29. Second hearts
We ended up at a small café in Greenwich Village for breakfast the next morning. It was an eclectic little place, nestled between a bookshop and travel agent. If I’d thought for a second we were there by chance, I would have praised Adam on his choice of venue, but judging by the incessant text messaging he’d been engaged in all morning, breakfast in the village was part of a plan I wasn’t privy to.
“Why are we here, Adam?” I asked, bleakly.
He shrugged. “I thought we’d try somewhere new.”
I wasn’t buying it. He usually favoured quiet tables in the corner. Opting for a table at the window closest to the door was a huge clue that something was amiss. Darting his eyes toward the door every time someone walked in also blew his charade to pieces.
“Tell me the truth,” I pressed. “Who are you waiting for?”
Adam confessed instantly. “Sera. She’s sort of friends with Tilly.”
“Tilly? The mean blog girl?”
He nodded. “I’m hoping we can have a quiet word and convince her not to tell any tales about last night.”
I was furious. Nothing had been mentioned about the bathroom drama at Billet-doux since the night before. Frankly, I assumed the cold light of day had put everything in perspective.
“This is so stupid,” I muttered. “I can’t believe you dragged me all the way down here for this.”
“Trust me, Charlotte. You do not want your name in that blog.”
Little did he know he wasn’t there to protect my honour. The only one likely to be damaged by the bad press was his mother.
Eventually Seraphina breezed through the door, making a beeline straight for our table. Mean blog girl sashayed in right behind her, flicking her long blonde hair off her shoulders and glancing around the café – probably wondering why no one was bowing down and kissing her feet. The whole entrance was reminiscent of a cheesy shampoo commercial.
Both girls smiled brightly as they approached. Adam stood, did the dumb double kiss thing and invited them to sit down. I remained seated, too furious to even pretend to be polite. The whole situation was contrived and absurd.
“Charli, this is Tilly Roberge,” Adam announced.
Tilly extended her hand across the table, which I met with a firm, unladylike shake. “Nice to meet you,” she crooned in a sickly sweet tone. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Adam flashed a panicked glance at Sera who seemed to be trying to reassure him with a faint smile.
I stared at Tilly for an abnormally long time – which didn’t faze her in the least. She probably thought I was in awe of her. “Have you now?”
Adam didn’t appreciate my loaded question. He frowned at me. I stood my ground by frowning straight back. My intentions just weren’t honourable. I wasn’t about to shower the cocky girl with false compliments and polite conversation in the hopes that she’d change her mind about hammering me on her website.
“Tilly was at the opening of Billet-doux last night,” said Sera, stating the obvious.
“I know.”
Like Adam, Sera tried pulling me into line with a prickly glare.
“You must be so pleased that Adam’s ventures are so successful, Charli. First Nellie’s and now Billet-doux,” exclaimed Tilly.
I ignored her, but continued staring at her as if I was somehow disturbed. Sera jumped in again. “Charli had a lot of input with Billet-doux. She came up with the name, and all the pictures on the walls are hers.”
“Tell me, Adam,” purred Tilly, alternating her pointed finger between the two of us. “How did you meet? I mean, you’re such an unlikely couple.”
I’d reached my limit. Who the hell did this girl think she was? Until the night before, I’d never even heard of Tilly Roberge, and yet Adam squirmed as if he had no choice but to answer her question. I had the sudden urge to thump him.
I looked straight at him. “Adam, don’t dare answer her.”
Tilly laughed. It was an irritating, condescending cackle. “Wow. That’s cute. You’re touchy, aren’t you?”
“Look, Tilly, I know exactly what you’re all about,” I muttered.
“Do you?” she asked pompously.
“Adam and Sera seem to think it’s important to try and stay in your good graces – as if that’s some kind of guarantee that you won’t trash us in your blog. After all, image is everything, right?”
Tilly smirked at me, changing my mind about who I wanted to thump. She now topped my list.
“Charli,” mumbled Adam, displeased.
“No, no, it’s fine,” soothed Tilly. “Let her speak.”
“I don’t need his permission to speak.”
“And I don’t need anyone’s permission to write,” she replied. “Everything in my blog is the truth. It’s freedom of speech. If your family’s image is somehow tainted by that, then you should all consider behaving more appropriately.”
She dropped her eyes to the table and smiled, riling me even more.
