Screwed Read online

  “I ignored him. I packed all my shit into a suitcase and some trash bags and left. I didn’t say a word to him. I tossed my key to his apartment on the counter, fished his keys out his pants pocket and took mine back, and went to work.”

  Laurel frowns at me. “So then what?”

  I sigh. “This is where it gets a little…ugly. And embarrassing,” I say. “I told my—our—boss what had happened.”

  Laurel barks a laugh. “You went in and told your boss, a senator, that his wife was fucking two of his aides?”

  I nod. “Yep. What I actually said was, “So, Senator. I just walked in on Presley, your wife, fucking Landon, my fiancée…and Eileen.”

  She sputters a disbelieving laugh. “Wow. So what did he say?”

  “Not much, initially. He did the whole stressed and disappointed important guy thing, where he leaned back in his desk chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a sigh.”

  “Sounds cliché.”

  “He was kind of cliché in a lot of ways, actually. Tall, slender, perfectly coiffed blond hair, big smarmy blue eyes, Harvard Law School alumni, put on the fast track to politics by his wealthy, influential father, blah blah blah. Partner at a high-powered law firm by the time he was thirty, senator by thirty-five, all that. Handsome, wealthy, with a beautiful trophy wife and two trophy kids, a bunch of plaques and degrees and bullshit on his office wall. And a total horn dog.” I groan, scraping my hands through my hair.

  “So, I have to point out a few things, here,” I say. “Like I said, I knew Calhoun was a horn dog who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. I knew it. I knew his wife was the same—she’d slept with half of the good-looking aides in Washington, and a good many of the law students and interns. She had a thing for younger guys, apparently. But the senator and his wife had an agreement—keep it discreet, no pregnancies, no tabloid or news attention, and don’t shit where you eat. Meaning, no sleeping with your own office people. I guess that was a major part of the agreement: neither the senator nor his wife was allowed to sleep with anyone who worked for them. Anyone else was fair game, but not the interns, aides, or office workers.”

  “And Mrs. Calhoun broke that rule,” Laurel says.

  I nod. “Yep. Worse yet, she’d done so in the most dramatic way possible—she didn’t just sleep with one aide, but two. And not just that, but she’d come between me and Landon. Plus, Eileen was married too. Newly wed, the ink still wet on her marriage license, basically. So Presley had ruined not just her own marriage, but my engagement to Landon, and Eileen’s marriage, all in one fell swoop.”

  “Wow. Shitty decision making, huh?” Laurel says.

  I sigh. “Yep. But it doesn’t stop there, and the story doesn’t leave me squeaky clean, either, unfortunately.”

  Laurel blinks at me, and then shakes her head. “You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “You slept with the senator?”

  I groan. “Yeah, I did.”

  “Wow.” Laurel pauses. “Not trying to be judgmental, but…wow.”

  “Not, like, that day. I held out for…shit, like three months? The senator divorced Presley, and that was a quick, quiet, and truly savage deal, too. Being connected the way he was, Calhoun made sure she didn’t get shit. He paid her a lump-sum deal and that was it. No alimony, nothing. She didn’t get a car, the house, nothing. He got her a halfway decent Georgetown apartment, they split custody in his favor, he paid minimal child support…it was ugly. But that’s beside the point. Landon got fired, and went to work for a congresswoman—who I think he also slept with, incidentally, but again, whatever. Eileen left her husband and moved to Norway to be a diplomatic attaché. Which left only me—and he, as far as I’m aware, never did dip into the pool of women who worked for him in terms of his sexual misadventures.”

  “Except for you.”

  I nod. “Except for me.”

  “How’d that happen? I mean, you don’t strike me as that type of person, you know?” She rolls a shoulder. “Especially knowing what you did about him.”

  “I got drunk with him. The day the court finalized his divorce, he and I went out to celebrate. Which wasn’t unusual, honestly. We often had working lunches, dinners, cocktail parties that kind of thing. This time, though…it was different. We both got just…obliterated. One of only two times in my entire life I’ve ever been that drunk. I was lonely and horny since I hadn’t been with anyone since Landon, and I think even Calhoun had been holding off until his divorce was done, for whatever reason. And we just…we got drunk and stupid, and ended up in bed together.”

