“Jessica Alexander,” I say outloud, studying her wide eyes, “another person who trusted me and I screwed over.” I re-roll the paper and set it to the side. I wonder how often Caleb still thinks of her. Does he picture what his life would have been like with her? Does he picture what it would have been like with me? Does he even think of me? I reach in again and this time I pull out something metal and round. Caleb’s thumb ring: the one with the star and the diamond that I gave him for a birthday. I sigh as I put it to my lips. So, he hides it away? At least he kept it, right? Maybe some nights when he is alone and listening to that CD, he pulls it out and thinks about me. A girl can only hope. I pull out a miniature hourglass after that, in which the tiny grains of sand are silver, and then a small booklet, whose colored pages of: black, red, white, gold and green have no words. I don’t know what memories these trinkets come from, after me, I guess. I place the ornament upright on his desk and small tinkling catches my ear.
Where had I heard that sound before? My gaze sweeps the desk, and then the floor around it, looking for the culprit. Where…where? There! My hands scoop it up and a bleat escapes my throat. I don’t know if I am surprised or if I knew that he would find it all along, but my mouth feels dry as I turn the object over in my palm. The penny, our penny. Had he gone to my apartment after I left, to find me? Had he seen it lying there on my abused coffee table? My eyes tear up as I imagine how confused he must have felt. How had he known to take the one thing that symbolized the start of our romance? Leah must have told him, I realize bitterly. Despite her promise to me, she must have dished up the truth with a sick satisfaction. To keep him away from me, because she must have known he would try to find me. I am sulking, slouched, and nauseated when I hear my name being called. It echoes across the big house like it is being sung by a backup singer.
“Olivia!” Cammie comes careening into his office, snapping me out of my daze. She is waving something in her hands, her blonde hair bouncing every which way in her excitement.
“Olivia,” she says again, her eyes wide. “There is something you need to see.”
She holds up a manila envelope, which she then tosses towards me on the desk.
“Where did you find this?” I don’t want to touch it.
“Just shut your mouth and open it,” she folds her arms across her chest and I can’t help but notice how worried she looks. I reach out to grab it and gently push open the top allowing its contents to spill onto Caleb’s desk. Letter’s, pictures……I study them for a minute, before I feel shock waves pass through my body.
“Oh my gosh! Cammie?” I look at her shaking my head. I am so utterly confused.
“I told you so,” she says. “Read them.”
“Lying on the desk are pictures of me…and Turner. There is the engagement shot, the one that we had professionally taken after he proposed and a shot of us at the zoo together during our first year of dating.
“I don’t understand—” I say blankly and Cammie, dear, detective Cammie, points to the pile of letters.
“Am I going to be upset?” I ask biting my lower lip.
“Very.”
I pull at the first letter. It is written by hand on plain white sheet of paper.
Hello Jo,
I know you hate it when I call you that, but I can’t resist.
It’s a strange request that you’ve propositioned me with,
and I must admit my curiosity is peaked. I don’t know what
trouble you’ve gotten yourself into now, but if its anything
like high school…..I’m in!
Joking aside, I do owe you one. Superbowl tickets are worth
my firstborn, so if you want me to take a pretty girl out on a
date, I’m not going to complain.
Anyway, gorgeous I’ll keep you updated on the
status. She better be smokin!
Turner
My wail of anger starts out as a groan and gradually escalates until I sound like a fire truck’s siren. Cammie looks worried, so I calm myself and stop.
“Next one.” I hold my hand out to her, and she places another sheet of paper between my fingers.
Jo-Jo,
Can’t believe this is happening! I mean what the Hell?
I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that we are
getting married. I finally took your advice and asked her.
Wow! I guess I should say thanks. Thanks!
I’ll be in Florida visiting her next month, maybe we can all
do lunch; your man and O and I. Won’t kill you to talk to her!
I know there’s some kind of sordid past between the two
of you, but whatever it is, she’ll get over it. You are the
force that brought us together after all. Let’s talk
soon.
The Engaged,
Turner
“Fuck,” I say.
“That’s an understatement,” Cammie walks around to where I’m sitting and flips open Caleb’s copy machine.
“She set me up! She somehow knew I went to Texas and she had one of her friends make moves on me—to keep me away from Caleb!” my voice is getting louder now and Cammie pats me on the shoulder sympathetically.
“Turner is Leah’s friend. She used him and he didn’t even know.”
“Well, she gave him Superbowl tickets. Those aren’t easy to come by you know,” Cammie pushes the start button and a whirring noise fills the room.
“I am engaged to Leah’s stogy.”
I feel like balling my eyes out and breaking her filigree egg at the same time. How could I have been so stupid? No, I wasn’t stupid. There is no way I could have known that Turner and Leah were connected. But, I should have known that she wouldn’t trust me to stay out of Caleb’s life and that she would take extra precautions. I was planning a wedding with her precaution!
