Rebound: Chapter 5

I knew exactly where she was until that cutie-pie Libby came over to visit. She’s a doll, that one, with her impish smile and those killer dimples. Pretty good grip when she’s pulling a beard as well, as I can now testify. I hope to god they don’t take her to a Santa’s village this Christmas—she’ll have him unveiled as a fraud as soon as she sits on his lap.

I was with my assistant, Luisa, and Libby’s grandad Harper when she tumbled over, a whirlwind of giggles in a frilly pink dress. We were discussing a potential takeover of a software company in Seoul, which probably wasn’t appropriate bearing in mind the occasion. Still, I was enjoying it a lot more than the rest of the day. It felt good to lose myself in the safety of business talk. I can win that game hands down because I know what I’m doing and I’m very, very good at it. Unlike being a husband—I clearly suck at that. Amber’s been erratic all day, lurching from laughter to barbed comments in a way that’s left my head spinning.

Talking to my colleagues was a fucking relief, truth be told, because Asian financial markets are a lot less complicated than my wife.

But no matter what else I’m doing, she is at the back of my mind. It’s annoying—like having emotional tinnitus—but I’ve learned to tolerate it. Like any addiction, I can’t quite quit Amber, but I also know she’s not good for me. That woman is my heroin, and my time with her has been one of incredible highs and ball-busting lows.

So, although I was paying attention to Luisa’s impromptu report, I also kept an eye on Amber, hopefully without her noticing. I try to always be aware of where she is in a room, even if only so I can avoid her.

She was talking with a bald dude, who I vaguely remembered is a doctor of some kind, and nodding a lot, widening her big brown eyes in that way she does when she wants to look impressed. I lost track of her after she joined Martha Kemp at a table. I feel sorry for that woman. Her husband is an asshole divorce lawyer who snorts half the product of Colombia on a daily basis. He also treats his wife like crap, but then again, maybe Amber says the same about me. Who knows? Maybe the two of them blow off steam by bitching about their shitty spouses over their boozy lunches.

Then Libby tottered over, and I got distracted by the simple pleasure of being in the company of a toddler. I love kids, love how they live in the moment, how easily pleased they are. My nephew has recently taken his first wobbly steps. Nathan assures me he’s a prodigy and will play for the Knicks. I don’t know about that, but I love the look of delight on Luke’s chubby little face when he manages to stagger all the way to my arms and his squeals of laughter when I scoop him up and spin him around. So yeah, I got distracted.

By the time Libby waves bye-bye and my head is back in the game, Martha is sitting alone, gazing at one of the buff young servers as though she’s planning on eating him instead of the smoked salmon canapés on his tray. Amber, however, is nowhere to be seen. I tell Harper and Luisa I’ll see them later and walk over.

“Elijah,” Martha says, unashamedly raking her eyes over me. This woman really needs some attention tonight. “You look divine in that suit, darling. Join me? Don’t worry, I won’t bite. I know you’re a happily married man.”

Do I detect some sarcasm there, or am I being paranoid?

“You look beautiful too, Martha. Love the new hair color.”

Her hands fly to her head as light reflects off the subtle gold tones highlighted into her tresses. “How nice of you to notice,” she says, sounding genuinely pleased. I’m guessing compliments don’t often fall from Freddie’s lips, and I’m glad I could put a smile on someone’s face.

“Do you know where Amber went?” I ask, gazing around the room.

“Oh, she said she felt a migraine coming on. Didn’t she tell you she was leaving?”

I make a show of pulling my phone from my pocket and checking it, then smile as I read a message that doesn’t exist. “Ah, there it is. Must not have felt it vibrate. She said she didn’t want to spoil my fun. You know Amber, always putting others first.”

I’m not totally sure Martha is buying my act, but if she isn’t, she’s been in this world long enough to know to go along with it. We’re all acting to some extent, and Amber and I have built a public persona that has far outlasted our private one. My family knows the truth, but to the rest of the world, we seem like the perfect couple. We play our roles, attending functions together, hosting charity events, networking in the business world. We present a united front, then we go home to a wall of silence and separate bedrooms. It’s fucking exhausting.

“I might call it a night myself,” I tell Martha, who isn’t even listening. She’s watching her husband make a fool out of himself, and her, on the dance floor with a blond half his age. “Go home and check in on her.”

“Good idea.” Her reply comes a second too late, the practiced smile on her lips the tiniest bit strained. The poor woman is dying inside. I can relate. “You two take care of each other so well.”

Do we? I think as I stride toward the exit. We certainly used to, but that was so long ago now it’s like a dream sequence in a film. An emotional muscle memory of feeling safe and loved. My heart still remembers those days. The days when I still had my mom around, and my marriage was full of hope and potential and tenderness. When everything felt right with the world.

