Just as I wasn’t sure all the lies we’d been fed as young women growing up were true. I’d begun to wonder if I was advocating for a future and a life I no longer believed in, chasing things that would inevitably turn to dust when I caught them.
Perhaps I’d never believed in earnest that loving romantically was anything but fleeting. Perhaps it was simply all…wrong.
For, at first, they taught us that behind every great man was a great woman.
Wrong.
Later, they revised and preached that beside every great man was a great woman.
Wrong.
Surrounding every great man was a slaughterhouse of women, some great, some not, positioning for the rise of her own empire. It was a difficult thing being Queen of the King, and even if you made it to the crown, bet your ass you’d have to fight dirty day in and day out to stay there, because behind every great woman was another woman ready to take her place.
Women were constantly in competition with one another.
Right.
So, yes. I said yes to the beautiful, great man proving all of societies woes intact. I’d done so a dozen times before and each time prayed without abandon that maybe this time, with this high, with this great man, I’d be the one who was wrong.
If the devil didn’t want me, maybe the saint would.
“Wonderful.” He dipped his face low to mine. Encouraged by anticipation, my eyes fluttered closed at his approach, the addict in me disappointed when his lips whispered across only my cheek.
I was hot-headed. I loved hard. I was impulsive. I obsessed and I fell hard. I was on top of the world until suddenly, I was not. This worried me, for as I bathed in the briefest of disappointments, I could feel hope climb from the depths of me, because it had found someone new to cling to.
Dropping the envelope to the desk, he released our handshake on a squeeze and moved towards the door.
“I’ll see you Saturday, Charleston. It’s been a pleasure.”
With that, his perfectly tailored suit moved through my now open office door and I watched until he eventually disappeared at the end of the hall.
Beau Callaway was a great man.
Could a woman like me ride a high that great and survive the fall? I wasn’t sure.
“That was quick,” Kevin chimed in, displacing my dark mood with his own bubbly one.
“He knew what he wanted.”
“Char, darling. When will you learn?” He grinned. “Men like that usually do.”
I was dead on my feet by the time I pulled my black Range Rover to the curb outside my building. It would be safer, as my dad often reminded me, to park underground, but I almost never did. Call it laziness, or an unwitting testing of fate, but I couldn’t be bothered.
Kevin and I had worked well into the evening alongside Emma fine-tuning minute decorative details for Saturday’s gala. With the added influx of cash from Beau’s more than generous six-figure donation, we were able to add a few of the items we’d originally crossed off the budget.
I left at seven to meet Tom, our in-house sound and set-up whiz, at the venue a few blocks over. This would be the first year we held the gala at The Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, and Tom was methodical about trial runs. We ran a sound check and agreed that the stage would need to be moved back two feet to accommodate the extra sponsor table in front.
The clock on my dash let me know it was nearly nine before I shut down the engine, climbing barefoot from behind the wheel. I worked long hours and I wore big heels; it wasn’t uncommon for me to finish the day climbing the stairs, sans shoes, to the entrance of my apartment building.
Hiking my purse higher on my shoulder, I adjusted the laptop and files into one arm so I could enter my access code into the screen without dropping my boots. After checking my mail and depositing the flyers and junk mail in the lobby trashcan, I forwent the stairs for the second time today, making a mental note to let Leighton drag me to the gym at least one day next week as I stepped onto the elevator.
My building was a renovated warehouse turned apartment complex. That meant it was only five levels with four apartments per floor, and it was rustic chic in an exquisite way. Exposed brick, retro but refurbished fire escapes, and brilliant, heavy copper doors throughout. There was a rooftop terrace shared by all the tenants that was amazing in the summer, and quite possibly the reason I purchased a third floor unit just shy of two years ago.