Sweet Filthy Boy

I know now that I love him, that what we have is real, and that I probably loved him that first second I saw him from across the room, enjoying my happiness as much as I did. For whatever Lola and Harlow say about it, I’m a true believer.

It is possible to fall that fast.

Chapter NINETEEN

ABOUT TWO BLOCKS from our apartment I know he’s behind me again, far enough back to give me some space, close enough that he knows where I am. Upstairs in the narrow hallway, I fumble with my keys as he bursts through the door to the stairwell, out of breath. At least he was smart enough to let me take the elevator alone.

The flat is dark now, the sun no longer lingering in the sky, and I don’t bother to turn on any lights. Instead, I lean against the doorway to the bedroom and stare at the floor. He stops in front of the kitchen, directly across from me but leaving about four feet in between. Slowly, his breathing returns to normal. I don’t even have to look directly at him to know he feels miserable. From the corner of my eye I can see his slumped posture, the way he’s staring at me.

“Talk to me,” he whispers, finally. “This is a horrible feeling, Mia. Our first fight, and I don’t know how to make it okay between us.”

I shake my head, looking down at my feet. I don’t even know where to start. This is so much more than a first fight. A first fight is what happens when he keeps leaving the toilet seat up or washes my new silk dress in hot water. He kept me in the dark about Perry, about a fiancée he had, for two months—and I don’t even know why.

I’m drowning in humiliation and we both seem so unbelievably naïve for thinking this was anything but a joke. This entire thing is such an epic rebound for him. Six years with her and then he jumps into a marriage with a stranger? It’s almost comical. “I just want to go home. Tomorrow, I think,” I say, numbly. “I was planning on leaving soon anyway.”

I thought he was leaning against the wall but realize he wasn’t only when he seems to collapse back against it. “Don’t,” he breathes. “Mia, no. You can’t leave early because of this. Talk to me.”

My anger flares, renewed at the slight measure of disbelief in his voice. “I can leave because of this! How could you let me walk into that? I was completely blindsided!”

“I didn’t know she would be there!” he insists. “Marie and Christophe are my friends from before; she doesn’t really know them. I don’t know why she was there!”

“Maybe because you were engaged? I don’t even know where to start. You’ve been lying to me, Ansel. How long were you going to let me believe Perry was a guy? How many times did we talk about him? Why didn’t you just tell me from that first moment in Vegas when I asked where ‘he’ was?”

He takes a careful step forward, hands held out in front of him like he’s approaching a wounded animal. “When you first called Perry ‘he,’ none of us thought to correct you, because we were in a bar. I had no idea we would be drunk and married a few hours later—”

“I’ve been here for weeks. You could have told me as soon as we got here that your fiancée lives nearby and oh, by the way, she’s Perry, the fourth member of your super-close gang—who is not a guy!” I press a shaking hand to my forehead, remembering the night someone came to the door while we slept, remembering how distracted Ansel was when he came back to bed—and how almost naked—how I asked him who it was and he said it was Perry, but again didn’t correct me when I called Perry he.

“Oh my God, that night someone came to the door? And when I came home you were talking to her on the phone, weren’t you? You left the room to go talk to the girl you were going to marry but—oops!—you married me instead! No wonder she’s so f**king pissed!”

He’s been speaking over me in tiny, pleading bursts, saying, “No,” and “Mia,” and “Wait,” and finally he gets a word in: “It’s not like that at all. After Vegas, I didn’t know how to tell you! Did I even need to make a big thing of it so soon? She wasn’t my girlfriend anymore! But then she called, and she came over . . .”

“Fiancée,” I correct, “not girlfriend.”

“Mia, no. We broke u—”

“Have you seen her? Besides that night?”

He regards me anxiously. “We had lunch twice.”

I want to punch him for that. Especially since I never got a lunch with him during a workday.

“I know, Mia,” he says, reading my expression. “I know. I’m sorry. I was hoping if we spoke face-to-face, she would stop calling and—”

“And did she?”

He hesitates. “No.” Ansel pulls his phone from his pocket. “You can read her texts, if you want. Or listen to her voicemails. You can see I never encouraged her. Please, Mia.”

I push my hands into my hair, wanting to scream at him but not sure I can open my mouth again without bursting into tears. The last thing I want is to hear her voice again.

“I wanted to tell you everything the night we played sinner and devil,” he says. “But I didn’t know how, and then we moved past it. After that, it seemed to become impossible.”

“It’s not impossible; it’s simple. You just correct me any one of the hundreds of times I got it wrong and say, ‘No, Mia, Perry is a chick and I was with her for six f**king years and oh, by the way? I was going to marry her.’ Instead you tell me about Minuit and deliberately mislead me.”