  Laurel eyes me. “But that’s not it, is it?”

  “It?” I ask, clarifying.

  “That’s not all that happened—you getting drunk and sleeping with your boss—and it’s not why you’re here.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Sadly, I was not that smart. I continued to sleep with him. And somehow it snowballed from sleeping together to becoming involved, openly. And then he proposed, and I accepted—”

  “What?!” Laurel shoots forward, her feet stopping the swing. “You didn’t!”

  “I did.” I shake my head. “Young, dumb, lonely, and naive, I guess. I was still in my early twenties, and delusionally idealistic. I convinced myself I would be the one to change his philandering ways. He’d be faithful to me even…though he hadn’t been to his wife and kids, blah blah blah.” I waved a hand. “So stupid. He wanted to get married right away, so I started planning. And he was…well, he was really good to me. Took me on vacations to Europe and the Caribbean, got me a nicer apartment—even got me a job with a different senator so there wouldn’t be office drama in our relationship.”

  “Let me guess…and then he wasn’t faithful.”

  “Yep. Got it in one.” I sigh for the millionth time. “He didn’t even try to be sneaky about it. I had a dentist appointment one afternoon, so I took off work in the morning, went to the dentist, and when the appointment was over I thought I’d surprise him with lunch and desk sex.”

  “And you walked in on him.”

  “With…get this…my new boss’s secretary.”

  “Wow. Not subtle, was he?”

  I laugh. “No, not really. That was the last straw for me. That was when I realized Washington was just…gross. Everyone was lying to and manipulating everyone, working solely for their own ends and using anyone they could, and everyone was sleeping with everyone else. It’s a surprisingly small town, in a way. The people who work on Capitol Hill tend to know everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business. The whole town knew Calhoun was cheating on me, and with whom. That shit goes around, you know? You discuss who’s sleeping with whom around the coffee machine.”

  “So you dumped him?”

  “I threw his ring in his face, went back to my office and told my boss I quit, there and then, on the spot. I called a moving company and had them pack my apartment and put all my shit into storage. I packed my clothes and I just…left. Washington, my job, my friends, my apartment, everything. I ended up in Chicago, and at first I got a job at a law firm, clerking. Familiar work, but I hated it.” I push the swing back into motion.

  “Then I met Craig at a coffee shop. He was the barista. We flirted while he made my coffee. This went on for months. Just flirting. Talking. He asked me out, and I accepted. He was…different. From a shitty background, lots of abuse and stuff, and ran away to the city, and was sort of just surviving on his own. Younger than me, but so, so, so amazing. Just absolutely the kindest, sweetest, funniest guy I’d ever met. Genuine to the extreme. He made you feel like you were the only person on earth. We dated for four months and then I moved in with him.”

  “Oh shit,” Laurel says. “I don’t like where this is going. There’s no way you got bamboozled by him, too. Your taste in men can’t be that bad.”

  I hesitate again. “Honestly, I wish that was it.” I stand up, pace across the barn to one of the horses and pet its nose. “Craig and I had it good
—really good. We were together for five years altogether. During that time I started the party planning business. A friend of ours wanted to throw a party for her graduation but just couldn’t make anything work, so I offered to help. I guess I did such a good job, she talked me up to our friends and someone else asked for my help. That snowballed into an event planning business. I loved it. Craig and I were barely making ends meet, but we were happy. He was a barista and a janitor, I was an event planner, and we just sort of scraped by, but we had each other and it was enough.”

  I have to stop again, gathering myself.

  “I’ve never talked about this before.” I scratch the horse on its nose, and it nudges me whenever I stop. “So, um. Craig started acting weird. Not eating much, getting cranky, taking naps—all of that was wildly out of character for him. He shaved his head randomly, and he’d always been sort of vain about his hair. He got cagey, like he was hiding something.”

  “He was cheating on you?”

