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Victor laughed softly and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m a simple man. I could live off the money I have in a small apartment by the ocean and be happy. So maybe I’ll do that. I could take up fishing.”
Emil’s laugh was low and thick with emotion. “Yeah. That kind of sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
It really did. Lonely, but what part of his life wasn’t? “Are you going to buy my shares?”
It took a while for Emil to meet his gaze again, and then he shook his head. “No. I don’t know if I’m going to stay. We have a strong board, and it’s not like this was my passion, you know?”
Victor couldn’t help a small chuckle. “I do know. It wasn’t mine either. I wanted to be—”
“A marine biologist,” Emil said very softly. Victor blinked in surprise, and Emil rolled his eyes, flushing just a little. “I did listen when you spoke. I…hell, I know I wasn’t a good friend like ninety percent of the time, but I still know things about you.”
Victor’s world felt like it was being rearranged in ways he wasn’t prepared for. He’d put Emil in the same box as everyone else—as figures that just existed to take up space. And he realized in that moment that while no one else saw him as a real person, he hadn’t seen any of them that way either.
He swallowed heavily. “Does Charlie love her?”
Emil looked terrified, like answering the question could condemn him, but Victor wouldn’t drop his gaze. He needed to know. “I think…as much as Charlie has ever been capable of loving anyone—yeah. He probably does. At least as much as he loved Hannah.”
“So why,” Victor started, then stopped. There was no point, and it wasn’t fair to ask Emil to fill in all these blanks. He dropped his hands, then sat back and rubbed his thighs which were still faintly trembling.
“I asked him, you know. The last time we spoke,” Emil said after a long moment of silence. “I asked him what he was going to say to you when you finally confronted him.”
Victor held his tongue. Literally. He clamped his teeth down on it, firm but not painful.
Emil squirmed in his seat. “He told me he didn’t know. I asked him if he was going to end the affair if Hannah demanded it, and he couldn’t answer that either. But I don’t think Hannah’s interested in having him back. He’s staying somewhere with Alice right now.”
Victor how that made him feel, but a small part of him understood the wild, obsessive love Charlie must have felt. Hell, if Oliver called him right then and asked for anything—a small island, a yacht, the moon—he’d find a way to say yes. “I’m not going to wish them happy, but I’m grateful anyway.”
“Yeah,” Emil said from behind a breath. He leaned forward, pressing his palms to the edge of the desk, and Victor could see the courage it was taking for him to ask the next question. “Can we still be friends? I don’t know how to make up for what I did, but I don’t want to lose you. I’m never going to beg you to stay here, but…God, I don’t know. It’s selfish as fuck, but I want the chance to do better.”
Victor stared at him—at yet another man who knew him, at least in very small ways—and he realized that in the midst of all this chaos, he didn’t want to say no.
* * *
He called Oliver once.
Victor lost control three nights after he was home and called Oliver’s number, only to discover it was no longer in service. He’d expected as much, and actually, a part of him was thrilled because he knew what it meant. It meant he’d given enough to Oliver that he could spend the rest of his time at school focusing on his future.
And even if Victor never saw him again, he could think of Oliver’s success and know he’d had some small part in getting him to the place he always wanted to be.
That night, as he set his phone down, he reached into his bag and set up the lava lamp he hated himself for bringing home. It was completely fucked. The wax inside was all beaded and wouldn’t gel together the way it had before it was shaken, but the softly glowing light provided a small comfort as he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he was going to do with his life now that he was setting it all on fire.
But he felt good about himself.
Then a week later, his doorman rang up to let him know he had visitors, and he knew immediately who it was.
He’d forgotten to tell the front desk in the lobby to revoke Alice’s and Charlie’s access, so he resigned himself to an uncomfortable conversation when he opened his front door and saw his ex standing there with red-rimmed eyes.
She was twisting the handle of her bag between her hands, giving him the look she always used to that got her out of trouble, and he did nothing more than roll his eyes at her. She hesitated at the threshold, and it gave him no small pleasure that she didn’t feel welcome in the place she’d once called her home.
“Vic,” she started, then stopped.
He wanted to tell her not to call him that. It was too familiar for a woman who had spent so much time leading him around like an ignorant dog. But he became profoundly and suddenly aware in that moment that he didn’t care. He was hurt because it had been a blow to his pride, but when it came to Alice, he felt entirely apathetic.
He held the door handle and took a step back to let her in. “I don’t have a lot of time,” he told her. “I’m meeting with my Realtor.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re selling? You love this place. Vicki…”
“No,” Victor told her. He’d never liked that name. “Don’t.”
