Sick Day (18 page)

S
tepping through the front door of the townhouse I shared with Riley that Sunday evening after my weekend with Hope, I released a long, deep breath. Within seconds, Riley came hurrying over, the sight of extreme worry flushing her face. She embraced me without getting a response, her body convulsing gently against mine as she wept. When she pulled back, her streaked face and watery eyes begged for answers.

“Where were you?” she asked. There was no confrontation to her tone, just worry.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the words failed to come.

“I was fucking scared something happened to you, Cam,” she said, and then hugged me again. “I called Melinda and Gordon, I tried Raj, I even called you!” And then, as if she suddenly remembered the numerous calls I had ignored since Friday, she stepped back again, and the worry morphed into rage. “Where
were
you?”

Stepping away from her, I tried not to think about returning to Hope’s hotel room this afternoon, about finding it empty, abandoned.

I had intended on debating whether to come home to Riley and challenging Hope on her depressing view of life. I had my argument all lined up for her, and I had left no room for her to back out. We were supposed to be together. I had planned on staying in that hotel room until she agreed and saw things unfolding no other way.

“I thought we talked about this,” I answered at last, shaking the memory of Hope out of my head. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

I started climbing the stairs, surprised by how easily I was able to avoid the conversation with Riley, but I heard her footsteps following me. “Talk about
what
, Cam?”

Taking the stairs slowly, I tried to imagine a plausible scenario to tell her. The answer seemed obvious once I reached the second level. “The weekend with Gordo. I’m sure we talked about it.”

At the bedroom, I stepped out of my clothes and crawled under the sheets, closing my eyes so Riley would get the point. But she didn’t. Instead, she sat on the edge of our bed, on her side. I couldn’t see her, but I heard her weeping again.

“Why is she doing this, Cam?” she asked with her broken voice.

I ignored her. Because I no longer knew why Hope was doing this, or who she was anymore, let alone whether I would ever see her again. I couldn’t very well answer Riley’s question. But she knew. Riley wasn’t an idiot, and I could tell she had figured out that my heart—the important part that could love—belonged elsewhere, not with her.

The silence between us stretched so long I feared I had fallen asleep. It made sense. My eyes were closed, and I couldn’t remember my thoughts from two seconds ago. Plus, I was so exhausted from making love to Hope all weekend, the idea of a brief, unintentional snooze didn’t seem all that far-fetched, even though I figured my heartbreak wouldn’t allow any rest at all. When I heard Riley get up and walk away, I realized that as much as I wished I had been sleeping, I hadn’t.

Before walking out of the room, Riley turned around at the doorway. “Open your eyes, Cam.”

I opened them. I hated seeing her upset—the messed up makeup, the streaks down her face.

“I don’t care what you did,” she declared, sniffling and wiping her sleeve across her suddenly determined and strong face. “I don’t care where you were. I just want to know. I want to know what I’m up against here, because this thing of ours? For the past few weeks or months, it’s not been the happy place it once was. It’s been hell, and I want it to end.”

I didn’t spend too much time watching her. I simply rolled over, curled my legs up toward my chest, and wondered why Hope had disappeared without saying her final goodbye.

}
i {

T
hursday morning, the doorbell rang. From my desk in the second bedroom, I heard Riley open the door and carry on a muffled conversation before shouting upstairs at me that it was Gordon. I hadn’t heard from him all week, and his absence had been something of a break for me, allowing me to wallow in my state of depression and agree to an interview with Raj and some middle-management types who would underpay and over-abuse me at a small financial services firm known as Second City Financial.

“Get dressed!” Gordo yelled upstairs.

I saved my resume, then showered and donned a pair of jeans with a black collared shirt. When I hurried downstairs, I saw that
Riley had invited Gordon into the house and poured him a cup of coffee while he waited for me. She kept him company, packing herself a light lunch and getting last night’s dishes loaded into the dishwasher.

When I appeared downstairs, Gordon seemed to do a double-take, but he hid the surprise at seeing me. I had possibly lost a few pounds. My pants were loose around my waist, and my shirt was a little baggier than normal.

“All set?” he asked from the table.

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “What are we up to?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Miami and then Nassau overnight.”

Riley smiled from the counter, all set to leave for work. “Sounds like fun.” Then to me specifically, she raised an inquiring eyebrow and asked, “When will you have time to find a job with all of this fun stuff, Cam?”

Gordon stood. Trying to lighten the mood, he wrapped his arms around Riley. Maybe a little longer than he should’ve, but I knew how much he liked her. “I’ve got half a dozen friends who will make sure he’s employed before the end of next week.”

“I hope so,” Riley said, wiggling free and walking to the front foyer. The way she said
hope
felt like a shaving cut. “Cam doesn’t manage his time very well when he’s home with nothing to do.”

“I’ll take care of him and have him back to you tomorrow night,” Gordo promised, joining her at the foyer. “He’s yours all weekend.”

She pulled her shoes on, bending over with her ass facing the door, which seemed to disappoint Gordo a little. I shook my head and started back toward the eat-in dining area when Riley asked, “Speaking of weekends, did you have fun last weekend with Cam?”

The question stopped me in my tracks, but thanks to the wall between the kitchen and foyer, Riley would never know. Gordo backed up enough to make eye contact with me, and his eyes had question marks in them. He consulted Riley again, then stared back at me.

Don’t fuck me now, Gordo
, I thought, my face burning up with the fear that he would do exactly that.

The sadistic little smirk rose up on his lips as he studied me, further intensifying the heat in my face and the fear in my chest.

