Sweet Little Lies (22 page)

A
dmitting you were a damn fool and dead wrong was a long, arduous process. Figuring out why you are the way you are and wondering how to repair it …equally difficult. Having to face up to your own flaws and let go of the past was gruel-ing. The past few weeks, I had been working on the rehabilitation of Christina. I knew that I had to fix me before I could face Steven. Even admitting to myself that I wanted Steven in a white-dress-and-forever kind of way was a huge step.

Why it took so long for me to figure out that I kept punishing the next man for what the ex-man did, was puzzling. Overall I was an intelligent, capable woman. But for some reason when it came to my relationships with men, I was a little slow on the uptake.

So I came up with a plan. There were four things I wanted to do before showing up naked on Steven’s doorstep and begging him to take me back. One was to clear his name—done.

The second was to spend some time alone getting my head right—working on it.

The third was to let him know what I was thinking. So every day at some point, I wrote him a letter. Technically, I typed him an e-mail. Sometimes they were two lines, sometimes they were pages and pages. Some days I just apologized, others I just shared a moment of my day with him. Some days they were sweet and filled with lighthearted memories. Some nights they were steamy and full of detailed longings. I told him he didn’t have to write back. It was enough to get the read receipt and know that he opened them.

The first letter I sent he didn’t open for three whole days. I was so terrified of getting that delivery failure notification showing that he deleted it without opening. That was a rough three days. When that read receipt finally came back, I danced. I mean I boogied. Because at least he was listening (reading—you know what I mean). By the sixth letter he was opening them immediately. Sometimes from his BlackBerry, when I knew him to be in class. I imagined him pausing in midlecture to read my words, and I smiled.

This past week he had begun to send back short answers.
Thanks for this. I remember.
And my favorite:
Wow.

The fourth thing I wanted to do was to bury the past for once and for all. I felt I had closure with Perry; he had to go live his truth. I even felt I had closure with Jay /David; he didn’t know how to live in truth. Today I was meeting with Cedric for lunch. He was the fiancé who had married his college sweetheart in the middle of our engagement and didn’t tell me until three weeks before our wedding date. He was the last piece of the Christina doomed-engagement puzzle I had to solve so I could relax, relate, release, and get on with my life.

Cedric walked into the restaurant looking nervous as hell. You know how you see one of your exes and suddenly remember all the good things about him? Yeah, this wasn’t that. I sat and watched Cedric weave his way toward me and thought to myself,
What was I thinking?
Not that Cedric wasn’t okay to look at. He was. He was your garden-variety, middle-class boy
next door. No sparks or tingles, just your basic nice-guy vibe. But now, I honestly could not remember why I agreed to marry him in the first place. I could not remember what the spark was between us. Had there ever been one?

When I stood up to give him a hug, he was visibly startled before he returned the squeeze lightly. Then I remembered that the last time I saw him, I chucked a crystal vase at his head. He hadn’t ducked fast enough. I touched the scar on the right side of his forehead with my finger. With a slightly rueful grin, I apologized.“Sorry about that, Ced.”

“Ah, Christina.” He sighed.“I can’t say I didn’t deserve it.”

“True. Have a seat.” Poor thing, he had the look of a man who expected a vase to be chucked at him at any moment. “You look well, Ced.”

“You look amazing, Christina, and you’re still the only person in the world who calls me Ced.” He smiled for the first time.

“I’m sorry, do you only go by Cedric now?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. It’s a good memory.”

“We did have one or two,” I agreed.

“Maybe a few more than that.”

I nodded.“How’s Vanessa?”

“She’s great. Nervous about me coming here today.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.“She thinks you want me back.”

“Ha!” I threw back my head and had a good long chuckle at that. Picture that! “I’m sorry, no offense. But that’s absolutely the last thing on my mind. Did you have kids?”

“Four.”

He had been busy.“Four! Wow, okay then.”

The waiter came around and inquired if we were ready to order. I considered before replying, “Just an iced tea for now, please.”

“I’ll have the same.”

