Wishing Well(56)

Maurice was nowhere in sight as I made my way back to the elevator, inserted the key, typed in the code and pushed the button for the lobby floor. And just as I’d known he would be, Vincent stood waiting outside the doors.

Except, instead of a slimy smile, he looked at me with concern. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” I spat, taking a left down the employee hall. I should have just gone to my room but I needed to go outside, to take a walk in the garden and calm down.

“So you submitted?” Vincent followed behind me. If I weren’t so afraid of being fired, I would have turned around and launched myself at him to beat his face in. Instead, I ignored his question.

“Are you quitting?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, still storming off.

“Will you come up to my suite tonight.”

Stopping suddenly, I spun on my heel to face him. “Fuck you. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I’m still working here. Until then, leave me the fuck alone.”

Surprisingly, he stopped following me, and slamming my hands against the back door, I walked out into the garden alone.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


I spent several hours of that late afternoon deciding what I would do with the cards I’d been dealt. An hour in the garden, and then leaving through a back, employee gate, I spent more time walking the streets of the city, eventually stopping inside a small cafe to grab some food. Choosing a quiet table by the window, I wrapped my hands around a cup of coffee, my head hung as I contemplated the sudden change in Vincent, the heartless way he’d told me that if I didn’t take on this new job he’d offered, I wouldn’t have a place to sleep.

Lifting my eyes to watch the traffic on the streets and the crowds moving down the sidewalks, I realized that during my wanderings I’d returned to the place where it all began, to a cafe facing a particular alley where I’d taken shelter from the rain. Had Vincent been sitting in this very spot when he first saw me?

A shiver of disgust rolled through me, but while staring at the small overhang that had done nothing to shelter me from the freezing rain, I realized I could never return to the streets. For a moment I was crushed beneath the hard truth that I was out of options...until I remembered one.

It would be an admission of defeat, a figurative crawling, but there was one door left that I could open, I just didn’t want to make that step, to choose to admit that I’d been wrong.

God, how we’d fought when I told my mom and Meadow that I wouldn’t move with them to Germany. In her anger, my mother had screamed that I was a stupid girl, a teenager caught up in what she foolishly believed was love. And while she’d been right to point out that Blake and I were too young to use words like ‘forever’, she hadn’t been right to call me every horrible name in the book.

Only Meadow had been strong enough to stay silent, had refused to judge me for my decision, and had wished me luck the day I hugged her before walking her to the airport gate. If I had to open that door, if I had to test the waters, it was Meadow I should contact.

Standing from my seat, I left my coffee half full on the table, dropped some money for the waitress and headed for the door. A hand gripped my bicep as I attempted to pass through, a familiar voice that said, “I owe you for the slap, you know?” His voice dropped to a whisper, “And I’ll pay you back before too long.”

Glancing up into Barron’s face, I scowled. “If you don’t take your filthy fucking hand off me, I’ll scream as I rake my fingernails down your pretty face.”

Barron laughed and shook his head as he let me go. “You haven’t changed at all. Vincent is going to owe me so much fucking money.”

He walked off as if the exchange hadn’t happened, his expensive suit perfectly tailored to his body. Glancing back, I watched him take a seat, my disgust so thorough that I didn’t pay attention to what he’d said. Storming off down the sidewalk, I resisted the urge to return to the hotel and cry into my pillow. Instead, I forced myself down another three blocks to an internet cafe where I could use their computers. After paying the cashier for a half hour, I selected an empty desk and pulled up the email I’d kept active since before Meadow and my mother had moved away.

Pulling up the last email Meadow had sent - the one that used all capitals to tell me she knew I was no longer with Blake - I clicked the button to reply and paused because I had no idea what I wanted to say. At that point I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Wishing Well just yet. I had too many thoughts to sort out before I could make a decision as important as that.

Reminding myself I was merely opening a door through which I could escape, I typed a non-committal response apologizing for staying out of touch and informing her that I’d found a job at a wonderful hotel which also provided me a place to stay. At first, I was hesitant to name the hotel, but with a shrug I decided avoiding the name would only draw Meadow’s suspicion. It wasn’t like she was going to leave college in Germany to come rushing to investigate. At most, she would be relieved to know I was okay and we would correspond back and forth until a time I made my decision.

Sending the email, I felt slightly better about my situation and I returned to the hotel to think about what I wanted to do given the direction my job had taken.

Lying in bed, I couldn’t silence my anger toward Vincent, but even more unsettling was that I couldn’t stop thinking about how broken I’d felt to look at Maurice. There was something so deeply sad about him that it kept drawing my attention back to thoughts of him. And I wouldn’t even try to lie and claim that what we’d done together hadn’t been amazing. A nagging whisper kept filtering through my head, a familiarity that I couldn’t quite pinpoint no matter how I focused on it.