A Deal with the Devil by Elizabeth O’Roark
17
If I thought forcing Hayes to take a day off would teach him the value of leisure, I soon learn I was woefully mistaken. When I suggest he consider a weekend off, he laughs, and when I ask about blocking out another Friday, he only says “maybe”, in a tone that sounds a lot like no.
But he’s coming home nearly every day for lunch, so…baby steps?
On an office day, when he can’t come to me, I go to him instead. I need to go anyway, since I’ve just gotten his oil changed and have to return his keys. The feminist in me winces as I show up at his office, toting a bag from In-N-Out Burger like some 1950s wife bringing her man his midday meal, but…fuck it. He needs to eat.
The receptionist looks at me like I’m taking my life in my hands and suggests I set it outside his door and run. I know he goes out of his way to appear distant and intimidating…I just didn’t realize people actually bought the act.
I wander back through the hallway to his office, walking in after I tap on the door.
“I got you a cheeseburger and fries,” I say, handing him the bag. “The rest is mine.”
He closes a file. I’m clearly interrupting him, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. Not that I’d care if he was. “Trying to ruin my social life by fattening me up?” he asks.
“At one cheeseburger a week, it will take me about two hundred years, but I have faith in our longevity.”
“You have faith in my longevity?”
I smile. “You might have a point.” I nod at the food. “I mean, look how you eat.”
I reach out to take the bag back from him, but he points to the chair beside me. “Stay,” he says. “I have a few minutes before my next patient.”
“I thought you hated people,” I reply, slumping in the chair happily and pulling out my fries. “Your receptionist wanted me to set the stuff outside your door.”
He spreads the paper wrapper out neatly on his desk and places a napkin in his lap, as if this is a proper meal. “I do hate people. I guess your constant nagging sets you apart somehow.”
I laugh despite myself. “Your staff could learn something from me,” I reply, shamelessly licking the grease from my fingers. He watches me, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Maybe I should offer an in-office training.”
“Your smart little mouth is plenty,” he says. There’s a purr to his voice that makes my core clench tight as a drum, something that seems to be happening more and more. I’ve always had a fair amount of self-control, but one lingering look from him, one low note in his voice, and I feel like I’m another kind of girl entirely.
Remember why it’s a bad idea, Tali.
I know his romantic past is certainly littered with examples of bad behavior, but when I scour my brain for them, I come up empty-handed. Even the few reports I’ve seen about him in the press have been complete bullshit, like the one claiming that girl I saw leaving his house weeks ago is “broken-hearted” over him—though he saw her only once—just because she looked vaguely depressed walking into yoga. Who doesn’t look depressed walking into yoga?
“Tell me about these purported girlfriends of yours,” I demand. There’s bound to be plenty of douchery there. “I’m still having a hard time seeing it. Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning?” He wipes his mouth. “That would be Alice Cook. We were six. I gave her candy hearts for Valentine’s Day, and she told me her mum wouldn’t let her have sugar and threw them away.”
I laugh and ache simultaneously. It’s too easy to picture a tiny, crestfallen version of Hayes having his tender heart broken for the first time.
He takes a sip of water, stalling, and I wave my hand to move him along. So far, he’s only made my issue worse.
“Then there was Caroline Cutherall, my mate’s older sister, who I loved fiercely from ages ten through fourteen,” he says. “She was a decade older. I suppose I might have a shot now.” He shrugs.
I’m sure he would. I don’t know who Hayes was at fourteen, but there’s no way it can match up to Hayes, two decades later.
“After that, there was Annie, the reverend’s daughter. We dated until midway through my first year at university.”
He pops the last of his burger in his mouth. I notice he doesn’t mention the end with Annie, which undoubtedly means he was at fault. Jackpot. “What happened with her?”
He leans back in his seat and holds my gaze. For a moment I’m certain he’s not going to answer.
“I came home from university to discover she’d been filling her time in my absence with a footballer from the local club,” he says.
Oh.
“She was followed by Ella,” he concludes, “who is now, of course, my stepmother.”
He gives me a rueful smile and takes another sip of water, as if this is all vaguely amusing and a little boring. To me, it is neither. I struggle with a sudden lump in my throat. Instead of a healthy reminder of Hayes’s callousness, I’ve just watched him die of a thousand small cuts and a few major ones.
I want to tell him he deserved better. I want to tell him Ella was crazy, that they all were crazy, but the words are lodged in my throat, too earnest and possibly too invested to be said aloud.
The phone rings, announcing the arrival of his next patient. I quickly clear away our trash, still thinking about what he’s said and wishing I could fix it all. He walks me through the waiting room to the elevator, standing with me while I wait for it to arrive. It almost seems as if he wishes I could stay, and…I wouldn’t mind. Increasingly, it’s hard to remember what my days were like before they included Hayes’s smirks and withering commentary about my car and my choices. Without the sweetness in his eyes that assures me he means none of it.
I’ve barely reached the parking garage when he texts, asking me to return. I wish I was annoyed. I wish I didn’t feel this quiet excitement at the prospect of seeing him again, even though I just left his side.
I find him in a room with a patient and stop at the threshold, but he beckons me in.
“Tali, meet Linda. She saw you in the waiting room and is telling me she wants to look like you.”
I slow, and my last few steps to reach them are faltering.
“I want all of it,” Linda says. “The tiny nose and especially the lips. Get mine as close to hers as you can.”
Is this normal? To point to another human being as if she’s an outfit on display and ask to be recreated? Hayes shows no surprise at all, but he swallows as his gloved thumb presses to the center of my lip. I want to suck it further into my mouth, nip it with my teeth.
“Tali has a lot of volume in her lips, the upper lip in particular,” he says. “It would be hard to replicate, but I could use micro doses of filler to turn the border out the way hers does.” His index finger runs along the contour of my upper lip. I take tiny, insufficient breaths through my nose, my heart beating harder than it should.
“Yes, let’s try that,” Linda says. “You’ve done such amazing work on her.”
His finger stills on the center of my mouth and our gazes lock. Being the center of his attention, in this way, is headier than I ever imagined it could be. It’s the experience of being exposed, laid bare, but also seen. Seen in a way no one ever has before, as if I’m something fragile, something worthy of care. I never want to stop feeling this way.
He drops his hand as if he’s been burned.
“Tali’s beauty is all her own,” he says gruffly, walking away. “I’m going to get the camera.”
I stare at his departing back in shock, wondering what the hell just happened. Was it me? Was it both of us? My memory of it is a little too surreal to be trusted.
“I wish my husband would look at me the way he looks at you,” Linda whispers. “Like he could be completely content if he never had to look at anything else.”
I glance at her—she is lovely in her own right, more than deserving of an appreciative husband—and my heart gives an odd, hard thud at her words. It’s the ache of wanting something to be true and knowing full well it is not. “I’m just his assistant,” I reply. “He looks at me like that because if I wasn’t around, he’d have to get his own coffee and he finds waiting at Starbucks intolerable.”
“I just watched the way he looked at you, honey,” she says with a knowing smile. “And believe me, that look had nothing to do with coffee.”