I got in my truck and sat there, too shaken to drive.
She’d been living with someone else. This whole fucking time. That George Clooney guy who shook my hand, was he the surgeon? The ex?
That was the ex?
I understood now in full color what she meant when she said our lives didn’t fit. Because if this kind of guy was what her people were used to, I never stood a damn chance.
And why the hell did he shake my hand?
I didn’t think she was cheating on me. But how could she not tell me that guy was living in her house? And her brother was married to Lola Simone? She never thought to casually mention that her sister-in-law was one of the biggest rock stars on the planet? What else hadn’t she told me? Where the hell did her friends think she went every weekend? Where did that Neil guy think she went? If she needed to lie to them, fine, but she didn’t need to lie to me.
I knew there was more to this, but my brain couldn’t work through it. My thoughts kept jumping around the whole awkward, horrible encounter, from the blank looks on Gabby’s and Jessica’s faces to the guy who was fucking laughing. And the worst thing of all was I think that was her dad. I recognized him from the History Channel documentary.
I didn’t show up there to meet her family and friends. I wouldn’t do that without her permission. I was just trying to prove to her I meant what I said.
I’d put in the effort, make this work. It didn’t even occur to me that everyone else would have the same idea and be there to congratulate her. I didn’t know she worked with Gabby and Jessica or her ex because she’d never told me. Apparently she didn’t tell me anything.
I felt betrayed, and it wasn’t even rational because what else did I expect? She said she didn’t see a future with us. She’d been very clear with me on that. She’d planned on ending it, up until last night, so I don’t know why any of this surprised me. But to see it with my own eyes was something else.
How could we be in love and mean so much to each other if nobody in her world even knew who I was?
All of this just solidified what I already knew. I really didn’t exist for her outside of Wakan. She had a whole different life, one I had nothing to do with, and she had no intention of including me in.
I was shaking too much to drive, so I sat there, trying to calm down.
Then I heard a tap at my window. A brown-haired woman in black scrubs stood there, eyeing me.
“Are you Daniel?” she said through the glass.
I blinked at her. Then I rolled down the window. “You know me?”
“Yeah, I’m Bri. I’m Alexis’s best friend. I thought that was you. She didn’t tell me you were coming today.”
“I…” I cleared my throat and started again. “I surprised her.” Her eyes got big. “Oh. And what was that like?”
I shook my head. “Not good.”
“Nope. It wouldn’t be. Mind if I sit?” She nodded to the passenger seat. “Sure.”
She came around the back of the truck and let herself in. She slammed the door and pivoted to look at me. “Tell me what happened.”
I dragged a hand down my beard. “I came to bring her flowers. She had that chief thing today. I found out she’s living with some guy—”
“Neil?” She scoffed. “That guy’s a dick. First of all, she’s living with Neil like you live with cockroaches. She hates it, it grosses her out, and she doesn’t tell anyone because it’s embarrassing. They co-own the property. He won’t leave. He wants the house, so he’s squatting there like a hobo against her wishes. They’re going to court for it in a few weeks and then one of them will move out. Next.”
I swallowed. Okay. That was good. That was something. “Gabby and Jessica were there—”
“The wicked stepsisters. I hate those bitches. Ali hasn’t hung out with them in months. She didn’t like how they treated you that one weekend. They don’t matter. Next.”
“There was some older guy and an older woman. Gray hair. Serious. He wouldn’t shake my hand.”
She sucked air through her teeth. “Those were her parents. Wow, you went through a portal right into the seventh level of hell.”
I laughed, even though it wasn’t funny.
“Look, I don’t know what all was said and done when you walked in there, but I’m gonna tell you this. None of it was her fault. Her brother, Derek? He moved out of the country to avoid introducing his wife to those people. This is not a you thing, it’s a them thing. If I know Ali, she’s probably freaking out right now.”
I felt my blood pressure going down. “Okay.” I tilted my head. “Is her brother really married to Lola Simone?”
“Yup. She never talked to you about Derek?”
“She did. She told me all about him and that he was married. She just didn’t tell me who his wife was, she just called her Nikki.”
