When It's Love (23 page)

As I reach the bottom of the stairs I bump into Benjamin. “Well, good morning, Sydney,” he says, looking startled “I had no idea you’d be awake so early.” He’s wearing a hooded, pine-green Addison College sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and sneakers. “I’m just on my way out for a walk in the crisp morning air. Would you like to join me?”

“Honestly, Benjamin,” I say. “I really need to get home. Something rather urgent has come up. I hate to be a bother, but if there’s any way I could get a ride, I would be tremendously grateful.”

“I’ll gladly drive you home, dear,” Benjamin says. “But perhaps you’d like to tell me what’s going on so I can help you.”

“It’s not about the possible break-in or the letter, or anything like that,” I say. “It’s something personal.” I feel tears welling up in my eyes and I try as hard as I can to blink them away. Apparently I’m not very successful because Benjamin says, “No need to cry. I’ll grab my keys and some tissues for you and we’ll be off. You go grab your coat.”

I don’t want that fucking Christmas-present-coat from that piece of shit son of yours
, I think. But I say, “Oh, I spilled some wine on my coat yesterday. Henry told me he’d send it to the cleaners. And I’ll be fine on the short drive home. No worries.”

“As you wish,” Benjamin says.

I put on my stilettos and step outside into the frosty morning with Benjamin. I am frozen within seconds and I can’t wait to get into the car. Benjamin drives a sleek, black BMW. It’s the most luxurious car I’ve ever been in, with smooth tan leather seats and a leather steering wheel.

“I hope all the roads are open,” Benjamin says as he rounds out of the circular driveway. “The town isn’t expecting much traffic today.”

“Me too,” I say.

Benjamin drives slowly and makes small talk, which I’m really not in the mood for. “When Henry was a little boy,” he says, “we’d have a children’s Christmas party every year. We decorated the estate with reindeer and hired a Santa Claus to hand out gifts to each child. Carolyn made decorations with the children and everyone got a stocking to stuff with presents for children in need. Then Carolyn, Henry, and Santa Claus would deliver the stockings to shelters in the area, doing their best to spread happiness.”

“How nice,” is all I can manage to spit out, because what is really going through my head are thoughts like:
So you taught him to be charitable. That’s great. Honesty would have been good, too.

Benjamin pulls up in front of my building and offers to walk me in. “I’m fine,” I say. “Thanks so much for the ride. I really appreciate it.”

“Sydney,” Benjamin says as I open the door to the car. “Please don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.” I turn my head away, so he won’t see the fresh tears spilling down my face.

I have never been so grateful to be home.

Tiny and Little are excited to see me. I chain lock the door behind me as they run circles around my legs. They don’t even give me a chance to set my backpack down and take off my shoes before they start a chorus of mewing. I feed them, clean their litter box, take a shower, get into my comfiest sweats, and collapse onto my futon. The tears haven’t stopped falling since I was dropped off and now I start to really cry. Grief bursts out of me in the form of deep, throaty sobs. My chest constricts and my breathing is erratic - quick, shallow breaths that leave me gasping for air. When I’ve exhausted myself weeping out a million tears, I do the thing I’ve never done, but the thing any normal girl my age with a broken heart would do, I pick up the phone and call my mother.

My mother answers with such a sharp “hello,” that I immediately regret calling her.

“Hi, Mom,” I say. My voice wavers, but I continue. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Sydney,” she says flatly.

I wait for my mother to ask me how I spent Christmas Eve, how my semester was, or just to be pleasantly social like Mayor Ryan and Celine.
Just show an interest in me, Mom. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to be ignored by you?

“I don’t suppose you could drive over to Addison today?” I ask. “I sort of need to talk to you,” I do my best to sound casual.

“If it’s nothing urgent, Sydney, I’d rather not,” my mother says. I can visualize her perfectly now, sitting at my grandparent’s table, doodling as she talks. Surely she looks bored to pieces.

“I need to talk to you,” I say, and without waiting for her to cut me off or tell me she has to go. My mother may hate the fact that I exist, but she owes me the respect of hearing me out today. She may not have chosen to get pregnant with me, but she chose to keep me. She didn’t have an abortion and she didn’t give me up for adoption. Therefore, I tell myself, she has a responsibility to me. I am her daughter, whether she likes it or not. “Could you give me some advice about a guy?” I ask straightforwardly.

“I don’t think I’d be much help to you,” my mother says. “I’m hardly an expert.”

“Then just tell me one thing,” I say. “If the man you think you’re in love with deceived you, would you forgive him?”

“Forgiving won’t change what happened,” my mother tells me without a hint of inflection in her voice. She sounds more robotic than human, and a searing hatred for my father courses through my veins right now because I know it’s his crime that made her this way. If I were sitting beside my mother instead of an hour away, I think I would grab her and beg her to forgive my father. I would tell her to let it go and to let me free. Until she does, I will always have a sense of culpability. My whole life I’ve ached to be her daughter, not her punishment.

My mother probably has no idea, but what she’s just said has helped me tremendously. She is living proof of what happens when you don’t forgive, and the way anger can burn out all the joy in a life. But forgiveness takes courage and strength, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to forgive Henry. As it is now, Henry has yet to ask for forgiveness.

I want to tell my mother about seeing a car like Abraham Rudd’s. I want to tell her about the note, but her lack of interest in me is so evident. She won’t do anything to help me. The question I have to answer is whether I think I can help her if I explain what’s been going on over the last few days. Or will bringing up my father just make her withdraw even more?

