Lethal Wedding, page 2
"Really?"
"I'm sorry," I say, taking a deep breath. "I know that I fucked up. I should have never suggested that we break up. But I tried to call you so many times afterward…"
I stand here next to her and wait for the cashier to run her credit card and for her to enter her pin number.
"I'm really sorry about how everything turned out," Aurora says when we get outside.
The rush of the traffic startles me for a moment. I have been in Kentucky for too long, I decide.
"So is this it?" I ask.
She shrugs.
"Do you not wanna talk about this anymore?"
She shrugs again.
Aurora puts the weight of her body on the back of her foot as if she's about to spin and walk away, but something stops her.
"What do you want to happen?" she asks.
"I want you back," I say without missing a beat. "I am really sorry about everything, especially about missing your graduation. I love you, Aurora. I miss you more than you could ever imagine. I need you back in my life."
Big fat tears start to well up in her eyes. Her face contorts as she tries to push them away.
Aurora covers her mouth with her hand and shakes her head mumbling, "No, no, no."
I reach over and put my arm around her, but she pushes me away.
"No, I can't," she says.
"Why not?" I whisper.
It feels like there's something that she is not telling me.
But the harder I push, the further away she gets.
"I have to go," she says, wiping her cheeks. "I can't see you again, Henry. Too much has happened."
2
Henry
When she walks away, she takes my ability to breathe.
Is this what it feels like to die?
Folding in half, I wrap my hands around my knees and start to sob, not caring who can hear me.
I don't know how long I stay there. Eventually, I force myself up to my feet. I know that I'm pathetic, but with my heart shattering into a million little pieces, how should I act?
Should I just pretend that I'm fine?
Should I punch someone in the face?
Is that what a better man would do?
No, the only way out is to go through the pain, not around it, not over it, just directly through it. I know that, but that doesn't make it any easier.
I want to follow Aurora again.
I want to force her to tell me what happened.
I want to force her to take me back.
But sometimes, you reach this point and you just know that you can't push the other person any further.
I know her enough to know that what she said back there is her truth. The only way that I can find out what is really going on is by letting some time pass and to heal a little bit.
When I first got to New York and I saw her at her apartment and I followed her to that bookstore, I didn't want to approach her because I didn't want the last conversation that we had to be a breakup.
Unfortunately, I didn't listen to my own advice.
Now, we didn't just break up over the phone, she also dumped me in real life.
There goes another regret to add to that gigantic pile of regrets that is my life.
I pick up my phone and scroll through social media. When that's not enough of a distraction, I open the news app. Hours pass and I don't feel any better, but I do become too numb to process anything bad in any real way.
Then my phone rings. His name pops up on the screen: Jackie.
I'm tempted to let it go to voicemail, but I answer anyway. After a brief hello, I tell him that I'm actually in the city if he wants to get a drink.
Jackie Peterson is a friend of mine from Montauk. He was a year behind me in school and we weren't that close until after graduation.
It takes Jackie an hour to get to the bar I suggest and I'm already on my third glass of scotch.
"I don't drink anymore," he says, taking the seat next to me.
I raise my eyebrows at that revelation.
Jackie is the kind of guy who was always down for a good time.
"What are you talking about?" I ask.
He shrugs and orders a Coke with a wedge of lemon.
"Is it because you're working?" I ask.
"Well, I'm not supposed to drink on the job, but no it's not because of that. I quit drinking, and everything else, 375 days ago.” He laughs.
"Wow, that's kind of a precise number."
"Yeah, I don't miss it one bit," he says, his voice drenched in sarcasm.
"Uh-huh.” I nod.
"I'm just kidding," he adds. "In reality, you kind of count the days when it's the only thing you can think of when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night and every other waking moment of the fucking day."
I look down at my glass and finish it quickly so as not to tempt him anymore. After handing the bartender my credit card, I invite Jackie for a cup of coffee.
"It's nice to see you again," Jackie says, taking a sip of his espresso at the shop on the corner. "What are you doing these days?"
"Working as a reporter," I say with a shrug. "I'm actually in town just for one day and I have to go back to Kentucky."
"Oh, really?" he asks. "I had no idea."
I expect him to ask me more about the type of stories that I'm working on, but when our eyes meet, I can see that he has something else on his mind.
Jackie is a tall guy with dark thick hair and broad shoulders and he can be quite charming and attractive, and the worst part is that he knows it.
He gives me a crooked smile and a wink.
"What is that?" I ask, sitting back in the big leather chair.
"Well, I've heard the rumors," he says slowly, savoring each word.
"What are you talking about?"
"About Aurora Penelope Tate," he says, enunciating each consonant in her name.
"I had no idea that you were so up on the gossip.” I smile.