“Cam,” he said, with a light-hearted chuckle that only his closest friends—AKA, me—would recognize as fake. “Didn’t you tell Riley about the blast we had?” Then, to Riley, “They say some weekends are made for building memories, but last weekend was a memory of a lifetime.” He chuckled again. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world, Riley. If it had been appropriate to have you along, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I thought I might piss my pants, but I held myself together as Riley peeked around the corner and blew me a kiss. “Have a nice time away, Cam. Remember to keep your phone on.”

As she left the house, Gordon called after her, “Where’s
my
kiss?” He forced his executive-salesman laugh and closed the door once she was gone. What a fucking gentleman.

I stood in that wasted space between the foyer and the kitchen/eat-in dining area, wondering if I would truly know whether I had just emptied my bladder into my pants. My entire body felt numb. Would the warmth of urine trickling down my leg be noticeable?

I thanked Gordo once he returned to the table for his coffee, then walked to the refrigerator for a cold bottled water. I needed it to cool my body panicked body temperature down, wash the heat off my face, and rehydrate my system after that sudden onslaught of sweating-my-balls-off. Fuck, that was a close call.

From behind me, Gordon cleared his throat. “What happened last weekend, Cam?”

I suspected he knew, but I lied to him anyway. “Pre-wedding jitters. Needed a bit of time to myself, that’s all.” I closed the refrigerator door, my mind already racing toward Miami and the possibilities. “Are we ready to go?”

Gordon finished his coffee in a final sip, rinsed it in the sink, and then placed it in the dishwasher, which Riley hadn’t started. Despite being a huge pain in the ass, with more money than real-life street smarts, Gordo was a decent guy. No wonder Riley liked him and trusted me to spend so much time with him.

“We’ll talk about last weekend,” he warned me as we left my townhouse and settled into his Tesla. “It better not be what I think it is.”

} i {

E
xcept we didn’t get to talk about last weekend. Once we arrived at the airport and boarded the Cessna that Landon had a timeshare-like interest in, Gordon was easily lost in the conversations about the markets, the technical analysis of grain prices combined with Asian demand trends, and a bunch of other things that numbed my ears. So while Gordon and a senior strategist from Landon’s company spoke about these things, I closed my eyes.

Until Landon dropped into the seat next to me, which was a little awkward because there were plenty of other seats available on the jet. I glanced up at Josh, who was reading the newspaper in the rear-facing seat across from me. The glance he gave me justified my curiosity in Landon’s sudden seating change.

“Hey, Cam,” Landon said, keeping his voice low. “Want a blow job?”

I nearly jumped, which made the flamboyant trader laugh so loud, even the pilot turned around to cast us a questioning glance.

“Just fucking with your head, Cam.” He patted my leg and wiggled his eyebrows at me to pique my interest. “I made two-point-five million last year. I don’t know if Gordon shared that with you, since I ask him to keep that shit to himself, but you never know.”

I shook my head and swallowed hard because I was a little nervous about where this was headed after the blowjob comment. “No, he never mentioned it.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter because I’m telling you anyway. But this isn’t a conversation about how big my dick is.” He shoots me a cocky wink. “This is a conversation about how I can help you out.”

“With my dick size or my unemployment earnings?” I smirked sideways, impressed with my wit given how nervous he
made me.

Landon thought that was funny, and the pilot glanced back at him yet again. “I know you’re sitting on a bit of cash, Cam. What if I could turn your Harris severance into a million dollars? Would that make you hard?”

I couldn’t help but shift a little in my seat. With a million dollars, I could do a lot of things. Including avoid employment while I fixed my head and heart after Hope disappeared on me. Yet, somehow, images of Bernie Madoff and his wild and crazy Ponzi schemes floated through my thoughts.

Landon reached into his pocket for a business card. “I’ll show you how I do it. It’s high-risk derivatives stuff, but it’s how I got started in college.” He shrugged again like it was no big deal. “Gordon says you’re a smart guy, but you’re way over-qualified for what we need. If you take what I teach you and make a go at it, maybe you can start trading.” He patted my leg before standing up. “Think about it, Cam. It’s a lot of money.”

He returned to his seat, and I couldn’t help but stare out the window at the clouds beneath the wings. Not that I expected to find answers there, but they offered no hints as to what I should do with Landon’s invitation to turn my severance into a million dollars. I wondered at the risk—he
had
mentioned there would be some risk involved. And then I started planning on how I could survive off a million dollars while convincing Hope to run away with me.

These daydreams of a life I couldn’t imagine for myself led me to my iPhone. And a Google search for Hope McManus in Miami. I found half a dozen addresses before finally tapping the one link I had wanted to avoid entirely: Facebook. I scrolled through the photos, taking note of the landmarks in the background, ignoring the big smiles she shared with that dickhead she had been eating lunch with last week.

And then I had my answer—a pic of a two-seater Mercedes convertible, the SLK, in the driveway of her house. Alone, the pic meant nothing outside of the fact that Hope drove an amazing vehicle and lived on an expensive suburban street. In the background, however, I found a street sign. Once I zoomed in on that street sign, I knew where she lived because I recognized the name from the White Pages directory.

I didn’t realize it right away, but tracking her down had made me happy enough that I discovered an imposter’s smile on my face. Across from me, Josh watched with a foreign interest. But when I raised my attention to him, he glanced back to the newspaper. Although I wanted to pat myself on the back with a cheer for this minor victory, I stayed quiet, rested my head back, and closed my eyes. I plotted the next few hours in my head, everything from getting out of Nassau to lining up a rental car in Miami, Hope’s hometown.  And how, before sunset, I would be standing outside the house that I located on my phone.

For now, I needed to concentrate on and script what I planned to say to her.

} i {