Do you believe in love ever after?
I did. I believed in the kind of love that people script screenplays about. I believed in the kind of love that people live and die for. I believed in the kind of glance-across-the-bridge love that songs are written about. But that's all over with now. That belief, I don't have it anymore. I haven't had it for the longest time. There are moments when I miss it. Long for the warm comfort it provides. But then I remind myself that it is always better to be burned with the truth, than comforted with a lie. And that's what love ever after is.
A lie.
Because he was my love ever after. He was my fairy-tale. Like Aladdin, he went from rags to riches, to burst into my life like Prince Ali on his magic carpet. But Aladdin had secrets, didn't he? He didn't tell Princess Jasmine that he was a street urchin with a monkey-devil on his shoulder. And if you can't even trust animated men not to hurt you, what business do you have trusting the real deal? See, I should have known better. Much better. Because, regardless of what she has that I don't, I am at least, intelligent. I'm not a formulaic damsel in distress with great hair, but only two brain cells. I could and should have seen the signs.
Because there were signs.
There always is.
Bubbles are a dangerous thing. You can live in them and the world outside you, with all its clues and evidence, will pass you by with a watery wave. I was in our bubble. I was busy believing in love ever after while he was out screwing blonde ever leggier. Yes, yes, you read that right. Blonde. He's switched it up. Brunettes don't do it for him anymore, at least, this brunette doesn't. He's gone older, blonder, and prettier. At thirty-three, Autumn (I thought it was her working girl name at first, if you catch my drift) Spector has ten more years of experience on this Earth than I do. She has a slimmer waist than I do, bigger eyes than I do and the man that I used to do.
And you know what's worse?
I was the one who introduced them to each other.
Cliché upon cliché, right?
It was me. In the foyer. With an appointment book.
I thought it would be a nice surprise. A present for the man who has everything. An early birthday gift that was supposed to be steeped in thought and love. But it didn't really work out that way. You see, Escala caught fire about seven months before Autumn came into our lives. Christian's eye in the sky caught fire quicker and hotter than a Christmas tree doused in petrol. He was devastated. He pretended he wasn't, like it didn't even matter. Which, monetarily, it didn't. But it did matter, it mattered personally. It was his first multi-million-dollar property purchase, bought in celebration of taking GEH public.
And when the fire was finished with it, only smouldering piles of wood remained.
Autumn, talented and beautiful bitch that she is, specialises in the fine art of piano restoration. The grand piano that died in Escala, was a present from Grace and Carrick for their son's achievements on the first anniversary of GEH. He loved that piano. So, I had it restored. Autumn had at first, been reluctant, the ruins of the piano were a hot mess. But I was adamant. My musical Fifty would love it and therefore, he had to have it.
It took three months and thousands and thousands of dollars.
Before, three days before his thirtieth birthday, it was finally ready.
Autumn had to be there at the grand reveal. That didn't bother me, I had no reason for it to bother me, she hadn't even met my philandering Fifty back then. I was so wrapped up in my excitement that I couldn't have cared less who had to be there to tune the beautifully restored black beauty back to his personal perfection. But I should have cared, oh, how I should have cared. My eyes were for him only when he stepped into our new home and saw his pride and joy of musicality in the foyer. His shock had been my joy and his face-splitting grin had been my soul-splintering happiness.
I didn't see the look in her eyes when she saw the look in his.
I didn't see her lick her lips like a preying lioness as she drank him in.
Every little bit of him.
Ever the polite wallflower, I had introduced them. Watched her shake his hand for just a little too long to be professional, flutter her eyelashes just a little too hard to be a blink. And still, I thought nothing of it. Women threw themselves at his feet on the daily and he side-stepped them like vomit on the sidewalk. He never spared even the prettiest of pretty girls a second glance. All for one very simple reason.
For love ever after.
I was his beginning, middle and end. He told me so. Over and over again, he told me so. And as destiny sniggered behind her hands, I started to believe him. Thought to myself, hey girl, you deserve a happily ever after just as much as that platypus Aimee McCann from high school, with her 32DD's, one brain cell, and Hollywood smile. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If by some stroke of God, Christian Trevelyan-Grey wants you, don't rock the boat. Don't fall into the ocean of otherwise certain spinsterhood. Embrace that shit. Think about taking up religion and thanking a higher power for that shit.
Don't lose that shit.
But I did. I lost that shit and let me tell you how. I started believing in things I had no business believing in. I started trusting in the fealty of a man who attracted the lust of every woman, and his fair share of men, he met. I began to treat it like one treats their other half's excessive chest hair. Annoying, sure, but nothing to get one's knickers in a twist about. In fact, it caused me some amusement at times, to see him batting off simpering idiot after salivating halfwit, making his way back to me.
