Pride, p.5
Pride, page 5
I couldn’t tell if this chick was throwing shade or sending me a message.
“I hope we can be friends, since Ethan will be working with you. He told me you contacted him.”
I frowned. “He told you about me?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said in a casual tone, as if their discussion had been a small matter. “He said something about an ex who needed some help.” She paused and looked me straight in the eye when she added, “And that her name was Journee.”
I crossed my arms. “So you knew?”
“Knew what? That you”—she pointed her French-tip manicure in my direction—“were the Journee?” She waved her hand and almost blinded me with the diamond on her finger that looked like it weighed a thousand tons. “My goodness. Still a little self-centered, I see. You’re not the only Journee in this world. I mean, look at that actress, Journee… what’s her last name?” She shook her head. “Nope, I didn’t know you were Ethan’s ex.”
She was lying—this I knew for sure. But why?
“But like I said”—she kept on talking as if I cared about what she had to say—“I’m glad to know it’s you, and I’m hoping we can all be friends.”
“For what purpose?” I spat those words at her.
“Because it seems like Ethan wants to help you,” she said, smiling as if she wasn’t getting my message. But then the ends of her lips turned down and she lowered her voice. “Now, I’m sure if I asked him to stay away from you, he would. But there’s no need for me to eliminate anyone in Ethan’s past, just like I wouldn’t want him to do that to me.”
I guessed she had gotten my message. “Eliminate me?” I said. “Do you think I’m a threat to you, or are you threatening me?”
Before she could answer, Ethan returned and opened the passenger door. He reached in and handed me my purse. His eyes were steady when he asked, “So you’re good?”
Now he was the one sending a message, asking me if I understood what he’d been trying to tell me in the car. There was no chance of us getting back together. I’d read every single word he’d spoken, every action he’d taken, wrong. “Yeah.” I glanced between him and his fiancée. “I’m great.”
He nodded. “I don’t want you to worry about this thing with Simon; enjoy your weekend. Nothing much will happen over the next few days. Even the government shuts down for this weekend. I’ll be back on Tuesday and I’ll text then.”
“Okay.” I kept my eyes on Ethan and still wondered, how could I have been so wrong?
He said, “Until Tuesday, just lie low.”
When I faced Ivy, she was wearing that saccharine smile again. “I’m sure we’ll see each other soon, Journee.” Then she slipped into the place in Ethan’s car that used to belong to me.
Ethan nodded his good-bye and jumped into the driver’s seat. I wanted to walk away, but I couldn’t. My feet were planted as if my body were punishing me by forcing me to watch the man I still loved drive away with the woman who’d made my difficult childhood harder, flaunting everything I lacked with every chance she had. It was amazing that here we were as adults, and her taunting continued. Because with me having nearly everything that I could want in this world, Ivy had the one thing that it seemed I’d never have again—Ethan.
I watched as the BMW weaved into the traffic, and I stayed there until I couldn’t see that car, that man, or his fiancée anymore.
4
This Labor Day weekend, I had truly labored, trying not to think about Ethan. Or Poison Ivy. But my efforts had failed. I’d been consumed with thoughts of the two of them every moment of the almost seventy hours that had passed since I’d watched them drive off toward the Galveston sunset.
On Saturday, after I’d tossed through the night, I called my sister hoping that by talking it out, I could make sense of what had happened. She and Norma had arrived in San Antonio and were already settled in, so of course she could step away from our mother and talk. Windsor gave me her supportive shoulder as I paced through my apartment and vented with flailing arms about my encounter with Ethan from Thursday night until he’d driven away with Ivy on Friday.
“Wow,” Windsor said when I finished. She was quiet for a moment before she added, “Why were you in Ethan’s office in the first place?”
I’d left out my reason for contacting Ethan; I hadn’t told Windsor about the texts or my concerns about Simon, keeping all my business close, the way I always did. Plus, with Windsor always worried about Norma and her bronchitis, I didn’t want my sister worried about me.
