He Left Me Outside His Door

At the company holiday party, I threw up all over my boss's guest of honor. He didn't flinch. He turned to my boss and said, "She can't hold her liquor.

Keep an eye on her." The whole room stopped. That was Sebastian Ashford. That coat cost fifteen thousand dollars.

The second the party broke up, everyone crowded in on me. "How do you know him?" Sebastian stopped in the middle of the crowd and looked at me. I looked somewhere else. "I don't.

We're not close." Three years ago, when he ended it, that was the only thing he asked of me. Two years together, and he didn't show up to say it. He got on a plane instead.

And at the end of the month, he was getting engaged to another woman. Chapter 1 For one second nobody in that room breathed.

Then somebody pushed back. "No way." "That coat runs fifteen grand, easy. If you two aren't close, he eats it and then says that to our boss?" Said what? I'd had too much to drink.

Whatever he said, it went past me. I shook my head. "We're not close. He probably let it go for Silas's sake." Everybody knew our CEO had friends in every room in Boston.

And he and Sebastian Ashford went back a long way. "Really?" I held her eyes. I didn't blink, and I didn't help her out.

She looked at me a while longer and talked herself into it. "Yeah, okay." "It's the Silas thing." "If Theodora actually knew a man like that, would she be here clocking in with the rest of us desk drones?" "Also, I heard he's getting engaged at the end of the month.

Maybe he's just in a good mood." That one landed. Half of them bought it. Except the CEO. Silas Brandt, who I almost never laid eyes on.

He was leaning on the door to the terrace, rolling an unlit cigarette between two fingers, one eyebrow up. The look of a man settling in to watch me lie.

I looked away, calm as anything. Because I hadn't lied. Three years. We were strangers by now. And back then he'd made it a condition. I wasn't to say his name out loud to anyone.

The party ended. Sebastian walked out with Silas. When he passed me, he turned his head and held the look a beat too long. I gave him the face you give a stranger.

I didn't even look up. Once the two of them were through the door, the room loosened again. All the gossip went to Sebastian.

When his fiancée came up, somebody sighed. "Vivienne Calloway. Heiress.

The bitterest thing that ever touched her tongue is espresso." "Born with a silver spoon, and she grew up next door to him.

That rock on her hand is the size of a knuckle, and that's before you count the truckload of gifts he sends her." "This is just talk," somebody said, dropping her voice, "but I heard he dated some scholarship kid once.

Two years. Then the girl made Vivienne Calloway cry one time, and he cut her off the next morning." "Two years and that's it? That's cold." "Worse.

I heard he ran her out of Boston to square it with Vivienne.

But the girl's family had nothing and her name wasn't clean, so I figure she was in it for the money." A low sound moved around the circle. Half pity, half enjoying it.

The woman who said it was standing half a step in front of me, wine glass in hand, easy about it, like none of it belonged to anybody in the room.

I kept my eyes down and let half of it wash past. Half of it was true. True: he ended it because of Vivienne. But there was no ultimatum that day. Nobody ran me out of anywhere.

He thought I wasn't the kind of girl you bring home. So on the day he ended it, he didn't show up at all. He got on a plane. Two years, and that was the finish. I'd heard enough.

I picked up my bag. On my way out, somebody asked: "Two years, though. Wasn't there any part of him that didn't want to let her go?" Chapter 2 No.

Sebastian Ashford was cold in a way I never found a word for.

Cold enough that long after it ended, I was still going back over the polite, easy version of him from the beginning, trying to work out whether that had been the same man.

Later I figured it out. He started changing after Vivienne came home. He took me to meet his friends.

The private room at the back of the restaurant was full of people he'd known since he was six. I said hello to every one of them.

Vivienne was the only one who didn't say anything back. She looked me over, top to bottom. That was the first time I ever saw her. Beautiful.

The kind of pretty that keeps everyone at arm's length. We didn't exchange a word all night.

Then, at the end, she finally spoke to me. "Funny thing." "I heard your mother got sick right after you met Sebastian. And suddenly needed money." I froze.

He had covered a medical bill for me once. I'd paid it back. I saved it up in pieces and put the cash in an envelope.

He wasn't at the dorm that week, so I handed the envelope to the guy who shared his room. The night I said yes to him, I'd already regretted it.

Sebastian Ashford, the golden boy of Boston. There was no version of that sentence with "scholarship kid" in it.

But he put his face in my shoulder, and his voice came out muffled, and he asked, "Have you really thought this through?

You want to break up with me?" And every word I'd rehearsed all night stayed in my throat. I could feel it under my ribs, one beat after another.

I found out that night that you don't get a vote on that. After that I made a point of turning down whatever he sent me. A man like him hands you things you can never hand back.

So how did Vivienne know any of it. Before I could open my mouth, she smiled again and changed lanes. "But it doesn't matter. It was pocket change." "I'm just talking.

Don't take it to heart." I stood there and watched her finish. Sebastian dropped his eyes and gave her a look. Light. Barely a look at all.

Vivienne lifted her chin and smiled at him with her eyes narrowed. Neither of them said a word, and something still passed between them.

That was the first time it got under my skin. After that, Vivienne came around more. And the feeling kept getting worse. The kind you can't point at and can't say out loud.

Then came the mall. I was out with all of them when I saw a pair of earrings. They would have looked right on my mom. I stood there looking at them too long.

Vivienne had to say my name twice before I turned around.

She looked at the earrings and delivered her verdict. "They are pretty." "You like them?" "Have Sebastian buy them for you." The second it was out, all of them laughed at once.