“She didn’t even tell me until I saw it in the tabloids, and I’ve known her and Derek for ten years. She’s trustworthy and she keeps promises and she’d respect their privacy, even to you. She’s good like that.”
I puffed air from my cheeks. Well, I guess I couldn’t really be mad at her for doing the right thing.
Bri looked me in the eye. “Look, I know all about you. She tells me. I’ve seen everything but the dick pics. And I’m the only one who matters. Trust me.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Okay.” I nodded. “All right.” Then my cell phone pinged. I pulled it out. It was Alexis. “Is that her?” Bri asked.
“Yeah. She sent me an address.” “Chateau de Chambord Street?” I nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s her house.” She put her hand on the door. “Well, you better head over there. Don’t worry, Neil works until nine. I always check his schedule. I like to spray a little vinegar into his locker while he’s on shift. Let him go home smelling like a salad.”
I laughed. “Thank you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t thank me. Good luck, Daniel. I think you’re going to need it.”
I took the ten-minute drive to the address she sent me. As I wound through the streets, the houses got bigger and bigger and farther apart.
When I pulled up to the address she’d texted me, I stared up in disbelief.
Her house was a mansion. And not the way the Grant House was a mansion. This was the kind of place you saw on TV when you watched
shows about celebrities. You could fit half of Wakan’s Main Street on the lawn.
She lived here?
I mean, I knew she had money. She’d offered me fifty thousand dollars like it was nothing. But I didn’t think she had this kind of money. I couldn’t even afford to pay the water bill on a place like this.
I got out of my truck, feeling unsure I should even leave it parked in the driveway. It looked like a clod of dirt dropped on a white linen tablecloth.
Alexis opened the front door before I knocked. She was still in her scrubs, and she’d been crying. She stepped aside without saying a word to let me in, and I peered around quietly.
It was cavernous. And cold.
Everything was gray, like a filter was over it. The floors were white marble and the ceilings were vaulted, which only made the room seem more hollow. Like an ice cave.
She sniffed. “This is where I live.” She said it like an apology.
She led me through the house silently. Our footsteps echoed as we passed an enormous living room with white sofas, a shiny black piano, muted Oriental rugs, expensive-looking paintings. There was a dining room with a table that could seat twenty and a huge crystal chandelier over it. Then a humongous kitchen, one she hadn’t even known how to use until a few months ago.
I remembered her calling me when the power was out and her telling me the stove was gas. I scoffed looking at it now. It was a huge Viking range, nine burners, double oven, a wall-mounted pot filler over it. Here I was thinking I was talking to her about a regular old oven and it was this. It was almost comical.
There were more bathrooms than I could count. Hallways bigger than my loft with marble tables that had fresh flower arrangements the size of my dog sitting on them. A library with twenty-foot-tall bookshelves and a sliding ladder. At one point we saw a maid. She looked at me like I confused her, like maybe I was a new employee or something.
We moved through an office that overlooked a lake out back. There were awards and diplomas hanging. Hers and Neil’s. So many between them, they covered half a wall. PhDs: Yale for him, Stanford and Berkeley for her. There was a pool with a waterfall through the French doors, and I remembered all the times Alexis sat out there to talk to me. Me sitting in my dusty, shitty garage where I made her sleep, and her in this place, like a palace.
I felt almost catfished. It was ridiculous, but I did. Like she hadn’t been fully honest about who she was. But in truth, she had been honest. It was just that my imagination had failed me.
You fill in blanks. You take the information given to you and you make assumptions that complete the picture in your mind. I realized now that all my pictures had been drastically wrong. She was a hundred times higher up than I’d ever allowed myself to imagine. I couldn’t even grasp this kind of wealth.
When I’d seen her at the hospital earlier, even that had been a small reality check. I knew she was a doctor. I’d seen her treat patients. But it was different seeing her actually there, wearing scrubs and standing in an ER, a doctor’s name tag hanging off her pocket. I wasn’t fully prepared for that, even with all the lead-up to it, and I definitely wasn’t prepared for this.