So I told her, “Ethan called me… He had a real estate question.”
“Oh, that’s surprising.” She paused, and I wondered if she believed me. But then she said, “Well then, I guess I can see how you thought he might have, perhaps, maybe would have been interested in the two of you reconnecting. Because he called you.”
“Why all the sarcasm?” I asked, plopping onto my sofa.
“Because a man calling me about business wouldn’t be enough for me to think he wanted to reconnect romantically. I mean, Ethan was always very direct with you, right? Why would he come at you under some business pretense when he wanted a personal connection?”
“Maybe he wanted to feel me out,” I snapped. “Maybe he didn’t want to get hurt if he found out I wasn’t interested in getting back together with him.”
“Okay,” Windsor said, not reacting to my tone, “that’s possible, but were there any other signs?”
My sister asked the question I’d been asking myself, but this was difficult to explain. There was nothing I saw, nothing I heard—not really. It was all in the way I felt when I was with Ethan. And I was sure he’d felt the same way. But I said, “Yes, there were signals all over the place.”
“Oh.”
That word made me frown and sit up straight on the sofa. Her oh didn’t sound as if she believed me. It sounded more like, Oh, okay, whatever you say. “What does that mean, Windsor?” When she hesitated, I added, “Just tell me. You don’t usually have a problem saying what you have to say.”
“Well,” she began, sounding a little too eager to speak her mind, “I just don’t see how wanting to have a discussion about business led you all the way to reconciliation.”
Why did I make this call? I thought. But I said, “You had to have been there.”
“Either that… or I need to be looking at the world through Journee-colored lenses.”
Ouch! “What?”
“Sometimes, instead of seeing what’s in front of you, you see what you want to see.”
Damn! “I don’t do that.”
“You do. I tell you that all the time. You do it with Mama, and now it feels like you’re doing it with Ethan. You have a hard time seeing anyone else’s side to a story. All that counts is what you see, what you believe. It’s your pride, Journee. You know everything, even how people are feeling and thinking. You never take anyone else’s perspective into consideration because you’re always right, no matter what anyone else says or feels.”
I stood as the ire began to rise inside me. But I wasn’t going there; I wasn’t getting into an argument with Windsor, because this wasn’t about what had happened with Ethan. She’d taken us to a whole ’nother place—my mother. She never missed an opportunity to attack me about that. Well, it wasn’t happening today.
“Oh, girl,” I sang, sounding like her words hadn’t touched me, “I have another call coming in. I’ve got to take it; I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up the phone, wondering if Windsor believed that ploy I’d used on her so many times. Talking to her left me worse than before the call. Now she had me wondering, had I made it all up?
Sunday had been better only because I didn’t call Windsor. Instead, I’d sulked alone, pondering how I could have been so wrong.
Today, though, I was determined to salvage some part of my weekend. That was the only reason why I was here at the gym, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. I steered my car into the parking lot; it wasn’t packed, but I’d expected to be the only one getting up before sunrise on a holiday just to work out.
Moving quickly, I passed the check-in desk, then made my way to the locker room, and within minutes, I was on the elliptical machine, with Drake blasting through my earbuds. But after five minutes, the thoughts were still there. After ten minutes, I began to see images of Ethan and Ivy holding hands, skipping across the sand, laughing and frolicking on some beach. By the time twenty minutes had passed, I turned off the music and just let my thoughts run wild.
My mind settled on one memory: how my desire to do what I thought was right collided with one moment of incredibly bad timing.
I didn’t usually walk the people I introduced to Simon to the elevator, but Mrs. Lyman had touched me so. When I met her several weeks before, as I was canvassing the streets around the Toyota Center, she’d been rolling a shopping cart with a few plastic bags stuffed inside, but what I noticed first were the little twin girls, dressed in dingy white T-shirts that fit more like dresses than tops and faded jeans. They were so small, they couldn’t have been more than two, maybe three. My heart constricted; in that moment I saw me and my sister.
