If I'm Honest Ch. 11

I'd sort of expected a morbid, dour atmosphere once I told them, but the three amigos were actually optimistic on my behalf, eager to hear what new path my life was going to be taking.

"You're done here, man," Ken told me. "You conquered the call center, you conquered the diamond, hell, you've conquered the city. There's nothing left for you here any more. You need a change of scenery."

"Yeah," I agreed, " I think so too, but I just haven't found where I'm changing to yet."

"So have an adventure for a while!" TJ laughed, patting me on the shoulder. "David and I have always wished we'd traveled more when we had the opportunity, but these days, it's not like either of us gets much in the way of time off. I mean, we squirrel a couple of weeks off here and there every year, but we've never really had one giant worldwide trip, like we always said we would."

At around eleven thirty, not long before the place was going to close, we were trying to figure out our next move when a familiar voice entered my head again.

Hey man, sorry to do this to you now, but the boss is ready, and so it's time. You can take a little bit to make your goodbyes or whatever, but we need to get your boss level in front of you sooner rather than later, so let's not dawdle, okay?

"Funny timing you have, Harvey," I remember thinking.

It's like Steve Martin once said, comedy is a matter of tiMING. TI-ming. Timing!

With Harvey giving me the go code, I suddenly shifted from planning to excuses, telling the guys that it wasn't going to be goodbye but more of farewell for now, and that for the next year or so, I'd probably be in town a few days each month, making sure Jen wasn't in over her head, not that I really expected her to be.

We said our farewells and then I walked out onto the street, reaching into my pocket, pulling out my phone, calling an Uber. "Where we headed Harvey?" I thought, and he gave me back an address, a residence atop one of the big skyscrapers downtown.

I walked into the lobby of the building, and the doorman immediately asked me who I was here to see. I told him I had an appointment with someone in the penthouse, and that they should be expecting me, because that's what Harvey told me to say. The doorman picked up the phone and called upstairs, only to be told that yes, I was expected, and that I should just come right up.

The doorman walked me down the hallway, past several elevators before reaching the last one at the very end, where he swiped a keycard in front of a panel, and the elevator slowly purred downward before the doors open.

"Which floor do I push?" I asked before entering the elevator, noticing there were only two buttons in it - penthouse and lobby.

"You'll figure it out," the doorman said with a smile, as the doors closed, leaving me in the elevator, so I pushed the penthouse button and it began to slowly crawl upwards.

Now remember, there's nothing to be gained from lying. Honesty is literally your only saving grace here. Don't stop and think about what you're going to say; just say it. It's going to be scary, but I'm right here with you, and you're gonna get through this. I think you're ready, and that's all that matters, because I am literally never wrong on these sorts of things, okay? I just need you to trust me and be completely open the minute those doors open. Don't hide anything. Don't shut anything down. Go from the hart, and you're going to do fine.

"Jesus, Harvey, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were nervous," I said to myself.

No fucking shit I'm nervous. Just because I've never been wrong on these sorts of things doesn't mean there isn't a first time for everything, and this is a pretty big swing for the fences by me as a final challenge before we get you settled in.

The elevator doors dinged and then opened before me, letting me into a large cavernous entryway, which I realized was sort of the start of a massive apartment. Slightly down the hall, I could hear what sounded like cooking, so I started walking down that way. "Hello?" I called. "I was told to come here?"

"Yes yes, Derrick, come in, come in," a voice from down the hall said to me. "We've been waiting for your arrival with baited breaths."

'We?' I remember thinking.

The floors of the hallways were carved marble, long solid unsplit pieces that must have been an utter bitch to lay up here, but it made the whole place feel more like a temple than an apartment. I almost wondered if I should take my shoes off. I walked down the hallway and found it emptied into a large room that seemed to be partially sectioned off, the left part a kitchen, the middle left a dining area, and the rest of the room a massive living room. The lights were all neon, bright shades of orange, red, pink and gold, like a 1980s sunset glow, except for the kitchen, which had a few white overhead lights to make that area feel less moody, which is where I saw two women.

