Dirty Laundry

It wasn’t so much that I was angry as I was confused. I’d been mulling it over all weekend and couldn’t figure out the whats and whys and hows of what I’d witnessed. Every time I came up with what I considered to be a plausible explanation, I was only left with a hundred more questions. All I knew for certain was that I’d been duped.

For as much as Genevieve had blown up my phone while she was still under contract—I had Sloane shred it and refund her signing bonus as soon as I got into the office on Monday morning, though I refused to explain why—she wanted nothing to do with me now. She hadn’t returned any of my phone calls or text messages, and when I emailed her to say her contract had been voided and she’d be receiving a check in the mail for a sum of $7,500, she hadn’t even opened it.

I wondered briefly if something terrible had happened to her, like she was overcome with guilt and killed herself, but I would’ve seen it on the news if that was the case.

Still, I kept my mouth shut about everything troubling me. Everyone in the office had enough to worry about without me piling my woes on top of it. Mia was getting in too deep with Zayn, Sloane had canoodled with the bartender four times since we’d gone out, and Liam…well, Liam was just being Liam. So, I weighed the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that, even though I would no longer be getting paid, I wanted to get to the bottom of what’d happened. Genevieve De Luca may have crossed me, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to make me look like a dipshit.

There was no easy way of going about this, however. I toyed with the idea of going straight to Lou and telling him how I really knew his best friend’s fiancée, but that was the trouble: Harry was still his friend, and I wouldn’t make it ten steps out of his office before he called him up and blabbed about everything. Alright, so I’d go to Harry first and confess my sins. I’d tell him who I was, what I’d been hired to do and what I saw at George Keeley. I’d tell him about the voice memo I sent his wife-to-be and then I’d talk to Lou. Only then I’d have to deal with one strangling the other instead of making a phone call. One of my key witnesses would be dead, and I wasn’t going to get any answers if that happened.

I was at a loss.

I locked myself in my office until Thursday, when Sloane sent me an email saying there was an important message waiting for me. I figured it was a ploy to coax me out of my office, but when I strolled past Sloane’s desk and saw the object of my irritation sitting in our poor excuse for a waiting room, I nearly dropped dead.

“What’s she doing here?” I whispered to Sloane, though she was too busy giggling over a text message from her new lover. I’d done the calculations before and it was mathematically impossible to fall in love in five days.

Once her laughter ceased, she neutralized her expression and stared up at me. “Not sure,” she answered, “just said she needed to talk to you. I figured you wouldn’t turn her away so I told her to wait.”

I nodded, straightening my pencil skirt as I approached her. I could feel Sloane’s eyes on my back and there was a brief feeling of regret. If I’d just told her what’d happened, maybe she could’ve advised me. Now I was left to figure it out on my own. Very little good ever came of that happening.

“Let’s talk in my office.”

Genevieve nodded as she set the tabloid she’d been reading—probably to see if I’d sold my story for a few million—onto the coffee table and gathered her things. She followed behind me without a word.

“Take a seat,” I told her. “I’d offer you a drink but I think we’re beyond niceties at this point.”

She hummed in agreement. My mother once told me that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, but in that moment I couldn’t force myself to be civil. “You know, I’ve met a lot of really idiotic women in my time, but you really take the cake.”

A frown contorted her features, jumbling everything to the point where I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Had I offended her, or was this still just a game? “I figured you’d want answers.”

“It’d be a great place to start.”

She dug into her handbag and produced a manila catalog envelope. Handing it over to me, I undid the clasp and poured the contents onto my desk. A trio of glossy photographs greeted me, and I immediately assumed the worst: that I’d been duped by a goddamn private investigator.

“What am I looking at?”

Genevieve re-stacked the photos. As soon as she placed the first one in front of me, everything clicked.

Emma was Lou’s ex-girlfriend. Genevieve had given me pictures of them together. No more than a year old, judging from their hideous matching holiday sweaters. It’d been taken at Harry’s penthouse—which I recognized from an interior design article on the Internet, not because I was a creep.

“This was last Christmas,” she said. “This was the first time I suspected that her and Harry had something going on.”

She then placed another photo on top of it. This time, Lou was looking directly into the camera and smiling. It was sickening, really, how happy he looked. So overcome with love he was about to explode and get glitter and rainbows all over the place. Emma, however, was looking at someone off-camera. She was smiling too, but it was nowhere near comparable to the look on her boyfriend’s face. Gen could be seen in the background with a troubling expression on her face. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Emma was looking at Harry.

“Harry had just gotten back from Frankfurt and we all had a bit too much Glühwein at dinner.” She sighed, casting her eyes downward. “Harry and Emma seemed to disappear around the same time. I think Louis figured it out—you could just tell, you know? He just looked at me and…he looked like his heart had just been broken.”

