The Bluffing Game (6 page)

After the meeting, I found him alone by the piano in his living room. He wasn’t playing, just sitting there with his arms resting on his legs, hands dangling. He stared at the keys.

“I finally do the right thing, and all they care about is how long it took me to get there. They trust me even less now.”

“Distrust begets itself,” I said.

“So you’re on their side.”

“I’m on your side. But if you want them to trust you, you have to trust them.”

“These days I can’t afford to trust anyone,” he said.

“You should ask whether you can afford not to.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes at this point,” he said.

“All we can do now is wait.”

His phone chimed, and he looked at it.

“The hearing date’s just been set,” he said.

“How long?”

“Three weeks.”

“They’ll wait until the last minute. Try to psych you out again.”

“I know. That’s why I booked you a flight home tomorrow.”

It felt like a slap on the cheek. “Tomorrow?”

“Until they call another meeting, you don’t have a reason to stay, do you?”

His look was enough. So that was it, then. This was his way of saying he didn’t want to continue our affair.

“Not if you don’t have one for me.”

He said nothing. I left him there to sulk while I packed my things. I passed Andrea in the hallway and she smiled, the subtlest hint of malice in her smile that sent a chill down my back at her happiness to see me go.

Seven

I
didn’t
see him in the morning, and I didn’t speak a word to Andrea either, taking my own suitcase and ignoring her offer to roll it down to the plane for me. If business was business, I had no reason not to be severe. I would fly back to the island when the opposition came dejectedly into a meeting and asked for whatever they thought Sterling might be willing to pay them to make the whole thing go away. And then it would be over.

Unless of course Sterling decided to hire his old lawyer back and fire me in the meantime. Either way, I had already billed the majority of my hours, and it didn’t matter. It fucking didn’t matter.

~

When we landed in Boston, I caught a cab to my office and worked other cases until quitting time. Then I went to a bar. I downed one martini like a shot and sat with a second and stirred it, not even interested. A few guys tried to get on my good side, and I waved them away like flies. Some got angry, but that was their problem. I didn’t owe them anything.

Finally I came home to my empty house in Cape Cod, my quiet bedroom, my bed that was only mine, and I tried not to cry as I lay under the covers. At last, I called Nick.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

“I wish you were here,” I said. “I wish I was in your arms.”

He took a moment to respond. “You don’t really mean that.”

“I’m just saying how I feel. I’m not asking you to come over.”

“Okay.”

“He’s so absorbed in himself, isn’t he? That’s not just me?”

“I never met him, June. But billionaires do tend to get that way by focusing on themselves first.”

“I just can’t believe it’s over. For some reason I was really hoping for... something long-term.”

“I know, it sucks.”

“Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

I could almost see him rubbing his forehead. “I don’t know, June.”

“Come on, Nick, I’m not trying to make you my fucking rebound.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

He sighed. He had a right to be a little unsure after we had talked about my possibly pursuing a relationship for its own sake regardless of whom it was with. But he said, “Okay then. We’ll have lunch tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Where you wanna go?”

“Anywhere. No, make that anywhere except seafood. No lobster.”

He laughed a bit, as I hoped he would. “Good night, June. You’ll feel better.”

“I know.” And somewhere I did. Here I was nearly in tears over Victor, though. Like a schoolgirl. I had fallen for him way too hard. Way too hard.

I woke in the morning having slept poorly, feeling for the first time that my already expensive bed was not up to snuff. Damn that resort.

Unable to fall asleep, I got up and walked down the stairs through my graveyard-silent house and into the basement I’d turned into a gym. I put on workout clothes and ran on the treadmill until I couldn’t think or move anymore. That jumpstarted my autopilot mode, and I was able to shower and go to bed again exhausted, with a completely empty mind. Finally I could sleep.

~

At work the next day, lunch couldn’t get here quick enough, to the point that I packed up my briefcase by ten in the morning and worked from the restaurant until Nick got there.

I stood up and let every last word of my work fall away, and sunk into his arms, felt them around me, warm, strong, familiar, kind.

“June?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I sit down?”

I let the professional part of me wake back up and let go of him, my hands and arms empty without his body held tight in them. I sat down and closed my computer and put all my papers away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t sleep very well.”

“I can imagine.” He met my eyes only in little flicks of movement, quick acknowledgements that showed me he wasn’t ignoring me, but made it all too clear he couldn’t handle staring into my eyes the way he used to.

“It’s really kind of weird,” I said. “My house never felt so...” I thought for a second. “…dead.”

He picked up the menu. “Why do you think I got my dogs?”

“I know, I’ve thought about it, but I travel so much, it just seems unfair. I’d need a nanny.”

“Lots of people do it.”

“I’d rather come home to a person.”

“Wouldn’t we all.”

Why was he cold? He hadn’t seemed jealous or bitter in years.

“Nick, did something happen?”

He looked at me for a longer second, but still broke contact. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I feel like there’s something you’re not saying.”

He shook his head. “Not that I can think of.”

“How are the dogs?”

“Good.”

“How’s your sister?”

“Great.”

I couldn’t stand the formality. “You seem down.”

He put the menu back on the table. “I’m just waiting for a shoe to drop.”

What did he mean by that? “Are you expecting me to drop one?”

“Don’t you want me here to listen? That’s all I’m trying to do.”

His defensiveness made me suddenly defensive too. “Listen to my sob story about losing a billionaire crush? I think I’m done sobbing about it.”

“All right, then why am I here?”

“I don’t know, why are you?”

“Because you asked me to lunch.”

“And isn’t that enough? Isn’t it fine to just have lunch with me?”

“Sure. Lunch is fine.”

“Then let’s eat.”

“Fine.”

We looked at our menus. Nothing looked appealing.