My heart needs to go fuck itself though. Remembering that shit hurts. These days, the only thing right in the world is my work, and it’s not enough. It was never enough.

If Amber left, it’s because she doesn’t want to be near me. I should let her go, give her the chance to exorcise whatever demons are battling inside her right now. Time has a habit of smoothing over our spats. In all likelihood, she’ll wake up tomorrow and act as though nothing happened. As though she wasn’t stretched tight as piano wire all evening. Sometimes I wonder if she’s a robot, the way she reboots overnight. She has more control over her feelings than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s like the discipline she learned from doing ballet for so many years became as deeply embedded in her mind as it did her body. She was forced to learn early on not to show weakness and not to expect much from the people who allegedly loved her because Amber was raised by wolves. Very rich, very successful wolves, but wolves all the same.

She never had the unconditional love and comradery that my brothers and I had when we were kids. Her childhood lacked the chaos of siblings and the warm glow of a mom who made her the center of the universe. My dad worked a lot, but we never doubted that he would do anything for us. Our childhood wasn’t perfect, but it was rich with love, and every single one of us boys felt cherished. Amber had none of that, and despite her active social life and packed roster of charity events, she can be an incredibly solitary person by nature.

If she’s upset about something, she won’t thank me for pushing her on it. She’s like an animal when she’s hurt—she slinks off and licks her wounds in private. Still, when it comes to my wife, knowing what I should do and actually doing it are two different things.

After pausing in the lobby and giving it approximately eight seconds of thought, I decide I’m going after her whether she wants me to or not. I must be jonesing for my next hit.

Anyway, who knows, she might have a migraine for real, and I don’t like the idea of her being out on the streets alone at night. This might be an upscale neighborhood, but there are always risks. It’s my job to look after her, even if she’d rather walk home alone than be in my company for ten minutes.

If she stopped to collect her coat from the checkroom, I reckon I won’t be far behind her. I don’t bother getting mine because it will only delay me. I have a lot of coats, but I only have one wife. I’m not totally sure why I feel compelled to track her down. Maybe protecting her is part of it, but she’s a big girl, perfectly capable of getting a cab or calling Gretchen. Even if she stays on foot, she’s unlikely to get mugged or abducted around here. So why am I really doing this? Why am I chasing her, still, after all these years? She’s made it perfectly clear she won’t be caught.

Is it so we can fight some more? So we can torture each other? So I can look into those miraculous eyes of hers and wish it was all different? Am I some kind of emotional masochist? Fuck knows—I just know I need to find her.

The reception is being held in a hotel on Fifty-Seventh Street, and heavy rain slaps the side of my face as soon as I step outside. It’s late October, and the weather is having mood swings. All day the sky was a crisp, clear blue, but now the heavens have opened. I should probably go back for my coat, but screw it. It won’t kill me.

I stop right outside the hotel. Would she have called our car? That would make sense, but for some reason, I don’t think so. I suspect she’s very much in one of her reclusive moods tonight.

I quickly check in with Gretchen anyway, and she tells me she hasn’t heard from Mrs. James. She goes on to ask if I need her to pull the car around, but I tell her not to bother. In fact, I tell her to head home for the night because I’ve just caught a flash of crimson out of the corner of my eye. I shove my phone back in my pocket and run along the sidewalk as she turns off onto Park Avenue. Or I think it’s her. I could be chasing a random lady in red and be about to get a face full of pepper spray for my troubles.

No, I think as I close the distance. It’s her. Nobody else walks quite like she does. Her long legs gracefully eat up the sidewalk, her high heels clicking against the concrete in a confident way that screams “don’t fuck with me.” Her red cashmere coat is belted tightly around her narrow waist, and even the torrential rain has done nothing to dampen her effortless elegance. Everything Amber does, she does with style—including running out on me at a party.

“Amber! Wait!” I shout, wanting to warn her—no woman appreciates a strange man ambushing her from behind.

She clutches her purse and speeds up. How the fuck does she move so fast in those goddamn shoes? And more to the point, why is she moving so fast? She must have heard me, but she’s still accelerating. She’s almost at a run now, her legs blurring in a desperate trot that makes it obvious she’s trying to put some space between us. Where the hell is she going? And does she actually think she can outrun me?

A taxi approaches, its tires throwing up spray from the water-logged street, and she raises her hand to hail it. If she gets into that cab, she can definitely outrun me, and I’m not going to let that happen. Because now I am mightily pissed. She dumped me at a wedding we were supposed to be attending as a couple without saying goodbye, and now I’m running through the rain, shouting her name like a fool while she pretends I don’t exist. Even by Amber standards, this is big bitch behavior.

