SWNOVELS Just Pretending: Chapter 28
I headed to the gym after a restless night in my bed at the apartment. I couldn’t get the image of Harleigh out of my head. I don’t think I had ever seen such pain on someone’s face as I had seen on hers the night before.
She had reached out, and I slapped her offer away as if she were presenting me with poison. I had never intended on hurting her. I couldn’t have taken her up on her offer. I would have been lost to all reason if I had stayed with her.
She offered me her warmth and I retreated to cold steel and concrete. If I had stayed I wouldn’t have been able to leave. There wouldn’t be a year and a day, there would be us. And would I expect more than she was willing to give? She deserved better than that, than me, than opportunistic physical pleasure. I shook my head. I should have been more careful with her this past year. She was a delicate, sensitive woman, and she deserved a man who would cherish her properly.
We had an agreement, and I let emotions trickle in and blur the edges. I should be glad I only crossed the line a few times. But in retrospect, every time I let Harleigh get close emotionally and especially physically, had been one time too many. I knew better, nothing should ever have happened between us.
Every time I thought that she was a grown woman and had understood the consequences of her actions I found myself running harder as if I could outrun my bad decisions. I would never be able to run away from the choices I made. I would never forget them either. I kept reviewing the same issues over and over again like my cognitive abilities were stuck in a loop. The irony was not lost on me that I would never get anywhere as long as I only ran on a treadmill.
I dripped with sweat by the time I had pounded out my miles. I needed a shower and to get over to the house to meet the movers.
“Mr. Hopper?” a tall man in overalls with the moving company emblazoned across the back stepped up to me as I parked around the back of the house about an hour later.
“Yes, have you been waiting long?”
“No sir, we only just arrived,” he said.
“Good, good. Follow me, and I’ll show you the rooms you’ll be packing and moving out today.”
I led the man and his two-man crew in through the back door. “My office is on the third floor, and the bedroom is on the second,” I said as we entered the kitchen. “This is Hannah. She’ll be able to help you if you have any questions. And Jessie is down that short hall. She runs the house, so if you need runners or anything.” I pointed in the direction of Jessie’s office.
I led the men through the back hall and pointed to the back stairs. “Servant stairs, they are steep. You may find it easier to bring the larger pieces down the main stairs.” I walked them into the front of the house and took them up the front stairs.
On the second floor, I opened the door to my bedroom. “Everything in this room except the bed goes. All personal effects from the bathroom as well. Leave the towels.”
Harleigh had put an effort into making the bathroom décor acceptable. I wasn’t about to steal her towels. Besides, the sun-gold towels wouldn’t go with my bathroom at the apartment.
After the men had a chance to look into the bathroom and the dressing room I led them up to the third-floor office that I had taken over.
“Everything in here, except the shelves, they’re built-in. Once this room is cleared out. You’ll need to pull the large desk and chairs from that room”— I pointed at a closed door— “back into here.”
The taller man opened the door and looked around. “Storage?”
“That’s what it became when I moved my stuff in.”
He nodded. “When you say not the shelves, do you mean the contents as well?”
I scanned over the shelves. I had cleared away a few shelves for my reference books, but the rest had all belonged to the old man. I didn’t know if Harleigh would find value in anything on those shelves. Jessie had been right, the business had been the old man’s life. There was no separating his life from his work, it was all the same. The contents of those shelves would benefit me in business before they would serve Harleigh any purpose.
“Pack the contents,” I said.
The men followed me down the back stairs.
“You have the address of the apartment where everything is going after you are done here?” I asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Great. I’ll make sure that Jessie and Hannah know everything, so be sure to ask them. I need to head out and get space at the apartment ready so you can bring everything in.”
“Devin.” Harleigh stood in the middle of the kitchen. She looked as if she had just walked in the door.
I stopped and the movers walked past me and out the door, their task set for the morning.
She watched them leave before she said anything else. “What’s going on?”
“Movers,” I said stupidly.
“I get that. But why?” She blinked rapidly several times.
Why was she getting upset and starting to cry? She knew this was going to happen, and she knew it was going to happen on this date. There was no reason for me to stay any longer than necessary.
“Our year is up,” I said.
“I’m aware of that Devin. But we had a year and a day, remember? Today is our anniversary. How could you do this to me today?” She gestured in the direction of the truck.
“It’s when they were available.”
She sighed and pursed her lips. Her cheeks turned pink, and not with an embarrassed flush. She was livid. It only made sense that on the last day of our marriage I would piss her off.
“I had hoped we would have been able to go out to dinner. Celebrate our accomplishments, discuss the future,” she said through clenched teeth. “Eat cake.”
“That’s not going to happen, Harleigh. There will be no cake. We both know it.”
The moving crew cut through the kitchen with their arms full of boxes and packing materials. We both stopped talking and stepped aside, waiting for the men to leave the area before we began hissing at each other again.
“You couldn’t even pretend to be married until tomorrow?”
“I’ll sleep here if that makes you feel any better. But what difference is that going to make?” I asked.
I fished in my pocket and pulled out my key ring. I worked the house key from the loop. I stared at it before handing it out to her. That key had been in my possession since the old mad gave it to me when I had moved in with him and Harleigh’s mom after my mother had died. Handing over that key officially ended any connection I had to the old man’s family.
“I won’t tell anyone we didn’t make it ‘and a day’ if you won’t. I’ll take care of handling the paperwork. I know you’ve already contacted McGrady to handle your part of the divorce. I want to make sure that all properties and funds are properly accounted for.”
“Don’t you trust McGrady?” she bit out.
“More like I don’t trust the old man. I’ve already learned of assets that your father had not disclosed. How many other properties are hidden in the paperwork?”
Her expression darkened. “You’re making sure I am properly screwed.”
“I’m not going to cheat you Harleigh. I want to make sure you are getting everything you properly deserve. If I left you with only what your father left you, then I’d be screwing you. I’m doing you a favor. I’m taking care of you, believe it or not.”
She glared at me through tears. Her chest heaved with unrestrained breaths. She was turning this into too much of an ordeal. We had both known before we signed any documents that bound us together that this was a temporary situation.
Her silence felt like a gut punch. I could handle hysterics and melodramatic sobbing, but her quiet rage let me fill in the silence with everything I possibly did wrong in the past year.
“You never even wanted to try, did you?” she asked in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear her.
“What are you talking about? We had an arrangement, we have met the terms of the arrangement. Now we both get what rightfully should have been handed to us without this trial. The only person screwing with us is your late father.”
“You’re a coward, Devin Hopper. You have no soul, and I weep for your lack of empathy and emotions.”
I stared at her. It felt as if she was cursing me for the rest of my days and for all generations that followed after. I couldn’t move, or try to stop her. Something in her words, her expression, and my guilt made me think I had earned her curse. I deserved it.
I had won my business. I had won the house for her. But I was walking away from this year a loser, and doubly so because I couldn’t quite articulate exactly what I was losing.
“Get out of my house. Leave right now.” She closed her eyes and turned from me.
I started to walk away.
“You know Devin…”
I froze at her words. Was I waiting for her to say something different that would change what had happened between us?
“I think the thing that hurts the most, is that I had thought that we at least had become friends this past year. It’s clear that I am wrong about that. That I was wrong about everything when it came to you.”
I started to reach out to her. I hated that this is what we had come to. That I was the cause of her pain. I don’t know why I had thought this transition would have gone smoothly. Not that I expected Harleigh to smile as I walked out the door, but I hadn’t expected her dark vitriol.