I let out a long sigh, unhappy with the realisation that annihilating her also meant protecting the evil queen. I forged ahead anyway. “For some reason, people get the wrong impression of me,” I complained. “They assume that I’m stupid.” I tilted my head to the side and blinked spastically, adding validity to their claim. “Perhaps it’s my accent.”
Knowing I was up to no good, Adam slowly shook his head at me. I ignored the silent reprimand and focused only on Tilly. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “Well, you have a chance to set the record straight right now. The floor is yours.”
Tilly Roberge represented every bitchy girl I’d met since being in New York. The decision to wipe the floor with her came easily. “Why should I set anything straight, especially to you? You’re nothing to me.”
“Charli please,” Sera mumbled, mortified.
“I’m just putting it all out there. Crucifying others with her words gives her power. Belittling others makes her feel better about herself. It’s how she deals with her own insecurities.”
Tilly’s expression flashed the first hint of anger. “You should tread carefully, Charli,” she warned.
“You’re extremely insecure, Tilly.” I spoke gently, as if breaking the news to her. “And it makes you do silly things.”
“What are you talking about?” she sneered, folding her arms defensively.
I stood up, preparing to leave. Adam and Sera stayed put, content to go down with the ship they assumed was sinking.
Resting one hand on the table, I leaned closer to Tilly. “I saw you up on the mezzanine with my slutty brother-in-law last night,” I revealed, lowering my tone. “Who knew you were such an exhibitionist? Imagine how damaged your image would be if that became public.”
Her cheeks blushed crimson, instantly realising I had serious dirt on her.
I’d recognised Tilly as being Ryan’s make-out buddy the second she walked into the café, but it wouldn’t have even rated a mention if she weren’t so hell-bent on being a bitch.
“Are you threatening me?” she asked, angrily.
“Absolutely not,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m merely setting the record straight, just as you invited me to do.”
“Is that so?” Her bravado was false. Her voice shook as she spoke.
I took it up a notch, practically growling at her. “Don’t underestimate me, Tilly.”
I straightened my pose and took half a step back, surveying the damage. Sera and Adam sat wide-eyed and silent. Tilly remained stoic, but at least her horrid smirk had disappeared. Grabbing my coat and storming out while they were still silent was a great move. It allowed for the cleanest getaway in history.
I clambered into the back seat of our waiting car, giving the unsuspecting driver such a fright that the newspaper he was reading flew in three different directions.
“Drive, please,” I ordered.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Adam, Miss Charli?”
“Look… Randy,” I said, squinting to read his name badge, “I’ve had a really rough morning and I’m sure you’re sick of sitting here waiting for us to finish breakfast. Am I right?”
Poor Randy didn’t know whether to answer me or not. “Where would you like to go?”
“Home, please.”
“As you wish.”
As I wish, I repeated in my head. If things had panned out as I’d hoped when I cashed in wishes for a life in New York with Adam, things would’ve been much simpler.
***
I expected Adam to be brutally furious with me when he arrived home. I’d never actually seen him brutally furious, but ditching him at the café was pretty poor form. He walked in the door and hung his coat. I stood in the kitchen, trying to gauge his mood as he walked over to me.
“You left before your tea arrived,” he said, handing me a takeaway cup that was amazingly still warm.
“Thank you.”
“I figure it was the least I could do. Annihilating the prima donnas of Manhattan is probably thirsty work.” Adam leaned his back against the kitchen counter and folded his arms. “I wasn’t expecting you to make such light work of her, Charlotte.”
“What were you expecting me to do, exactly? Beg for mercy? Cry a little?”
He knew better than that, which is exactly why he hadn’t told me the real reason for our excursion until we got there.
“I didn’t expect to get caught up in one of your games,” he chided. I took the lid off my tea and poured it down the sink. It was all I could do to stop myself throwing it at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you had that kind of leverage over Tilly?”
“I didn’t even know who she was until she arrived. I wouldn’t have even mentioned seeing her with Ryan but – “
“But what?”
Cutting me off was unnecessary. It was an annoying ploy designed to make me feel childish.
I took a step toward him but Adam’s pose didn’t waver. He remained leaning against the counter with his arms tightly folded.
“Bitchiness begets bitchiness,” I said spitefully. “It’s an art I’ve had to master to survive here.”
He shook his head, riled by me. It was the first time I’d ever seen such an angry expression on his perfect face. “No one twisted your arm and forced you into the bathroom with a bottle of wine, Charli. You wouldn’t have to be on the defence all the time if you’d just….”
I took it upon myself to finish his sentence. “Conform? Behave myself?”
