to one more person who found it so easy to trample on mine.
I thought about the moment when Matt told me he was going back to New York. I remember the anger, the frustration, the hurt—but this was something else. This was like Rocco had blown out my heart. I swallowed down the sob that was threatening to get out, and held myself together. I would not fucking lose it in front of him.
“This is how you do it, huh? You martyr yourself?”
He said nothing.
“You make it about other people so you can keep punishing yourself,” I said, hugging myself, suddenly feeling frozen to my toes. “I can’t fix this for the both of us and I won’t beg you. I deserve better.”
He flinched again and walked to my door and I let him go. He grabbed the doorknob and turned to look at me. “You deserve the very best, and that’s not me, Julia.” He laughed then, a hoarse, broken sound. “That’s not me.”
He walked out without so much as a backward glance, as I did everything I could to hold in the sob in my throat until he was gone.
I screamed. Hard and loud, and I knew he could hear me. But he didn’t come back, he left me there, because I was now a prop in Rocco’s theater of misery and isolation.
I don’t know how long I sat on the carpet crying, but after a while I walked over to the couch and grabbed my phone.
I tapped on the screen and after a couple of rings, José answered. “Hey, chula. I thought you’d be busy with Mr. Quinn, or is he still at the office?”
“Mr. Quinn has come and gone.” I started crying then. “He came to break up with me tonight. It only took him like five minutes.”
“What? Why?”
I scoffed, because I wished I knew. “Because he’s going to tell the board they should cut the funding for the foundation. He came over, could barely look at me, told me we had to break up, and left. That was the extent of it.”
“I’m coming over. I’ll tell Salome too.”
“You don’t have to.”
He sucked his teeth, and I could practically see his eyes rolling. “Stop it. Of course I have to. I have no idea what got into him, but we’re going to figure this out, babe.”
“Okay.” I sounded small and pathetic. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you in thirty, ma.”
I ended the call with José and sat there with my eyes closed replaying the scene with Rocco. I tried not to psychoanalyze him. He wasn’t my client. He wasn’t my project. He’d been my boyfriend...and now he wasn’t.
Rocco
I walked into the Sturm’s corporate office in a fog, my body aching from lack of sleep and what I’d done to Julia last night. I knew I had to. I didn’t think it would hurt so much though. I didn’t know anything could hurt like this.
As I turned on the lights in my office, the brightness made my eyes ache. I’d gotten home from Julia’s and sat on my couch until Pulga started meowing at me in disdain. It was almost like she knew what I’d done and was pissed at me for not consulting her first. I lay in bed awake until 2:00 a.m., but couldn’t sleep, so I worked on my presentation. The presentation that had been bought and paid for by Duke Sturm, so he could turn away from his family’s legacy and reduce his company to a machine with the sole purpose of making money. I had the numbers, and Sturm’s would be leaner if they made those cuts that Phil and Duke kept advocating for. They’d be more appealing for savvy investors if they were less generous with their employee benefits. It was true no other high-end retailers offered sixteen weeks of paternity leave, or helped people who had kids with special needs, but it’s what made Sturm’s staff so dedicated. They loved their company and were loyal because Sturm’s was good to them. All of that would be lost.
I didn’t check my phone and I didn’t check my email. I just sat and reviewed what I’d decided on for my recommendation. I didn’t need to know what my boss had to tell me, I knew what he wanted me to do. Just as I was looking at the last few slides, with my stomach in knots, my phone started buzzing and I quickly picked up when I saw it was Sofia.