Double Regrets: My Boyfriend Is My Ex’s Boss

Two a.m.

Leo's forehead was a hundred and three.

Adrian stood in the ER hallway holding a paper cup of coffee gone cold and watched a nurse change the IV.

"Stomach bug," the doctor had said. "Plus he skipped his evening dose of his asthma controller. Has Mom been out of town?"

Adrian had not answered.

He pulled out his phone. Opened Amelia's name. Stared at the empty thread.

His thumb hovered.

Leo is in the hospital. Come.

He typed it. Looked at it. Deleted it.

She'd come running. She'd kiss his hair and ask if he'd eaten and take the chair Adrian was sitting in, and Adrian would have to sit there and watch his son reach for her and not him.

He put the phone away.

He pulled the chair closer to the bed.

Leo's small hand was curled by his cheek. His cracked lips moved.

"Mommy," he whispered.

Adrian leaned in. "Daddy's here, buddy."

"Hurts. Mommy. Want Mommy."

"Mommy's busy, buddy."

"What's she so busy for, cleaning my room or cooking? I feel like having the small pancakes she makes." He mumbled to himself and then fell asleep.

Adrian sat very still.

The IV beeped. The nurse came back with a wet washcloth. He took it from her without looking up and laid it across his son's forehead the way he had seen Amelia do a hundred times.

He did it wrong. The cloth slipped. He fixed it. It slipped again.

He did not text her. A surge of irritability welled up inside him, and he added her to the blacklist. Since you've walked out, don't come looking for us again, he muttered to himself.

* * *

Across town, in a forty-second-floor penthouse, Amelia was wearing somebody else's silk pajamas and eating cold pizza for breakfast.

"Babe." Maya kicked open the bedroom door, two coffees in her hands. "We are going shopping."

"Maya, I don't have - "

"Stop. I have cards. Get up."

Maya tossed her a black baseball cap and a pair of giant black sunglasses.

"Rules. One - wear these the whole time, my fans are unhinged. Two - don't look at price tags. Three - smile at least once an hour, or I rap in the food court. Loud, Amelia. So loud."

Amelia laughed. Rusty. Real.

* * *

The mall was three floors of glass and marble. Two girls spotted Maya by the escalator and screamed. Maya signed a phone case, kissed a cheek, kept walking.

She steered Amelia into a boutique on the second floor and pointed at a rack of dresses.

For the next two hours she played dress-up like Amelia was a doll she'd waited six years to unbox.

A black slip dress. "Too funeral."

A red wrap. "Too 'I'm having an affair.' Save it."

A green silk thing. "That's the one to break a man on his knees, but not today."

And then -

A pale yellow off-shoulder. Buttercup yellow. The kind of yellow that made skin glow.

Maya zipped Amelia into it and turned her toward the mirror.

"Oh."

Amelia looked up.

The woman in the mirror was twenty-eight. Her shoulders were bare. Her collarbones sharp. There was a faint red line across her throat where a chain had cut her, and somehow even that looked like jewelry.

She did not recognize herself.

A salesgirl walked past. Stopped. Walked back.

"Ma'am - sorry, are you - somebody famous? You look - "

Maya cackled. "She's somebody."

A second salesgirl: "Is she that actress from - "

A third: "My God, the lighting on her - "

Maya leaned her chin on Amelia's bare shoulder.

"Six years," she said. "Six years that pair of mutts had this in their kitchen and treated you like a slave. They didn't go blind, babe. They were never looking. There's a difference."

Amelia couldn't answer.

"Okay. New plan. Tomorrow we drag your sorry-ass husband through every court in this state. While we wait - we find his boss. That Chairman whose name's on the building. We make Adrian Hale watch his wife walk into that man's office wearing exactly this dress."

Amelia froze.

"What."

"His boss. The Chairman. Adrian's been kissing that man's shoes for ten years, right? Imagine - picture it - imagine the Chairman pulls Adrian into his office Monday morning and goes - " Maya dropped her voice an octave, "- Hale. About your wife. She's coming to dinner. With me. Dump her or you're fired. Your choice. - and then she walks in in this - "

"Maya, stop - "

"- and the Chairman goes, baby, you'd better leave him quick, because if you stay, your husband's career goes in the trash, and after I'm done with you tonight, sweetheart - "

"Maya."

But Maya was off, eyes shining. "And then he kisses her against the desk - "

Amelia wasn't listening anymore.

Maya had said the Chairman whose name's on the building.

Adrian's boss.

Alexander Blackwood. She never thought that The Alexander Blackwood was her Alex,till yesterday.

He had been Adrian's boss the whole time.

That was why he was at the gala last night. He had not come for anyone. He had come because it was his building. His charity. His money paying for the string quartet and the champagne and the diamond clip on her son's bow tie.

For six years she had been married to a man whose paychecks were signed by Alexander Blackwood, and nobody had ever told her.

* * *

"Mommy!"

A small voice. Across the boutique floor.

Amelia turned.

A little girl in a pink coat was tugging the hand of a tall man in a charcoal suit, pointing right at her -

"Mommy! Mommy that's my mommy!"

Lily.

And behind Lily, holding her hand, was Alexander Blackwood.

He stopped walking.

He'd been frowning at his daughter, opening his mouth to correct her - Amelia could see the words forming, Sweetheart, your mommy is on a long trip, your mommy isn't here - and then he saw what Lily was pointing at.

He saw Amelia.

In buttercup yellow. Bare shoulders. Loose hair.

She's got a pair of sunglasses on, hiding her features completely, yet every move and every line of her posture feels so much like the woman he's always had in his heart.

His mouth stayed open. The correction didn't come out.

Amelia could not move.

She watched his eyes go dark in the specific way men's eyes went dark when a woman walked into a room.

She watched his head tilt - that same quarter inch - and she watched the question come back.

Wait.

He took a step forward.

And Maya - Maya, oblivious, still in mid-fantasy - leaned in close and said, plenty loud -

"Imagine The Mr. Alexander Blackwood bending you over his desk and going, baby, you're too good for him, leave him tonight or watch his career burn - "

Alexander stopped walking.

Amelia watched it happen in real time.

She watched his eyes go from dark to flat.

The quarter-inch tilt straightened out. The recognition that had been almost there got filed away - neatly, completely - under a different folder.

His Amelia did not stand half-naked in a department store with a woman in a thousand-dollar chain who was loudly fantasizing about him bending strangers over desks. His Amelia was shy. His Amelia said please and thank you and blushed when men looked at her too long.

This woman was just another one who looks like his Amelia.

Alexander's whole face went cold.

He scooped Lily up off the ground. Lily, mid-shriek of "Mommy! Mommy!", found herself airborne and tucked against her father's shoulder.

"Daddy, but she's - "

"That is not your mother, Lily."

"Daddy, she - "

" We don't shout at a random women in stores, and call her Mommy. Do you understand me?"

"Daddy - "

"Lily."

His voice was low and cold.

Lily started to cry.

Alexander Blackwood walked out of the boutique with his daughter on his hip. Did not look back.

The bell on the door jingled.

The boutique went very quiet.

Maya, frozen mid-fantasy, looked at Amelia.

"Babe."

"Yeah."

"Was that - "

"Yeah."

"Did he just hear me - "

"Yeah."

A long pause.

"Babe," Maya said, in the smallest voice Amelia had ever heard her use, "I think I might've fucked up."

* * *