His Secretary:Undone(35)

At first, there's no response. I'm starting to wonder if he's even home,  and why I assumed he must be - when there's suddenly a series of  shuffling and clicking noises, and the door swings open.

His clothes are rumpled, his hair a complete mess, with a bottle of Jack  Daniel's in one hand and a half-empty glass in the other. I'm starting  to understand why it was such a production to get the door open.

"It was you the whole time," I practically shout at him, not caring if anyone hears.

"It was me the whole time!" he echoes, spreading his arms out in a dramatic gesture. Jesus, he's even drunker than I thought.

I storm inside, kicking the door closed behind me. "Are you fucking serious right now? How long did you know it was me?"         

     



 

"I suspected, at first," he says, swaying a little as he heads for the  kitchen. "Then, when the details started to come out, I knew."

"Bullshit." I fold my arms across my chest, protectively. "There's no way you couldn't have known from the first email."

"Okay, okay." He sits down, heavily, on a stool at the bar. "I knew, but  I didn't want to know. I told myself it had to be a coincidence,  because if it really was you, that'd be too big of a coincidence. It  made sense at the time." He swallows with an effort. "Also, I wanted to  know what you say about me behind my back."

"Big fucking mystery there." I stand there, in front of him, wondering  if he'll even remember this tomorrow. "I can't believe this. You told me  to wear lingerie at work." My face burns as I recall that conversation.

"And I stand by that suggestion." He manages a lopsided grin. "You should see the emails I didn't send you."

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I cannot deal with this right now.

"I'm not proud of it," he says, at last, a little more quietly. "But  then I saw the things you'd never tell me to my face. Like that you  think I'm a good person. That you like how I make you laugh. I shouldn't  have done it, but I'm not sorry I had a chance to find out." He looks  up at me, and there's no humor left in his face. "I was just begging for  scraps, Meg. When it comes to you, that's all I've got."

I let out a bitter laugh. "No, no, you are not putting me in a position to feel sorry for you. Not today."

"Will you please sit down?" he slurs.

"No, Adrian!" I shout, adrenaline coursing through me as I let five  years' worth of bottled-up anger spill out. "No, I will not fucking sit  down! I'm done with this. I'm done with you. You're fucking toxic, and  you poison everything around you, and you already ruined half a decade  of my life. I let you take my self esteem, and my self respect, and my  sanity. I even shared your bed because I just needed something to make  me feel better about all this shit. And it did, you know that? You're  pretty fucking good at making me forget what a train wreck my life is.  And the fact that you made it that way. You're my own personal heroin.  I'm fucking done, Adrian. I hate who I am now. I hate what you've turned  me into."

He just stares at me. I watch his nostrils flare, his eyes flash, his  chest rising and falling more rapidly as he listens, but he doesn't say  anything. My face is burning, and I can feel angry tears beginning to  gather and trickle down my cheeks. I don't even care. After today, I'm  never going to see him again.

"I used to be a good person, Adrian." My voice is thick with sobs I  force myself to swallow. "I used to have friends. I used to have fun. I  even used to be able to tolerate my parents, for a monthly phone call,  for a couple visits a year. It was shitty, but at least it was  something. Now I'm going to be eating a fucking Swanson meal for  Christmas with a god damn plastic tree in my discount apartment because  paying me another couple dollars an hour would mean you have to cut down  on your Dom Perignon consumption. And I can't start my own family,  because now, thanks to you, I'm exactly the shrill insufferable bitch  you always thought I was."

He just keeps staring at me.

Finally, he speaks, his tongue sounding thick in his mouth. "You're not … you're not," he says.

"Really? That's the best you've got?"

His eyes are barely even open anymore. Jesus Christ.

I storm out of Adrian Risinger's penthouse suite, out of his building, out of his life.





Chapter Seventeen





Time passes.

I wake up in the morning. I shower. I swallow a mouthful of vitamins I know I'm supposed to be taking, and I update my resume.