“Let’s burn her house down,” I say standing up.
“Now, now, Lucy, this is Caleb’s house, too. No need to punish him for what Leah’s done.” Despite the fact she’s supposed to be Ethel, she uses a Ricky Ricardo accent.
“I just saved her from a twenty- year jail sentence,” I moan. “I defended that disgusting, evil, treacherous little bitch.”
“Yes. Too bad you’re such a kick ass lawyer huh? Anyway, there’s more bad news…”
“More? How could there be more?”
She pulls a stick out of her back pocket and places it in my palm.
“What is it?” I choke, blinking back my tears. Cammie rolls her eyes.
“A fertility monitor.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a test stick used to monitor hormone levels present in your urine…so you can get preggers…”
I flip my hand over and drop it.
“They’re trying to have a baby?” I gasp. Why hadn’t he told me that?
“She is trying to have a baby. I found that little sucker hiding out in a ‘secret’ shoebox with those letters,” she nods to Turner’s correspondence, “and a fertility chart. If they were both trying to have a baby, don’t you think her baby gadgets would be in the bathroom cabinet?”
I stare at her blankly.
“O-livia! She is trying to get pregnant because you are back on the scene She’s scared of losing him. Caleb doesn’t know! You have to stop them before he is trapped forever.”
“Why? I can’t—” I say, miserably slipping into the chair.
“A fertility chart,” I repeat and I have no idea what that is.
“Yes, it tells her the days she will be most likely to be able to conceive. What century are you from?”
“Did the fertility chart say this weekend?” I feel the breath sucked out of me now, like someone just punched me in the stomach.
Cammie nods.
“Here,” she hands me the photocopies of the letters from Turner. “Look, it’s time to do something. And I’m not talking about your usual routine of sneaky and dishonest. This time you need to tell him the truth and co
me clean about everything.”
“Like what? What’s left to come clean about? He already knows the big stuff.”
“Like, telling him that Leah ran you off when you left Florida and that she tried to bribe you with money…how about that?”
“That’s not going to make a difference. He already knows she’s as rotten as I am. He freaking loves immoral girls.”
“What about confronting him about his feelings for you? He found you again, even after he knew what you did when he had amnesia. He’s still in love with you, Olivia. You just have to convince him of that.”
I think about how he showed up to my condo the night before Leah’s sentencing. He was always showing up wasn’t he? Showing up at the music store, showing up at the grocery store, showing up in my office. Damn it. Cammie was right, there had to be something to that.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” she agrees. “Now turn that computer on, we have to find out where they went.”
Two hours later, I walk through the door of my condo. The windows are open and the salty sea air hits my face. I take it in in great gulps and start searching for my rat fiancée. I remind myself to be calm, to act like a lady, but when I see him sunbathing on my oversized patio I swear at him loudly, so that he spins around almost dropping his water.
“Here,” I pull the ring from my finger and toss it at him. It goes careening across the tile and spins to a stop at his feet. “I’m going on a trip. When I get back, BE GONE.”
He jumps up looking confused. He is looking left to right like the answer for my erratic behavior can be found there.
“Wha—?”
I take in his salmon colored swim trunks, his Gucci sun glasses, the way he moves like a robot, and I inwardly cringe. What was I thinking?
I wasn’t! I was stuffing something in my heart. Cammie was right!
“You know Leah! All these months of me defending her in court and you never said a word!”
Turner’s face goes white, despite his ridiculous tan. He flaps his hands around like he can’t decide whether to surrender or point at me.
“You dated me for Superbowl tickets!” I am yelling now.
“Yes, but—”
“Shut up! Just shut up.”
I collapse onto a lawn chair and put my head in my hands. I feel like I am ninety years old.
“Turner, we’re not right for each other. I don’t want to marry you, I’m sorry.”
“Well,” he puffs. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
I look at him from between my fingers.
“No, actually,” I sigh and stand up. “I have to go pack.”
I head inside.
“Why?” he calls after me. “Why can’t we work it out?”
I pause looking over my shoulder.
“There’s nothing to work out. I can’t give you something that I don’t have.
Chapter Eighteen
Eight hours later, I am sitting in business class, sipping on a coke and drumming my fingers impatiently on the beverage tray in front of me.
Caleb and the Scarlet Beast are in Rome. Yes, that’s what I said, Rome. The Bahamas weren’t good enough for her and neither was Marco Island; both of which were listed as top baby making locations on her computer’s Internet history. Instead, she opted for The De La Ville Inter-Continental hotel where her favorite actress Susan Sarandon became pregnant. How do I know such a personal detail? Because, along with breaking into her home with my psychotic best friend, I also hacked into her email account and read a correspondence between her mother and herself.
