister taking you on an adventure…”

“Kara?” I asked
through clenched teeth, because I was desperately trying to wrap my head around
what she was saying.

She let out a sigh.
“I set it up. You up. I mean, Reese did request a temp, and the moment the
request came across my desk, days after we saw him, the idea hit me. I-I
scheduled a meeting in which I explained the issue and laid out my plan. He was
so damn condescending that I was sure it would work. I was sure his ego would
destroy your crush.”

My jaw hit my knees.
My heart sank. “And Reese agreed to it?” I asked in an incredulous tone. “He
should have reported you and your ass should have got fired!”

Kara nodded. “True.
But I started the meeting off with an offer.”

“What the hell did
you offer?” I growled, though the whole thing was difficult to comprehend.

She absently
rearranged a pile of books on the bedside table. “A meeting with my father, a
chance to represent St. Lawrence.”

Well, Reese
would
want that. While not huge, her
father’s consulting business was known for excellence. It had a perfect track
record. Every business it’d helped develop had succeeded. More than the money,
Reese would be attracted to their reputation to build his.

“Your father was in
on this?” I squeaked out in an embarrassed tone. This was getting worse by the
second.

“No,” Kara said,
shaking her head and sitting down at the end of the bed, “but I was sure I
could talk him into at least listening to Reese. His company has a stellar
reputation too.”

My mind was whirling
while I resisted kicking her ass off the bed. “What did you tell him about me?”
I demanded.

Her lips thinned.
“That you were discouraged with men and had become obsessed with him,
especially since he was a billionaire…and that you were a bit of a stalker. I
told him that you needed to be cured by the reality of who he was and move on
with your life.”

After sluggishly
processing what she’d told me, I jumped out of bed. “So for a chance to work
for your father, he was willing to put up with an obsessive, freaky secretary
for his island activities?”

She winced. “Yeah, I
guess that’s what it boils down to, though I did make it quite clear that you
would be professional and had the skills for the job.”

I wanted to strangle
my roommate. My mind flashed back through Puerto Rico, Berbunk, the pool hall,
my homemade dinner, the Hamptons, his apartment, and even tonight. The whole
time, he’d known I was obsessed with him! A stalker! I
was
going to strangle my roommate then die of embarrassment.

I bent over, trying
to get air in my lungs. “How could you?” I gulped air. “And you’d been upset
when we dated!” Another gulp of air. “Never told me! And you were pissed at
me!”

“I’m sorry, Naomi. I
know I’ve been awful, thinking I could control your life, get your confidence
back in such a twisted way. I’ve wanted to fess up. I just didn’t know how
without ruining our friendship, and our friendship means so much to me. But I
was pissed at him and myself, not you. Beyond the fact that we’d made a deal,
why would I want you with someone like him? Someone who’d agree to the entire
thing. Someone who’d agree to mess with a person’s emotions for a business
deal.”

Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh shit.
Bent over, I wrapped my arms around
myself and began to rock back and forth. I hadn’t let my brain go there yet.
Because Kara’s confession changed
everything
.
The growing, warm relationship between Reese and me, my entire perspective of
it, distorted and twisted until I felt manipulated and hurt. A raw ache settled
in my gut and spread in my body at the thought of the deal he’d made with Kara.

“Naomi,” she said in
a worried tone.

“Has he met with
your father?” I gasped out.

“He… That is in the
works. I’ve been stuck between
threatening
Reese with it to leave you alone or tell my father the sordid details about why
I suggested Reese’s company in the first place.”

Oh, her father
would
be pissed that she was playing
games with his business. Bent over and drawing in air, I asked, “When did you
threaten Reese?”

“At the pool hall
and I’ve called or texted him a few times, like…when you were in the Hamptons.”

While we were in the
Hamptons? I recalled Reese getting pissed about a text. It had been Kara! The
whole time, they’d been going behind my back, keeping their little deal a
secret. I snapped up, ready to tell off the person who’d sowed the seeds of the
hurt currently breaking me, but a loud pounding at the door had both of our
heads whipping toward the hall.

“I’ll get it,” she
said, standing.

Feeling physical
ill, I began to dig in my dresser for pajama bottoms. At the sound of Reese’s
voice echoing in the other room, I slowly moved toward the hall and the voices
arguing in the main room. The familiar timbre of his voice had my heart
cracking.
 

“Well, she isn’t
here!” Kara barked.

“Has she called you,
texted you, contacted you in any way?” Reese demanded.

 
I stepped closer to the kitchen, peeking
around the entryway.

“Nope.” Kara marched
to the door and opened it. “So you should go.”