And only me.
Autumn Spector put a swift end to that.
She was everything I wasn't. Beautiful, holder of an Ivy league education, musically talented beyond belief and a business owner with a staff number higher than my years on Earth. She was exactly the kind of woman Christian would be expected to have on his arm. And she wanted his arm, regardless of the fact that I was still attached to it. It started off small, innocuous. She called to check on how the piano was performing, a routine follow-up she said. The disappointment when I answered the phone instead of Christian was well hidden, I didn't catch it. The second time she called, and got me instead of him, her disappointment was evident.
And I still didn't catch it.
Next time, she called him at work.
The minute she got passed Andrea, her elevated talent of manipulation sealed my fate.
No one sidestepped the Andrea Parker line of defence to Christian Grey without serious skills.
He told me about her call when he got home that night. That was the first and final conversation of truth we ever had about Autumn Spector. He was impressed with her professionalism, her consumer satisfaction strategy. He was in love with his restored piano. Played it every night. Thanked me in many different ways, at many different times of the day and night. I was grateful to her for his happiness, indebted to her for her enabling me to give him something incredible for once. Can you believe that? I was grateful to the scheming, gold-digging strumpet that was hatching her plan to steal my man from under my nose the moment she laid eyes on him.
In our home.
She took her time. She did her research and her reach was far more than that of piano restorers ever ought to have been. She was connected and flitted in the same circles that he did. Turns out, musical miracles were her forte, but they weren't her primary business focus. She was the female Christian. But in a much quieter, silent partner sort of way. She sacrificed public admiration for privacy and anonymity. She had stakes in telecommunications and green energy, not quite on a GEH scale, but enough to get her into the glitziest of Washington dinners.
She intertwined her business with his.
Cleverly, discreetly, patiently.
You know, in a way, I can almost understand it. Who wouldn't do whatever it takes to salve the Christian Grey bite? I mean, I was held hostage by a crazed ex-sub at gunpoint and I still would have given more, done more, for Christian Grey. Redirecting the flow of business to fall into the lap of GEH seems an almost tame effort in comparison to all the things I did to live in his life.
And still, he chose her.
I was feeling sick the night it happened. Not violently sick by any stretch, but sick enough that I didn't want to go to yet another dry ass dinner. Things weren't that good between us around then and a night apart was, as a rarity, appealing. We'd been fighting. All the damned time. His controlling and possessive streaks were out of control because there'd been a spate of violent attacks against women in the city. He tried to stop me going to work, insisted Taylor watch my every move, went thermonuclear when I slipped away for a much-needed night out with Kate.
I think he was as secretly happy to have a night away from me as I was from him.
He certainly didn't try and change my mind.
If I could change anything in my life, I would go back and change it for me.
It was that night that she cast her first move.
Or so she told me.
Oh yeah, she told me. Everything. In excruciating detail, a play-by-play narrative that conjured up some of the most vivid imagery my literary mind had ever experienced. Their four-month affair had flourished without a nugget of my knowledge before she had dropped the bomb she had been creating since the day she'd finetuned his piano strings. She'd been wearing a Valentino gown. Black, subtly glitzy, and off the shoulder. She'd spotted the opportunity she hadn't been expecting when he walked stiffly into the dining room, with no one on his arm and no one seated at his side. She'd been expecting me. That dinner was just to evaluate how we were together, how we played off each other in public. It was a surveillance operation. Until I gave her the ammunition to speed up her game plan astronomically, because I had a cramp and a bad dose of the sulks.
I handed him to her on a silver platter.
I really did.
She pretended someone had taken her seat at her table. She feigned consternation as she glided past his table and paused in faux amazement when she spied him. He looked up at just the right time and she perfected her damsel in distress routine to a fine art. Asking him about his piano, she opened up about the embarrassment of being table-less. And he, of course, the consummate gentleman had promptly offered her a seat.
My seat.
She couldn't believe her luck. They got talking as the most boring awards ceremony known to man droned on around them. She intelligently guided the conversation to a place where she could drip feed him bits and pieces of her own portfolio. He had been pleasantly surprised to find their commonalities, impressed that she wasn't a one-trick, one-tune pony. She was a Harvard grad, and he a Harvard drop-out. They talked of their college days, their elite status, their business domination. She was in-tune with the stock market that made him vibrate with excitement and that bored me to tears. She made him laugh with inside jokes of the commercial world I was ignorant of, and he made her tinkle with amusement with his dry wit.
All the while, I was on my second tub of Ben and Jerry's and feeling sorry for myself.
By the time they'd finished dessert, they were in negotiations.
He thought they were brokering an investment, she knew she was getting his personal cell.
