Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

I tuck behind the corner, steeling my nerves. When he's like this, he can be…hard to deal with. Bryce says something, then pauses. He must be on the phone. His shoes tap down the hall towards me, and I flatten myself against the wall, but when he speaks again I can hear him perfectly.

"Are you serious? Marry Tia? Nah, I'm not marrying her. She's not awful, but I mean, there's a reason she's never met my family."

I shake my head. Um, what? I almost want to laugh at how ridiculous that sounds.

"Yeah, they don't even know about her. Endgame is some trust fund girl from an old-money family with houses up and down the East Coast."

I couldn't have heard him right. No, that's…this is all a front, he's just swaggering. But then again, it feels all too honest. I struggle for air, like I've been punched in the stomach. I want to run, but I can't remember how to move.

Endgame is some trust fund girl. Not me. I had no idea I was competing against an invisible woman. Or…no, I am the invisible woman.

"Good to hear from you, man. It's been too long since we partied it up at Alpha Sig. Yeah, for sure. Later."

Bryce's footsteps start to retreat, and I wheel around the corner.

"Bryce?"

His tall, lean body whirls around and he at least has the decency to turn pale. Pain radiates through my chest, as if there's a literal knife sticking out of my heart.

"What was that?" I ask.

"Tia, I don't know what you think you heard—" He brushes his strawberry-blond hair to the side and straightens his red-striped tie.

"Why would you say that? It was a lie, right?"

We're good together, we were just cracking up at a Washington Nationals baseball game last week. We're going on a road trip soon. I always wondered if we had kids, if they would have his fair coloring or my olive skin tone.

It would not be out of character for him to make up some story to impress an old frat buddy. It has to be a lie. In every way he described, I am the opposite of his "endgame." I have a small savings account, no living biological parents, and my uncle, who raised me and whom I refer to as "Dad," rents an apartment above a bait shop in Cozumel, Mexico.

A flicker of decision crosses Bryce's face and his eyes go cold.

"Tia, you're not allowed to police my private conversations," he says.

I watch his expression grow more and more distant and I want to reach inside him and drag out small, vulnerable Bryce. But he's gone. The door to his heart is slamming in my face.

"Are we even going to meet your family next week?" I ask in a pained voice.

He has the inconceivable nerve to look me dead in the eye and say, "They had to cancel."

So it was not a lie. Not at all.

It's like scales falling from my eyes, the last click of the combination lock, a sharp tug of the final thread holding a tattered tapestry together. I finally see him for who he really is—a manipulative, selfish man. The facade is gone.I've spent months pretending everything was fine, promising myself he would change over time, but now I see I was hoping to uncover someone he could never be.

I laugh. It starts as a slow chuckle of sheer disbelief, then morphs into a hysterical belly-laugh of relief as I shove the bag of food into his chest and storm past him.

"Tia," he says down the hall.

I run down the stairs and he makes no move to follow me. No, why would he? I'm simply seeing myself out, sparing him the effort of eventually dumping me when the right rich girl comes along.

The emotional whirlpool is spinning me in circles. All the little red flags I've been suppressing in the name of maturity, acceptance, and hope pop up like a hundred jack-in-the-boxes with wicked grins. But right alongside them are hundreds of good memories, laughter and sweet smiles and tender, private moments.

He played me so well.

My breath is coming in weird gasps as I run outside. I can't carry this by myself, it's too much. I dial Sutton's office number. She's the only one who can help me try to make sense of this.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asks impatiently.

"No."

"Do I need to call 911?"

"No, no, it's nothing like that."

"Okay, then say it. I've got minutes to finish this press release."

"I went to talk to Bryce and overheard him on the phone with someone and he…" Oh, no, I can't start crying. Sutton can't stand it when other people cry. She'll hang up on me. I take a sharp inhale. "He said he wants to settle down with a rich girl whose dad has vacation houses all along the East Coast. And he said his family doesn't even know about me. At all."

I thought he was it. He could be so kind, so vulnerable, so sweet when he wanted to be. I was okay with his moodiness, his white lies; no one is perfect. We totally could have made it work.

Sutton is quiet on the other end of the line, and I hear typing in the background.

"Sutton?"

"My dad has a house in the Hamptons, does that count?"

I pull my phone away from my ear and study the screen. Did I call the wrong Sutton?

"Excuse me?"

"You were just dating. Low commitment, you know. Were you even exclusive?"

My eyes go wide, and my eyebrows scrunch together. "What is that supposed to mean? He's my boyfriend, and we've been together for a year and a half!"