"Well, you know how it is, one of your old high school buddies starts dating an heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune and people start talking."
"There's nothing really to talk about," I say with a sigh. "We broke up."
"I'm sorry to hear that," he says, "but you knew that was going to happen, right?"
I shrug.
"Seriously?"
"Yes, this is the face of a man who knew that things weren't going to work out," I say.
"Okay, maybe not, but you didn't really expect to marry her, did you?"
His question takes me by surprise.
I stare at him, unsure as to how to react.
"Henry, come on man, tell me that you were just having a good time."
"I can't," I say, shaking my head. "That's the thing. Maybe I'm just an idiot but yes, I did think that we were going to end up together."
"No shit! Are you serious? I mean, were you two that serious?"
I give him a slight nod and look down into the blackness of my cup.
"That's why I'm in New York," I say. "I mean, we officially broke up earlier, but I flew all the way back here to try to make things right and she didn't want to hear it."
"Wow, I'm such an asshole," Jackie says, sitting back against his chair.
"Yes, you are."
"I really didn't mean to say any of –”
"Don't worry about it," I interrupt him.
"I'm-"
"Listen, let's just drop it. I don't really want to talk about it."
"I'm really sorry about this, man," Jackie says, putting his hand on my knee.
"Don't worry about it," I mumble.
I appreciate his support, but I'm a bit embarrassed at the same time.
Jackie and I aren't the types of friends to talk about anything serious that's going on in our lives. I feel dumb telling him all about any of this.
Also, I don't want him running back home and blabbing to everyone that we both know about how pathetic I am.
"That's really fucked up, man," Jackie says, finishing his coffee. "I wonder if that had anything to do with what happened to her dad."
I look up at him, my ears starting to buzz.
"What are you talking about?" I ask.
"Well, it was all over the news."
"What was?"
"I thought that you knew."
"No, I don't fucking know," I snap.
"Her dad got arrested," Jackie says. "They even had a perp walk for him."
I stare at him, dumbfounded.
"Perpetrator walk?" I ask.
"Yeah, you know, when the cops specifically call the media and walk the accused past the press so everyone can get those pictures and videos of him in handcuffs with his head hanging low."
"Yes, I know what a perp walk is," I say, urging him to continue. "What was he arrested for?"
"That I'm not so sure about," Jackie says. "Insider trading, I think. Isn't that the only thing that the rich elite ever get arrested for?"
I shake my head, uncertain as to what to think.
"There's more."
"What are you talking about?" I ask.
"Well, the thing is that right after the arrest, he had a heart attack. While in custody."
3
Aurora
I miss him more than I ever thought I would.
No, that's not entirely true. I knew that it would hurt. I just didn't realize it would hurt this much.
But we got so used to being apart.
It's not like we lived together and were with each other every single day. Still, my heart aches for Henry.
I think about him all the time, almost every minute of the day, and especially when I should be thinking about something else.
My father is in the hospital.
My father has been arrested.
My father has had a heart attack.
Yet all I can think about is Henry.
I want to see him and I want him to hold me and promise that everything is going to be alright.
When we first broke up, I waited for him to call me back. I wanted him to fix everything and to make everything better.
But he didn't.
He made me wait.
That made me angry.
When he finally called, texted, and called again, I didn't write back, not because I didn't want to but because I wanted him to suffer as much as I did.
And then something changed. After some time had passed, I couldn't bring myself to call him back even though I wanted to more than anything.
Each hour is just a blur of the one before.
I'm angry and mad and sad all at the same time.
I have no control over anything that's going on in my life.
I'm lost and anything that I try to do is not enough.
At the hospital, minutes and hours tick by at an excruciatingly slow pace. It doesn't help that my mother is omnipresent, like some sort of malevolent God who watches you all the time, waiting for you to screw up.
Nothing I have ever done has ever been good enough and that has never been clearer than it is now.
She's taking her anger out on me and there is only so much I can take. The one time that I escape for a casual walk down the street, and pop into a bookstore, to find something to take my mind off my shitty, shitty life, I run into him.
Henry has been following me.
He doesn't hide this fact.
He wants me to know.
A big part of me is happy, overjoyed even, to see him. I have missed him and just being in his presence is overwhelming.
Henry is as tall and gorgeous as ever, with his thick black curls and broad shoulders and that trustworthy Roman nose and piercing eyes.
He is one of the few guys in New York City who doesn't seem to know quite how attractive he is and the fact that he doesn't know makes him even more so.
He's humble in that way that people who are truly humble are, without pretense and without putting on airs.
When he corners me in one of the aisles, it takes everything within me not to run into his arms. I want to tell him that I forgive him and I want him to make everything better.