The sight of him
felt like the bam of the accident to my emotions. Looking perfectly divine in
his tux, Reese lowered his head and ran his hand through his hair, his
expression tightly lined with anxiety. His worry caused my chest to constrict
until I became numb. The numbness traveled all over my body. I felt woozy, so
much so that I leaned on the wall.

After letting out a
string of swearwords under his breath, he turned to leave but froze, noticing
me standing at the edge of the kitchen.

“Naomi,” he said in
a hoarse voice, his face losing some of its angst.

My heart cracking at
the warmth in his gaze, I took a step back.

His heated eyes
roamed over me
as he stepped
forward.

Yeah, I’d forgotten
I was only wearing a tank and panties. “Please give me a minute,” I said, my
voice cracking like my heart as I backed up to my room.

I left my door half
open while sliding into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

“Why would you take
her to a place where her coworkers could be?” Kara asked in an incredulous and
angry tone.

“I send the man
tickets each year. He never comes, and he’s never given them away before.”

“Well, I told her
everything,” Kara hissed.

“Your version, I
presume?”

“What other fucking
version is there?”

“Mine.” Reese’s tone
sounded flat.

“Oh? And how does
yours differ?”

My heartbreak merged
with a growing anger. I slipped on my tennis shoes and grabbed the sequined
clutch from earlier.

Reese cleared his
throat. “Well, I’m sure yours painted me as a royal dickhead.”

“You are a royal
dickhead. You use women. And I find it hard to believe that you’re not using
Naomi.”

I tiptoed down the
hall into Kara’s room.

Reese cleared his
throat. “Listen, Kara, I’m aware we got off on the wrong foot, and I never should
have agree—”

When I quietly shut
her door, their argument became muted, which caused me to believe that they
wouldn’t hear me opening the window or climbing out onto the trellis roof of
the deck below. At the edge of the slotted roof, I turned around, hoisted
myself over, hung for a few seconds, and dropped onto the grass, rolling like a
video game character.

I stood up, wiping
the grass from my jeans, and drew in a determined breath.

Fuck Kara
and
Reese.

Two climbed fences
later, I was on my way toward the subway. I couldn’t go to Jules’s house—that’s
the first place they would search. Avery was way too close in the apartment
above. I considered heading to the nearest bar and getting shitfaced, but that
might turn out real bad—as in waking-up-in-a-back-alley bad. So I got out my
phone and pushed a number I had never imagined calling.

Chapter 30

The
apartment door opened and I peeked past the thin, brown-haired woman standing
in front of me. “Um, is Gracie home?”
 

The woman’s face screwed
up into a peeved, almost comical expression. “I’d be Gracie, Naomi.”

“Oh,” I said,
inspecting her. Her hair was in a short, brown ponytail, her skin tone normal
instead of nearly white, and she had pink lips—not the usual dark burgundy.
Wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants, she appeared completely normal. “Sorry, you
look different without the demon—dark makeup and black hair.”

Her mouth thinned,
but she opened the door wider. “You coming in?”

“Ah, yeah,” I said,
expecting to step into a room decorated with black and lit with candles.
Instead, the room seemed girly with a flowered couch, books piled everywhere,
and frilly throw pillows overtaking all the furniture.

I’d gotten to know
Gracie more since my lunch hour was back in the breakroom
and
since she’d realized that I wasn’t after Ray. She’d grown up in
Kentucky and had seven siblings, and her biggest hobby was going to Comic-Con
conventions. She talked endlessly about them. Instead of dark and evil, I could
have imagined comic book characters all over the place, but this sweet, almost
granny-like decoration?

Never.

Gracie shut the door
behind me. “So what’s with the late-night call and visit?”

The amazement of
seeing Gracie normal and her normal apartment diminished with her question. “I
needed to get away. I had no one else to turn to,” I said, my lip trembling. “I
just need to hang a few hours.” At the thought of going home and seeing Kara, I
blurted, “Or is your couch possibly free for the night?”

Un-darkened eyebrows
rose. “Sleep on my couch? This better be good.”

“Good?” I echoed,
sinking onto aforementioned couch with a plop. “It’s a long, sucktastic story.”

Gracie lowered
herself onto the nearest chair. “This I have to hear.”

Half an hour later,
after I’d shared a shortened version of the details—even though I’d concluded
that Reese
was
a dickhead, I wouldn’t
divulge anything personal about him—Gracie and I sat in her living room, eating
cookies and drinking tea. The woman had the greatest cookie selection I’d ever
witnessed. The small coffee table held a cookie smorgasbord, from Girl Scout
delicacies to fancy gourmet to the elf kind from the grocery store. I might
have been heartbroken and pissed, but I was in cookie paradise. Hot tea I could
live without, yet paired with cookies, it wasn’t too bad.