  “That’s what I assumed.” I twist my hair up and then let it fall loose again, going back to the swing. “I followed him around one day, thinking I’d get to the bottom of it. Instead of going to work, he went across town, and I thought, aha, got you now, asshole. But instead of a hotel or some chick’s apartment, he went to an outpatient medical facility. A…um, cancer center.”

  Laurel’s face falls. “Ohhh. Oh no.”

  “Yeah. I went in. Found him in a chair, getting chemo.” I swallow hard. “He had cancer, and he’d never told me. He was hiding it. Hoping he could beat it. Or maybe hoping it would kill him before he had to tell me he was dying. I don’t know. We never discussed why he didn’t tell me. I just…” I blink hard. “I stared at him for a minute, and he stared back, and then sat down with him, held his hand, and…that was it. I stayed with him. Went to every round of chemo with him. Went to radiation with him. Sat next to him for every oncologist appointment, sat at his bedside while he died.”

  “Holy hell, Nova.”

  “I found out in May, and he was gone by September.”

  “Jesus.”

  I wipe at my face. “Yeah.” The memories are sad and bitter. “Two weeks after his death, after I’d cleaned out our apartment and donated his stuff and everything, I got a letter. From Craig. He wrote it before he died. It had a ring inside. He had planned on proposing, had the ring, but then he got sick, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask me to marry him when he knew he was going to die.” I lift my wrist and tap the hospital bracelet. “This is his. From his last hospital stay. He gave up treatment at the end, knew it wasn’t going to save him and he didn’t want to fight it, so he just came home, and I took care of him. That was…hell. There are no words for it. None.”

  “Nova, god. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I nod. “I really truly loved him. Like, so fucking much. I’d been waiting for him to propose. I had our wedding planned, in my head at least. I knew exactly what it would look like, everything.”

  “But you never got there.”

  “Nope.”

  “So then you went into nursing.”

  I shrug, nod. “Yeah. I couldn’t go back to Washington, had no desire to. Planning parties was a thing I’d done because I enjoyed it but somehow, without Craig, it wasn’t fun anymore. So I went back to school, at first just sort of taking random classes to see what sparked my interest. An anatomy and physiology class caught my attention, and I ended up in the nursing program.”

  “That’s the class where you met the guy who wanted to churn your butter?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, exactly. I decided I wanted to try something different. I’d always been sort of buttoned up, by the book. I only had sex with guys I was in relationships with, and then only long-term—that oops with Calhoun was an exception, and even that turned into a relationship. I kept to myself for a long, long time after Craig died. But then I was just…I don’t know. Lonely? Horny? Tired of being alone, and lonely and horny? I needed sex, but couldn’t deal with emotions. So I tried hooking up—casual sex. That guy, the butter churner guy, and a few others. There was about…I don’t know exactly…maybe two years while I was in nursing school where I was pretty promiscuous. But I just…I don’t know. I gave that up, once I got my MS and got a job out here.”

  “Gave what up?”

  I shrug. “Sex.”

  “That self-imposed celibacy you mentioned,” Laurel says. “So you really haven’t had sex in three years?”

  “Yep. That lifestyle just stopped being fun. I was always the kind of girl who got more enjoyment from sex when it…I don’t know…when it meant something. Even a little bit of something—it didn’t have to be love. I just needed some kind of connection. I couldn’t do the casual sex thing. I tried—I really did, but I hated it. I felt dirty, like I was using the guys. I always felt more empty afterward than I had beforehand. So eventually, I just stopped pretending and focused on my nursing work.”

  “And you have no intention of—” Laurel stops, shrugs. “I don’t know, of…letting anyone get close again?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. After Craig, my heart was just…irreparably broken.” I drag my toes on the barn floor as the swing gently creaks, creating parallel scuff marks in the dust. “I loved Landon, but he’d broken my heart and my trust. I can’t say I exactly loved the senator, but he’d still hurt me. Craig, though—I’d given myself to him heart, mind, body, and soul, and his death just…shattered me. I’m broken by it, and I don’t know how to…” I shrug, shake my head, trail off.