And that, she said sweetly, was that.
It's nothing personal, Anastasia. Surely you knew deep down that you weren't the woman for him? The Christian Greys of this world always end up with women like me. You'll find your man, honestly sweetie, you will. But it won't be this man. It won't be Christian. He's mine now. And you need to know that I will do whatever it takes to keep it that way….
I thought it was a joke.
A very strange, perverse and almost Mrs Robinson style hoot-and-a-half.
I'd laughed.
In her face.
I'd actually laughed.
But she didn't laugh back. She just looked at me with the kind of pity a vet offers a dying dog. I was in our home when she came to tell me the news. I was in our lounge, wondering what to make for our dinner, I was completely and utterly clueless. She said Christian couldn't bring himself to tell me from his own lips. She said that I could keep the house, he wouldn't come back and make things even more difficult than they already were between us. He would have someone come by and remove anything of his within a working week. There would be no need to see each other and experience all the pain that such a meeting would bring. That they never meant to hurt me, but they had fallen in love and couldn't bear to keep their adoration in the dark any longer.
I genuinely thought she was on drugs.
Or deranged.
Or drugged and deranged.
I had called him. And called and called, before calling and calling again.
He didn't pick up.
He always picked up.
I e-mailed him. They bounced back. My address had been blocked. She just sat and watched with a sly smile on her rosy pink lips. I began to panic. I called Andrea, and she stonewalled me. Told me Christian was out to lunch. She was lying, I could tell. I called Grace, and she was edgy with me, hiding something, trying to get me off the phone. Same with Elliot and the same with Mia. I was being completely shut out. Then, you know, I thought I was just having a bad dream. Or that I'd eaten some really bad shellfish. Or maybe even drank three bottles of wine without really realizing it.
But it wasn't any of that.
It wasn't any of that at all.
Eventually, she left. In a hurry. People tended to do that when you launch yourself at them, nails out and fists flying. Looking back on that now, I regret it. I despise the fact that I lowered myself to her level. To their level. An entire hour later, I'd eventually gotten him on the line by threatening Andrea I would barge into Grey House with a sawn-off shotgun if she didn't put him on the phone. And so, she did, with his reluctant permission.
"Anastasia."
"Christian? What the hell is going on? I've just had that piano tuning woman from months ago in the house and she was spouting the most insane-"
"Anastasia. Please listen to me for a moment."
"Listen to you? You don't even know what's been going on, I-"
"Anastasia, the things Autumn told you aren't insane or untrue. They're true and I'm so sorry. I couldn't face you and tell you myself and see what I've done. To you, to us. I've been having an affair with Autumn since the Summer gala, the one you were too sick to come to. Things were… well, you know the way things were between us. I'm not making excuses. What I've done is the worst thing I have ever done in my life and I will never forgive myself. But I can't help the way I feel, Anastasia. I've tried and tried, but I can't. Autumn and I are together now, and I know it's out of nowhere and I know I've betrayed you, and I'm sorry. You can keep anything you want, have anything you want, I'll give you everything and anything that I can… except me."
"… what? What are you talking… Christian, what the hell… What are you… "
"I'm so sorry, Anastasia. I'm sorrier than you will ever know. There are some things that even I cannot control, and even though it will never seem it, your wellbeing was and is my priority. At whatever cost. There are some things that can never be understood, and for that no apology will ever be enough, trust that what we had was the best thing I've ever done. No matter what else you may think, please remember that."
"Christian, I-"
"Goodbye, Anastasia. We will not speak again. Please, look after yourself, always."
And that was the last time we ever spoke.
Three months ago.
And ninety-two days later, I'm still as broken as I was on day one.
So, I'll ask you again, do you believe in love ever after?
The love story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey was supposed to be a happily ever after. It was supposed to buck the trend and give hope to all the mousey-haired bookworms out there, that they could have their very own Prince Charming. Not the kind of Prince Charming that leaves Fiona the Ogre in her swamp when she turns green and mundane, but the kind of Prince Charming that lies down in her swap with her, staring at the stars.
But that's not the way our story ended.
He's out there, right now, and he's whispering sweet nothings in Autumn Spector's ear in the lap of luxury. I'm in a one-bed Seattle hellhole, because I'd rather be impoverished independently than mourn in decadence dependently. I threw away my dignity and tried and tried to contact him. All to no avail. His parents are respecting his wishes of not giving me his new cell number, his siblings too. He is in the wind and I have to accept that what was meant to be, is over. I was never meant to have my happily ever after with Prince Charming.
He's with her, now.
With Autumn the slut Spector.
