Layover Rules

Chapter Six



Benson dropped me off at the office shortly before eight. He didn’t say anything about Trevor not being up yet, and I didn’t raise the topic either.

I was almost in my office when Corrine stopped me.

“Blair,” she said, coming out of her office. “How’d it go in Atlanta?”

I told her about the store, how great it was looking, and then she told me about her trip to Houston.

Corrine and I had the same job title, but I had been at it a year longer than she had. In fact, when she first started with the company, I trained her, taking her on a few trips. We were friendly at work and sometimes grabbed lunch together, but that was about it as far as social interaction between us.

We didn’t know many personal details about each other—and she certainly knew nothing of my private romantic life—so most of our discussions revolved around office gossip, which is why she stopped me in the hall that morning.

“Did you hear?” she said in a conspiratorial tone.

“About what?”

“They’re opening up a new Creative Director position.”

My eyes opened wider, but I caught myself before letting my mouth do the same. “Really,” was all I managed to mutter. Thoughts of a major career advancement swirled through my mind.

“Yeah,” she said. “Stein’s starting the interviews soon. Do you think I’ll get one?”

Frankly, I didn’t care if she got one. I wanted one. But I tried to be diplomatic about it. “Oh, definitely.”

“God.” A huge smile took over her face. “I’d be perfect for it, don’t you think?”

I nodded, and managed the same false sincerity from a few seconds ago. “Absolutely.”

The rest of my day consisted almost entirely of going over early versions of some graphic requests that Beth—the Creative Director I worked for—had put in a couple of weeks ago. My job was to weed out the ones I knew she would reject, so that only the possibles and sure things got through for consideration.

A little after three in the afternoon, I was getting nervous that the second batch of proofs I was expecting wasn’t going to make it. I sent a quick email to the graphic design department, and they got back to me by phone, telling me there would be at least a one-day delay.

Beth was easy to work for if you were competent. But when something went wrong, she could be, well, let’s just say…quite assertive about it. The graphics people knew this from experience, which is why they preferred to call me.

Beth had risen to her position for a reason, and if I had any hope at all of attaining that level in the company, I’d have to be more like her. I’d known this for a long time, but now that I was up for a possible promotion, there was no better time to model myself after my mentor.

“We’re pressed for time,” I told the guy from graphics. “This can’t wait. What’s the holdup?”

“We’re short two people today.”

“Look, let’s do this. You get me the final proofs tomorrow, but I need the initial composites today. By five.”

The guy sighed, but said, “I can do that.”

I hung up the phone, pleased with how I had taken control of a situation I might have let go just last week.



. . . . .



“I’ve made up my mind. I’m definitely going to tell him tonight.”

Alicia looked at me, put her fork down, finished chewing her mouthful of salad, put one hand in the air and said, “Hallelujah.”

Her reaction made me laugh, and I was grateful for it. If there was one person in this world who could always cheer me up, it was Alicia. That’s why, when I got off work, I called her and asked her to meet me for dinner.

“What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is this going to happen? At home, or out somewhere?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to bring it up out of the blue, or wait until a certain time?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at me for a few seconds, picked up her drink, and deadpanned, “Well, at least you have it all planned out.” She raised her glass. I picked mine up and we toasted to my completely confident resolve and my thorough lack of planning.

We ate in silence for a few moments, then I threw down my napkin, and the words poured out, surprising even me. “You know what would be nice? To find a man who is funny, self-deprecating, easy-going, and dresses like an everyday guy, not in a five thousand dollar suit every day. Where are the men who think talking is part of romance, and that it’s not all about smoldering whispers and intense glaring and customized airplanes and penthouses with gold-plated doors? Okay, there are plenty of guys without those last couple of things. And what about guys who don’t need to know where you are every moment of the day? You know what I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want to know what it’s like to be around a man who…” My voice lowered and the unfinished thought hung there between us.

“Who what?” she prodded.

I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it was the truth, and if I could speak the truth to anyone, it was Alicia.

I took a deep breath, let it out, and just said it. “A man who isn’t Trevor.”



. . . . .



There was simply no way I could wait any longer. I was going to do this when he got home. I wasn’t going to talk to him about my concerns, thoughts, feelings, or anything like that. I just needed to end it.

While waiting for Trevor to get home, I ran through it over and over in my mind as I packed the things I would need to bring to Alicia’s. She had offered to let me stay there as long as I needed.

I planned on starting by asking him to hear me out and please let me finish, something he rarely did. I would tell him everything that bothered me—the emotional distance, mainly the lack of sharing intimate details of his life before we met; the secretive lifestyle; the lack of a social life, all of that.

I fretted over how to approach the issue of our sex life. I no longer needed an explanation of why it was such a struggle for him to allow me to express my own sexual desires. I would simply tell him that this relationship was something I could no longer be a part of.

