“He didn’t leave me,” I corrected him. “I went off to college and we decided to break up.”
“And then he turned into this famous musician and you were left trying to carve a name for yourself in order to make yourself feel better.” The ugly part of Harrison’s personality was still alive and well. I’d only seen it a small handful of times during the time I’d known him, but when he took that tone with me, it always sat heavy in the center of my body and turned the sky red. “Is that why you wanted to go into journalism, Coco? Because it was the only way you could become famous and show this ex-boyfriend of yours that you could succeed without him by your side?”
“Not. At. All.” The words gritted like sandpaper in my mouth as I turned to face him. It was the truth. Growing up, we never had cable. Watching T.V. at our house mostly consisted of watching major network news programs. Barbara Walters was my idol. I used to switch on the closed-caption function and practice reading the news in front of Addison and an assortment of stuffed animals.
“It is, isn’t it?” Harrison laughed a hearty laugh as he walked to the mini bar and poured himself a glass of single-malt Glenfiddich. “God, it’s so junior high, Coco.”
I silently cursed my mother for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. And why had those two been talking in the first place?
“This whole jealous ex-husband thing is really unattractive.” I crossed my arms, squaring my shoulders. We weren’t married, and I wasn’t with Beau. I didn’t need to explain or defend a damn thing.
Harrison downed the rest of his drink and slammed the crystal tumbler on the table. His eyes locked into mine as he lunged toward me like a fire soaring upward.
“I still love you, damn it,” he said, cupping my face in his shaking hands. “Imagining you with…with that hick, that cowboy…imagining his hands on you, his mouth…imagining him touching your body…”
His eyes flickered like a shattered mirror, like a man who’d just lost everything he’d suddenly discovered he’d ever wanted.
“I love you, Coco,” he said. “We belong together. We’re cut from the same cloth, you and me. I knew it since the moment I first saw you at that audition.”
He’d been working at a local news station in New York, and I’d auditioned for a morning anchor position. I didn’t get the job, but he called and offered to help me work on some things. At the time, a handsome producer several years my senior showering me with all kinds of affection was a kind of exhilaration and excitement I’d never known before. That’s when the wonderment had started.
“We had a good run, Harrison,” I said, feeling his scotch-tinged breath upon my face. Our lips held in limbo mere inches apart, as if he was two seconds from trying to claim them as his again.
Reality hit halfway into the second year of our marriage, when work took a front seat and everything he’d said or done that had once given me butterflies suddenly felt overdone and contrived. That’s when the wonderment ended.
“We didn’t try hard enough,” Harrison said. “We should’ve tried harder.”
For as long as I lived, I’d never forget walking out of that therapy session with him as a general sense of relief washed over me. We’d walked into that building as struggling marital partners, and we walked out of that building as new old friends. He’d held my hand the whole walk home, and we’d spent the better part of that evening reminiscing about our better days. That night we flipped through our wedding album and shared a bottle of wine, and after that we changed into sweats and I helped him move into the guest suite.
Addison never understood it, but I couldn’t help that. I didn’t understand it either. Harrison had been my rock when I first moved to the city. He was the first friend I made. The first guy I trusted with my heart after Beau broke it. He got me. And for that reason, I never felt the need to let him out of my life completely.
“But we didn’t and what’s done is done,” I said as I felt his mouth inch closer to mine. “Please don’t.”
I backed away from him. “I think it’s time I move out. Get my own place. I’m meeting with Addison tonight, so I’ll have her find me an apartment. It’s going to be better this way.”
“He doesn’t deserve you, Coco,” Harrison said, letting his hands fall from my face to the bend in my arms. “You should know things about him. He’s a womanizer. He’s been around. He’s-”
“Enough,” I silenced him, unwilling to listen to his spiteful word vomit. I wasn’t sure if any of it was true or if he’d hired a private detective on some jealous whim while I was gone, but my situation was already confusing enough. “You will not speak about him.”
I didn’t allow Beau to speak of Harrison, so it was only fair.
“Pull yourself together, Harrison. Your mother would be ashamed right now if she saw you acting like a petulant child. I know you were raised better.” I pulled my arms out of his grasp with one quick tug and took a step back. “You’re thirty-fucking-eight for Christ sake.”
“Get that twang out of your mouth.” Harrison rushed at me once again, smashing his lips against mine in a frighteningly desperate attempt to salvage what was rapidly disintegrating before our very eyes. Gone was his class, his subtle arrogance, his New England aristocratic pedigree. Harrison Bissett was a desperate, desperate man showing all his cards and wearing all his colors.
“God, Harrison, what are you doing?” My face scrunched as I peeled myself from his clutches.
“You fucking taste like him,” he seethed, his shoulders drawn back as he reached for my arm. I’d never seen him acting this way before, holding onto me with a bulldog grip. Years ago, I’d caught a glimpse of a nasty, jealous side of him once. A man was hitting on me at a bar when Harrison had slipped off to use the restroom. When he returned I thought he was going to beat the man to a bloody pulp, but after a heated exchange, the bartender asked us to leave before it escalated.
My fingertips rose to my lips, tracing along the tender space where Beau had left his mark on me that morning before I left the ranch. “Yeah. I kissed him. But I didn’t cheat on you, Harrison. You’re acting like I’m still your wife, and that’s completely absurd.”
I imagined the things Beau would do to Harrison if he could see what was unfolding. He’d tear him limb by limb and throw him out our tenth story window when he was done.