He's telling her all the things he told me. Maybe he has a Red Room of Pain wherever he's living now. Maybe she's a natural, unlike me. Maybe they bonded over that. Maybe they recognized needs in each other than I neither have nor can fulfil. Whatever they share, it's working. They're all over Society Weekly like white on rice. Her on his arm at a fundraising dinner for at risk children. Her on his arm at a black-tie gala in aid of a new children's wing at the local hospital. Her on his arm at the annual chamber of commerce ball.
Every time, with a smile wider than the Persian Gulf on her face.
Every time, with a firmer grip on his arm.
Every time, he looked mouth wateringly and soul crushingly handsome.
They're in love.
So I'll ask you again, do you believe in love ever after?
Because if you do, you shouldn't. You should take heed. Take heed of the Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele love story of the ages. Note with detailed attention how it crashed and burned in the flames of deceit. He was my everything. My morning and night, light and life. He was my first and only love. He was my first, in all things, and my last. I can still taste him on my lips, feel him at my side and mourn for him in my head. But he's a cancer. Christian the Cancer. Because he smiles at you as he looks you in the eye, with a knife behind his back. He strokes your cheek and tells you that you're special, while he's bedding the help.
Because there is no such thing as love ever after.
So that's it, I suppose. That's me, Ana, in a nutshell. I loved and lost, and I never saw either coming. I never meant to fall in love with the devil. But I did, and I loved harder than hard. I did everything I could. I sacrificed my morals, my dignity and my entire concept of my being. All in the name of love, all in the name of blending two into one and jumping in with both feet. And it wasn't enough. It just… it wasn't enough.
Because there is no such thing as love ever after.
As I fall asleep, I wonder, as I always do… what is he doing now? Is he thinking of me the way I think of him? Or am I alone in my pathetic bubble of grief? Does he allow her to sleep in his bed? He said that was a me only thing, but I thought his body was a me only thing, too. And how wrong I was. How so very wrong and blind, for so very long, I was. There are no more tears. I've cried myself out, over and over again, I've cried myself out. I have no more saline to give. So it's just me, the two am silence and another night of wondering and wondering….
Will this pain ever end?
Will this pain ever end?
I cannot breathe with the disgusting scent of her in the air. She is not to be in my apartment, that much, I would not be moved on. She has never touched me and she is never going to touch me, try to touch me, or think about trying to touch me. Unless there's a photographer within fifty feet. In which case, I have to suck it the fuck up and dissociate myself from the hell I'm living.
You know, it's weird.
I've spend my life living a lie.
The lie of the charming CEO by day and the deviant pervert at night.
I thought it was hard work keeping up that lie. I thought it took everything I had, that I couldn't possibly falsify another facet of my life. But adversity brings out the best and worst in people. And when that adversity comes in the form of danger speeding towards the one you love the most, you find it in yourself to falsify whatever the hell needs to be falsified. The last three months of my life have been that additional falsification.
But the thoughts of another three months makes my heart stop.
Her scent will remain in the town car until Taylor can have it disinfected in the morning. Well, technically it's morning now, but morning morning. Her slender frame is encased in a three-thousand-dollar dress, born out of my bank account and her smile is Dr Fenton's best and brightest. She crosses her legs and raises a perfectly manicured brow as the glass divider is dutifully risen. To the naked eye, she is exquisite.
To my eye, she is the most despicable of beasts.
"Christian," she purrs, "How are you darling?"
Jesus Christ I've never hit a woman (you know what I mean) before in my life but…
"What do you want, Autumn? I don't have all night."
She smiles that sly smile that I should have noticed from the get go and digs around her purse. Sliding a pink invite towards me, she laughs when I snap it out of her hand with ire. My heart sinks when I read the flouncy writing and for the one millionth time, I wish I could wake from this never-ending nightmare. It's a dinner dance in aid of the new Seattle Hospice. All the richest and stiffest will be there, accompanied by a barrage of paparazzi.
Pro forma.
My fist clenches the pretty pink invite into smithereens. This is the first time in my life where I couldn't wheedle or negotiate my way out of a situation. Even Taylor agrees that to try and out manoeuvre this insane motherfucking bitch would have catastrophic fallout. The kind that even my resources couldn't control or withstand. And the sole victim of that catastrophe wouldn't be me or my family, Taylor or Mrs Jones. I can't take that risk. Not now, anyway. Not when I'm in the weeds and she's the fucking lawnmower bearing down on me with fangs bared.
"For how long more do you plan on keeping this fucking farce going?"
She flicks her revolting blonde hair over her shoulder.
Smiling that inhuman and psychotic smile, she shrugs with the nonchalance of one holding all the cards.
"For as long as you want to keep protecting your beloved Anastasia, Mr Grey."
…..
TBC
….