The sexual aspect of our relationship was important, but it was nowhere near as critical as the emotional component.

Or maybe I didn’t need to tell him any of those things. No, I had to give him the courtesy of an explanation. He hadn’t shared a thing with me, and I was determined not to be the same way with him.

All the planning changed, though, when I went into his office. I rarely ventured in there, and there was an unspoken rule that it was his private place. Not anymore.

I don’t know what I was looking for. Nothing in particular, I guess. Maybe some hint at what was troubling him so much that he slept in there, sitting in the chair with his head on the desk. The silly, curious side of me looked for a drool mark. Nothing.

I sat in his chair, running my hands over the cool, smooth, expensive glass surface of the desk that probably cost more than a lot of people make in six months.

Without thinking, I reached for the large drawer on the right side of the desk. It was locked, which only made me more curious about what he was keeping in there.

I looked around for a key, knowing all too well that Trevor wouldn’t just leave one lying around. But I was wrong. Sort of. It wasn’t exactly lying around, but it wasn’t very hard to find, either. He kept it under a small bust of Winston Churchill on a bookshelf.

I opened the drawer, expecting to find money, or maybe personal or business papers of some kind.

What I found was books. Six of them. Novels. The same ones I had been reading over the last couple of years—all popular erotic romances.

The fact that Trevor had these books wasn’t the shocker, though. What stunned me was the reason he had them locked away. They were heavily bookmarked with Post-it notes, all of them containing keywords. Trevor had indexed the novels.

What the f*ck?

I opened the first book to one of the marked pages and found that he had highlighted a passage where the alpha male character was talking to the female protagonist during foreplay. I recognized the dialogue. Trevor had spoken almost those exact words to me one night just a couple of weeks ago. I had read the book, but hadn’t made the connection when Trevor mimicked the dialogue, but now it all came together.

My heart beat faster.

I picked up another novel, flipped to one of the marked pages, and saw another highlighted passage. This one detailed how the female character was put in restraints, something Trevor had done many times, and now I knew where he had studied the procedure.

I must have sat there for thirty minutes, going through all the books, randomly selecting the flagged sections and inevitably matching them up to some part of our relationship.

Trevor was a charade all along. Even the few private details I thought I knew about him weren’t authentic. Who was this guy?

I felt sorry for him. Aside from the intensely secretive aspects of his personality that bothered me to no end, there was this additional secret—he was imitating the men in those books because he had no true sense of self.

The more I sat there, the more my feelings changed from sympathy for Trevor to anger and disgust.



. . . . .



I was packing in the bedroom when I heard the front door open. I stepped out into the den. Trevor walked toward me wordlessly and didn’t stop until he was standing maybe a foot away, looking down at me as I peered up at him.

I stood there frozen, not scared and not feeling like I needed to get away from him, just totally perplexed. Who was I really looking at? Who was this man I’d been living with for months?

He looked toward the office. The door was always closed, but I’d left it open.

We stood there for what seemed like many long minutes, but was probably only thirty seconds. It was strange. I could feel my body slightly trembling out of anger, and I knew he could see it, but Trevor didn’t bother to ask me what was wrong.

He just said, “You know you aren’t supposed to be in there.”

I was about to tell him it was too late, but he spoke before I could open my mouth.

“Blair,” he said, and then paused for a few seconds. “You need to leave. It’s for your own good.”

I let out a disgusted, sarcastic cough of a laugh. “For my own good? Since when does that matter to you?”

“I’m trying to protect you—”

My full-throated laugh interrupted him. “Please stop with that bullshit. And, by the way, you don’t have to tell me to leave. I’ve already packed some bags.”

He didn’t look surprised. “Benson will take you wherever you want to go.”

I wondered if there had been others. The way Trevor was doing this so calmly, so businesslike, I couldn’t escape the thought that he’d done this before. Maybe with just one other woman. Maybe with many. Who really knew?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “Here’s ten-thousand—”

I cut him off. “I don’t want your money. I don’t need your money, Trevor. If it’s even yours.”

He sighed and looked down. It was the first time I had seen him display even the most remote sense of shame.

“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?” I pressed.

He didn’t say anything. He looked me dead in the eyes with a blank, emotionless gaze. For the first time, I was creeped out by him. I needed to get out of there, but I couldn’t resist pushing him to say something. “You don’t know what to do next?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you need to go consult one of your books to tell you how to be an alpha male?”

His jaw clenched. I’d seen that happen before, but never in anger. It was always in the throes of lust. He moved toward his office door.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “they’re all locked up again.”

He stopped, didn’t turn his body, only his head, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, then looked away.

“Say something,” I said.

“Not now, Blair.”

“No. You don’t get to do that anymore. For the entire time we’ve been together you’ve been a closed book. Pun intended. You’ve never opened up to me. I guess now I know why.” I crossed my arms across my chest, a defiant, determined pose.

