“Loved,” I said. “It’s past tense now, don’t you think?”
She sighed. “Please don’t leave me…”
“I won’t.” I stepped back so the guards could escort her back to the van. “I’ll write…”
“Really?” Her eyes looked hopeful as she walked away. “Okay, I look forward to your letters…I look forward to fixing us…”
The rain picked up its pace, transitioning from a drizzle to a downpour, but I remained standing—unable to walk away from Emma. I re-read her tiny tombstone, crying as her face crossed my mind.
Emma Rose Henderson,
A Daddy’s girl, through and through.
Gone too soon,
But never forgotten…
I stared at those words for hours, letting the rain drench me to the bone. It wasn’t until the director informed me that the gates were closing, that I walked away.
Lost and heartbroken, I spent the next few months in a dizzying haze. Despite the fact that Ava was the one behind bars, the paper continued spouting her lies as facts, slandering me, and I didn’t even bother disputing it.
I didn’t have the energy.
I submitted written testimonies through lawyers I’d hired—knowing that eventually things would sort themselves out. I didn’t even care that Ava had hired her own high profile team to block me from getting a divorce.
I no longer gave a f**k about anything.
My firm collapsed before my very eyes—everything down to the sink-ware was sold off in parts, and in the legal community, the downfall became a warning, a tell-tale of what happened when status and greed consumed one of us.
I drank every morning, letting the alcohol numb my pain. And whenever I awoke from passing out, I drank again. It was only when I started drinking coffee that I could somewhat function well enough to get anything done.
Visiting the cemetery was too painful, almost as painful as stepping inside Emma’s room. So, I hired a few people to pack it away in boxes, telling them to leave out the “E” and “H” frames; I could bear to look at those since she’d hand-picked them.
For months, I mourned the life she would never have—attempting to make sense of it all. I knew deep down that I couldn’t stay here, but I couldn’t leave as the same man that I was; I knew that I’d never get over Emma, but I needed a way to cope. A way to slowly re-integrate myself into the real world.
Stopping by a newspaper stand, my eyes caught an article about the newest hotshot lawyer in town—Michael Weston. Dressed in one of the expensive suits that Kevin once raved about, he was the talk of the city and from the words I was reading, he was cocky—only slightly cockier than I had become recently.
“Oh, you got the last one…” A woman said as she stepped next to me.
“You want this paper?”
“Well…” She blushed. “Not really the paper. I just want the ad of Michael Weston so I can show my friends my ideal dream guy.”
“Have you read some of the shit he’s said in this interview?” I raised my eyebrow. “He’s an ass**le.”
“That just makes him more loveable, don’t you think.”
“They asked him what he does when he gets less than favorable reviews.” I couldn’t believe how f**king gullible this woman looked. “Do you want to know what he said?”
“Sure.” She crossed her arms. “What does he do when he gets bad reviews?”
“He looks at his bank account,” I said. “And then he claims, and I quote, ‘I don’t recall learning that someone needs to be well-liked in order to be successful.’ He really said that.”
She practically melted into the sidewalk. “I bet he really knows how to f**k…”
I gave her the paper and walked away. Her bringing up sex was a reminder of how long it’d been since I slept with someone.
And then it hit me: Sex.
I needed some, badly.
I signed up for an online dating site, Date-Match, and slowly shed the layers of the man I used to be. I bought expensive suits—one for every day of the week. I slowly curbed my excessive drinking to make room for a new appetite, and instead of punching my walls to de-stress, I invested in Cuban cigars.
Still, the women I met online were average, and none of them seemed to be about sex. They just wanted to talk about bullshit—always leaving me restless and alone at the end of the night to drink away my sorrows; forcing me back to square one with my experiment.
Like the woman who was sitting on the edge of the bed right now, a goddamn mile-a-minute talker. She was a few years older than me, a teacher of some sort, and she couldn’t shut up for shit.
She was talking about her life in college, about some boy named Billy she once loved—some boy who never loved her back. Before she could start elaborating about the campus bond-fire where the two of them met, I realized that I couldn’t take this shit anymore.
“Billy and I would’ve been perfect together, I think,” she said. “There was even this one time that—”
“Are we going to f**k or what?” I cut her off.
“What?” She clutched her chest. “What did you just say?”
“I said, are we going to f**k or what?” I emphasized every syllable. “I didn’t reserve this hotel room so I could sit and listen to you talk all night.”
Her jaw dropped.
“I thought that…” She stuttered. “I thought that you liked me.”
“I like you enough to f**k you. That’s about it.”
Her eyes went wide and she stepped back. “All this time that we’ve been dating you’ve only been thinking about sleeping with me?”
I mentally added “rhetorical questions” to the list of shit I wasn’t going to put up with anymore.