It's truly hard to say which I noticed first, because both women caught my eye for extremely different reasons. The woman on the left looked to be about thirty, Mediterranean in descent, with slightly olive skin and charcoal black hair with streaks of dark brown in it, pulled back into a very relaxed ponytail. She was dressed in a white tank top and a tight pair of gym shorts, slowly putting a gyro onto a plate, pushing it towards me, as she already had one in front of her and the other woman also had one in front of her. She was breathtakingly gorgeous.

The other woman was a familiar face I hadn't seen in years, not in person anyway. For a couple of years, though, I'd shared a bed with her, although really I guess I was only one of many men to sleep in that bed. I knew her mother was Mexican and her father was white, because I'd met both of them, back when she and I had been dating. She had on an oversized Duke University sweatshirt and what looked like yoga pants on beneath it. She had her hair up in a bun, but I suspected if she'd let it down, it would still hang down nearly to her belly button.

Her name was Vanessa.

"Holy shit, Deke," Vanessa said, trying to give me as much wattage behind her smile as she could, "I didn't think you'd really come when she told me you would."

"Vanessa," I said, trying to keep my voice as flat as I could. "Who's your friend?"

"Ah, forgive my poor manners, Mister King," the other woman said, wiping her hands off on a towel next to the stove before moving over towards me, extending it toward me for me to shake. "You can call me Vera."

"Is this your place, Vera?" I said, shaking her hand, not feeling comfortable enough to do my cheeky little kissing the back of her hand move I usually did. "It's very nice."

"It's one of my many temples scattered around the world," she said, with a relaxed confidence I'd only seen a couple of times in my lifetime. "Not as many as there used to be, but you know, you have to change and keep up with the times."

'Temples?' I thought to myself.

Tell the boss I said hi, Deke.

'Wait, what?'

Tell the boss I said hi.

"Harvey says I'm supposed to say hello to you," I told Vera, as it was all starting to dawn on me what exactly I'd walked into.

"Harvey, hm?" Vera laughed. "I suppose it's as fitting a name as any other. "I was always fond of Susurri myself."

That's Latin for whisper.

"What's in a name?" I said with a smile, trying to portray I was at ease, when every single danger alarm I had in my head was ringing at full volume. "So, Vera, what am I doing here?"

"Oh, I thought it would be obvious, Derrick," she said to me. "You're here for your final test, to see if you're ready for the love of your life to finally enter it. Come, first we eat and then we'll move on to the test."

"Whatever you say, Veritas," I replied with a little bow.

She clicked her tongue in discouragement. "Now now, no bowing or praying while you're here. It'll only confuse your karma. I understand you were out drinking, so I want you to eat some of this wonderful food I've prepared, to help your head clear a little bit. The last thing I want is you facing this challenge without your wits entirely about you."

"And why is she here?" I said, gesturing to Vanessa, who had mostly remained quiet since my arrival.

"She's here for two reasons, Derrick," Veritas said, placing her plate and mine on the table in the dining room area where Vanessa had already carried her own plate to, as the three of us sat down. "She's here because she has a question she desperately needs answered, and she's here because she's a final test for you to deal with. Now, no more talking until you've finished that gyro in front of you."

The three of us ate in silence, and to her credit, it was truly divine food, easily the best tasting gyro I'd ever had in my life. My mind was racing with thousands of questions, none of which I felt comfortable enough to ask yet. It was pretty obvious from Vanessa's face that she also had more than her fair share of questions.

And still, we ate quietly.

Nobody spoke for some time.

After I finished my gyro, I was the first to break the silence. "That was a godly meal," I said, by way of pun, which brought a smile to Vera's face.

"I should hope so," she said, her eyes kind and warm and inviting, like I could just fall into them for a few hours before anyone found me. "I have a lot less followers these days, but that shouldn't impact my cooking skills anyway. I used to be very good at this and it wouldn't be wise to lie to me."

"That's fair," I told her. "Now, why am I here, and, more importantly, why is she?" I said, gesturing at Vanessa, whom I still hadn't directly spoken to yet.

