How to get even, p.16
How to Get Even, page 16
Each child had at least one piece on the wall and once finished, they all stood back and oohed and aahhhed over the adorable pictures. But as Bella looked at the walls, there was something niggling at the back of her mind and she couldn’t put her finger on it.
‘What is it?’ Maurice asked, noticing her distraction.
She wasn’t sure. The walls were filled and the bright pops of felt-tip pen looked perfect against the stark white back drop. Innocence and an energy that pulsed from the room but…
She looked to where Chase stood watching her with a knowing smile.
‘You know what’s wrong with it,’ she accused.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’ Ali rushed to their defence, while the others looked around the gallery trying to see what she wasn’t quite seeing yet.
He nodded, but didn’t tell her.
‘This has to be perfect,’ Bella nearly whined, genuinely wanting the kids to like it, to love seeing their own work on the walls, completely forgetting that this had anything to do with his reputation or the article.
She’d seen how much effort the children had put into something so simple, just because they could. Because they’d been encouraged to play and be silly. Not to be means tested or assessed, but to put a little bit of themselves on a piece of paper and for it to go up on the… up on the…
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, finally getting what was bothering her. ‘We’ve done it all wrong. They all have to come off.’
Ali and Maurice went to stop her, but when she looked back to Chase, he smiled, more with his eyes than mouth, and gestured for her to do what he’d known was needed all along.
The others were confused until she took the nearest picture from off the hook she’d hung it on and lowered it by almost two feet. All of the pieces had been hung at adult eye level and would have left the kids peering up to see their work. It was something that had taken her a while to realise, but Chase had known nearly immediately, his awareness of how people accessed art so much stronger than others.
They all scrambled to rehang the pictures before the kids got back from the park and their parents arrived. Maurice had procured some red velvet curtains that were absolutely perfect, and draped them across the small entrance to the gallery so that the class and their parents could gather for the ‘grand unveiling’ that Mr Tawney had advertised.
Bella welcomed them all back and Mr Tawney picked the girl who had decided that ladies could be bosses as well as girls, to cut the gold ribbon they’d tied across the velvet curtain and the children poured into the gallery with their parents.
And she had never seen anything more lovely. The look of delight across the children’s faces as they saw their pictures hanging on the wall. Bella didn’t know if they’d noticed the way that the pictures were hung at the perfect height for them, and then realised that was the point. They shouldn’t have to notice.
Children held the hands of parents, of each other, of teachers, moving around the room in beautiful chaos, so unlike the way that adults moved progressively painting by painting around a quiet gallery.
Today, Nayak was full of gasps of delight and conversation that wasn’t hushed, it was full of colour and brightness and noise and everything Bella wanted to see in a gallery again already.
She smiled as she looked around the room, until she noticed the little boy that Chase had been working with earlier standing alone looking unsure. She was about to cross the room when the boy looked up, a look of happiness passing over his features and he ran smack-bang into Chase’s legs.
‘Look,’ the boy said, his face angled up at Chase.
‘I did,’ Chase said, smiling, understanding the little boy immediately.
But the child still grabbed Chase’s hand and drew him half way across the gallery, almost as if he were dragging a stuffed toy behind him. Bella watched half fascinated as the boy pointed at his drawing. Chase and the boy came to stand opposite the small frame that encased his drawing, both wearing almost identical expressions of seriousness on their faces as they ‘looked’.
‘If I had ovaries, I think they’d have just exploded,’ Mr Tawney said, suddenly appearing at her side.
She let out a huff of surprised laughter, but knew exactly what he was talking about.
‘I’m afraid that you might not be his type,’ she offered regretfully.
‘Oh, he’s not mine either,’ Mr Tawney confided, casting a longing glance over Bella’s shoulder to where Maurice was studiously ignoring them. ‘I was thinking for you.’
‘Me?’ Bella spluttered. ‘Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.’ She dropped the denial about them like confetti.
‘Mm hmm,’ Mr Tawney replied wryly.
‘No, seriously,’ Bella replied, half panicked.
‘Me thinks she protesteth too much,’ he stated with a wicked grin and left her standing in the middle of the gallery reeling at what he’d just said.
15
There are roads which must not be followed.
THE ART OF WAR, SUN TZU
They were still finding coloured felt-tipped pens in corners and beneath chairs long after the last child, parent or teacher had left. Chase told Ye-Joon to wait until later in the week to start putting the pieces back up on the walls in preparation for the opening. They were still working from photos of Sascha’s paintings to perfect the layout, but he wasn’t worried.
But with the children’s drawings all taken down, he was once again surrounded by stark white walls, staring at him like a blank canvas.
His heart rate picked up, just like it had earlier even with just a coloured pen.
What did you want to draw?
I wanted to draw feelings.
He released the breath he’d been holding, trying to rid himself of the discomfort the memories brought.
‘Night!’ Maurice called, an excited smile lighting his features as if they all didn’t know he was going out for dinner with Mr Tawney.
‘Good luck!’ Chase called out behind him as Maurice waved him off with a hand.