I make a Linked In profile and I send in applications and I wait. Most  of the time, I remember to eat. At night, I stare at the ceiling until I  fall asleep. Sometimes it takes too long.

If I dream, I don't remember it.

I do all of these things without feeling. If there's still a heart  beating in my chest, I'm not particularly aware of it. I've had to  excise the part of myself that was stupid enough to fall in love with a  man like Adrian, and it's left precious little behind.

Someday, I know, I will look back on this time in my life and wonder  what the hell I could have possibly been thinking. I might even laugh at  it, perhaps with my kind, slightly older, curly-haired husband who is a  college professor or an assistant regional manager of who gives a fuck.  We'll swap stories about the crazy exploits of our youth. He'll tell me  about the time he broke his leg jumping into a shallow lake, I'll tell  him about the time I slept with my boss. We'll be that kind of couple.  He won't get jealous, because he knows that time is long gone.         

     



 

He knows, as well as I do, you can't grow old with a man like Adrian.

Maybe someday we'll see each other. Not bloody likely, in a city this  big. But it could happen. Maybe he'll be reduced to doing his own food  shopping at some point, and I'll meet him in the ice cream aisle with a  baby on my hip. Maybe I'll pretend not to recognize him.

A month passes, and I find myself with a new job. It doesn't pay as  much, but it's enough. My boss is patient and understanding. A normal  person, basically.

I hate it.

My first day, I get home and suddenly realize what a sty I'm living in. A  month's worth of the shitty local newspaper scattered across my kitchen  table, junk mail everywhere, empty bottles of God knows what. I haven't  had an adrenaline rush in ages, so I find myself cleaning. I flip on  the TV and let the financial news drone on in the background while I  gather up the recycling.

As I walk to the bin in the kitchen, something on one of the newspapers catches my eye.





Animal shelter says "guardian angel" responsible for saving location; furry tenants





The eye-rolling headline notwithstanding, I have to wonder.

I flip to the human interest section. Sure enough, it's a picture of  Shelly cuddling a very photogenic polydactyl cat with striking green  eyes, taking up half the page.

My heart squeezes painfully in my chest.





 … .the donor, who insists on remaining anonymous, has promised Masterson  his ongoing support for her shelter, and its mission. "He really is a  guardian angel," she says. "I've always believed that the universe will  provide when you're at your most desperate, but until now I didn't  realize just how true that was."





The universe, hell.

Guardian fucking angel? Not likely.

I'm laughing and I'm crying and I'm laughing some more.

And he never said a word to me. Why would he? He didn't know. It's not  his job to update me on every charity he decides to support.

But the anonymity is different. That means he's not supporting them as  Risinger Industries, he's just supporting them as himself. Like he  actually cares.

My heartbeat comes back. And with it, a pain in my chest that I wonder if I'll ever live completely without.

***

When I show up at the shelter, with its shiny new coat of paint and expanded kennel area, Shelly hugs me and cries.

"I thought you might be back," she sniffles. "I was hoping. After we ran into each other … "

She pauses, looking at me. It seems like there's a thousand things she's not saying.

"I'm just so glad you're here," she says, finally.

I puzzle over this while I supervise the open play time for the dogs,  throwing balls and sticks and sitting down on the bench with the elderly  beagle who just wants to cuddle all day. I know he's going to have a  hard time finding a home, and I try not to think about it as I stroke  his ears.

The one nice thing about this new, terminally boring job is that it  leaves me plenty of time and energy to volunteer again. It feels  strange, like a time machine has taken me back five years and dropped me  in a place where I no longer really fit in. Nothing else has changed  much, but I have.

I start spending weekends, evenings, and even some early mornings at the  shelter. When I mention it offhandedly to my new boss, he offers me a  flexible schedule to help out with my charitable endeavors. He loves  animals, you see.

I feel like I'm on a different fucking planet.