"I'm here because I want to apologize, Derrick," Vanessa said to me, her voice shaky and cracking. "When we started dating, we were both so young and foolish, thinking we could fuck away all our problems and that the rest would just magically fall into place. And neither of us wanted to make compromises, which is always the biggest problem in any real relationship, never being willing to give the other person what they need, be it space or more closeness or more support."

I frowned a little bit. "Vanessa, you cheated on me. Lots. Not just once. Not with just one person. Hell, I know of at least two people you cheated on me with, and that's just the ones I know about. You went on to marry one of them. You're still married to him, as far as I know. But now that things have started going south with him, you're jumping ship. Again. Because that's what you do, Vanessa. You're a survivor, at the expense of everyone and everything around you. You don't care about the damage you leave in your wake. You don't care who you hurt along the way. You're just in it to make sure you're safe and taken care of, and now that John's safety net is gone, you're moving on to find greener pastures."

"No, Deke!" Vanessa said, reaching across the table, grabbing onto my arm, clinging to me like a lifeline. "I'm coming back to you because I realize now that I was wrong. I should've talked to you about the problems we were having and we could've worked through them, like adults are supposed to do. We could have! I could've told you how I felt like you were spending too much time in the office and not enough time with me, and we could've found some common ground to build things better. I'm sorry I wasn't a better person, but I was young and stupid. You're always going on about how everyone deserves a second chance, Deke, but you won't give me one? You won't give a second chance to the woman who held your heart for so long?"

She looked at me with those pleading green eyes of hers, a tear starting to form in the corner of one, biting her bottom lip nervously.

I glanced over at Vera, inhaling a deep breath before pushing it back out, carefully. "I can tell that you want to say something to me, so you may as well."

"You've got a choice in front of you, Derrick. If you want, you can choose to accept Vanessa's offer and give her a second chance. She will be unable to lie to you for a full year, but in that time, you will also be unable to split from her, for any reasons at all. It will be the second chance she says she's always wanted," Vera said, holding her glass of wine in her hand, swirling it. "On the other hand, you can choose to decline Vanessa's offer, and refuse to give her a second chance, and you will never have the opportunity to get an honest answer from her as to how she's felt about you all of these years. You could be the long lost love of her life, the great white whale she let slip through her grasp, or you could just be another port in a storm, a place for her to find shelter until the calm has returned and she can set out in search of greener pastures. If you refuse her now, you will never get the honest answer to that."

Vanessa's fingertips clung to my forearm, squeezing onto it imploringly, her eyes never once leaving my face, even as I refused to look back at her, keeping my eyes on Veritas the entire time, her look giving absolutely nothing away either in Vanessa's favor or against.

"It's not a hard choice," I told Vera, hearing Vanessa exhale a breath of confident satisfaction. "I don't need you to tell me the truth when it comes to Vanessa, because I learned that lesson all on my own. Whether I'm 99% certain or 100% certain, the answer's obvious - she may have fooled herself into thinking that she loved me, but she never did, not really."

Vanessa gasped, and her grasp on my arm grew much tighter, like she could hold on strongly enough to keep me in her clutches. "Derrick!" she whispered to me. "You can't possibly believe that!"

"After I caught you cheating on me Vanessa, you never apologized for it. You could have. I may have moved out of the apartment, but you knew exactly where I worked, because the new branch you were clinging to, my so-called friend John, worked there too. Instead, you avoided talking to me ever again, which was probably for the best. And over the last several years, even as hurt as I was, I never did anything to get in the way of you and John, nor did I do anything to jeopardize John's place at the company. Sure, he and I moved to different divisions, but John was trying to oust the founder out of his own company. He fucked it up all by his lonesome. How the fuck did he think that was going to over? Hell, I bet it might have even been your idea, because John never struck me as bold enough to try that kind of shit on his own. You probably talked him into making a play to take over AI."

"I won't let you paint me as the bad guy here, Deke!" she said, letting go of my arm, standing up, as she was starting to tear up. "I'm tired of everyone always painting me as the bad guy!" She stood up and stepped away from the table, walking over to the window, folding her arms in front of her, practically hugging herself. "I'm not a bad person!" she shouted at the downtown Seattle night skyline.