Ye-Joon was next, Ali skipping after him, peppering him with questions and looks of adoration that the poor kid didn’t know what to do with.
That left Bella.
Bella who’d looked almost relaxed today. Bella in jeans. He smiled. Until he didn’t. Because those jeans had looked good. Really damn good.
‘You were good with the kids today.’
Her words came from behind him. Sneaking up on him just like she had.
‘So were you,’ he said truthfully, turning to find her standing beneath a spotlight, looking up at him with those grey eyes of hers.
‘It’s part of the job description,’ she said ruefully.
Chase frowned. ‘As comms director?’
‘Pampered socialite,’ she clarified.
‘You’re not that,’ he dismissed with a shake of his head. ‘I’m sorry I ever said it.’
She scrunched her nose and a shrugged delicately. ‘I’m a little bit of that,’ she admitted kindly.
‘You’ve been working very hard. Do you miss it?’
‘What, you actually believe that pampered socialites do nothing all day?’
‘Tell me,’ he asked, just to hear her speak a little more. Just to draw out any kind of conversation with a woman that was fascinating him far too much for his own good.
‘Oh, you know. We sit around all day drinking tea, eating cupcakes, planning good works in the community…’ she said loftily.
‘PTA?’
‘Oh absolutely. And making sure that our children are at after-school activities and our husbands are…’
Bella trailed off, filling the gallery with a heavy silence.
‘Playing golf,’ he offered to fill the space. He hadn’t meant to touch on her past but in some ways, they’d been skirting around it all for a while now.
‘Golf in the Hamptons,’ she added, picking up the threads of the story they were weaving for her fictional life of privilege, before he could apologise. But as the details rose in his mind, they all felt strangely wrong for the Bella standing before him.
‘And what about you?’ she asked and he smiled. A hand at the back of his neck.
‘Me? The classic, tortured artist,’ he said with a little bitterness that surprised him. ‘I pour everything I have into my art, while raging against the system,’ he said, blurring the line between fiction and fact. ‘So much so,’ he said, swallowing, ‘that my wife becomes resentful and cheats on me with my best friend.’
Bella stared at him with those glowing grey eyes.
He didn’t know if she already knew, and right now he couldn’t tell from that unfathomable stormy gaze. But whatever was or was not happening between them, he’d wanted her, needed her, to know that about him.
‘It’s such a fucking cliché,’ he admitted. He’d hoped for humorous, but instead it had sounded helpless. He clamped his teeth together to stop any more words from escaping. It went against a lifetime of habit, of the Miller way, but something about Bella made him want to break the mould his father had given him. He braced himself for her sympathy. But she just waited. As if knowing that now the dam was breached, it would all come pouring out with only her to stem the flood.
‘She was an artist too. A ceramicist. A good one,’ he acknowledged, ‘but not a great one,’ he replied truthfully. ‘And ceramics are harder than painting already so…’ He shrugged. ‘We should never have got married,’ he admitted now to himself and to Bella. ‘I was…’
Get married soon and give me grandbabies.
Another way he’d failed his mother’s dreams for him.
‘Rushing headlong into things I shouldn’t have,’ he said, picking up the threads of the conversation he’d started. ‘And after the success of that first show, things just snowballed for me. I loved it. Pouring everything I had into my pieces, not realising just how much Annalise hated it. Resented it.
‘She had this image in her head of us, struggling together. Of being passionate artists, living off our creativity and whatever crazy indulgence we could find,’ he said, finally looking back and seeing how difficult it must have been for her. That he hadn’t been what she’d thought she was getting. And with each success he’d had, she had drifted further and further away. And he hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t noticed how much that had hurt her. And he should have. Dan had.
Chase swallowed.
‘I’m sorry that she couldn’t be happy for you and what you’d achieved,’ Bella said and deep down something caved in on itself, her words soothing a hurt he’d not allowed himself to acknowledge, let alone speak of.
‘Do you miss her?’ Bella asked.
‘No,’ Chase replied truthfully. ‘I should. But I don’t. I feel… relieved.’ The word emerged on a heavy sigh, guilt and hurt and loss and… relief, all knocking him for six. Yes, they had betrayed his trust, and trust was still something that he found difficult to contemplate. But he wasn’t blind to the way his own actions had helped form the problems in their relationship.
It takes two people to ruin a marriage.
That was what Annalise had said to him the day she’d found him in the hotel room with Astrid and she wasn’t talking about her and Dan. She’d meant that Chase had ruined things for her. That he’d ruined her plans, her life, her future, the things she’d wanted. And that was what she’d wanted to do to him. With Dan, with Astrid.
And Chase would never put himself back in that kind of situation again.
‘Relieved and thankful. Marriage is not for me. Not again,’ he said firmly.
He knew what prompted him to say that.
He knew he wanted Bella to know that.
Bella was the kind of woman that still wanted marriage, children, the Hamptons.
He wanted her to think, to know, that he wasn’t what she needed. Wasn’t what she wanted when she looked at him with those unreadable eyes of hers.