“So Ced, I’ll get straight to the point. I don’t want you
back, but I’m kind of trying to get closure on a few things. So I’m hoping you can help me out.”

“Sure, whatever I can do.”

“Well, I do want you to explain. Why her and not me?” That was the one question I probably should have asked years ago but never did.

He leaned back heavily in his chair and let out a puff of air. “Wow. I did not see that one coming.That’s it? That’s what you want to know? After all this time?”

“Yes.That’s it.”

“Can I be really honest with you here?”

“Of course.”

“I mean honest and not get something lethal thrown at me?”

I laughed.“I’ve grown a little bit. I tend not to assault people physically these days. I do my damage with words. But please feel free to speak your mind.That’s why I came.”

He took a deep breath. “You were my ideal, Christina. When I approached you on campus, I never thought I could get a woman like you. I was swinging for the fences.”

“A woman like me?”

“Classy, beautiful, ambitious, sophisticated, sexy, smart.”

“I was all that, huh?” So far, so good.

“You were, still are. But, Christina, you are like a force of nature.”

“Uh …”That did not sound good.

“Like a tornado. It was go, go, go. Full steam ahead. You knew what you wanted, you put the pieces where you wanted and rolled forward. I was just a piece in his place. I mean, I would have died if you left me—but I knew if I left, you’d replace me with someone else and keep rolling.”

“Oh.” I kinda had done exactly that.

“I wanted someone who thought I was
that
guy. That irreplaceable force of nature in her life. I wanted to be the guy you couldn’t live without, couldn’t imagine not being in your world.
Not just that guy who fit neatly there. When I ran into Vanessa that weekend, I saw it in her eyes. I was that guy for her.”

“Aw, she got you with the you’re-the-only-one-for-me look,” I teased.

He smiled.“She really did. As sexy and hot as you were, you never looked at me like that, and I knew you never would.”

“So it was more important for you to feel wanted than to want.”

“Exactly. Eventually, I felt the same for Vanessa as she felt for me, but yes. Having someone tell you they knew they’d never be as happy with anyone else as they were just thinking about you … that’s some seductive stuff there.”

“Mmm, pretty irresistible, actually.” I nodded.

It made perfect sense. And yet again, I had to realize my own culpability in a relationship collapse. The waiter brought the tea and we made small talk for a few minutes, but I had what I needed.

As we hugged good-bye, I told him, “You tell Vanessa she got a good one. One of the very best.”

“Forgiven?”

“Nothing to forgive.”

He sighed as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoul-ders.“You were one of the great regrets of my life.”

I patted his shoulder.“Regret no more. You absolutely did the right thing.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“Thank you for dumping me.”

We snickered.“Take care, Ced.”

I walked away feeling a bit lighter myself. Climbing into the car, I had one last order of business.

I scrolled through my contact list and hit DIAL.

“Hello?”

“Brandon?”

“Christina?!” He was shocked to hear from me.

“I worked out a little deal. The charges against you and
Rita are being dropped.” I had spoken to the Js. They were ready to put the whole thing behind us and get on with the business of news.Without them, the authorities decided to not pursue the case. They elected to let me handle it as I saw fit. I was ready to put it to rest myself.

Brandon was stunned.“Why would you do that?”

“I owed you…sort of.”

He was silent.

“It’s okay. We really don’t have to go into a whole lot of who did what to who. I was a little wrapped up in me and you suffered for it and I never saw it. So while you were real shady, I get it. I apologize. I sincerely do.”

“And I apologize.”

“Do you think we can call it even?”

“I would say we’re more than that,” he said quietly.

“Okay. Go live your life and, Brandon, for the love of God—either commit to Rita or cut her loose.”

He laughed. “I hear you. You gonna take your own advice?”

I sighed.“I’m going to try. I’m really going to try. Brandon, good luck to you.” I hung up. Neither Brandon nor Rita would work at VNN anymore, but I felt it only fair to clean the slate.

I felt like Michael Corleone in
The Godfather
on the day of his nephew’s christening:“Today I settled all family business.”

It took me a little while, but I finally got it. No more little lies, no more evasion. It was time I grew up and took responsibility for what happened before and whatever was coming next.