“So what now?”
Gracie asked, dipping a shortbread flower in her cup.

I tapped the cookie
in my hand on the edge of the saucer in the other. “I don’t know. I just needed
some space to get my head together away from Kara and definitely away from
Reese.”

“So it’s over with
him?”

The notion of us
over made me want to sob into every one of Gracie’s throw pillows. But I was
mad too. Very, very mad. He’d been toying with me for over a month while I’d
come to believe we had something special.

“Well, yeah. The man
went behind my back, even made a business deal that included being a jerk to
me.”

“Then why continue
on with you?”

The cookie in my
hand crumbled to dust as I made a fist. Why had Reese perpetuated our
relationship? Because I didn’t care about his wealth? Because he was attracted
to me? Because he knew I was obsessed with him?

I brushed the cookie
crumbs onto a napkin. “It doesn’t matter why. The way it started, it was sure
to end. Probably with me getting dumped, and I’m done being dumped.”

Her eyes narrowed on
me so much and so long that I expected something different when she said, “So
Ray was out with another woman.”

Shit. I should have
left that part out. Dumb
and
insensitive, that was me. “Yeah, but I’m guessing by the way she kept checking
out the other tables, she was there to
rub elbows with the rich and famous.”

Gracie squinted down
at the teacup in her lap. Brown wisps of hair hung over her freckled forehead.
I gradually realized that she must wear a black wig to work.

“You know,” I said
gently. I needed to tread carefully here. “I think the dark look might be a bit
scar— intimidating. Maybe if you could tone it down a little, he might be able
to see the possibility of dating you.”

Gracie blinked at me
for a moment then sighed. “I like how I look. I’m comfortable with my look. And
I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t know any other way.”

“You look good right
now,” I said honestly.

Surprisingly—like
shocking surprisingly—she had the sweet next-door look going on while sitting
in her pajamas. I’d bet Reese’s inheritance that Jules could do wonders with
tall and thin Gracie. I sat up excited about the prospect, even more excited
about a project to keep my mind off Reese.

Her eyes bugged out
at me. “I look good like this?”

I nodded my head
vigorously before the excitement suddenly distinguished to burning coals. Kara
had pushed me into Reese, had me wear Jules’s fancy clothes, and look what had
happened with that.

“Yeah, but I don’t
think you should change for Ray. Just change for yourself. Only do what you’re
comfortable with.”

Tilting her head,
she considered my words. “
Maybe
I
could tone it down a bit?”

As in loose the wig,
I thought, nodding. “I think that
would be a happy medium.”

“Maybe. I’ll have to
think about it,” she said, getting up. “But it’s way past my bedtime.” And here
I imagined Gracie up all night, making voodoo dolls. “Let me get some sheets
and blankets for you.”

After saying
goodnight to my non-witchy friend, I made the couch, shucked my jeans off, and crawled
in. Of course, as soon as my head hit the pillow, the evening’s events played
through my head. Although I’d accepted the past weeks had been a mirage, the
knowledge didn’t crush my feelings or the sorrow of losing Reese. Funny, I’d
never truly had him. Yet the hollow ache inside my chest remained.

The hum of the
refrigerator in the other room, the tick of the clock on the table near the
couch, and the emptiness inside me kept sleep from coming for a long, long
time.

But I refused to
shed one more tear. I just lay there feeling hollow and gutted, and beyond
those feelings, I was terrified that, once I got past all my anger, this would
break me.

****

The
next morning, I woke up with the resolve to move on with my life. My shit luck
would probably continue. I might as well roll with the punches, most to my
heart. Ten voicemails—none of which I listened to—and thirty-three messages
were on my phone, all from Kara and Reese. I deleted all of Reese’s without
reading. I was too mad to be curious. I read a few of Kara’s. Gracie and I went
to breakfast—
bagels and a schmear were on me.
Then I headed to the subway and
home.

Kara flew off the
couch the second I entered the apartment.

I put my hand up
without looking at her. “Back off. I read most of your apologies, but it’s
going to take me a few days or longer to get over my anger.” Though I was
spitting mad at the egotistical bitch, I loved Kara and always would. She had
been there for me when no one else was.

“Okay,” she said, a
frown spreading across her lips. “But I may have misjudged Re—”

“I don’t want to
talk about it. I might never want to talk about it.”

“But—”

“No! We. Are. Not.
Talking. About. It.”

“O-kay,” she said
meekly, slinking back toward the couch.

I moved on to the
bathroom, took a long shower, threw on some pajamas, and spent the rest of my
day reading in my bed. No romance though. I opted for some good old fantasy,
the kind with swords, blood, and war.