When I introduced myself, Mrs. Lyman told me she’d heard about me from one of the men who used to stay at the shelter, and she begged for my help. “That kind of money would go a long way for me and my girls.”
Mrs. Lyman didn’t have to say much more. I moved her to the top of the list, made sure Simon saw her within a few days, and convinced him to add two hundred dollars to his normal fee for the woman.
“You have no idea what you and Mr. Simon have done for me and my girls,” she said as we stopped before the elevator bank. “I was thinking that maybe it was time for me”—her voice cracked as she continued—“to find a home where I can place them. Maybe put them in foster care until something happens, because I hate having them on the streets.”
I shook my head. “No, Mrs. Lyman.” I took her hands into mine. “Please don’t do that. Even with all that you’re going through, your girls would rather be with you than without you.” She glanced down at her hands, and I realized I was squeezing them too tightly. “I’m so sorry,” I said, moving back just as the elevator doors opened.
Ethan stepped off, holding a bouquet of flowers. His grin was wide when he saw me, but his eyes moved to Mrs. Lyman, and his smile faded away. I watched Ethan take in the sight of the woman, who had dressed as decently as she could, I supposed, in a pink sweater that was stretched and frayed at the collar and black pants that hung on her thin frame. But it didn’t take any kind of special intelligence to know she was out of place in this office.
As Ethan’s eyes narrowed, I tried to push Mrs. Lyman into the elevator, hoping that if she didn’t speak, I’d be able to convince Ethan not to believe his eyes.
But I didn’t get my wish. “Oh, those are pretty flowers,” she said to Ethan; then, to me, she added, “Ms. Alexander, again, thank you. We’ll be off the streets for at least a few weeks because of that check from you and Mr. Simon.”
Short of putting my hand over this woman’s mouth and dragging her onto the elevator, I didn’t know what to do. Finally, she stepped on, and when the doors closed, I pasted on a smile, held my breath, and faced Ethan.
Before I could begin an explanation that hadn’t yet fully formed in my mind, he shoved the flowers into my chest and turned back to the elevator, punching the button as if it were an emergency.
“Ethan,” I began.
He whipped around. “You promised.”
“I didn’t promise a thing.” The words slipped out before I could stop myself; I had just confessed, which hadn’t been my plan.
“So you continued with this the whole time?” He spoke through clenched teeth, but I could still hear his astonishment. “You’ve been scamming people for the past year?”
“Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” he said just as the elevators opened. He rushed inside, and the only reason I didn’t say anything more was because there were others on the elevator.
GLANCING AT MY watch, I couldn’t believe that only fifteen more minutes had passed. I felt like I’d been striding on that elliptical for a lifetime. I hopped off and glanced at the weight machines but then walked in the opposite direction and into the locker room. The gym hadn’t been the escape that I’d hoped for.
I opened my locker but then sank down onto the bench. I wanted to get away from my thoughts, but the memories were holding me hostage. Closing my eyes, I returned to that day when our life of perfect harmony crashed:
Ethan was gone, but his expression, the way he glared at me before the elevator doors closed, stayed. He was upset, but he was wrong, he didn’t understand. And so, after an hour, I decided to go home. I had to prepare for the talk Ethan and I needed to have. I’d be able to calm this situation; of that, I was sure.
But when I entered my condo, I paused at the threshold. I hadn’t expected Ethan to be home; it was only two in the afternoon. But he sat in the living room, leaning back on the sofa, with his feet resting on the ottoman and his eyes on the television, though the sound was muted.
Stepping inside, I waited for Ethan to turn toward me. He did not. So I tossed my purse onto the sofa and moved to the kitchen. I pulled a bottle from the wine refrigerator and filled two glasses, but when I faced the living room once again, Ethan still wouldn’t look at me. My eyes were on him as I strolled across the room. I offered him a glass, but still he did not move. I placed both glasses on the table before I lowered myself onto the sofa next to him, kicked off my shoes, and tucked my feet beneath me. “Let’s talk,” I said.