But I can't.
I can't do anything until I figure out what's going on with my father.
I'm not saying that on my mother's request. Her audacity in asking me to marry a man that I not only loathe but also despise is ridiculous, but I might have to play the game a little bit if I want to help my father out of whatever mess he’d gotten himself into.
I know that I don't have to do that and maybe it's not even my place, but whose place is it?
I love my father, despite all of his shortcomings, and I want to help him in any way that I can.
Getting back together with Henry at this point will only complicate things.
There's something else, too.
The other thing that I can't bring myself to say out loud is the fact that if I were to get back together with Henry, I would have to tell him about Franklin Parks.
Franklin is not only Henry's boss, but he's also the person who can help my father with his charges and help Tate Media get over this little bump in the road.
I don't know the details of any of this and I need to guard what I do know carefully. Henry does work for him and though I don't think he would betray me, the less that he knows the better.
When I think about Franklin, my chest tightens.
He is Henry's boss and he's the one who sent him away. He told me that he did it to break us up, but he framed it as a joke.
Was it, or did he just say it to make me feel bad?
Or both?
As I walk away from him down a crowded New York street, I'm surrounded by a sea of people and I feel all alone.
I turn left and head toward Central Park.
I need to go somewhere where I can clear my head.
I need some nature in my life to help some of this make sense.
A few hours later, I get back to the hospital and spot an attorney sitting next to my mother.
4
Aurora
My mother, who has always been thin and trim, now looks frail and at least twenty years older than she really is.
She has been staying at the hospital for many days on end, only going home to shower and sleep for a few hours here and there.
Her dedication to my father is unnerving and never-ending, and I know that they have always been devoted to one another.
I admire that, but it doesn't change my complicated relationship with her.
I still have flashbacks back to that day when she showed up at my apartment and blamed me for everything that has happened to my father.
According to her, Franklin is the most powerful man in New York, if not the world, and everything that is happening right now, including the arrest and the heart attack, is my fault.
I take a deep breath as I walk down that loud linoleum floor toward the waiting area with a round collection of uncomfortable pink chairs, arranged to face the television on the other side of the wall.
The sound is off and the captions are so big that they take up half the screen. They are also about two minutes behind what the people are saying.
I watch a local reporter discuss a housefire in Staten Island, glancing at it occasionally as my mother talks to me.
She talks a lot under normal circumstances, but when she gets nervous, she talks at double her regular speed.
She gives me a brief update about my father. He is stable but the doctors are still watching his condition, whatever the hell that means.
She goes into the minutia of the medical evidence and all of the information goes in one ear and out the other. I've never been particularly good with biology and I have a D from 10th grade to prove it.
Eventually, I shift my attention to the stranger next to her, with his head buried in his phone. He's an attorney in his 50s with salt and pepper hair and the slim physique of someone who likes to work out and run a mile or two multiple times a week.
Is he the type to have a protein shake every morning and forgo all processed food? I wonder as I let my mind drift.
He introduces himself as Timothy Bradza and gives me a firm shake of his warm hand. He has a quiet demeanor that puts me at ease and I can see why my mother has retained him as counsel.
"Can you please tell my daughter what we talked about earlier?" Mom asks Timothy, looking away from me, annoyed and tapping her manicured nail on the plastic chair.
"Yes, of course," he says. "Well, to be honest with you, Aurora, the situation is quite bleak. The justice department has a strong case against your father for bribery and insider trading."
I give him a nod as if I understand what he is saying when in reality, I can barely wrap my head around it.
No, he must be wrong, I want to say. My father would never do that.
Why would he?
He's a multibillionaire who runs one of the most successful media companies in the world.
Why would he have to do anything like that?
Of course, I don't ask any of this. Instead, I just wait for him to continue.
"Also, they have numerous reports from shareholders and investors who say that they have had their retirements stolen as a result of this Ponzi scheme and, frankly, they are out for blood."
I shake my head, unwilling to believe this.
I look over at my mother, who looks just as dumbfounded.
Did she know? I ask myself.
"Is this all true?" I ask both my mother and the attorney.
She snaps her face toward mine and gets so close I can smell her minty fresh breath.
"Of course, it's not true," she hisses. "How could you even think that?"
The hairs on the back of my arms stand up.
She's so certain that she is either 100% right or 100% wrong. One thing is for sure, whatever it is that my father did or didn't do, she had to know.
Mr. Bradza's phone goes off and he excuses himself to take the call.
When we are alone, my mother moves one seat over to me.
"How dare you ask me that in front of him?" she whispers.
"What are you talking about?" I ask. "I thought he was our lawyer."
"Yes, he is, but he's also a stranger. He's not family."
