When the man I loved told me he was going to destroy the woman who had once saved my life, he smiled as if he were talking about winning a football pool.
Chapter 3
Ryan agreed to meet me Monday evening.
We chose a diner halfway between our apartments, the sort of old neighborhood place with cracked vinyl booths and waitresses who called everyone honey.
He arrived ten minutes late.
He looked tired but not broken. For some reason that surprised me. Part of me had imagined him as devastated as I was.
He slid into the booth.
“So,” he said, “have you come to your senses?”
That sentence killed the last bit of hope I had carried into the restaurant.
“I need you to answer something.”
He sighed. “Here we go.”
“When you started dating me, did Rachel have anything to do with it?”
His face did not change.
But he looked away.
That was enough.
My heart began pounding.
“Ryan.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Look at me.”
He did.
“Did you approach me because I was close to Rachel?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why did you keep asking me about her work? Why did you ask me to help with your promotion? Why did you get so furious when she didn’t give you the job you wanted?”
His eyes hardened. “I earned that promotion.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He leaned back and crossed his arms.
“You really want to do this?”
“Yes.”
“You want to take eighteen months and make them ugly because your precious Rachel told you to?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.”
“Sure.”
“She actually told me not to rewrite everything.”
That seemed to surprise him.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
The waitress approached with two menus. Ryan waved her away. She took one look at our faces and wisely disappeared.
I lowered my voice. “When you met me, did you know who I worked for?”
“Yes.”
“Did that make you interested in me?”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Ryan.”
“Why hide it anymore?”
I stopped breathing.
He looked directly at me.
“Yeah. At first, you were useful.”
The diner seemed to go silent, though I could still hear silverware, a coffee machine, and an old Motown song playing somewhere behind the counter.
“Useful.”
“You had access.”
“To Rachel?”
“To her. To the family. To information.”
I felt nauseated.
“You dated me for information?”
“At first.”
I stared at him.
He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You weren’t exactly suffering.”
I could barely speak. “What does that mean?”
“I took you places. I paid for dinners. I treated you well.”
“Because you were using me.”
“I said at first.”
“So when did it change?”
He hesitated.
I waited.
He could not answer.
That hurt more than everything else.
I thought about our first date at a little Italian restaurant near Rittenhouse Square. He had seemed nervous. He had reached across the table and touched my hand. I had gone home smiling like an idiot.
I thought about Christmas, when he bought me a watch and told me he had never felt this comfortable with anyone.
I thought about the night I finally told him the full story of being thrown out by my family, including details I rarely spoke about. He held me while I cried.
Had he been calculating even then?
“Was the promotion part of it?” I asked.
He looked irritated now, as though I had become an inconvenience.
“I figured knowing you might help.”
“Knowing me.”
“Dating you. Whatever.”
I swallowed.
“And when it didn’t?”
“I realized Rachel wasn’t going to do me any favors.”
“Because she was being ethical.”
“Oh, please.”
“She promoted you later.”
“To a worse position.”
“You told me you liked that position.”
“I told you a lot of things.”
That sentence broke something in me.
I looked down at the table.
Ryan leaned forward. “Daniel, I did care about you.”
“Did?”
“I do.”
“No. You don’t.”
“You don’t get to tell me how I feel.”
“You wanted me to quit my job and cut off the person who has been family to me for thirteen years.”
“Because she destroyed my career.”
“Because you wanted me isolated.”
He scoffed.
The truth came together so cleanly that I wondered how I had missed it.
If I quit my job, I would lose financial security.
If I cut off Rachel, I would lose my closest friend.
And then Ryan would be the center of my world.
A man who had first entered my life because he believed I could be useful.
I looked at him and said, “You thought I belonged to you.”
Something changed in his face.
Maybe he realized there was no way back.
His voice turned cold.
“I thought you understood where your interests were.”
“My interests?”
“You had a chance to build a life with me instead of spending your days carrying Rachel Ashford’s briefcase.”
“I’m her executive assistant.”
“You’re a glorified chauffeur.”
I flinched.
He noticed.
And smiled.
Then he said the cruelest thing he had ever said to me.
“You really thought somebody like me would have looked twice at somebody like you if you weren’t connected to that family?”
For a second, I was nineteen again.
Standing in my parents’ hallway.
My father refusing to look at me.
My mother asking where she had gone wrong.
Every ugly belief I had spent years learning to reject came rushing back.
Unworthy.
Disposable.
Embarrassing.
Something to be ashamed of.
Ryan kept talking, but I no longer heard most of it.
Then another memory surfaced.
Rachel sitting cross-legged on the floor of her college apartment while I cried because I had nowhere to go.
“You can stay here as long as you need,” she had said.
No judgment.
No bargain.
No price.
I stood.
Ryan frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No.”
“Daniel, sit down.”
“No.”
People in nearby booths were beginning to glance over.
I did not care.
“You want to know the difference between you and Rachel?” I asked. “When I had nothing, she helped me because she loved me. When you met me, you saw what you could get.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s exactly fair.”
I pulled his apartment key from my key ring and placed it on the table.
His face changed.
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic.”
“So that’s it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to throw everything away?”
“There was never an everything.”
His eyes flashed.
“You’ll regret this.”
I picked up my coat.
For years, I had imagined that if someone abandoned me again, it would destroy me.
But walking away from Ryan did not feel like abandonment.
It felt like finally refusing to abandon myself.
I left him sitting beneath the yellow diner lights.
Outside, the September air was cool. Traffic moved steadily along the avenue, and somewhere nearby a dog barked behind a fence.
I stood beside my car with shaking hands.
Then I called Rachel.
She answered on the second ring.
“Hey.”
I tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
Her voice softened. “Daniel?”
“He used me.”
Silence.
Then, “Where are you?”
“Outside the diner on Lancaster.”
“Stay there.”
“No, I can drive.”
“You’re crying.”
I touched my face and realized she was right.
“Come to my apartment,” she said. “I’ll put coffee on.”
“It’s eight at night.”
“Then I’ll put bourbon in the coffee.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
And for the first time in three days, I knew I was going to survive.