I put mind down. “Nick, I just need some human comfort. I just want to have a fun lunch with a dear friend. Is that so hard?”

“No, that sounds great.”

“Then why are we snapping at each other?”

“I wish I knew. I just wasn’t expecting this lunch to be a whole lot of fun.”

“Then why did you agree to come? You don’t owe it to me.”

“How could I say no, when you were so upset?”

“Well if you don’t want to be here, leave. I’ll call someone else.”

“I want to be here now, I just didn’t want to before.”

“I get it. You didn’t want to hear me vent.”

His eyes flicked to mine, flicked away. “No, it’s because I thought you might try to make it more than that.”

I crossed my arms. “Really. You thought that.”

“You seemed desperate last night.”

“I am desperate. But that doesn’t mean I want to ruin our relationship by trying to resurrect the past.”

“So you’re not trying to imply anything when you complain about how your house feels so empty? You’d genuinely agree with me that it would be a bad idea if I came over tonight and made it feel less so?”

That was brutal, but I understood his need to hear me say it. I looked away from him. “It would feel like heaven. And then I would regret it in the morning.”

“Yes, you would. Which is why it’s a bad idea.”

I still couldn’t look at him, even though he wouldn’t hold eye contact. “I know.”

“Then we agree.”

“Yes. But I don’t know why you had to describe it so temptingly.” I knew why he did, but I thought he still deserved to be called out on it.

“Look,” he said, “this is what I didn’t want to deal with. It’s just so much easier when we only talk on the phone. Seeing you in person is just… too much.”

Well, if things were already not going smoothly, I might as well throw in the towel and be honest.

“Because you’re still attracted to me,” I said, looking at him now.

“That surprises you?”

“No, it doesn’t surprise me. I just thought we had a different understanding.”

“We did.”

God, it was pulling teeth getting him to say things out loud. “Are you saying it’s not working?”

“I thought it was. Until yesterday.”

“Why was yesterday so different?”

“You called me after a breakup.”

“It wasn’t a breakup. It was a fling.”

“You made it sound like a breakup.”

“It felt like one.”

“Then call it breakup. Why argue semantics?”

“I’m an attorney. Just doing my job.”

“Very funny.”

A moment passed.

I said, “I’m just trying to sort things out.”

“And I’m saying things never needed quite so much sorting before.”

“Sometimes things change.”

“My point exactly.”

I felt like we were talking in circles. “And why is that a problem?”

“I wasn’t sure how much things might change. And I didn’t want to get convinced into doing anything I might regret. Or that you might.”

He looked at my eyes now. Unwaveringly. Finally. And then it was so clear, so inevitable. I could read like a book just how much he still wanted me. It would be so simple to take advantage of this, and yet I couldn’t bear to let myself use him or hurt him.

The menu sat longingly on the table, waiting to provide us with something. “What if we agreed ahead of time not to regret it?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we understand we can’t get back together, and that nothing long-term will come of it, and that afterward, we’ll still just be friends.”

“I can’t do that.”

His eyes were misty. I was offering him something he knew he wanted, but that he also knew he couldn’t handle emotionally. He knew himself well. And I was making everything harder. I might as well have been rubbing in his face how weak he was to be unable to sleep with me without wanting it to be more than sex. But I didn’t think that was weak of him. That was what I wanted. Exactly what I wanted.

“Then what if we try again. For real.”

He shook his head. “It won’t end well.”

“It might. We’re different people now.”

“I don’t feel like I am.”

“So it would be on me to be different?”

“Yes. And that wouldn’t be fair. Which is why we shouldn’t do it.”

“So you’re not willing to work with me on anything, then?” That would certainly kill my picture of this being what I wanted. It dawned on me suddenly that all of these words were ones I could never take back, and that like it or not, this conversation was really happening. I felt a sting inside and hoped I wasn’t unwittingly pushing him out of my life forever.

“June, I would do anything for you. That’s the damn problem. I would let myself stay in an unhappy love with you all my life. I would let you walk over me. And then I would resent you, and get angry, and break it off again, and then I would hate myself because I’d lost you again. You’re like a drug, and I’m trying like hell not to fall off the wagon.”

“Why would you have to hold it in, if you were so unhappy?”

“You didn’t used to be able to compromise.”

That hurt. It burned hot and hard. All the more because it had been true. But it had a time in my life when such an uncompromising attitude was necessary if I was to achieve the things I wanted.

And now I had.

Maybe now was the time to be more compromising.

“You’re right,” I said. “I was rigid. Immovable. Obdurate, even. And I don’t regret that. But I’m willing to be someone a little different now.”

“How much do you really mean that?”

“Have you been talking to me this past week? Haven’t I been telling you I want a change?”

“Up until now, if you wanted something, you worked until you got it. You didn’t change for it.”

“I know. What I’m saying now is, I’ve gotten everything I can work for. Except the thing I suddenly want the most.”

“And what if you get tired of it? What if you change back?”

“I can’t predict the future. You’re right, I might decide I’ve had my fill of being compromising after a while, and change my mind again. But I’ve spent the past eight years being uncompromising, and I’m tired. I’m willing to give a little if it means getting what I really want in return.”

“And what if a relationship stops being what you really want?”

“You’re going to get hurt, Nick. Whether we give this another try or not, whether it last three days or three years, you’re going to get hurt. I’m not perfect. No two people have ever been able to spend years together without hurting each other in some way, big or small. The question is whether they can work together to help each other grow, so that they both do it less often. So that the good moments outweigh the imperfections. And if you’re willing to try that, so am I. But if you’re putting me so high on a pedestal that you can’t stand up for yourself if I make a mistake, then you’re right. It won’t work out. Because I can’t be with someone who thinks I’m so perfect that he suffers in silence and lets me think I’m doing fine when I’m not.”