  Laurel leans her head on my shoulder. “I understand. As well as I can, at least, not having been through that.”

  I stare at her. “ I know you have more to say than that.”

  She shrugs. “Sure. But you’re not here for my advice. You needed to vent.”

  “You’re not going to bring up James?”

  She grins. “I don’t have to, because you just did.”

  “Everyone wants me and him to get together, and neither of us are there. He for his reasons, and me for mine.”

  “They’re the same reasons, I think. Or similar.”

  I groan. “Sure, maybe. But so what? We’re both dead to love. Why bother?”

  Laurel wraps an arm around me. “Oh, Nova.”

  I pull away. “What?”

  “If you were dead to love, you wouldn’t be here.”

  I glare at her. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, if you were dead to love, it wouldn’t be so hard for you to plan Jesse and Imogen’s wedding.”

  “It reminds me of Craig, that’s all.”

  She glares at me. “You’re a bad liar.”

  I growl in annoyance. “I’m not saying I’m, like, without feelings. I’m not some sociopath or whatever. I loved Craig. Planning weddings was something I did frequently when I was with him, and they were my favorite kind of event. I did bachelor and bachelorette parties, kid’s parties, graduations, all that, but I loved doing weddings best of all.” I swallow hard. “Probably because I was so sure that one day soon I’d be planning my own to Craig. That’s what kept me going, what gave me my creativity.” I wave a hand. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with James.”

  “Then why’d you bring him up?” Laurel asks.

  “I didn’t. I asked if you were going to.”

  Laurel just smirks. “Sure.”

  I stand up, annoyed. “God, you’re all so smug about this. You’re all so certain I’m going to just, what? Fall into bed with James, and end up in love?”

  “None of us have said that.”

  “It’s implied.”

  “You’re lonely, Nova. Lonely and bitter. And cranky. You need sex. You need companionship. We all just think there’s something there with you and James, and that you should at least give it a look, see what it is and see if it’s worth pursuing.”

  “It won’t be.” My voice is flat, hard.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because nothing will ever compare to what I had with Craig, And
James is just as closed off as I am, so even if I did want to pursue something, he doesn’t.”

  “How do you know?” Laurel asks.

  “Because we talked about it!” I snap. “We both acknowledged things, and we both made it clear we weren’t in a place to fuck around with something that would only end up in more heartbreak for both of us. And there are his kids to think about, too. He doesn’t want to get them confused, so we agreed to move on without lingering over it. For both our sakes.”

  Laurel just shakes her head, sighing. “Nova…”

  “What?”

  She shakes her head again. “Nothing. Never mind.” She wraps her arm around me again. “I’m glad you shared this with me, Nova. Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry to crash like this, I just…” I lean against her. “I was up late after work, trying to come up with creative themes and centerpieces and such, and I just… couldn’t. It all came up all at once, and I had to get it out. I’ve kept it bolted down for so long.”

  Laurel tugs me to my feet. “Come on. You can sleep in one of our extra rooms.”

  “You’re sure it’s okay?” I ask.

  She nods. “It’s not just okay—I insist.”

  “All right,” I say, “I’m too tired to argue.”

  I follow her back to the house and she leads me to an extra room at the end of the hallway upstairs. There’s a queen-size bed with a cozy flannel quilt and an electric fireplace, and a few cute, kitschy, country-chic decorations that make it feel homey.

  I hesitate when Laurel asks if there’s anything I need, and when I don’t reply right away Laurel just snorts at me. “It’s not that hard to just ask for something, Nova. It’s really not.”

  “Maybe not for you,” I murmur. “Do you have anything I can sleep in?”

  Laurel eyes me—I’m several inches taller than her, and thicker in the butt and thighs as well as bustier. “Ummm, maybe? I can’t guarantee anything of mine will fit you all that well, though.”

  She leaves and comes back a few minutes later with a T-shirt.

  “This is the best I can do, considering the difference in our builds. An oversized T-shirt…well, oversized for me.”