I’d been screwed over for a girl barely out of college.
Here I was, walking along thinking I could fix things, content with the idea of fixing things, my path clear and sunny with determination, when all of a sudden this giant brick wall of hate, disgust, disappointment, betrayal, hurt pride, and fury appeared out of nowhere and smashed right the fuck into me!
And I wanted Tom and his little Erin to feel everything I was feeling.
Rage was pretty much running my show.
Erin’s phone didn’t have a password to get into it. She might want to rethink that in the future.
“What are you doing?” Her high, girlish voice trembled.
I scrolled through her contact list.
REX.
I hit call.
“No, Tom, what is she doing?” Erin squealed.
The sound must have made the dog in the apartment below us wince but I didn’t even flinch. I was too focused on destruction.
A deep masculine voice I recognized picked up after the third ring. “Hey, baby, you still at work?”
If I’d been thinking more clearly the affection in his voice would have stopped me from saying anything. But as I later realized, I wasn’t running this show in my right mind. “Rex?”
“Who is this?” He sounded confused, his tone a little sharp, protective.
“This is Bailey Hartwell, Tom Sutton’s girlfriend.”
“Tom, stop her!” Erin cried.
“Bailey, for fuck’s sake.” Tom strode toward me, pleading with his dark eyes.
I whirled away from him and started walking around furniture out of his reach.
“Is that Erin I hear? What’s going on?” Rex demanded.
“I just caught Tom fucking Erin on our couch. I’m guessing since Tom came home last night and showered before getting into bed and then shoved me off him when I tried to have sex with him that this isn’t the first time Tom and Erin have been together.”
“What?” His voice was hoarse, sounding far away.
“We got cheated on, Rex. Just thought you should know.” I hung up and threw Erin’s phone on the nearby chair.
She stood clinging to the throw, her shoulders shuddering as she sobbed.
Her obvious pain made me feel nothing.
Numbness had settled over me. I turned to stare at the man I’d spent ten years of my life with. “I thought we deserved each other. But I deserve better. I can’t believe I wasted ten years on you. In case that wasn’t clear enough: it’s over, Tom.”
I slipped the stilettos back on and strode out, shrugging off his hand as he tried to stop me, ignoring him as he hurried down the stairs at my back, his voice, his presence, like an annoying fly I’d gotten used to hovering over me.
Nothing he said penetrated my fog. I couldn’t feel his touch or what I later remembered as his pleading, his apologies.
Instead I got in my car and pulled away so fast I almost clipped him, vaguely aware of him cursing and jumping out of my way as I drove off.
“I am going to kill that son of a bitch!” Jessica, my best friend, yelled, pacing back and forth in front of me in her living room. Louis the pup followed her every move, so now and then they tripped over one another mid-pacing.
I hadn’t known where I was driving until I’d pulled up outside Jess and Cooper’s place. Cooper was working at the bar but Jess was home.
Somehow I’d found the words to tell her what had just happened and her reaction broke through the numbness that had settled over me.
Nausea was the thing I was feeling most at the moment. Nausea caused by uncertainty, by fear, because suddenly—
“I’m thirty-four, Jess.” I interrupted her pacing. She stopped to stare down at me, her eyes bright with hurt for me. My own eyes filled with tears. “How do I start over?”
“Oh, Bailey.” She sat next to me on her couch, and wrapped her arm around me. Louis laid his chin on her knee and stared at me in what looked like doggy sympathy. “You’ll find someone else. You just need to let your heart mend.”
But that wasn’t what I was afraid of. And I had to wonder if the anger I’d felt in Tom’s apartment was only for him and Erin, or if a big part of it was directed at myself.
“I knew, Jess,” I whispered, letting my tears fall, knowing she was the one person who wouldn’t judge me for what I was about to confess. “I’ve known for a while.”
“That Tom was cheating?”
“No, not that.” I shook my head. “I knew . . . I knew he wasn’t the one.” I stared up at her, her face a blur through my tears. “I thought he was a safe bet. I chose him because I thought he was a safe bet. And it turns out he wasn’t even that.”
Jess was quiet awhile, holding me as I cried.
And then, “I don’t think I understand.”
Wiping at my tears, I pulled away and let out a shuddering sigh. “I should be heartbroken. Grief-stricken. Right?”
She nodded.
“But I’m not. I’m hurt. My pride is hurt considering I’m currently wearing red silk lingerie and a raincoat.” I gave her a wry, sad smile that she returned. “And I’m mortified. Humiliated even. But heartbroken . . . no. I’m—” I sucked in a breath, like I’d just been skewered in the stomach.
“You’re what?”
“Relieved,” I admitted. “Terrified but relieved. Oh, God.” I rested my head in my hands, looking down at the stilettos pinching my feet.
I slipped them off. “Ten years. God, ten years I’ve wasted on a man I knew I would never be madly in love with. I just wanted . . . I wanted a man who made me feel safe and Tom gave me that when we met. I was happy just to feel safe with him, to know that he would give me the things I wanted: marriage and kids. When my parents moved away, leaving me the last remaining Hartwell in town, I’d missed them so much that I’d felt this overwhelming need to start my own family. Tom knew about it. He knew how much kids, family, meant to me. I thought he loved me enough to eventually get around to making me happy. But he couldn’t give me that, and I’d held on, giving him my best years, and the piece of shit cheated on me.