When I increase my speed, the soles of my dress shoes slip and slide on the wet sidewalk, and I reach the yellow cab as she pulls the door open. I don’t try to reason with her—I’m not feeling reasonable. I smack the partially open door closed and glare at her. “What the fuck, Amber?” I’m soaked to the skin and cold, and I have no clue what the hell is going on here. How did we go from admittedly bad but within-normal-boundaries bickering to this?

The driver of the cab winds down his window and takes in the scene before him. “Are you all right, missus? If you need to get in, get in. You will be safe with me.”

Even sitting down, I can tell this guy is a good eight inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than I am, but he looks at me in a way that suggests he’d take me on anyhow. He has balls. I should probably recruit him, fuck knows what for, but something.

“She’s fine,” I reply, trying to rein in my temper. It’s not his fault, after all. “She’s my wife.”

“I don’t care if she’s your wife or not, sir, if the lady wants to get into my car, then you will not stop her. I can always call the police to help us sort this out.” He holds his phone up like it’s a grenade and he’s about to pull the pin.

Jesus. All I wanted was to talk to my damn wife, and now a vigilante cab driver is threatening to call the cops on me. This is fucking insane.

“That won’t be necessary,” Amber says, finally breaking her silence. She turns her face away from me and hides behind the length of her hair as she peers into the window. “Thank you, so much … What’s your name?”

“My name is Sanjay, miss.”

I can’t see Amber’s face, but I can see his, and his reaction tells me she’s pulling her hypnotism trick. Her eyes are so big, so expressive, that they overcome all resistance. Man, woman, beast—all are powerless against her. Me included. She will now use his name fifteen times in one sentence, and he’ll be so flattered by the attention that he’ll practically have cartoon Tweety Birds fluttering around his head.

“Well, I’m Amber, Sanjay, and I’d like to thank you for being such a gentleman—who said chivalry is dead?” She infuses some real warmth into her voice, and Sanjay’s chest puffs up a little. As it should, because if my wife had been in actual danger, I would have wanted someone like him to make a stand for her. “Thing is, though, Sanjay, this is actually my husband. We just had a little disagreement—you know how that is, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, indeed I do.” He smiles and flashes her his wedding ring. “Thirty-two years married.”

“I thought so. You understand, then, Sanjay, how it can be sometimes. I was just blowing off steam, and my husband here quite rightly didn’t want me to disappear off into the night alone. In his own clumsy way, he was being chivalrous too.”

Clumsy? Really? She never misses a chance to put me in my place, this woman. Sanjay drags his eyes away from Amber and scrutinizes me. I try to make myself look as nonthreatening as possible, and finally, he nods. “Okay, if you’re sure? I can still take you wherever you want to go. No charge.”

“Sanjay, you’re a darling, you really are—but I think my husband and I might stroll home together, give ourselves the chance to cool down and talk. I won’t forget your kindness though, Sanjay—you have a fabulous evening, now, you hear?”

A very slight taste of the South creeps into her voice with those last few words. Amber grew up in and around Washington DC but spent summers with her grandmother in Charleston. Sometimes it shows up without her noticing when she’s angry or otherwise distracted. Sometimes, though, it shows up when she needs to come across as humble and approachable. Like a regular human being rather than the ice-queen wife of a billionaire. Tonight is possibly a combination of all three.

I slip Sanjay a twenty. “Thank you,” I say simply. “You’re a good man.”

His eyes narrow slightly, as though he’s still trying to make up his mind about me, but he takes the cash anyway. A beep of his horn, a little finger wave from Amber, and away he goes in a cloud of fumes and a spray of rainwater. A white knight in a yellow cab.

I turn to face my wife, but she’s already on the move again. Those heels are back to clicking, her stride lengthening. I quickly catch up, grab her arm, and spin her around. She slaps my hand away but finally stays still. We’re beneath a streetlamp, the arc of light shining over our heads like a golden umbrella. She clamps her lips together, stares at the sidewalk, and swipes rain from her cheeks. Except … it’s not rain. Amber is actually crying. What the fuck? Amber never cries—at least not in front of me.

Just like that, all my rage disappears. I want nothing more than to take her in my arms, to hold her close and comfort her. Now I understand why she was running—she didn’t want me to see her like this. Shedding tears in public? She’s simply too tough, too proud, too practiced at hiding her feelings. In fact, she hides them so well, I sometimes forget she has them at all.

