Lucky Charm (11 page)

“
I can't go hiding in my room forever, can I?
”
Annabel sobbed
. A
pparently
,
she had been too rash to congratulate herself on the absence of tears.
“
What if Meredith is right? What if I am going to end up a spinster? I'm twenty-
eight years old. I'll be twenty-
nine in six months
. T
hat doesn't exactly leave me much time, you know.
”

“
Nonsense! Now you're being ridiculous. You can't let people get to you like that, especially Meredith
. W
hat does she know about
a
happy marriage? For all the good marriage did her, I would rather be a spinster myself. God, I hate that word! It boggles me to think that people still haven't come up with a modern alternative to describe a woman who never married. I mean
,
who spins these days?
O
f course
,
we have a perfectly good option for men: a bachelor
. A
man could be eighty and toothless, but if he's never been married, they'll still describe him as a bachelor and make jokes about him avoiding the marriage noose.
”

“
Yeah, well, that's the world we live in.
”
Annabel felt cheered up by her mother's indignation, but deep inside she could not help wondering whether her mother's tirade was not intended to sugar-coat the truth
. I
n a little over a year
,
she would turn thirty
,
and she had heard plenty of horror stories about the
New York
dating scene for women over thirty. Of course, there were some who would beg to differ
. H
er boss, Paige, had more dates than most girls in their early twenties. But Paige was a character – she was independent, spunky, and tough.

“
Well, I guess I'll have to get going soon,
”
Annabel murmured
. T
hinking of Paige reminded her of work
. B
roken heart or not, she would have to go in to the office tomorrow.

“
Are you sure you d
on't want to stay the night
? I could get your old room ready.
”

“
Thanks, Mom, but I've got to go to work tomorrow, and I can't exactly go in looking like this.” Annabel motioned at her shabby outfit of sweats and sneakers.
“
I'll be fine
.
I feel much better than I did this morning.
”

“
You will be fine —
just wait and see. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. Call me anytime you feel blue
.
I don't care what time of the
day or
night it is. Call me whenever you feel like it,
okay
?
”

“
O
kay
.
”
Annabel nodded, although she sincerely hoped that it would not come to that.
“
I've got to go,
Mom
.
I want to catch the five-
fifteen train.
”

“
All right. Let me get the car keys
.
I'll drive you to the train station.
”

“
I'm not going to cry,
”
Annabel chanted to herself as she opened the front door of her apartment.
“
Not going to cry,
”
she repeated her mantra once again as she took her shoes off. She walked inside and took a seat on the couch. It was only half past six - still plenty of the night left to fill.
Suddenly,
she wished she had taken her mother up on her offer
. S
he could have stayed in her old room, slept in her old bed like she used to when she still lived in her parents' house, and pretend that she was back to the time before Jeremy. Instead, she was alone, surrounded by the ghosts of her life with Jeremy. Almost everything in the apartment reminded her of him: the TV table they
had
bought together at a flea market and lugged home for ten long blocks, their hands numb with the weight, but their faces shining with smiles; the ridiculously expensive coffee maker that Jeremy had insisted on buying because of his absolute need to have espresso in the morning; the teddy bear clutching a velvet heart that Jeremy had given her for last year’s Valentine’s day – the list was endless. Assailed by these vivid reminders of their time together, Annabel could not help wondering if she had been wrong about kicking Jeremy out. There was no denying it
. D
espite his betrayal, she had to admit that if faced with Jeremy this very moment, she would probably
break
down and take him back.

Not that there was any danger of that
. S
he had been checking her cell phone for messages all day, but Jeremy
ha
d not attempt
ed
to make any contact with her. Only yesterday she could not stand the sight of him
. N
othing had changed since then, and yet she was already missing her cheating, lying snake of a fiancé
. S
he missed the smell of his Hugo Boss cologne, missed the way he looked at her with his baby blue eyes, missed the way his bangs fell across his forehead, and even missed his pretentious jackets with leather elbow patches.

