“You need to go,” she said to him and stood up. “I can’t do this anymore. I never should have in the first place. And you’re angry all the time, Ivan. Don’t be mad at me because I’m writing. You can write a novel, if you want to, even if you’re tired after work or you don’t want to stay up late or get up in the morning to write. Other people do it, so can you. And don’t punish me because I want to write. And no, I’m not going to have ‘fun’ with you and some girl. That’s disgusting. You don’t respect anything, you don’t care about anyone except yourself. I don’t want to live like this anymore, worrying about what makes you angry, afraid that you’ll be jealous or pissed about something I do. You have a chip on your shoulder the size of your head. And if you’re cheating on me on top of it, I quit. I’m done. I have work to do. Go home.”
“Oh, give me a break. What kind of work? Are you going to write a story? What makes you think you can? A romance novel?”
“It doesn’t matter what I write. At least I do it. What have you ever done except have sex and sit around and complain, and be mad at what other people do or have? You’re a nasty person, and a cheat apparently. I’m finished. Go home.” She stood there waiting for him to leave, and he finally unwound his long frame from the chair where he was sitting and walked to the door. He didn’t look sorry to go.
“She’s better looking than you are anyway, and she has bigger tits,” he said, walking out and slamming the door behind him. She felt sick after he left, that he would even say something like that and cared so little for her. He had never loved her. He wasn’t capable of loving anyone. Only himself.
She slept fitfully that night, and went to work the next morning. She saw him in the hall, and he ignored her and didn’t even try to talk to her. And she saw him with the little blonde from publicity that afternoon. He was kissing her in the back hall. When she saw them together, she woke up. She was crazy. She was spending her days filing so she could say she had a job in London and justify staying there. She didn’t need justification. She could be in London if she wanted to. And she had a book to write. Bert was coming in a month, and she had to get ready for him. She knew she had kept the job only so she could see Ivan in the daytime. It was insane. She had lost her mind for a while because she had sex with him. And even that wasn’t fun anymore. He was an empty shell. She had been dazzled by him in the beginning but there was no one there. And nothing had gotten better—it had all gotten worse. And now he was cheating on her, to add insult to injury. She cringed, thinking of the abuse she had taken for almost seven months. But it would never happen again, she promised herself.
She handed in her resignation that afternoon, and gave them two weeks’ notice, which they said they wouldn’t hold her to, since she was only an intern. She could leave right away if she wanted. She didn’t see Ivan before she left, and hoped she never would again. She had a book to write, and he was a distraction she could no longer afford. She had to have the manuscript finished for Bert. And that was precisely what she was going to do now.
She told Fiona she was leaving, and they promised to have dinner soon. Fiona felt guilty for causing the breakup with what she’d told her, but she hated Ivan making a fool of Alex. And amazingly, Alex seemed calm.
She went back to her apartment, which she had extended at Christmas until June. And she had gotten a visa a month ago to extend her stay in the UK. She hadn’t told them about the internship, and now she didn’t have one anyway. She set her typewriter on the desk, took her manuscript out of the drawer, and sat down to get to work. The fun and games were over. Alexander Green had a crime thriller to write, and the book she was working on was going to surprise and shock even the most loyal Alexander Green fans. She wasn’t even sad to lose Ivan to the other woman. There was nothing to lose. He was just as empty and bitter as he had been when they started, and she no longer cared. He had been a terrible mistake, and all she wanted to do now was forget him and get back to work on what really mattered to her.
Chapter 13
Without Ivan and a job to distract her, Alex plunged into her work. She wrote constantly, as many hours a day as she was able, and it was a relief to lose herself in the book. She thought of him sometimes late at night when she finished, and compared it to the relationship she’d had with Scott. He had been jealous of her writing and tried to belittle her by tearing her down, in order to aggrandize himself. But with Ivan, it wasn’t her writing, since he had never read anything she’d written. It was everything, her dedication, her perseverance, her single-mindedness about life, her refusal to be swayed from the path toward what she wanted to achieve.
She kept her eye on the goal, which infuriated him, because he had none. He only said he did, like the book he claimed he wanted to write but never would. He was too lazy to do it. He was sloppy about everything he did, and angry at those who weren’t. And even though he knew nothing of her secret career and association with the Alexander Green books, he sensed that she would go far one day, and hated her for it. He wanted all the prizes and praise for himself, but not to work for them. She wondered how many people like him there were in the world, jealous of others for what they had and couldn’t be bothered to do themselves. He was never happy for her, just angry. She felt as though a thousand-pound weight had been lifted from her when she told him to leave. He was always angry at her about something, it was exhausting to deal with, and have to constantly try to make it up to him for what he didn’t have, wouldn’t work for, and thought he deserved.
And with her many hours of hard labor, Alex had finished the first draft of the book when Bert arrived in London in May. She had taken a room for him at a small hotel near her, and he was planning to stay for a week of intense collaboration. He was going to read and correct one section at a time. She would then make the changes he suggested, if she agreed with him—and she almost always did—and then they would move on to the next section. And while she was writing, he would have time to walk around and enjoy the city. He said he hadn’t been to London in years. And when he rang her doorbell, it was like a family reunion for her. She threw her arms around him and he hugged her and spoke to her gruffly as he walked in. He was wearing jeans and an old tweed jacket and hiking boots, and his beard and hair were as big a mess as ever. It was wonderful to see him. She had left Boston eleven months before and missed him.
He sat down in a big, well-worn leather chair and she handed him a glass of red wine, which he accepted with pleasure, and told her she had gotten prettier in the last year, and thinner.
“Are you eating?” he asked after the first sip of wine. “You don’t look it.”
“I’ve been working really hard for the past month, so I’d be ready for you when you got here.”
“Am I going to meet the boyfriend?” He was curious about him, and didn’t like what she had told him, but he didn’t want to scare her. He didn’t think it would come to a good end, for her. The boy she described had everything to gain from the relationship, and he couldn’t see what she’d get out of it, except a headache, and maybe great sex, which he didn’t ask. He had known she was a virgin when she left, but suspected she wasn’t now, not after seven months of dating a twenty-seven-year-old man. Even Alex wasn’t that saintly, and she was human and twenty-three years old, after all.