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Darcy glared at my arm and jerked free. “It’s none of your business.”
“You’re staying here on company money. That makes it my business.” There I went again. Apparently, the momentum of stupidity was preserved across time and space. It was like I just stepped straight back into the room last night and wanted to pick up where I left off.
“You mean I’m staying here on your daddy’s money, right?” she asked.
I saw Elizabeth and Farhad both wince behind her.
“This is my company,” I said. “And you’re my employee.”
“For now,” she said, never breaking eye contact with me. “If you don’t mind, I have to pee like a racehorse and sleep. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll have a dirty dream about the guy who was hitting on me at the last bar.”
I saw red, but I managed to keep from blowing up. I just stood there like a statue as she walked past me and the rest of them filtered out of the lobby. I imagined her flirting with some asshole at a bar–her going home with him and fucking him like she’d fucked me. It made me sick to my stomach.
And I deserved every bit of it.
“Rough night?” The voice was familiar.
I turned to see my dad wearing a somber expression. He patted my back and gestured with his other hand to the sofas by the window in the lobby.
All the anger drained out of me. It was replaced by hopelessness. This was what he wanted. He wanted me at rock bottom so he could offer his hand and reinforce the vision he had of being my savior–my superior.
I sat down, head hanging as I listened to him take the seat across from me.
“I know it’s hard, Son. But you did the right thing. I heard you two broke it off. That’s good.”
You don’t know shit,I thought. But I said nothing.
“Without that woman distracting you, I’m confident you’ll turn things around here. Next time you start thinking you can get by without your old man, just remember I’ll be around to help you out of your messes, eh?”
I looked up at him and felt like throttling him, but I still said nothing.
He smiled, and there was just the faintest touch of venom in his expression. It told me everything I needed to know. Like always, there was a conversation happening just beneath his words.The real conversation.It was the one that said “don’t forget you’ll never be as good as me. You’ll always need me to come fix your problems. You’ll never be able to do this on your own, so bow down and say thanks.”
There was a lump of disgust in my throat when I thought about how similar that all sounded to what I’d told Darcy in the hotel room.Fuck.I was hurting her the way I’d learned to be hurt, wasn’t I?
But I’d already dug my grave. I needed to lie in it. “Alright,” was all I said. I got up and headed outside into the California night. I was going to pick up some greasy pizza and eat it in bed while I worked. Was I being a sentimental little bitch?Yes.But I was going to stick to my guns, no matter how much it stung.
34
DARCY
The trip to California felt like it was months ago. Since then, I’d left my job atThe Squawkerand joined Jasmine atThe Union Coast.Farhad and Kirk leftThe Squawkeralong with several others who were fired or quit after Dominic’s father came on. Farhad and Kirk were writing an online only project that focused on politics. Elizabeth and Polly were still atThe Squawkerand complained about how miserable it had become nearly every time we met up for drinks with the old crew.
My life had become incredibly busy since those days. I stifled a yawn at my desk. I had an office to myself, now. It was cramped and crowded with stacks of paper and half-finished books, but it was mine.The Union Coastwas what my dad would’ve considered an “actual, legitimate publication.” There were no articles about celebrity gossip. There wasn’t some flavorful local piece full of Elizabeth’s contagious humor. There was just news and reporting on facts. It was the kind of stuff you would see men and women in fancy clothes reading. No smiles allowed.
AtThe SquawkerI had some autonomy. Every week, we had a running list of categories we needed stories for, but it was somewhat fluid. I had the freedom to dig a little and sometimes come up with creative angles to fill the assignment. Here, there was a separate research team. The legwork was already done and I was just tasked with transcribing it into a readable, respectable article for my editors.
I’d been getting nothing but praise since I started three months ago, but I was starting to dread coming to work. When I thought about still being here ten years from now or even two years, dread crept in from all the dark corners of my mind.
So I’d spent the last week cleaning up the pitch that seemed destined to never be caught. I was planning to bring it to Jasmine’s office today. It was like deja vu, except this time, Dominic wasn’t going to stride into my life and mess everything up.
At least that was how I kept telling myself it went when I thought back on him. He messed things up. But was that really what happened?
I’d been chasing a dream when Dominic came along–completely blind to my own needs as a woman. I was waiting to start my life until some unforeseen point in the future. I was living for “later” and telling myself it was okay to be relatively miserable in the “now”. But Dominic showed me just how incredibly fun “now” could be. He made me wonder if I was being an idiot. After all, what was the point of throwing away “now” for years and years on the gamble that “later” was going to be amazing? Who said I wasn’t just sleepwalking toward a depressing existence of loneliness and dry vaginas?
I rubbed at my eyes and groaned. This always happened when my thoughts drifted to Dominic. I could sometimes get lucky and go a day or two without thinking of him. I could sort of close my eyes and drift through my days, telling myself I was “working for the weekend”. I’d get to hang out with Polly, Elizabeth, Farhad, and every few weeks I’d even meet up with Charleston when he wasn’t too busy conquering the world. That was enough, right?
But when Dominic popped in my head, it was impossible to tell myself the same lie. Before him, it was like living my life without ever tasting sugar. You could’ve handed me a pepper and I might’ve said, “that’s so sweet!”. But then I had a taste of Dominic, and now everything was tasteless in comparison. He’d fucking ruined me, and I hated him for it. I hated him because we could’ve had something amazing and he decided to throw it away. Did I want it back?Yes.Was I way too mad at him to reach out or accept an apology?Yes.