I realized now that I had seen what I wanted to see in Cedric, in Perry, in Jay /David, and not much more. I saw them as a means to an end that I had planned out in my head. Chances were, they didn’t show me much because I wasn’t really looking for it. I wanted someone to fill a particular role,
and they filled it for as long as they could. I never really took the time to see who they were.

Steven, on the other hand, had been the same person since the day I met him. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it before. He was the one who stayed true to himself and true to me through thick and thin. He didn’t waver, he didn’t change, just steadfastly stood beside me. I wasn’t sure what he saw in me. I had ducked, dodged, waffled, and whiffed ever since the airplane to New York.

He asked me to believe in him, but I hadn’t believed in anything. He was right—I played the victim and acted like my whole life had happened to me instead of owning my role. Well, I was ready to own it. What the hell was I thinking? Men like that don’t come around too often, and he had come my way twice. And men like that don’t wait around forever.

Long story short, if I couldn’t make it work with someone who was as good and true as Steven, I couldn’t make it work with anybody. I was ready to try. I was ready to grovel if need be. Now I was truly ready to move forward, and I knew exactly what I was putting in today’s letter to Steven.

O
kay, she got me. I had to admit. She was smart. She knew that showing up at my doorstep or calling would have gotten her a door slammed in her face or a dial tone. So instead, she snuck in on my weak side. She appealed to the literary romantic, the professor in me. She wrote me letters. A single letter every day. The very first letter was an apology. An apology for not being what I needed her to be. She vowed to do better in the future. She used the phrase “plan to be worthy of the love you gave unselfishly.”

After that, I was hooked. I was addicted to these letters from Christina. I knew what she was doing. She was wooing me. This was a good old-fashioned (albeit gender-reversed) woo. It was flattering. Some of the letters were sweet, some sad, some sexy, but on the whole seductive. She always did know how to draw me in. Mentally and physically.

Each word was a balm to my bruised little ego and restored some of my spirit. Before receiving the first letter, I truly wondered if she was capable of the depth of emotion and steadfastness
I needed. And I really didn’t think I was asking for much. But her inability to believe in me and stand beside me hurt more than I would have believed possible. But I was also tired of being angry and feeling betrayed. That kind of emotional outrage is exhausting. Battling that sense of loss was harder to deal with than the threat of losing my profession and reputation. Those were things I always knew I could rebuild. Christina, for all her faults, was one of a kind and not easily replaced.

She caught me with the first letter and drew me in closer with every one since. With each letter, I felt renewed and almost as if I was falling in love with a brand-new person. I wanted to believe; I really did. There was always that thing between Christina and me that was undeniable.

But it wasn’t until her letter this past Tuesday that I knew. I knew it wasn’t a matter of “if” but “when.” Our time was coming. I was perfectly comfortable letting her set the pace. My days of pushing Christina to take the next step were over. I had, at the very least, learned that lesson.

The past weeks had been one teachable moment after an-other. After Christina’s piece clearing me aired on VNN, things moved very quickly. I dissolved Chi-Wind Foundation and reopened it as The Williams Research Foundation. Now that my name was golden again, might as well maximize the brand. I hired Stefani’s husband, Marcus, as the chief operating officer and brought on Betsy Fine herself as the government liaison. There would be no more getting over on Professor Williams.

We would be kicking off a study testing existing railroad beds (foundation under the tracks) for their capacity to carry high-speed trains and move them quickly. I was excited and couldn’t wait to share the news with Christina. I missed talking to her, I missed being around her, I missed her cooking, I missed her touch. But I was willing to move at her pace.

I popped open my laptop to reread Tuesday’s letter, which
was my personal favorite so far. It had a tone that was so authentically Christina, I could hear her as if she were in the room reading the words aloud to me.

It was the first time she’d told me what the
T
stood for. I took it as a sign that she was ready to let me in.Tempest was an apt name for her. Christina was a storm unto herself. I was curious to see what her next move would be. Hitting the REPLY button, I typed quickly and hit SEND. I sent back two words. “I’m ready.”