I can’t decide so I get off the phone before I say something I’ll regret.

I wake up to pounding on my door, and I’m sure it’s Henry. I grab my phone to check the time. 10:30, on Christmas morning. I walk over to door to ease the banging racket, but I don’t open it. “I’m not home,” I say. “Go away.”

“Sydney, please open up.”

Hearing Henry’s voice sends a chill down my spine.

“No,” I say firmly.

“You have to talk to me,” Henry implores. “Let me in before I wake your neighbors.”

“Fine,” I say. The truth is that I want to hear what Henry has to say. It will be fucking interesting to watch him try to talk his way out of his enormous lie. I can feel how puffy my eyes are, but I don’t care what I look like right now. I open the door and Henry rushes in with open arms. He tries to grab me, but I shriek and recoil. “Don’t you dare touch me,” I say, cringing with repulsion.

“OK,” Henry says. He puts up his hands as a sign of retreat and takes a step back.

I’m glaring at Henry with the most ferocious look I can conjure up, but my trembling body betrays me and exposes my pain.

“I wish I could hold you,” Henry says, his voice oozing with sincerity.

I have to look down because seeing the pain in his eyes makes my own pain even worse.

Henry reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the Tiffany’s box. He sets it down on my table and says, “No matter what happens between us, this bracelet is yours. I want you to keep it as a memory of our good times. I’m not only talking about the mind-blowing sex. I’m talking about our years of friendship. Sydney, you mean more to me than anyone.”

His words threaten to soften me.

“I gather you figured out that I am P.Sparling,” Henry says.

I nod.

“Please,” Henry begs. “Say something.”

I take a chair and gesture to Henry to sit down. “Your phone,” I say, choking up with sobs as the words come out of my mouth. “I was going to delete that last picture you took of me because it made me uncomfortable.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Henry practically screams. “The last thing I want to do is make you feel bad. The whole point of sex is pleasure.”

“I didn’t want to ruin the moment,” I say. “And, truthfully, I didn’t realize how bad I felt about it until after you’d fallen asleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Henry says, quietly running a hand through his hair.

Even in my anguished state I can’t stop from admiring how handsome Henry is. Things could have been so much different … we were on the road to perfect. I don’t think Henry and I have ever had a single disagreement. We would have been dynamite together. But here we are in the rubble of a relationship that, only hours ago, was at the peak of its bloom.

“Your betrayal is unfathomable,” I say. “I can’t believe what you did.”

The tension in the room is thick and threatening. I’m expecting Henry to attack me for snooping through his personal belongings, even if I had a good reason to do so, or to lash out at me in some dramatic way, but he just nods as if he’s resigned to defeat. He stares down at his hands. “Will you let me explain?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

I should know the truth, the whole story from its beginning to this wretched end. Oh God, is this really the end of my friendship with Henry? It has to be. We have to say our good-byes here and now because I’ll never be able to trust him again.

My heart begins to melt at the distraught look on his face, but I’m still holding my unwavering position that Henry cannot be absolved after what he’s done. I would like to curl up in bed now so I don’t have to face him, or feel anything for him but fury. I stay where I am sitting in the chair beside him, though, because I’m determined not to chicken out.

“I had no idea how far things as P.Sparling would go,” Henry says. “If I’d known it would escalate to such an extreme degree, I never would have started.”

“You shouldn’t have ever started,” I cry. “Deceiving me once was too much. And you had the gall to go on and on. What you did is dishonest, cruel, infantile, and a thousand other horrid things. What were you thinking? How did you ever come up with such a stupid fucking idea?”

“Because after so many years of seeing you sad, you began to shine when you talked about Professor Sparling,” Henry says. “And even though I know he’s not good enough for you, I wanted you to have what you wanted. You were so excited when he called your essay ‘extraordinary’. I was trying to give you more of that feeling when I sent the first email from Professor Sparling. And, then, you were so happy and responsive.”

“You played me for a fool, Henry,” I say bitterly, wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my hand.

“I didn’t mean to. I swear, Sydney. I used bad judgment. I made a terrible mistake. But believe me, please, that it was all an attempt to give you what you desperately wanted. And you have to know it was torturing me to see how willingly you gave yourself to P.Sparling, because I wanted you so badly for myself.”

“You could have just told me that you wanted me,” I say, completely exasperated by Henry’s excuses.

“I’m telling you now. Sydney Morrison, you are my every dream and my every fantasy. If you had any idea how I feel about you, and how I’ve felt about you all these years …”

“So you tricked me into showing you my tits?” I snap, refusing to surrender to his romantic words. “You couldn’t come up with a better way to demonstrate your desire for me?”

“No,” Henry declares. “I couldn’t because you were too fragile. I was afraid to push anything that might jeopardize our friendship. I knew you didn’t want to date anyone. You’ve always been clear about that.”

“I couldn’t date. I was trying to heal.”

“I know,” Henry says. “I understood that, even though I didn’t know what had happened to you, so I never tried anything. Then you started crushing on Professor Sparling. And I wanted you to be happy with all my heart, even if it meant you’d be with someone other than me. Please believe me. Please. I lost control because you were so receptive. I was living vicariously through your emails to Professor Sparling. I was living my ultimate fantasy in a warped and fucked up way. I know it was wrong. So wrong. And I’m so sorry.” Henry looks at me warily. “Do you believe me?”