“Something like that.” His answer was barely more than a mumble.
Something inside me gave way. I couldn’t stave off the hurt and frustration any longer. I picked up the wet dishcloth off the sink and socked it at him. It splattered against his shirt, leaving a big wet patch before falling to the floor.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through in the last few months!” The words raged out of me. I flung open the cupboard closest to me, grabbed a roll of paper towel and threw that at him too. “Toeing the line was never an option, Adam. I’ve never been given the chance.”
If I’d been Whitney Vaughn’s doppelganger, I still wouldn’t have been accepted by his spiteful mother and awful friends. They all loathed me. I stared at him for a long time, trying to figure out what would change between us when he found that out.
“I know this hasn’t been an easy transition for you, Charli,” he said, dabbing the front of his shirt with the paper towel. “I see that.”
“Do you see your so-called friends tearing me down at every opportunity?” I asked dully.
“They’ve tried hard to include you.”
His obliviousness made me want to throw up. “Keep telling yourself that, Adam.”
“Is there more to it?”
I didn’t hesitate; blurting out every misdeed his friends had subjected me to. By the time I was done, Adam knew exactly how the purple circle really felt about me.
He frowned. “Why haven’t you told me any of this before now?”
Frustrated tears welled in my eyes and I looked to the ceiling, trying desperately hard to stop them brimming over. “Because I love you.”
“So you lied to me?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I sniffed.
“Tell me all of it.”
I quickly realised I couldn’t do it. Finding out how awful his mother was would solve nothing. I compromised with myself, deciding to give him only snippets of the bigger picture. He didn’t need to know how malicious and cruel she was. He only needed to know that she wanted me gone. “You mother hates me.”
Adam groaned, locking his hands behind his head as if his brain ached. “Don’t you think you’re blowing things a little out of proportion?”
In the steadiest voice I could muster, I told him about the conversation I’d overheard in the bathroom at Nellie’s on the day I went to lunch with the queen.
“You’re spending a lot of time in bathrooms lately,” he noted humourlessly.
“Nothing Tilly Roberge planned to write about me would have been new, Adam. Fiona’s been spreading the word for weeks.”
He frowned. “She was very concerned for you when she thought you were going to end up in that blog.”
I shook my head sadly. “You’re an idiot. An absolute, dead-set idiot.”
Adam seized my face in his hands and tilted my head, forcing me to look at him. “Stop crying and calm down.”
It was a stupid thing to say. I wasn’t capable of calming down. I dug the heels of my palms into his chest, pushed him away and let loose. “Don’t you see? Fiona was trying to save her own skin! Tilly’s mother didn’t see me doing anything wrong. She walked in on your mother screaming at me, roaring about how much she despises me. That’s what was going to end up in the stupid blog.”
Adam stared at me for a long moment, processing my words. “Why protect her then?” he asked, still perfectly calmly. “Why bother silencing Tilly?”
I huffed out a sharp breath. “I guess I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to destroy her. She deserved to be shut down.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you want me to do about this.”
“All you have to do is tell me that you believe me.”
Adam took a few steps forward and kissed my forehead. But he said nothing. And it crushed me.
I had to get out of the apartment. I wanted to be where there was no noise, no trouble and no Adam.
Inexplicably, the laundrette was where I ended up – with Adam in tow, because lugging a bag of laundry three blocks was beyond me.
We sat side by side on the row of plastic chairs, mindlessly watching our clothes slosh around in the machine while we waited.
“I want you to know that I didn’t mean what I said,” Adam murmured, entranced by the spinning clothes in front of us. “I would never want you to conform. It would be like ripping the wings off a butterfly.”
It was a sweet thing to say, but still implied I’d done something wrong.
“It’s unfair that I love you the way I do,” I said bleakly. “My second heart will be black by the time I’m through with it.”
Adam turned to look at me, silently quizzing me with his eyes.
I sighed, unwilling to explain. “Never mind.” The machine stopped spinning. I grabbed a trolley and began pulling the clothes out.
“Please tell me,” he urged.
I stuffed the wet clothes into the dryer and slammed the door. “No. You’ll have to figure it out.”
He pulled out a handful of coins and pumped them into the machine. “And if I can’t?”
I shrugged, highlighting my indifference. “Then I guess you’ll never know.”
He turned to me, drawing me in close. “I love you, Charli,” he said, leaning his forehead against mine. “And if I’ve let you forget that today, I will tell you a hundred times more.”