“Evan,” I said. “I don’t—”
He held up a hand, kept talking. He’d gotten locked out of his hotel room by his coworker. So he’d crashed on the couch in another suite. Michael and someone else from Spire came back to the room in the middle of the night.
“Did they know you were there?” I interrupted. Evan shook his head. “Why didn’t you say something? Like, hey, guys, I’m right over here?”
“I couldn’t, Jules. I just couldn’t. It was too late.” There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. The other person in the room confronted Michael while Evan was listening. He’d spotted something in the books. Michael admitted that the deal was rigged. Michael and WestCorp had arranged for immigration papers for the Chinese officials and their families. The next day, Michael asked Evan to deliver a briefcase to a Mr. Wenjian Chan at the Venetian.
“And you did it? You agreed to deliver the briefcase?”
He nodded, looking pale and sick.
“Evan. You had just overheard all that and you went along with it?”
“What else was I going to say? He didn’t know that I’d overheard them. So I deliver the briefcase, and Chan seems happy. But before I walk out, his daughter stops me. Translating what her father’s saying. They want to keep in touch, she says. She’s applying to college in the States, and they want my help. They seem to think I have the right connections. Like, she can blackmail her way in through me.”
“Did you tell Michael this?”
“He was already gone by the time I got back. I haven’t talked to him yet. I don’t know what to do.” He stopped his pacing and sank down onto the futon next to me. He dropped his head in his hands. “Jesus. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
I was silent. I waited for him to look up at me, but he wouldn’t. He kept his palms pressed up against his eyes, like a child willing a monster to disappear. After a minute, he said it again. “Julia. What should I do?”
He finally looked up. I flinched when he reached for my hand, when his gaze locked on mine. My heart was hammering. Evan had been ignoring me for so long. He hadn’t asked a single question in all that time. How was I? How was my day? How was I feeling? What was I thinking? And, finally, this was what he came up with. He wanted my help. I was only there to solve his problems, and then he’d go right back to ignoring me.
I was also thinking: How had he not figured this out? His pretending at innocence made me queasy. He wasn’t innocent. He’d done this, too. He let himself become blinded by it. We’re going to make billions. Spire is going to crush the rest of Wall Street. But when the truth finally became too uncomfortable, he wanted out. He wanted an escape. I was angry, but part of me felt relieved, too. Validated. I wasn’t the one who had fucked up our relationship. I’d been duped. Evan had betrayed me—had betrayed us. And whatever was happening, whatever person Evan was becoming, I wanted no part of it. This was a waste of my time. I was done.
“I don’t know, Evan.” I stood up, walked over to the kitchen. “I don’t know what you should do. You need to figure this out on your own.”
“What do you mean?” He looked confused. He hadn’t even considered that I would be anything but sympathetic. That confirmed it. He really wasn’t thinking about me.
I reached for a glass and filled it with water. I was just realizing how thirsty I was. “I mean that I don’t have the answer for you. This is your problem. You need to fix it.”
He said nothing for a long minute. My pulse was pounding in my ears. I hated this person in front of me, hated what he made me feel. I felt it boiling up, the blood in my body primed for a fight. Shouts, slammed doors, permanent words. Get out. The end.
But he just said, quietly, nodding to himself, “Okay.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m late for work.” I put my glass down loudly on the kitchen counter and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. The shower took a long time to get hot, and as it did, I felt the sharp edge of my anger dulling. This was how it always went. Evan was always waiting for me to cool down, to come to my senses. He never let our fights escalate, never shouted back. His patience knew no bounds.
It didn’t have to be this way. Our relationship deserved a better ending than this. I wrapped myself in my towel and opened the bathroom door. I could apologize, tell him I was sorry for snapping like that. I would.
But Evan was already gone, his duffel bag left behind on the floor, the imprint of his body slowly fading from the cushions on the futon. I was too late.
Chapter 9
Evan
Paranoia was a disease whose symptoms I didn’t recognize right away. Or maybe that’s the essence of it: nothing is as it seems. The world rearranges itself while you aren’t looking. You never know you’re suffering from it.
“Evan? Honey, are you there?”