Her mind took her back two years, to the time when Jeremy had proposed. The two of them had been perfectly happy together when all
of a
sudden, as if in some cosmic domino succession, all the couples they knew began to get engaged and then married. As she attended one wedding after the next in bridesmaid capacity, Annabel hoped that Jeremy too would soon follow suit, and the next wedding would be their
s. B
ut Jeremy
had
remained silent on the subject. Her mother told her that everything would happen in due time while Lilly urged her to confront him, and Meredith voted for a subtle combination of hints and blackmail. One night, after they both had too much to drink over dinner, Annabel asked Jeremy point blank whether he saw marriage in their future. He seemed startled
,
and she regretted
immediately
asking him
that question
. Jeremy’s lukewarm response caught her off guard, and she spent subsequent weeks inwardly questioning their relationship
. W
ith the exception of that one occasion, they had never openly discussed marriage, but she had always assumed that it would be in their future. Then, one night, upon coming home from work
,
Annabel
had
found a trail of rose petals leading all the way from the lobby of their walk-up into their tiny studio. Over a candlelight dinner Jeremy had prepared himself, he told her that she was his soul mate and he would be lost without her. Then Jeremy got on one knee and proposed with his grandmother’s royal blue sapphire diamond ring. Feeling like the luckiest girl alive, Annabel
had
said yes, and all her reservations melted away at the drop of a hat, or to be more precise, at the drop of a ring. They set the wedding date to two years from the engagement and the rest, as they say it, was history.
Now, in hindsight, Annabel wondered if she had missed the chinks in their relationship as early as back then.

She tried to remember bits and pieces of break up advice from women's magazines
. N
ot that she had paid any attention to them at the time
;
she did not have a reason to. Phrases like
“
recreate yourself
”
and
“
enjoy the new space in your life
”
surfaced in her mind, but
right now
the space in her life felt as vacant as a black hole, and as much as she would have liked to, she simply could not think of a way to enjoy it.

I'll start small
, she thought,
I'll start by reorganizing my closet
.
I
t might be a cliché, but there was nothing like chores for getting your mind off things
.
She got off the couch and bravely opened the cramped closet that she had shared with Jeremy for the past six years. The left side had been his
;
and the right side had been hers; now, the left side was completely empty with her clothes still bunched in together on the right side of the rack. She smiled weakly, remembering Jeremy's complaining about his shirts getting crumpled
. H
e always took a slightly bigger share of the space. Well, now the entire closet was hers. She wondered what kind of closet space Jeremy would get at Athena's apartment
. H
is own walk-in closet
,
perhaps?

With one sweeping motion of her hand, Annabel pushed apart the tightly pressed hangers, spreading her small, but tasteful collection of clothes over the rack. At least now she would no longer have to iron the creases out of her outfits in the mornings. Then, she reached for the storage bags on the floor that she used for her seasonal clothes
. S
he had actually bought those vacuum storage bags that they advertised in TV infomercials. Well, with all this extra space, there was no need for them now. It was already almost the end of April, and before you knew it, summer would be there, so why not unpack
her
summer clothes? Now was as good a time as any.

Annabel spent the next three hours ironing and hanging up her creased summer outfits. By ten o'clock
,
she
had
finished reorganizing her closet
. E
verything was in place, with plenty of space left between hangers. Well, at least she had managed to reclaim the extra closet space
. N
o doubt, it was only a small step, but
it was enough to spark a small
hope that maybe, just maybe,
in time
she would find a way to reclaim the rest of her life.

“Feeling better, Annabel?” Annabel heard Janine’s sharp voice as soon as she walked into the office.

“Fine, thank you.” As if Janine was one to talk: she made no qualms about calling in sick when she was hung over from too much partying.

“Oh, by the way
.
Paige won’t be in today, so I guess it’s just the two of us holding down the fort,” Janine added gleefully as she followed Annabel down the hall.

Annabel guessed that what that really meant was that Janine would go out for a two-hour lunch and leave early, while Annabel would be holding down the fort by herself. While normally she might have objected, today Annabel welcomed the idea of a busy day – anything to keep her mind off Jeremy.

“Great, thanks
,
Janine. I’ll call you if I need you.”
Which, hopefully, will be never
, Annabel muttered under her breath as she shut the door of her tiny office.

After checking
her calendar, Annabel realized that she did have a suitable assignment for Janine after all. Circled in black marker
,
there was a twelve o’clock portfolio delivery to Stephen Vargas
. It was
something she would normally remember, but with all the chaos in her life, the appointment had completely slipped her mind.
Janine is going to love this
, Annabel thought as she buzzed for Janine to come into her office.

At thirty-two, Stephen Vargas was an heir to a huge fortune
. I
n addition to managing his father’s enormous real estate portfolio, he owned a chain of successful nightclubs in
Las Vegas
and
Miami
– his
“
pet project
”
as he liked to call it. Recently, he had decided to expand into the Big Apple and
had
hired Paige’s agency to do the promotion work for him. Apart from being one of the richest, he was also one of the best-looking clients the agency had ever had
. L
ean and muscular, with an unruly mane of long, dark hair and smoldering brown eyes, Stephen Vargas was a walking sex machine. He dated models, actresses, and heiresses
,
and he left each one quicker than the next. He was an important client
,
and Annabel had worked hard on his account, but now that the work was finished, she could not bring herself to sit through an hour of meaningless small talk with the suave womanizer
. N
ot when she was such a wreck. The assignment, however, would be perfect for Janine.