“I was under the impression that all those dates you took me on was because—”
“I took you on all those dates so we could scratch the surface of each other’s personalities. So I could know that you’re not some psycho-murderer, and so you could be assured that I’m not one either.” I grimaced at all the time I’d clearly wasted. “The purpose was so the both of us could be comfortable enough to f**k, and then after that we could go our separate ways.”
“It was only going to be once?”
“Do you have a hearing problem?”
She looked completely lost, and I wasn’t in the mood to make this picture any clearer.
Before I could say another word, she looked into my eyes.
“So,” she said, still in shock, “all the things on your profile were a lie?”
“No. Everything on my profile is one hundred percent accurate.” I pulled out my phone. “I specifically wrote what I’m in for, and I’ve been more than lenient spending my time with you. You seem like a nice person, but after tonight—whether we f**k or not, I won’t be speaking to you again. So, what’s it going to be?”
She stood there, her jaw dropped once more, and I glanced at my profile.
Sure enough, I’d forgotten to adjust the default settings when I’d signed up for Date-Match, and my “What I’m Looking For” box was still set to bullshit: “Long conversations, a connection with someone I can truly relate to, and finding my one true love.”
Ha…
I quickly erased all of the text and looked up, noticing that my date for tonight was still in the room.
“If you continue standing here,” I said,” I’m going to assume that you do want to f**k tonight. If not, the door’s right behind you.”
The sound of her huffing was the last sound I heard before the door slammed so hard it rattled the mirror on the wall.
Unfazed, I contemplated what I wanted to write in my profile’s box. Over the past few months, I’d found disappointment after disappointment—wasting too much of my time and money on women who were not on the same wavelength as me.
And now it all made perfect sense. All those unnecessary dinners, late night conversations, and utter bullshit was about to end right now.
I didn’t need another relationship—those days were gone forever, and I would never spend more than a week talking to the same woman on the phone.
As the sun set outside the hotel room’s window, the perfect phrasing came to me, and I typed: One dinner. One night. No repeats.
Then I highlighted it and placed it in bold.
Staring at it, I realized how bare it looked, how someone might actually think I wasn’t dead ass serious, so underneath, I made things completely clear:
Casual sex. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Condone (v.):
To forgive, support, and/or overlook moral or legal failures of another without protest, with the result that it appears that such breaches of moral or legal duties are acceptable. An employer may overlook an employee overcharging customers or a police officer may look the other way when a party uses violent self-help to solve a problem
Aubrey
I sat in the back of the courtroom, listening to Andrew break down on the stand. Twice, when the defense purposely brought up Emma, he lost all composure.
Yet, as I saw the look in his eyes at the mere mention of her, of the “slip” of her name, I felt his pain.
I kept my head down the remainder of his testimony so our eyes wouldn’t meet, so he wouldn’t know I was here, and when the judge called for a short recess, I slipped outside.
Reporters were murmuring in the hallway, hoping he didn’t read any of their old articles about him years ago, and suddenly they were shouting questions.
“Mr. Henderson! Mr. Henderson!” They hounded him the second he stepped outside of the courtroom. “Mr. Henderson!”
He stopped and looked at them. “My name is Mr. Hamilton.”
“How do you feel about potentially sending your former partner and best friend away to prison?”
“He’s sending himself to prison,” he answered.
“Do you have any intentions of reconnecting with him while he’s behind bars?”
He ignored that question with a blank stare.
“Your name was cleared years ago and yet you still left New York,” someone else asked. “Now that everything is in the open for good, any chance that you’ll come back and re-open your firm?”
“I’m about to spend my last hour in this city on the way to the airport,” he said, pulling shades over his eyes.
The throng of reporters followed him out of the courtroom, and he slipped inside the car without a second glance.
Sighing, I pulled out my phone and re-read the messages he’d sent me this morning, somewhat regretting that I didn’t respond.
Subject: NYC.
I would like to see you one last time before I leave. Can I pick you up for breakfast?
PS—I really was going to tell you everything that night…
—Andrew
Subject: Your Pussy.
This message is actually not about your pu**y. (Although, since I’m on the subject, it is number one on my list of favorite things.)
Come to breakfast with me. I’m outside your door.
—Andrew
As I was rereading that email, a new one popped onto my screen:
Subject: Goodbye.
—Andrew
I knew my lack of response was immature, that it was my fault that I didn’t get to see him before he left, but I felt as if he could’ve made more of an effort. And I still felt that he was wrong for not being open with me when he should have.
Leaving the courthouse, I headed home and thought about all the half-truths and lies that had swirled our relationship. Alyssa. His wife. My real name. His real name.
Everything we had was built on lies…
Letting tears roll down my face, I opened the door to my house, prepared to shower until I couldn’t cry anymore, but Andrew was standing in my living room.