“How do I start over at thirty-four?” I could feel the panic rising, my breath hitching as I struggled to draw in air.
Jess grabbed my hands. “Deep breaths, Bailey.” She inhaled and exhaled, gesturing at me to mimic her.
I nearly broke her fingers I squeezed them so hard as I forced through my panic to mimic her, concentrating on my breathing.
After a while I felt muscles I didn’t even know had tensed relax.
Slumping against her couch, I let more tears fall. “I’m scared.”
Tears glistened in Jess’s eyes. “I know. I’ve been there. But starting over can be done, no matter what age you are.” She reached for my hand. “You have me, and you have Cooper and everybody. This town loves you, Bailey. We’ll get you through this.”
“What if I end up alone?”
“Not possible.” She frowned at me. “You’re not considering taking that asshole back just so you won’t be alone?”
“No,” I bit out. “You know, he pushed me away last night. I tried to make love to him and he pushed me away. Of course he was cheating on me! What an idiot I was for not seeing it.” I laughed humorlessly. “I was so convinced he knew we couldn’t do better than each other that it never crossed my mind he’d cheat.”
“What do you mean ‘knew we couldn’t do better than each other’?” Jess crossed her arms over her chest.
I tensed again. I didn’t want to admit to Jess my theory of how Tom and I made sense because of our mutual averageness. “I just mean . . . we were equals, you know.”
Her eyes narrowed, like she didn’t believe me. “For your information every single one of your friends thinks you deserve better than Tom Sutton and the fact that he cheated on you makes him Asshole of the Year. No,
scratch that: Ultimate Asshole of the Year.”
Swallowing back a smile I nodded. “Definitely Ultimate Asshole of the Year.”
Jess harrumphed.
“Jess.”
“Yeah?”
“You know I love you, right?”
In answer she squeezed my hands. “We’ll get you through this, Bailey. And you know what? Today, tomorrow feels terrifying. But I’ll bet everything I own that tomorrow, this fresh start will feel exciting.”
“I hope so.”
She shimmied closer to me on the couch and wrapped her arm around me again.
“Oh, God.” I broke our moment of quiet as guilt and horror filled me. “Oh, God, Jess. What I did to Rex?” I looked at her, tears falling again, these ones a product of shame. “That was awful. Horrible. I’m a selfish bitch.”
“Don’t call yourself that. You weren’t thinking clearly. And you know what, you did the guy a favor if you ask me. He needed to know his girlfriend was cheating on him.”
“But not like that. I forced him into the humiliation with me. I’ll have to apologize.”
“Apologize if you want. Not tonight, though, okay? Tonight you’ll stay here and watch stupid movies and eat junk food with me.”
“No, I don’t want to be a bother.”
“I won’t even acknowledge that comment.” She got to her feet. “I’ll go get you something to change into.”
I gave my friend a tremulous, grateful smile. As soon as she disappeared upstairs, Louis bounding up after her and taking his comforting doggy sympathy with him, I started to cry again, harder this time. Starting tomorrow I had to begin the awful task of telling everyone close to me that Tom and I were over. I’d have to call my mom and dad, my brother, Charlie . . . I’d have to tell Dahlia and Emery. Iris and Ira.
Oh, God, the speculation.
The pity.
And Vaughn Tremaine.
It would be harder to fight his mockery of my life. I’d just have to remind myself that even though I’d lost certainty of what was to come, I hadn’t lost my beloved boardwalk or the people connected to it that made up my family. They still made my life extraordinary and Tom’s disloyalty or Vaughn’s opinion of his disloyalty was not going to change that. I wouldn’t let it.
It was easier to think that than feel it, I realized, as the fear gripped me tight. I wrapped my arms around myself and cried harder, letting the hard lump that had tightened my throat loosen with my sobs.
Not too long later I felt Jess’s familiar arms surround me and she moved me closer, resting my head on her shoulder. I curled into her, muffling my sobs in her sweater as Louis nuzzled my hand in another gesture of puppy solace.
FOUR
Bailey
Around four thirty in the morning I woke up on Jess and Coop’s couch and found myself wide awake unable to return to sleep.
Only a few hours ago I’d woken, confused, staring at the back of their couch, wondering where I was. It wasn’t until I heard Louis’s low bark and Cooper’s voice that I remembered sitting watching movies with Jess. I must have fallen asleep and she’d left me on the couch rather than wake me.
“Yeah, I can see Bailey is on our couch, but I’m asking why?” I’d heard Cooper’s hushed voice and the concern in his tone. “Down, Louis.”
“She found Tom screwing another woman,” Jess whispered back, her own voice filled with a mixture of anger, hurt, and worry.
“What?” Cooper yelled.
Louis gave another low bark.
“Shh! Both of you.”
“What?” he whisper-shouted, fury evident in that one word.
I had lain tense. Once upon a time when I was a naive kid I’d crushed hard on Cooper and chased the heck out of him. As I grew older Coop somehow morphed into a big brother, a great friend. He was also incredibly protective.