“Is this your first time to Rome?”
I look over and see a pair of very green eyes looking at me from the seat next door.
“Um, yes,” I clip my words so that I sound as rude as possible and look back out the window. Yucky—chit chattery. I am in no mood to converse. I am on the most important mission of my life.
“You’re going to love it. It’s the best place in the world.”
“Yea, to make babies,” I mumble.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “I’m going there on business, so it’s all work and no fun for me,” I laugh shrilly and pretend to dig around in my purse for something.
“Too bad. You should at least make time to see the Coliseum—absolutely amazing.” I look over at him now because that’s actually not a bad idea. Holy crap! I’m going to Rome! I’m now officially excited. In all the commotion of booking a ticket, throwing things in a suitcase and breaking up with Turner, it completely escaped me.
“Maybe I will,” I say, smiling at him. He wasn’t bad looking. Actually, he was roguishly handsome with coal black hair, caramel skin, and a chiseled jaw. He had one of those distinctly Jewish noses. I suddenly feel self-conscious about my pasty complexion.
“Noah Stein,” he offers me his hand and I take it. “Olivia Kaspen.”
“Olivia Kaspen,” he repeats, “That’s a very poetic name.”
“Well, that’s about the strangest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
I pull a face and he smiles.
“What do you do for a living?” I ask, trying to sound pleasant. Oh, my gosh—I just broke up with Turner—oh-my-gosh!
“I own my own business. You?”
“Lawyer,” I say. I look down and see that my hands are shaking.
“I have to go to the ladies room, do you mind?” He shakes his head and scoots out into the aisle so that I can get past. I almost knock a little girl and a stewardess over as I stumble toward the signs for the lavatory.
Once inside, I collapse in front of the toilet and throw up.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
My entire life has changed in the last few hours and I’m just now realizing it. Turner, poor Turner, but not really, because he dated me for Superbowl tickets. But he loved me, right? Did I love him? No. It was the right thing to do, breaking up with him. It was the only thing to do. I rinse my mouth in the sink and lean back against the wall. This was insanity; rushing off to Italy, chasing after my ex-boyfriend- all on a whim. What would my mother say? I stifle a sob and bite my lip. Alone in Rome; I didn’t even speak Italian, for Pete’s sake. This was bad. This was really, really bad.
I go back to my seat and Noah graciously lets me in without a word about my swollen face. After taking a few large swigs of my flat soda, I slide two fingers underneath my eyes to clear up any smudgy mascara and turn to Noah, frowning.
“I’m not going to Rome on business,” I say, and he doesn’t look surprised. Why should he? He doesn’t know that I’m a perpetual liar.
“Oh,” he says, raising an eyebrow, “Ok.”
I take a deep breath. It feels exhilarating to tell the truth.
“I’m going to find Caleb Drake and when I do, I have to tell him the truth about everything. I am so scared.”
He looks at me with new interest. I’ve transitioned from being a pretty girl, to a woman of intrigue.
“What type of truth is it?”
“A messy one. There’s going to be a lot of clean-up,” I sigh.
“I’d like to hear about it.”
I shift under his gaze. He has the intensity of a nuclear weapon in those two green orbs.
“It’s a long story.”
“Well,” he says raising his hands and looking around the cabin. “It’s going to be a long flight.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you on one condition,” I say, pulling my legs up to my chest and holding them there. Noah looks at my knees and then my face like he can’t quite grasp why a grown woman is sitting like a little girl. “You have to tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
“The worst thing I’ve ever done?” he looks off into some distant memory and grimaces.
“When I was in the ninth grade, there was this girl in my class whom we called Felicity Fattness. As a prank I snuck into her backyard and stole a pair of her underwear off the line and then hung them on the schools front door with a sign t
hat said, Felicity Fattness Wears Parachute Panties. When she saw it, she burst into tears, tripped over her school bag and had to be rushed to the emergency room to have five stitches put into her chin. I felt horrible—still do actually.”
“That was mean,” I say, nodding.
“Yeah, she’s a total babe now. I saw her at my high school reunion and asked her out on a date. She laughed at me, said I’d already seen her panties once and it wouldn’t be happening again.”
I laugh—a real laugh, so that my whole body shakes. Noah joins me. I am still smiling, when I realize that I have another boy scout on my hands.
“So, Felicity? That’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
“I stole a magnet from the dollar store once.”
“Oh boy,” I say. “I’m not sure you’re ready for my story.”
“Try me.”
I look at his face and remember how Caleb once told me that you could judge someone’s personality by their appearance. If this is true, I decide that I can trust Noah because he has the kindest eye’s I have ever seen.
“I fell in love underneath a tree,” I began.