I got now why she didn’t know how to clean or cook—I really got it. Because someone who could live like this had people running their lives for them. People like me.
Now I understood even more what I must have looked like to her friends and family, why they reacted the way they did. Especially now that I’d seen her ex. I was everything opposite of that guy. How did someone like me fit? I was uncomfortable even being in this house. I couldn’t imagine being with her here, cooking in that kitchen, even sitting in the living room. I felt the way the truck looked parked in the driveway. Out of place and like I didn’t belong.
She took me up a grand, twisting staircase that made the one at home look small in comparison. Three more guest rooms, more bathrooms, and finally a room with a dead bolt on the door. She unlocked it and stood back while I went inside.
It was the master bedroom.
I looked around, not saying a word. It was bright and warm, like it wasn’t a part of the rest of the house. A king-size bed sat in the middle of it. There were plush chairs and a rose-colored bedspread. A framed photograph of a girl in a field of poppies. There was a small fridge pushed against the wall with a microwave on top and a Keurig. It was the only room that felt like the woman she was in Wakan.
It was the only place where I finally saw us.
She had knickknacks on her nightstand. Small treasures. Little things I’d made her, a raccoon I’d carved from wood, just something funny I’d whittled out in an hour. There was a jar of the strawberry jam we’d made a few weeks ago, one of my hoodies tossed over a chair.
The heart-shaped rock.
Souvenirs.
This was why she wanted me to see her house. It was worth a million words of explanation.
For the first time she came full circle for me. I finally saw all of her. She came together like a puzzle that had been missing pieces. It was like she was two different people.
And then I realized she was.
Who she was with me was who she was on vacation. Who she was in Wakan wasn’t real life.
This was her real life.
And I knew before she even said anything that she wasn’t going to ask me to be a part of it.
She sniffed, and she looked like she might start crying again. “My dad wants me to get back with Neil,” she said. “He loves him and won’t accept our breakup. Neil’s forcing me to live with him because he wants the house in the separation—and he wants me back,” she added. “I can’t leave my job to be with you because if I do I’ll break a hundred-and-twenty-five-year family legacy. And if you come here to be with me, you’ll lose your house and my parents won’t ever speak to me again.”
She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to sob. “So that’s where we are. I’m sorry, Daniel…”
I felt my throat get tight, and I forced myself to say the words I already knew the answer to. “Are you breaking up with me?” I asked, my voice thick.
She looked anguished. “We knew it wasn’t going to last. We got more time than I thought we would, and I’m so grateful for it.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
I felt like my heart was being crushed in my chest. And I didn’t even have anything to say because this wasn’t on me. I’d leave my life to be here if she wanted that. I’d learn to get used to all…this. I’d deal with it, because if the alternative was being without her, I could never choose it. But this
wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t up to me to decide for her to be disowned or whatever the hell her parents would do.
And what a fucked-up thing to even put on someone. What kind of people were these?
But then I already knew.
For the first time I truly saw what she was trying to make me understand every time she told me this wouldn’t work out.
It wasn’t just a money gap or an age gap or even a social gap between us. It was everything. Her entire family conspiring against us. Her friends. Logistics. Fate. A thousand qualifiers that I’d never have, things that would have had to have happened at birth, generations ago, to help me now. A well-connected family, a better education, a more important place than Wakan.
All we had was our love for each other. That’s all we had. None of the other parts worked or fit or made sense.
But I didn’t need it to make sense, because for me the love was everything, it was all I needed.
But it wasn’t enough for her.
People don’t stay in Wakan. They come and they have a magical time, and then they go back to their real lives. I’d fallen in love with a tourist. Because that’s what she was.
And the vacation was over.
My eyes were tearing up. “Alexis, please. Come home with me. Or let me stay. Don’t make me leave you…”
Her chin quivered, and she looked away from me. “Please don’t do this,” I whispered.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “One day you’re going to realize the mistake you’re making. Please, Alexis. Realize it now.”
She wouldn’t. She didn’t. She made me leave five minutes later.