It was not low commitment to me. I was ready to settle down and have some stability, even if it meant giving up on the idea of fairytale love and settling for satisfactory. He gave me enough glimpses of a softer side that I believed in that part of him. I thought with time and love, it would grow. He was charismatic, I liked being on his arm when he shook hands with magnates and moguls, he knew exactly how to tease a sardonic laugh out of me.

Sutton cuts through my thoughts. "Just…Tia, I'm sorry you feel betrayed. Can we talk about this later? I'm glad you're fine, go back to work, we'll order pizza and drink wine tonight, okay?"

I hang up.

I am not fine. My breath is squeezing out of my chest in short gasps. I'm twenty-six years old. My life should be full of great beginnings by now. Instead, my world is caving in, a gaping black hole of emptiness.

The humidity is cloying. I close my eyes and inhale, but the air is feeling thicker, stifling. It's getting harder and harder to take a breath.

Why am I here? What am I doing here? I don't even like D.C. I took this job because it fit my degree and I knew it would make my family proud of me. I thought it was patriotic and contributing to the greater good to work for Congress. I don't love spreadsheets and emails and phone calls, I love art and creativity and doing things that challenge me. I want authenticity, genuine friendships, and kindness, not talking behind people's backs, lying, or playing coy political games.

I don't want to be here anymore. All I want right now is a sea breeze. I want a wide-open beach. I want to paint a happy sailboat bobbing in the ocean. I want to kick a soccer ball on a grassy field. I want a Southern California summer. I want to go back to my happy place.

And why can't I? I have savings, I have family, I have a place to go.

My phone vibrates with a text from Hughie.

Hughie

Food?

Tia

Be right there.

Forget Bryce. He doesn't get to lie to me, break my heart, and get my lunch. I march back inside and storm into Bryce's office. The five legislative aids crammed into the side room all look up as I stride across the carpet. Bryce has the audacity to be on the phone, talking about a new tax bill with zero shame about what he just did to me. I swipe the Shake Shack bag off his desk, send an uncharacteristic rude hand gesture his way, and head back to my office.

I'm biting back tears as I set the food on Hughie's desk.

"The hero returns triumphant!" he says. "I nearly perished from starvation."

Sorry for the delay while I got my heart stomped on, I'll do better next time.

"Oh, wait, wait, wait, I almost forgot," Hughie says as he chomps down on a crinkle-cut french fry. "While you were out, Rich came in and talked to Dan, and the word on the street is your position is about to be made redundant. Like, soon."

My stomach bottoms out. My job too? "Wait, what? What exactly did Rich say?"

"Oh, Dan's coming over. Shh, sit down."

"Hey, Tia," says Dan on his way past our cubicle with another cup of black coffee. "Just out of curiosity, if you weren't working here, you got something else you would want to be doing in D.C.? I don't know, lobbying, a nonprofit, something corporate?"

"I'm sure I'd find something," I say with a false tone of reassurance. Dan nods to my white lie with a satisfied smile.

If that's not a hint, I don't know what is. It's time to ditch D.C.

I clock out early with shaking hands, running through the pros and cons over and over. I'm not a whimsical woman. I don't get harebrained ideas and spontaneously act on them. But I'm not happy here and I haven't been for longer than I care to admit.

Once I'm home for the night, I lock myself in my room with some leftover pad thai and a quarter of a bottle of white wine. When Sutton arrives, she gently knocks on my door.

"Tia?"

"Maybe later," I say as a sob lodges in my throat. There are plans to be made and a big cry waiting to happen, and I don't need her commentary on either of them.

When I open my laptop and see the picture of Bryce and I as the background, the ensuing tears fall hot and angry. I think of my secret Pinterest board called "B + T" filled with wedding ideas, and I feel equal parts sad and stupid. I had a picture in my head: him and I at the end of the aisle, just married, our loved ones cheering behind us, and Bryce with that sweet, happy smile I love so much. What a joke.

I weep into my pillow long enough that I hear Sutton turn off the TV, flick off the lights, and whisper, "Goodnight, Tia," before closing the door to her room.

However much I'm mourning a lost future, a strange, sweet relief follows on the edges of my tears. I am free of him. I no longer have to put up with his moods, his whims, his half-truths. I don't have to twist myself into his idea of what I should be like. It doesn't outweigh the shock of today, the way he took the full measure of me and found me wanting, but it helps.

In the quiet darkness, I lay on my back on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. There's nothing keeping me here now. I grab my phone, intending to look up ticket prices to San Diego, but my browser opens on a Longfellow poem I had pulled up earlier called "The Light of Stars." I read to the end, my breath shaking in quiet sobs over the last stanzas.

The star of the unconquered will,

He rises in my breast,

Serene, and resolute, and still,

And calm, and self-possessed…

O fear not in a world like this,

And thou shalt know erelong,

Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.