“Excuse me?” Mr. Worthington asks.
“Dylan didn’t marry Peyton,” Juliet says, shaking her head. “He married Alice.”
“What?” Mr. Worthington yells. His face gets flushed and the pupils of his eyes dilate so much it looks like his eyes fill with blackness.
“Wait a second,” Dylan says. “Why did you go to Tiffany’s?”
What the hell is Dylan talking about? His dad is about to murder us all and he’s questioning him? I start to inch my way to the back of the room. If Mr. Worthington explodes, I want to be as far away from him as possible.
“I’m going to ask Cynthia to marry me,” Mr. Worthington announces.
“What?” Dylan asks.
Just at that moment, the door to his room opens and Hudson comes out. Perfect timing, as usual.
“Cynthia? You’re going to ask Cynthia to marry you? Are you insane?” Dylan asks. He’s no longer a scared little boy afraid to make his father mad. He’s now standing right in front of his dad, challenging him. He’s indignant and his mouth is full of anger and venom.
“Yes, Cynthia.” Mr. Worthington shrugs. He looks as surprised by Dylan’s temperament as we all are.
“Cynthia is four years older than I am.” Dylan turns to me and explains. “She’s twenty-three years old. My dad apparently doesn’t think that there’s anything inappropriate about that.”
“Age is just a number,” Mr. Worthington says.
“Yeah, right,” Dylan says.
“Hey, why are you questioning me anyway? I wasn’t the one who secretly got married to a stranger and got her a…” Mr. Worthington looks down at the piece of paper in his hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that a picture of my ring is at the top. “The two carat Tiffany Embrace diamond ring,” he reads from the printout. “It’s bead-set diamonds exquisitely accentuate a round brilliant center stone in a setting that evokes glamour and romance. All for a price of $44,100! You two were engaged for how long? An hour?”
“You got her a 44 thousand dollar ring?” Juliet whispers. Her eyes light up and I think she’s going to faint.
Honestly, the ring looked nice, but I had no idea it was so much money.
“You know what the best thing is? He put it on his father’s credit card. How perfect is that?” Mr. Worthington says sarcastically.
“He got you an engagement ring?” Hudson asks quietly. His voice is barely audible, but everyone turns to look at him.
“I’m not going to keep it,” I say. It’s the only thing I can say.
“You got her an engagement ring?” he asks Dylan.
“So what?” Dylan asks. He’s taken aback, I can tell, but I get the feeling that he’s not apologizing as long as his dad’s here.
“So what?” Mr. Worthington yells. “I was going to get my actual fiancée a $30,000 ring, but my son went out and splurged on forty-four grand of my money on some stranger!”
“She’s not a stranger,” Dylan says. “Alice, this is my dad, Mr. Worthington. Dad, this is Alice Summers. My roommate and wife.”
“Oh, please.” Mr. Worthington rolls his eyes.
“What? You think this marriage is a joke? Well, it’s not,” Dylan says with a shrug.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I whisper.
“Look, Dylan, even your wife knows it’s a joke.” Mr. Worthington laughs.
“Well, it’s not. I wanted to marry her and I did. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
I shake my head. No, no, no. What is he talking about? Suddenly, my whole body starts to shake uncontrollably. I turn to Hudson. He can’t actually believe this. Why is Dylan doing this? Hudson just grabs his jacket and walks out. I follow him. I can’t stay in that room any longer.
“Hudson! Hudson!” I run after him, catching him by the elevator. “Please, wait,” I say. The button pointing down is lit up and I know we don’t have much time.
“He gave you a ring?” he asks. There is sadness on his face and disappointment. It looks like he’s going to cry at any moment. He takes a deep breath, trying to hold back tears.
“He got me a ring, but I’ve already given it back to him. We’re getting a divorce. This all has been a terrible mistake,” I say. I’m speaking fast, a little fast, but I want to be able to get everything out before the elevator comes.
“He got you a ring, Alice,” Hudson says with a shrug. As if that means something. As if it signifies something important. “And a really expensive ring,” he adds.
“So what? That’s Dylan. If he gets something, then he goes all out, but it doesn’t mean a thing. I don’t care about that ring.”
“It’s a two-carat ring, Alice. It cost almost fifty thousand dollars.”
“It was just a splurge. A mistake from a night full of mistakes,” I say. “Why does it matter what kind of ring it is?”
The elevator doors open.
“I don’t know,” Hudson says, stepping inside, “but it does.”
The elevator doors close and he disappears, leaving me alone. I’ve never felt so alone before. This is over. Really over. My legs crumple underneath me. I drop to the floor. Tears rush down my face. I can’t stop them even if I want to. I just let them wash over me. Maybe they can wash away my mistakes. Probably not.
28
Day turns into night and into day again. I lose track of time. I cry for so long that my eyes feel like someone’s slicing them with razor blades and my chest starts to physically hurt from the pain. Eventually, the tears dry up. There are no more. The pain remains, but it’s as if it’s happening to someone else. I’m detached from it. Separated, somehow. Now, there’s just a dark cloud that descends around me. One that I can’t shake no matter what I do.
The next two weeks are consumed by melancholy. Hours blend into days and days into nights. I become something of a zombie. I don’t cry much