"Sooner or later, Vanessa, you're going to have to account for your actions. Not to me, because I'm so far removed from your life now, I don't even know who you are anymore, but someone somewhere's going to collect on your misdeeds. Think about this - John's been out of work for about a year now, and instead of helping him get back on his feet and figure out what he's doing with his life, you're off having expensive dinners with Josef again, as well as being here, trying to convince me to take you back, probably because you heard I came into a load of money, if I'm honest. If you're not a bad person, Vanessa, then why do you keep doing such bad, bad things?"

She spun around, tears rolling down her cheeks openly now. "You don't know what it's like, being a woman in this fucking world! No one's ever looking out for you and everyone's trying to take advantage of you! You always have to wonder if the guy buying you drinks at the bar has slipped you something to let him rape you! You always have to wonder if the guy you're sharing a bed with is going to kick you out of it sooner or later for someone younger or prettier. I haven't had solid ground to stand on since I was a fucking kid, Deke!"

I shook my head with a quiet laugh. "Welcome to the fucking human race, Vanessa. It's dangerous, it's unpredictable and it's inevitably fatal, but you can't trust everybody and you can't distrust everybody either. I literally can't give you a second chance, because I already did that, way back when. Hell, I gave you more than two chances, but cheating on me, that was the final straw, my bridge too far. There's no road back from that. You're out of lifelines with me. I don't trust you, because you've given me loads of reasons not to. So many reasons. Giving you another chance now wouldn't just be foolish, it'd be downright fucking stupid. So, no, Veritas, I don't need to definitively know what's in Vanessa's heart, because I already know more than enough for my satisfaction. If I'm honest, I should've known better before she and I ever got serious, because there were plenty of red flags early on in the relationship, but I guess some lessons have to be learned the hard way." I glanced over at Vanessa. "And as crazy as it is, I don't wish you ill will, Vanessa. Genuinely I don't. I hope you grow out of this paranoid attitude and find someone you let into your heart. I mean it. I truly hope you find a chance at happiness again, but it's not with me. It never was, and it never will be."

My man.

Veritas smiled, as if she was both surprised and delighted by my answer. "You are not the man you were when my bracelet first came into your life, Derrick King. You are better, smarter, wiser. You are finally ready for the love of your life to enter it."

"I mean," I said with a grin, "you can't guarantee that this woman you're going to introduce me to will be the love of my life, but I get that you're convinced she's as close as you think you're going to find. There's no such thing as perfection in this world, is there, Goddess? And that's where the beauty truly lies. In all our flaws and mistakes, that's where we take the true measure of a person. So I hope you're right, and that she really is the love of my life, but even if she's half of what you've been promising, I think that'll be more than enough."

Veritas stood up and moved over to stand next to me, reaching down to touch the bracelet, a motherly expression on her face. "You've gotten so much better at this over the centuries, my creation."

Aw, thanks boss.

"Harvey says thank you," I told her, uncertain if she could hear him like I could.

"I can hear him, thank you, Deke," she said, tracing a fingertip along my arm. "This will be the only time we ever meet, because you're going to have your soulmate soon, but it's been some time since I've had the chance to indulge in pleasures of the flesh. Might I interest you in one last dance before you settle down?"

Oh damn, Deke. You don't have to say yes, but... I mean... can you?

"Is this still part of the test?" I said to her, awe and maybe even a touch of fear in my eyes.

"No no," she said, her fingertips drawing up along my bicep. "No more tests, no more games. Harvey, as you call him, has locked in on the perfect candidate for you, and your fate is already determined. Nothing you do now will change that, one way or the other. And, as I said, we're never going to meet again. But I find myself wanting to enjoy this moment of triumph with you."

I canted my head over towards Vanessa, who had turned back to looking out the window, directionless and aimless, completely adrift in her own misery and self-pity. "Shouldn't you send her away, let her head back to John or Josef or whoever it is she's sharing a bed with now?"