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Broadley’s restaurant closes after rumors of trashy food is spurred by Redhead.
What? That didn’t sound like Layla. She wouldn’t say things like that. Did he think I was Layla? Is that why he’d thrown me out? Because he thought I was Layla?
I spotted a video, so rather than read the article, I clicked on it, hoping for answers. The link proved to be Amanda Hill’s most popular video. Why had I never seen it before? Millions of views on the one video, even more than the one she’d posted when Layla ran away from her first wedding, and that had gone viral.
What had…?I gasped.
It wasn’t Layla. No, it was me. I saw myself wearing a red dress I hadn’t worn for years. Sparkly. I could never pull off that kind of dress now, but five years ago, it was briefly in fashion. Layla had bought it for me. I paired it with red heels, and my hair, which had been long at the time, was pulled back in a messy bun.
Five years ago. I caught my breath. Ohfuck.
In the shot, I knelt on the sidewalk puking into a gutter.Gross. I mean…really bad. I could practically feel the burn ofbile in my throat, but I couldn’t remember the moment captured on film. Not a second of it. Months of that year were just gone. What had my psychiatrist called it? Major depressive disorder and anxiety. Sure, it was all those things, but also so much more.
It was just that I couldn’t let myself remember.
A man with a camera filmed me puking. “Hope,” he shouted at me. “Why are you puking?”
I could see the background. The name of the restaurant was Hayley’s. My stomach clenched. What had I said?
Fuck me, what had I said?
“Well, the food inside Hayley’s is trash. I ate there, and now I’m puking.”
I groaned and closed my eyes.No. No. No. Why had I said that? I didn’t even have to search hard to find the answer. I hadn’t wanted anyone to know the real reason I was puking at the time. I was pregnant. If the date was right, I would be for four more days before I lost the baby. That would have been the end of that time for me.
I’d gone to the hospital with the miscarriage, and someone had noticed I wasn’t okay in ways that had nothing to do with losing the baby. Help had come after that, because I was rich, and things like that happened for people like me. They’d tested me for all kinds of things, and somehow, even though unprotected sex had gotten me pregnant, I hadn’t picked up anything else from the night I never let myself think about. I was free of any infections or permanent issues, even the baby gone like none of it ever happened. The whole experience was a giant, permanent blur in my consciousness.
The time that happened, yet…didn’t.
I wiped at my eyes. I didn’t want to cry about it. I’d said something terrible, and if I was reading the situation correctly, Max lost his first restaurant afterward. I scanned through comments on the article. People made fun of him. They calledhis restaurant trash, despite the likely high ratings prior to my visit, which spurred me to eat there in the first place.
Who had I even been there with?
I wiped at my eyes again.
I’d done a bad thing. It took him five years to open shop someplace else, and I understood why he’d thrown me out. I was lucky he hadn’t done worse, like publicly call out my bad behavior. He likely assumed I returned to eat his food, bash it, and ruin his life again.
I got off the chair and paced the room. This wasn’t okay. I’d ruined this man’s life. He’d obviously recovered it since then, but his ability to spring back after a disaster didn’t negate what had happened to him…because of me. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to have worked so hard to open a restaurant, have it succeed spectacularly, and then have someone like me come along and destroy years of his effort.
I had to make it right, somehow. I had to…figure it out.
I just didn’t know how.
I sent a text to Bridget. It would be early for her in Hong Kong, just after eight in the morning, but I needed her.
I fucked up.
She was fast to answer me.What did you do, love?
I wasn’t ready to tell her the whole story just yet. Hell, I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready to tell anyone. That was athing. I could get stronger, I could get help, but—short of confessing the whole nightmare to a few doctors and a psychologist—I’d never told another living soul what happened to me.
I wasn’t sure I ever would.
Why? Because I couldn’t stand the thought of what people would think after they knew what I did. For years, everyone claimed Layla was the most like our mom—the one likely to fall apart, to go to dark places. I never understood why. Layla was strong, even if she didn’t see it. Things had gone askew, but she’drun—literally—toward the life she wanted. I was the one most like Mom, silently breaking while pretending I wasn’t.
No, that had been who I was before, not who I am now.
I’d done something—I’d sought help privately, while she never did. I survived, so no one ever had to know.
