Or, I make myself consider as we walk farther down the street, maybe I was imagining all of this, assuming the worst about Chess. Maybe she is just genuinely happy I’m writing again, that I’ll be able to deliver the book that’s due and get the payment that I definitely need.
How is it that someone can bring out the very best and the very worst of you all at once?
Pushing that thought away, I pull out my phone to check the time. Instead, I see I have missed calls.
Four of them.
All from Matt.
I frown, and Chess moves closer to me. “What is it?”
“Matt,” I tell her, and she snorts.
“What does he want?”
I shake my head, checking my texts to see two from him.
Hi. Know you’re busy, but really needed to talk to you about something.
Give me a call when you can.
More paperwork, probably. Some new wrinkle in the divorce proceedings, some extra money his lawyers have figured out how to squeeze out of me.
I know I have to call him back, but not now. Not here. I don’t like the idea of him here, invading this place that’s just mine.
Well, mine and Chess’s.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I tell her now, and I put the phone back, resolved to put Matt out of my mind for the rest of the afternoon.
Chess watches me for a beat, and then folds her arms over her chest.
“Em, this is an Ostrich Moment.”
I stare at her, wondering if I’ve suddenly had a stroke, but she’s just watching me expectantly and suddenly I realize this has to be something from one of her books, something I’ve missed, apparently.
“An Ostrich Moment,” I repeat, and yes, I can practically hear the trademark appearing next to it now.
Chess steps forward, taking my hands in hers, rooting us to the spot even as other tourists are forced to walk around us.
“You want to stick your head in the sand, and make this all go away. But the thing is, it’s not going to. The sand doesn’t fix the problem, it just hides it.”
I know there are women who would pay thousands to get their own personal Chess Chandler Therapy Session, but right now, I really wish I were getting Chess my friend, not Chess the Guru.
Even though I know she’s probably right.
“So, you’re saying I should call Matt.”
She squeezes my hands. “Get it over with. We’ll head back to the house, and you’ll call him. Find out what he wants, and I promise you, whatever it is, it won’t be that bad. It’ll take, like, fifteen minutes max, and then, instead of agonizing over what he might want, you’ll know. And then you’ll come into the kitchen and meet me, and you’ll have a cocktail roughly the size of your head, and everything will be fine.”
The thing with Chess is, when she says something, you believe it.
Which is why I find myself in my bedroom at the villa half an hour later, dialing Matt’s number.
He answers after the first ring. “There you are. I sent those texts hours ago.”
I can feel my blood pressure rising, but I close my eyes and focus on my breathing just like Chess had suggested. “I’m on vacation, Matt,” I say evenly. “I called as soon as I could.”
“Fine,” he replies, and I picture him there at his desk at work, his white polo shirt bright against his tanned skin, the nervous way he’s probably rubbing his free hand over the top of his head.
Always a tell with Matt.
“I called because your lawyer hasn’t gotten a response from you on the dissolution filing,” he says, and I frown.
“What?”
Matt’s sigh may come from thousands of miles away over a cell phone, but I swear I can feel it. “We talked about this. I think we should go for the dissolution of marriage now since the divorce is … obviously going to take awhile.”
He doesn’t come right out and say that it’s my fault, but of course that’s what he means. Because if only I’d agree to give him those royalties, this could all be over, and wouldn’t that be nice?
A dissolution of marriage is a sort of in-between. It will mean we’re no longer legally married, but that we still haven’t finished hashing out the financial stuff of the actual divorce. My lawyer told me it’s pretty common when one of the parties is ready to move on with someone else.
But then Matt already jumped the gun on that, didn’t he?
“I haven’t checked my email,” I tell him now. “And I’ve been working so—”
“Right, I’ve heard,” he says.
Outside, the sun is setting, and I can hear the gentle twittering of birds, the sound of wind in the trees.
Inside, I’m very still.
“What does that mean?” I ask, but what I really mean is Who told you that?
Two people know. Rose and Chess. That’s it. Maybe he emailed Rose and asked her. Maybe his lawyer did. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now, the only thing I’ll let make sense to me now.
“You know, Em,” Matt says, and I picture him sitting forward, his eyes darting around the office as he lowers his voice. “If you’re working on a new book just to fuck me over—”
I bark out a laugh. “Right! Because everything in my life is about you, I forgot!”
“I’m serious,” he continues, a little louder now. “If you write something else just to get out of paying me what I’m owed for the next Petal book, I’ll sue you for part of that, too.”
I feel my stomach drop. He’s bluffing.
He has to be. No one would let him have part of a book I wrote after we split up. But the thought of it sticks in my gut, twists like a knife.
This project, which has started pulling me out of the hole I’ve been in for the past year … it’s a thing Matt would make another anchor around my neck.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask him now, and I hate how pleading it sounds. “You left, remember? Why punish me?”
“This isn’t about punishment. Jesus, you always do this. I took care of you. I supported you.”
I can practically see him ticking off his fingers.
“I put in all this effort, Em. I wanted to save us. I wanted to save you. Look, if it were up to me, we’d still be living in the house we bought together, raising our child. You’re the one who changed. Not me.”
I feel the blood rush to my cheeks. “Matt, I got sick. I didn’t change.”
“You said you wanted a baby, but you never wanted to have sex, and then I found out you were still taking the pill. Even after you promised to stop, you never did.”
“Because I was sick,” I say again. “I didn’t want to fuck with my hormones when I didn’t know what was wrong with me.”
“You lied to me,” he insists. “Which means I spent seven years of my life with someone, thinking we wanted the same things when, clearly, we didn’t. Seven years. So, excuse me if I want a little return on my investment.”
I give a bitter laugh at that. “Serves me right for marrying an accountant, huh?”
“Am I wrong?” he presses, and I don’t answer. He is and he isn’t, and, honestly, maybe ostriches have the better idea because right now, I don’t feel better.