God, everything coming out of my mouth is a platitude, the pat phrases people reach for to excuse the inexcusable.
“It just happened?” he asks, his expression lit with outrage. “Do you know how much co?o I turn down? How the guys tease me for being faithful to one woman when I could have four every night? In every city? But I didn’t. I wouldn’t ever do that to you. To my best friend. To the woman I . . .”
He cuts himself off, biting back the word he’s said to me so many times.
“So do not tell me this just happens, Banner. It never happened to me.”
“I k-know,” I stutter, eyes so blurred with tears I can barely see him. “I promise I had never done anything like this before. I wouldn’t. You know that. You know me. I would never . . .”
Only I did. My voice trails away with that realization. There are no words I can say to make this better; to make it right. My inadequacy and shame meet his fury and disappointment head on, across the room. The only thing that could make this right, could make it better, is if it had never happened.
But it did.
“?Con quién?” Zo’s demand is a growl, his narrow-eyed stare promising retribution.
I was a fool not to have anticipated this, that he would want to know who. Of course, he does. They always do. I would want to know, but I can’t tell him. He and Jared move in the same circles. It will only make things more awkward. Worse.
“I . . . It’s not important who,” I say lamely, fixing my puffy-eyed stare on the hands twisting in my lap. “It was . . . someone from my past.”
“From your past?” A heavy frown hangs between his thick, dark brows. “What? From college? From business? I know all your friends. I know everything about you.”
A scowl and cynical twist of his lips mock me.
“At least I thought I did,” he says. “I didn’t know you were a cheat who could not be trusted.”
I don’t reply but take every word like a lash on my back, a verbal flogging tearing at my dignity and my pride.
“Fuck, Banner!” He detonates the expletive. Frustration tenses the powerful lines of his huge body. “You’ve ruined everything. My entire life is intertwined with yours.”
“I know.” I sniff and swipe at the tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.
“Your family is my family. Your career is my career.”
The emotion hardens like cement on his face.
“If I can’t trust you to keep your legs closed,” he says, deliberately coarse in a way he has never been with me, “I certainly can’t trust you with my career.”
I anticipated that, of course, but to hear him voice it . . . the dissolution of a years-long partnership breaks my heart. Not because I’ll lose his business, but because no one else will take better care of his career than I will. He won’t be in better hands. He can’t be. No one else will care about, not just the player or the bottom line, but about the man, the way I do.
He strides back to the door, grabs the bag he dropped what seems like hours ago but was only a few minutes, and turns to give me one more disparaging look.
“I’ll send for my things,” he spits. “And start looking for a new agent.”
“But your contract,” I protest. “I’m so close to getting you the supermax deal you deserve. If you’d let me—”
“You think I care about that when you’ve . . .” He shakes his head and adjusts the bag on his shoulder. “Once I put my career in the hands of an inexperienced girl who knew next to nothing, and I’ve made millions. I thought it was because you were special, but you’re not. So I’m sure someone else can do just as good.”
I nod, biting my lip to choke back another sob. Losing my best friend, the man who has been with me—and I have been with him—through ten years of triumph and pain and success and failure feels like I’m losing a part of me.
“Zo, you have to know I’m so very ashamed of myself,” I tell him, not bothering to dry the tears coursing down my cheeks.
He doesn’t look back when he jerks the door open but tosses his final words over his shoulder.
“Yo tambien.”
So am I.
24
Banner
I’ve been sitting here in the dark, pickling in my own tears and staring at Gino’s take out menu. Only fifteen minutes away lies the best pepperoni pizza I’ve ever tasted. Usually I pick off the pepperoni, blot most of the grease away with a paper towel, peel off the doughy crust and restrict myself to one slice. If I’m splurging, maybe two.
But tonight, with Zo’s disappointment heavy on my shoulders and his shouted recriminations trapped in my walls, echoing in my mind even after he’s gone, I want to eat the whole pizza. I imagine how good it would feel to tear my teeth into something soft and carby, not crunchy salads or strips of lean meat. Something puffy as a marshmallow. Something gooey that feels like a pillow in my mouth.
Comforting.
I’m reminding myself of all the things I learned in counseling, but it wouldn’t kill me to eat pizza. My body wouldn’t balloon overnight. I indulge every once in a while. It would be why I’m eating it: the fact that there’s a deep crater in my chest hollowed out by how I’ve let myself down and let Zo down, how I’ve hurt the kindest man I’ve ever met. I want to stuff food in that hole, and I want to believe, even if it’s only as long as it takes me to finish the meal, that pepperoni makes it better. Giving in to that feels like tossing a sobriety coin in a wishing well and hoping for the best. But right now I don’t care how I feel better. I just need to.
Fuck it.
I pick up my cell to select Gino’s contact when the phone rings in my hand. And, of course, it’s Quinn. For two rings, I consider not picking up, but I know she’ll just keep calling. I cancelled our workout this morning. I haven’t been answering my phone. If she tried the office, Maali will have told her I called in sick. If I don’t answer, she’ll be at my door.
That’s what I would do for her.