We’re both silent, our bodies inches apart, drenched by the downpour that’s growing heavier by the second. If I try to touch her, there’s a very real risk that I will lose a limb. Her anger and sorrow are clear by her downcast expression and the way she’s holding herself. The way she’s refusing to meet my eyes. She has shown weakness in front of me, and to Amber, that is the greatest sin she could commit.

“Are you okay?” I ask, recognizing how inadequate those words are, but I’m unable to come up with anything better.

“Do I look okay?” she snaps back.

“No. You look miserable, baby.”

“Don’t ‘baby’ me, Elijah. I’m forty years old.”

“True. So why are you behaving like a teenager sneaking away from daddy?”

She snorts slightly and finally looks up at me. Amber is five nine, and when we first met, one of my biggest assets was my height and size. She appreciated that she could wear heels and I would still be taller. Back in the days when she loved everything about me.

“Daddy?” she repeats, the ghost of a smile on her face. “If you say so. Do I have a curfew? Are you going to take away my allowance? Am I grounded?”

“No, but you are behaving like a brat. Why did you leave like that? Why didn’t you tell me you were going? It’s not safe for you, walking these streets at night, looking so …”

“Rich?” she supplies for me. I was going to say beautiful, but her bitter tone tells me she wouldn’t appreciate it. That she’d prefer a fight to a compliment.

“Whatever, Amber. Apart from anything else, it was embarrassing.”

Now I’m speaking her language, and a flicker of remorse crosses her exquisite features. “Yes. I can see that. I apologize if I embarrassed you.”

“Fuck’s sake, Amber, I don’t actually give a damn about that—I give a damn about you. Why did you leave? And why are you crying?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, her long lashes moist and clumped together, her hands balled into tense fists. “I left because you were flirting with Shannon.”

What the hell? I was flirting with Shannon? Shannon, Harper’s daughter, who is both Libby’s mom and five months pregnant? Who, as far as I know, is happily married? Never once have I looked at her in that way. And I barely spoke to the damn woman tonight.

I bite my tongue and take a deep breath, letting my brain catch up before my mouth opens. This is a required skill set when spending time with Amber. My wife is a complicated woman and an absolute mistress of misdirection. She has a knack for making people believe what she wants them to believe, for convincing them her ideas were theirs, for deflecting away from anything that might not suit her. She wants me to react to this. She wants me to focus on her unfair accusation. But why?

She’s genuinely upset, more upset than I have seen her in many years, but it’s not about Shannon. It can’t be about Shannon. Me snapping back at her and escalating this fight would be counterproductive and possibly exactly what she’s hoping for. If we end up screaming at each other, I won’t probe any deeper. I won’t ask again about her tears, and she won’t be forced to admit they even exist. But if it isn’t about Shannon, what is it about?

The answer comes to me in a flash, and I feel like I’ve been sucker punched. She’s not upset about Shannon; she’s upset about Libby. If I had to guess, I’d say she saw me playing with the little girl. She saw me laughing and cuddling her, and in Amber’s mind, she saw me regretting every single thing about my life since we got married. That’s the way her brain works, whether it’s logical or not. She can’t have children, and I love children—therefore, I must be miserable with her.

Fuck. Honestly, sometimes I am miserable with her. But it doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with kids. It’s because I wake up every single day wondering if I’m going to die of frostbite.

“I wasn’t flirting with Shannon,” I say quietly, taking all the challenge out of my voice, out of my body language, giving her nothing to fight with. “But I’m sorry if you thought I was. I’m sorry if I upset you. Forgive me. Let’s walk home, like you said. Let’s cool down. Maybe we can stop somewhere for a drink, just the two of us—coffee at the Moonlight Diner or a late-night cocktail, like we used to?”

“You really think a strawberry daiquiri is going to fix this?” she asks, her eyes still shining with tears. She lets them spill down her cheeks and doesn’t try to wipe them away. It’s so unlike her that I feel a jolt of fear shoot through me. It’s physical, a tingle of dread running up and down my spine like nerve pain.

“Well, a daiquiri never hurts.” I reach out and stroke the side of her face. She leans into my palm, her cheek soft against my skin, and for a moment I have hope. “Amber, sweetheart, we’re both soaked through. Let’s go to a bar, or even better, go home. You must be tired.”

She gazes up at me, and her eyes are so big and luminous that I swear I can see the city backdrop reflected in them.

“I am tired, Elijah, yes. I’m exhausted, and I know you must be too. Why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep dancing this dance? Why don’t we just … let go?”

My nostrils flare and my hand drops to my side. “What do you mean?”

Her sigh speaks of bone-deep weariness. “I mean I think I’m done, Elijah. I want a divorce.”