“There is no us, Nicole. There never was. We were friends, we had sex, but that was it. I thought that was clear.”
There was no bite to his tone or the words he used. He said it soothingly, as if he were talking to a child or trying to calm down an ex-girlfriend after a breakup. Clearly I was in an overly emotional state. Had I not been, his words would have just rolled off me, but they didn’t. They actually hurt a little. I had gone off and gotten married. It’s not like I expected him to care. I looked at him momentarily. He didn’t seem like he did, and at this point, what did it matter?
“You’re right,” I said once I collected my thoughts and looked at Victor again. “So, what do we do now?”
“The question of the hour is: did you sign a prenup?”
“Of course.”
My father was a divorce attorney. Did Victor really think he’d let me marry with no prenuptial? Seemingly reading my mind correctly, Victor nodded.
“I’ll have Corinne get it for me,” he said, opening up the folder in front of him and jotting something down before picking it up and coming around the table.
“This will make it easier for me to explain,” he said as he sat down beside me. The smell of his cologne enveloped me and I did my best to take it in small doses, taking small and quick shallow breaths as I focused on the papers in front of me.
“Nic?” he asked, his voice low and near my ear. My stomach did a flip-flop.
“Yeah?” I whispered.
“You’re going to have to learn to breathe when you’re near me. We’ll be doing this a lot.”
My head whipped toward him, and he reared back slightly to put a little distance between our faces.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Let’s get on with this,” I replied, trying my best not to roll my eyes.
And then Victor went over the process and explained each page. I didn’t care to know all the details, and I knew he had my best interest and wouldn’t screw me over, but I listened anyway. He leaned over me and pointed at the spots I needed to sign and I wondered how many women had felt the warmth of his chest against their shoulder. When we finished, he backed away and picked up the papers to go back to the spot he’d been sitting earlier.
“So now that part is over,” he said, sitting across from me and taking a legal-sized notebook out, “let’s go over things I should know about. How many houses do you own? By own I mean, how many is your name in the title for?”
“Two. One in Calabasas and an apartment in New York.”
“And those are also owned by Gabriel?”
“Correct.”
“Have either one of you moved out of your current residence?”
“No.”
The tip of his pen stopped writing, and he glanced up at me. “Are either one of you planning on moving out any time soon?”
“I don’t know.”
He put the pen down and threaded his hands together as he looked at me.
“Have you discussed anything with Gabriel?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Why is that?”
“He’s in Canada filming a movie, and I’m on set here working on one being filmed now.”
“You’re still doing costume design?”
I nodded, smiling that he remembered. It was the one thing keeping me sane these days. It had been for quite some time. Work and wine, maintaining sanity for unhappily married women everywhere.
“Okay. Let’s go over a timeline.” He slid the notebook and pen over to me. “I want you to write down your wedding date, and basically any date you remember that you think is of importance—good and bad.”
I did as I was told, jotting down my wedding date and more or less the timeframe of when other things happened, though I didn’t keep track of every major event of my life on my calendar. Now I kind of wished I had. When I was done, I slid the notebook and pen back to Victor.
“You were pregnant?” he asked, looking at me like I was a complete stranger. I nodded.
“Miscarried at nine weeks.”
He gave a nod. “And you didn’t try again?”
My heart squeezed in my chest. “It didn’t work out,” I whispered. We hadn’t, even though I’d wanted to. Gabe then started getting major acting roles and got me a dog instead, saying we needed to wait to start a family. Wait until he could actually be there for his kids, and I couldn’t argue that. I cleared my throat and spoke louder. “Why is that important?”
“Is it one of the reasons your marriage didn’t work out?”
“No,” I said, even though I’d often wondered if we’d had the baby, if things would have worked out between us. Would things with him have been different? I refused to put the blame of our downfall on that, though. We married each other, not the idea of having a child together.
“You sure? It took you a while to come to that conclusion.”