He nodded but kept his eyes on the television. “Do you know why I came by your office today?” His question was only rhetorical because he continued, “Do you know why I wanted to bring you flowers?” Now he turned to me. “I was approached by a few members of the Harris County Democratic Party. We had a meeting this morning, and they want me to consider running for city council.”
“Oh my God, Ethan,” I said, forgetting for a moment why we were sitting here. “Why didn’t you tell me about the meeting? This is what we’ve wanted.” I reached for him, but he stiffened, and I pulled my hand back.
“Yeah, I was excited, and all I wanted to do was celebrate with you. And bring you flowers for standing alongside me with this dream. But now…” He shook his head. “But now, what you’re doing will cost me something I’ve really wanted.”
“What?” I squinted, not understanding.
“I can’t run for office.” The sadness in his tone weighed heavy in the air. “Not with your real estate scams.”
I swung my legs onto the floor and sat up straight. “What does my career have to do with you?”
He grunted, or maybe that was a chuckle, I couldn’t tell. “It amazes me that as smart as you are, your self-centeredness blinds you to the world around you.”
My eyes narrowed.
“I can’t run for office because what you’re doing is a crime,” he explained. “I can’t run for office because there is no doubt in my mind that just a bit of opposition research will lead to the discovery of what you’ve been doing.”
With my hand, I swatted his words away. “I told you before that even if what Simon is doing is a crime, it’s a victimless one. And no one will ever be coming after me.”
This time I was sure he chuckled, but there was only bitterness in the sound.
“I’m serious,” I said. “I truly don’t get why you think my career will impact you. That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Let me paint the picture for you. I’m running for office and the other person wants to win. So they hire the best opposition research firms, who search for everything they can on me, but they’ll find nothing. Because I’ve lived my life, since I was ten, so that I could run for political office one day. When they can’t find anything on me, do you think they’ll stop? No, they’ll go to the woman I’ve been living with, the woman I want to marry.”
I inhaled. Even though we hadn’t spoken specifically about getting engaged, we’d often talked about being married. From the beginning, both of us saw our future together.
He continued, “So they’ll investigate you, and because they’re good, they’ll find what they’re looking for. And when they find that, do you think they’ll stop with you? No, they’ll come right back to me because you were committing a crime while living with me. And I knew and did nothing.”
“Okay.” I held up my hand and moved to the edge of the couch. “You’re doing too much right now, Ethan. This sounds more like a script for a B movie than real life. But let’s just say what you’re telling me is true. If someone were to find out about what Simon and I are doing, all we have to say is you didn’t know.”
His eyebrows rose and he stared at me for so long. “I never noticed this about you before.” I frowned before he added, “Lying comes so naturally to you.”
My frown deepened. “There’s no reason for you to call me a liar,” I snapped.
“Well, would it be better,” he said, his voice still steady, “if I called you a cheat? Or are you fine with me just calling you a criminal?”
His words surprised me because this was not the way Ethan and I operated. We were always calm and collected when we spoke to each other, always with respect.
This was so new to me, and my first instinct was to jump up, fight back, and call him every name I could think of. But that would do nothing except separate us. So I would be the grown one here.
I swallowed my rising anger. “Let’s say what you’re telling me is true—”
“It is.”
“Then if anyone ever comes for me—and that’s not going to happen—I’ll just get on television and show Houston how Simon and I have helped the poor. How we’ve done what the city should have been doing. Can you imagine?” I said. This was something I just thought of, but as I talked it out, I could imagine what a news conference would look like and what it would do. “I can have some of the people we’ve helped standing up there with me. People like Mrs. Lyman and her little girls. By the time I finish, Ethan, forget about the city council. They’ll be asking you to run for mayor.”