One low sound, like they'd rehearsed it. All those people who had grown up together. The light came through the glass and cut the room into bright and dark.

They were standing in the bright part. I was on the other side of it, by myself. I knew this one was different. I looked up at him. I couldn't have told you what I felt right then.

But I wanted him to step forward. To say one thing. Just one. To say, Theodora has never asked me for anything. To say, she isn't what you all think she is. I looked at him.

Vivienne was looking too. The whole thing stretched out like a century. After a long time, longer than that, Sebastian spoke.

He turned back, let his eyes pass over the earrings, and said it without much in his voice: "Next time just tell me you want something." "Anything else you like?

Go ahead and pick." The floor tipped. I put a hand on the counter and looked up at him. I was trying to see the real thing behind that smooth face.

What I found in those toogood eyes of his was the exact same thing I'd seen in hers. Looking down at me. There was no difference between them.

Chapter 3 After that day we settled into a standoff neither of us named. I stopped reaching out to him. Vivienne reached out to me instead. "You forgot the earrings you were eyeing.

Sebastian asked me to bring them by." Then she looked past me at my mother and laughed once. "So this is the famous mom." "Your mother was sick.

That's the reason you gave him when you borrowed the money, wasn't it?" "What's the reason going to be next time?" "Sick again feels a little unoriginal." "You two should get your stories straight.

Your mother's probably had more practice than you have." My mother heard every word of it. Every single one. And with every word, more of the color left her face.

I shoved Vivienne before she could finish. "Watch your mouth." She hit the floor. The skin on her wrist tore open, and her eyes were wet from the pain in about a second.

Her friends turned up that same night. A row of faces I recognized, filling my doorway, waiting for an apology. Something knotted up in my throat. "Vivienne started it.

Why am I the one apologizing." "Fine. Don't apologize.

Pay for it." The guy leaned back against the wall and looked me over, and then he laughed at his own joke. "Can you even afford that?" They were nothing like the first time I met them.

Nobody bothered being polite. "Besides, you're in it for his money. What did Viv get wrong?" "Just say a number." "Whatever you and your mom want, we'll cover it.

Stop hanging on him." I was shaking. I opened my mouth, and that was when Sebastian got there. He showed up and they cleared out.

The footsteps faded down the stairwell and it was quiet again. Vivienne had gone to him too. She must have. So he was here for the apology, same as the rest of them.

Or he was here to say something worse. I had my sleeve twisted in my fist. I stared at him and didn't move. But he didn't bring up Vivienne. No accusation. No temper.

He asked me in the same voice he used for everything else: "I heard your mother isn't feeling well." "Do you need money?" Gentle, the way he said it.

And underneath, the exact same thing every one of them had said. I stood there wondering if I'd spent two years not seeing him clearly. Or if he'd turned into this.

When I didn't answer, he pressed something into my palm. It was cold.

I knew what it was without looking. "Anything else you need, just say so." My mother was on the couch the whole time, listening.

Her fingers were dug down into the cushion beside her. I couldn't make my body move. I didn't dare turn around and look at her face.

All I got out was one word. "Out." I threw him out, and the black card after him. That was the end of the conversation. He didn't try to hand me a card again.

He just kept sending things over with other people. I came home one night and our door was standing open.

My neighbor was on her way out, talking the whole time. "That daughter of yours, she's really something. Pretty girl.

Look at all this, must have cost a fortune." "Guess she meant it about giving you a better life." I stopped where I was. I made myself look into the living room, slow.

The table was covered in designer jewelry. The room was the wrong kind of quiet. My mother sat on the couch. She didn't ask me anything. She didn't say anything at all.

She just looked at all of it. After a long time she closed her eyes. "Thea. I keep thinking.

It would have been better if I hadn't lived through that accident." Chapter 4 She was on her way to buy me a cake when the car hit her. Her leg never healed right.

That same year my father filed for divorce, started another family, and cut us off for good. After that, wherever I went, my mother went with me. She hated it.

She decided she was dead weight. In high school she decided I got laughed at because of her. And now she'd decided that people were saying these things about me because she existed.

I'm not a crier. I've never cried in front of my mother. I clawed my way from high school to here one year at a time and never once let myself do it.

But I looked up at her that night and couldn't stop. When I was done, I blocked his number. Then every other way he had of reaching me. Everything he'd sent went back.

He'd been gone for days. That night he came looking for me. The rain hadn't stopped and it was cold. The chill had soaked all the way through him.

He stood under his umbrella in the middle of it and looked at me like he hadn't slept. "Why did you block me?" "What did I do this time?" "Was it the style?

You didn't like them?" He asked it low, almost humble.

But I was never the arrogant one in this. "Do you have any idea what the neighbors say about my mother and me because of the things you send?" I kept my eyes down and finally asked him. "Sebastian, I don't understand." "Why don't you believe me." "Why do you think of me that way." "Two years.

Do you know me at all? Why is Vivienne's word worth more than that?" "Is that all I am to you?" Thunder came down over the block. He didn't explain. He laughed instead.

Quiet, that laugh. Cold all the way through it. Cold enough that it went through me. "Don't understand." He said the words again, slowly, like he was tasting them.

Then he lifted his eyes, and everything he'd been holding back was right there in them. Contempt. Impatience. Disappointment. And that look down at me.

He studied me like a man who couldn't decide whether to be angry or amused. "Do you really not understand, or are you just not done performing?" "Theodora.

Getting close to me was about this from the start, wasn't it