“I’ll fucking kill him.”
I had heard the door open and was about to sit up to stop him when Jess had said, “No, you won’t.” The door had closed. “Bailey doesn’t need that. She just needs us to be there for her.”
“I’m pretty sure putting my fist through that asshole’s face counts as being there for her.”
Affection for Coop had filled me, sparking fresh tears.
“Maybe so,” Jess had whispered. “But let’s postpone that. Come upstairs so we don’t wake Bailey.”
Cooper hadn’t spoken after that. Instead I heard the creak of the stairs as they and Louis climbed them. Exhaustion had taken me and the next thing I knew I was awake and my watch said it was four thirty. As I lay there I thought about the events of two nights ago that had led me to showing up at Tom’s apartment in that stupid red lingerie.
Confusion.
That’s what I had mostly been feeling as I lay in bed on my side, staring at the wall in the dark that night. I’d been confused because I didn’t understand why I pretended to sleep as I’d listened to Tom enter my house, rummage around in the kitchen for fifteen minutes, before coming down the hall to my room to use the shower. I’d pretended even as he’d gotten into bed with me.
We didn’t share a home. I lived in my little one-bedroom house and Tom had his own apartment. Not by my choice. For years the fact that Tom refused to commit to buying a place together had pissed me off. And yet that night as I’d pretended to sleep as he got into bed, I’d wondered why the hell he hadn’t just gone home. What was the point in coming to me on a night he’d worked so late?
And then I’d wondered why the hell I hadn’t turned around and kissed him hello. How many times over the years, especially these last few, had he waited up for me because of the long hours I worked at the inn?
I’d turned onto my other side, leaned on my elbow, rested my head in the palm of my hand, and I’d stared at my sleeping boyfriend.
An unfamiliar tight, horrible melancholy had gripped my chest.
Because confusion wasn’t what I’d been feeling most.
It had been fear.
Perhaps it sounds strange but I’d always liked the feeling of missing people. It’s not the actual missing them part. That part is horrible, of course. But the part when you get to see them again after a separation . . . that’s the part I love. Because in that moment all the messy, complicated emotions we feel for an individual are burned, turning the bitter fragments to ashes, leaving only the sweetness: the love. All I feel in a reunion is the sweet longing of loving them, and the joy of having them in my arms again.
I liked missing my parents—my parents who sold their holdings in the town our ancestors founded, everything but Hart’s Inn, which they left to me and my siblings. My brother, who had no use for the inn, my brother, whom I loved missing. My sister, who also had no use for the inn, my sister, whom I liked missing until I spent five minutes in her company.
However . . . I hadn’t liked missing Tom. The horrible part of missing someone? That’s all I’d felt when I’d looked at him.
I’d studied his face as he slept, remembering the contentment I’d felt once upon a time when I lay watching him sleep back when we were first starting out. If I were honest with myself, Tom had never made me feel giddy or nervously excited with uncontrollable butterflies. That’s what attracted me to him. I felt safe with him. I felt in control of my emotions.
Lately I didn’t feel that way.
I was thirty-four years old. I wanted to be married. I wanted babies.
And the man I’d spent ten years with, the man I thought I’d have all those things with had lain next to me . . . and he may as well have been eight thousand miles away.
Five years ago I would have reached across the distance between us and woken him up with my lovemaking. Tom said that was one of the things he loved most about me—my impulse control. Or lack thereof. I said and did whatever I wanted. Everyone around me knew whatever I was feeling in any given moment. He always
said it was a miracle I was so good at my job as an innkeeper. But my mother had trained me in hospitality from the moment I could talk and I became a different person at the inn. I was professional, controlled.
In fact I think maybe I was so mouthy outside of work because I had to be the Disney version of myself at work—congenial, cheery, good-natured—no matter what shit a guest was giving me.
Tom wasn’t always a big fan of my lack of brain-to-mouth filter, but typical guy that he was, he was a big fan of my free spirit and confidence in the bedroom.
What he didn’t know was that I was only like that with him.
When we met I had felt average. Before I met Tom someone had stomped on me so badly I felt stupid for thinking I might be a little extraordinary. I’d grown up as a descendant of the town’s founding family, people liked me, I was popular. I felt special. That guy took that away from me. However, he’d never been able to take away how much I loved my life in Hartwell. He may have made me feel average, but I still felt like my life on the boardwalk was extraordinary because I lived in a beautiful place surrounded by a community of people I loved.
And as long as life around me was extraordinary it was okay feeling average with Tom. We were equals. We were good enough for each other.
So I had no hang-ups in life or in our bed.
I could reach for him anytime I wanted and know that he would reach back. Or so I’d thought.
Sex between us had always been good. It wasn’t the best I’d ever had but it was good. Tom seemed happy. Or I’d thought so anyway. I was more adventurous than he was so it could have been better, but it was good. It was good enough.
Lately it became nonexistent.
For the last two years I’d been working my ass off at the inn because my manager left, and I hadn’t replaced him yet. In what I felt was part retaliation, Tom had started working long hours.
We barely spoke, let alone had sex.