He just looked at me.

“Who are you?” I asked him. “Do you even know? What would you be like if it weren’t for those books?”

He glared at me for a moment, then said, “Blair. Leave. You have no idea what’s going on—”

“Oh, I know exactly what’s going on. You’re a fraud and I feel sorry for you.” I went into the bedroom, grabbed the couple of bags I’d packed, then made my way to the front door. I stopped when I got to his office door. He was sitting in the chair, looking out the window, his back to me. My last words to him were, “Don’t ever contact me again.”



. . . . .



“Kitchen’s on your right, bathroom’s down the hall, around the corner…I’m just kidding,” Alicia said. “You know where everything is. Mi casa and all that. Although, this is kind of a small casa. But, we’ll make it work.”

I’d called her from the limo and told her I was on my way over, and that I’d tell her everything when I got there.

When she opened the door, I burst out crying. She hugged me and we stood there for several minutes until she kissed me on the cheek, looked at me, smiled, and said, “I’ll make us some margaritas and you can drink right out of the blender.”

I loved her like a sister. I could always count on her to do anything for me, and most of the time it was the simple but beautiful and rare gift of humor in a bad moment.

“That’s so f*cking weird,” she said when I finished telling her how it all went down.

We were sitting on her couch, each holding big glasses of margaritas. She had also heated up some experimental hors d’oeuvres she’d made as a test batch for an upcoming catering event. The oven bell dinged and we went over to the kitchen area where I sat on a stool at the bar.

“Look at it this way,” she said, opening the oven and pulling out the baking sheet. “You didn’t have to break up with him out of the blue. So now you don’t have to deal with any guilt.”

“I don’t think I would have felt guilty. And that doesn’t even matter now. I wanted out and I got out. Finding the books just made it easier. He knew right when he walked in and saw the office door open. I could see it in his eyes.”

Alicia got some plates out of the cabinet. “Do we need plates or is this more of an eat-like-cavegirls night?”

“No plates.”

She put them back, then handed me a napkin. “These are spinach, tomato and feta wrapped in filo dough. Give them a minute to cool off.”

They smelled wonderful, and I thought right then that I could eat all two dozen of them.

“What are these called?” I asked.

“Not sure. Just some kind of stuffed pocket, I guess.”

“Mmm. Stuffed pocket. So elegant.”

“Maybe he’s crazy or something,” she said. “Maybe…hell, I don’t know.”

She asked me which books I’d found in his drawer, and we’d both read them all.

“Damn,” she said. “I never thought men would read books like that, let alone use them as instructional books. Do you think other men are doing that? I mean, aside from the one we already know about.”

I shrugged. “If they are, I hope they’re doing it better than Trevor did. It’s like he missed the emotional aspects of the characters. All he took away from it was how they wooed the female characters, and all the sex stuff. Or maybe he was into that before he read the books.”

“Who knows?”

I shook my head. “Obviously not me. I was in the dark about it all along.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“I know.” I didn’t want to talk about Trevor anymore, so I changed the subject. “When do you see the cop again?”

“I don’t think I’m going to.”

“What? Why not?”

She poured some more margarita in her glass, then mine. “You’re right. I can’t use that JDate site. I’m not Jewish, so basically what I’m saying right off the bat is, ‘Hi, I’m a liar!’ I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Told ya.”

“Hey, I’m admitting you were right. Go easy on me.”

I grabbed another stuffed pocket.

Her phone rang. She went over to the coffee table to get it. “It’s the front desk.” She answered it, then said, “From who?” She listened and then said, “Wait, never mind, I know. Okay, thank you.”

She hung up and looked at me. “They’re bringing some bags and boxes up here. It must be your stuff from Trevor’s.”

As far as I knew, Trevor didn’t know Alicia’s address, but Benson must have told him where he had dropped me off, and he figured anything he shipped here would reach me.

When the boxes came up, I didn’t open them. They were clothes, almost all of which Trevor had paid for, high-end designer items, which made for a good appearance in my line of work. But I didn’t want anything I’d received from Trevor. Out of necessity, though, I’d keep them for a little while, but only until I could replace them with items I’d paid for, making a fresh start, and I knew just the way to get them without spending half my paycheck on a pair of shoes.

We stacked the boxes and bags in a corner of her den. “I’ll go through them tomorrow and get this out of the way.”

Alicia hugged me. “No rush. Tomorrow we’ll start trying to find you a rebound guy.”

“No, thanks. I need some time off from men for a little while.”

“Great. So you can devote all your free time to finding me one.”

I gave her my raised-eyebrow look. “Seriously? You want me to help you find a guy? With my track record?”

“You have a point. Plus, I’m not really rebounding from anything. I’m…God, what am I doing?”