She opened her mouth to speak, but then the sound of her phone ringing from her bag stopped her.
With an apologetic smile, she checked the screen and frowned.
‘I’m sorry, I have to—’
‘Of course…’
And just like that she was gone.
‘Hey Paige,’ Bella said as she exited the gallery, her mind still half on the conversation with Chase. With what he’d shared and what she’d felt, but the fact that Paige was calling was unusual enough to make her concerned.
‘Hey,’ Paige said brightly. ‘How’d it go today? Did it work?’
‘Oh, it was amazing,’ she replied, pulling her scarf around her neck with one hand and closing her coat with the other, heading back to the apartment without giving a single thought to the pedestrians stepping out of her way. It had been so much more successful than even she’d dared hope for.
‘That’s… awesome,’ Paige replied. ‘You must be… thrilled.’
Bella frowned, the unusually stilted response catching her attention.
‘Paige, what’s wrong?’ Bella asked.
‘I don’t… I can’t… Oh Bella…’
‘Paige, it’s okay,’ Bella rushed to reassure her. ‘Whatever it is, it’s okay,’ she insisted.
A near sob came down the phone, pulling Bella up short. ‘Are you hurt? Did Olly hurt you?’ she demanded with alarm creeping into her heart. She didn’t think for a second that Olly was capable of such a thing, but that didn’t mean that something hadn’t happened.
‘No, no. He didn’t. He’s… he could never.’
‘Is he hurt? Did something go wrong with the payback plan?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ Paige replied, and Bella breathed a sigh of relief. ‘He’s fine.’
Whatever had happened could be fixed. Once Bella knew what was actually wrong, she was absolutely sure that they would be able to make it fine.
‘It is about Olly though,’ Paige said, stuttering her way through the words. ‘I’ve, we’ve… I…’
Something turned in Bella’s chest, a knowing, without knowing. A strange kind of hurting that was for something that was about to happen, rather than from something that had already happened.
‘About two weeks ago… God, I don’t know how to say this…’
‘How to say what?’ Bella asked, as her stomach twisted.
‘Something happened. Between us. We kissed.’
Paige’s words were drowned out by a high-pitched ringing in her ears. As if Bella was reeling from a physical blow.
‘And I’m so, so, sorry. The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you. Oh fuck, I’m a terrible person and a shitty friend.’
‘No,’ Bella said. ‘No, you’re not,’ she said automatically, her lips strangely numb.
‘I am, and you were going to marry him and he jilted you via text on your wedding day and—’
‘It’s okay,’ Bella replied robotically. ‘Are you…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Do you have feelings for him?’ Bella forced herself to ask, collapsing onto a bench on the sidewalk.
It shouldn’t matter, but it did. If it had been for nothing, if it had just been a fling…
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m so confused.’ Paige sounded miserable and she didn’t want that, but…
‘If he feels the same way, then I’m happy for you both,’ Bella said, remembering the messages of congratulations she’d received from friends and family on her engagement to Olly.
She blinked, hoping to clear them from her mind and a tear escaped, to roll down her cheek.
We’re so happy for you.
Thrilled for you and the future you’ll have together.
Congratulations Mr & Mrs Prendergast.
Her breath shuddered in her lungs.
‘Bella—’
‘I have to go, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?’ she said and hung up before Paige could reply.
She stared at nothing as the cars passed, their lights glowing in the early dark of a winter’s night, unhearing of the noises of the people that stalked up and down the sidewalk around her.
I’m happy for you both.
Are you? Really? she asked herself.
She wanted to be. She wanted to be the bigger person, to rise above her own feelings and wish them well. But she couldn’t. Because she was… angry. Her whole being vibrated with emotions that she didn’t know what to do with.
It wasn’t because Olly had moved on, because Bella had always known he would one day. But it was Paige. It was Paige that she felt she’d lost. Not Olly.
Somewhere over the course of the last weeks and months, she’d stopped thinking about Olly so much. She’d stopped thinking about what she’d lost when he’d walked away from her.
But this… this was different.
This hurt in a new way.
Because it felt a little as if Paige had chosen Olly over her. Because it felt a little as if it didn’t matter how good she was, or how hard she worked to make everything fine, to achieve her goals, to fix everything. To make sure that she didn’t disturb what other people got to have. And if that didn’t matter… then what was she doing, all the time, being so damn good?
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it. It would be the girls, they’d be worried about her.
The last thing they need is to worry about you.
She didn’t want them to be worried.
But a small, mean, part of her did. Just for once, she wanted to be the one that people cared about. Just for once she wanted not to have to make herself invisible in order for them to feel better.
Her eyes hurt and she blinked, the cold feeling from the back of her eyelids making her aware that she was cold. Really cold. She got up, stiffly, not bothering to check her watch to see how long she’d been sitting there.
She didn’t even think as she walked into the liquor store and grabbed the nearest bottle of wine. She paid for it without noticing the curious glance she got from the guy behind the counter. As she passed Isiah she barely waved hello, not noticing the frown of concern he gave her as he watched her walk to the elevator.