She handed me the last photograph, which had been taken at some sort of party. “This one’s from Harry’s birthday last February.”

Emma was nowhere to be seen. I was no expert on expressions a la Paul Ekman, but the look on Louis’s face left little to be desired.

“This doesn’t tell me anything,” I replied. “So…what? You felt bad for him and decided to sleep with him to get back at Harry?”

Gen’s eyes widened. “I’m not—I’ve never slept with him. Yes, I feel bad for him, but can you really hold that against me? His best friend slept with his girlfriend.”

I couldn’t help myself as I snorted. I had no idea what world Genevieve came from, but this shouldn’t have been shocking to anyone with two braincells and a birth certificate from planet earth. “And what I saw at George Keeley’s was a trick of the mind? Was I just hallucinating? Do I need to be institutionalized?”

“That’s where you come in, actually.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I already know what Harry’s doing—what he’s done—and I’ve come to accept it. But Lou…he’s naive and a pushover and still hopelessly in love with Emma.” She paused, waiting for me to connect the dots. When I didn’t, she reluctantly continued. “I knew if you’d catch Harry cheating with anyone, it’d be her. That’s why—”

“—you didn’t want me to sleep with him.” Gen nodded. “That still doesn’t explain what I saw at the bar.”

“Me and him are still friends,” she said. “I mean, it’s kind of hard not to be when he’s still stuck up Harry’s ass like nothing ever happened between them. Sometimes we go out just to get our minds off what a disaster he’s turned both our lives into.”

“You weren’t wearing your engagement ring.”

She held up her hand, proudly displaying a bare ring finger. “I rarely do anymore. The only time I bother to put it on is if I think I’ll be photographed. If I get caught, I just tell Harry I must’ve forgotten it that morning.” As she began to bite back tears, I felt myself feeling sorry for her. “I don’t think he even cares, you know? It’s not like h-he loves me or really wants to marry me.”

I sat back in my chair, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. “You’re just a publicity stunt to him is what you’re saying.”

She nodded. “That’s what I feel like most of the time.”

I ran my hands over my face, careful not to smear my makeup. “And him coming out of the stall?”

“The men’s room had a line.”

I should’ve been surprised. Hell, I should’ve slapped Genevieve across the face for making me worry myself sick. All the assuming and investigating I’d done and the only reason he’d been in there was because the men’s room had a line.

“Well, I already sent you your money back, so I’m not sure where we go from here.”

“I’ll write you another check,” she said hurriedly. “I just…Louis is a really great guy. Emma has been telling him all sorts of lies about how she’d only slept with Harry the one time and she’ll never do it again. He doesn’t deserve to be jerked around.”

“You paid me seventy-five-hundred dollars because you were looking out for him?” She nodded. “Jesus Christ.”

“Now that you know everything, can you do it? Louis will never ask for your help on his own, and if we’re being honest, spending Harry’s money is my way of getting back at him.”

I looked at her like she was stupid. “You can leave him, you know. No one is forcing you to stay.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said. Again, I was no expert on body language or facial expressions, but Genevieve looked sad. Worse than Louis did in the birthday party photograph, that’s for certain. “Harry’s my best chance at escaping my old life. If I have to deal with infidelity every now and then, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“It’s not really a risk if it’s already happening, Gen.”

She nodded. “That’s true. But I can’t leave, Elle. Despite how he may feel about me, I love Harry. I have since the moment I met him. Even if he feels obligated to put a ring on my finger and ask me to be his wife, even if it means hiring you to sleep with him…I don’t care.”

This broad is delusional, I thought to myself. But the initial shock of Genevieve’s words dissolved and I was left with a seemingly infinite sadness. I’d never love someone so much that I could overlook their infidelity. I’d never love someone to the point of selfishness. Everyone would be so much happier of Genevieve would just let go and let Harry sleep with whomever he wanted, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Or maybe that was insanity and not love at all. Whatever it was, I’d never be able to understand where she was coming from.

I’d seen a million Genevieves walk through my door, begging for my help. I gave all of them closure and very few the type they wanted. I’d ruined the trust of a million women with a smile on my face because it proved me right and them wrong. I didn’t care. I didn’t take their vulnerability into account, just put a price tag on it.

Someone had to do it, and it might as well have been me.

But as selfish as Genevieve was, she was also the opposite. She hired me to help a friend at the expense of her fiancé, the man she loved to the point of insanity, cheating on her. I could’ve easily slept with Harry that day in his office and this would all be over. There’d be no Louis and Emma in matching ugly Christmas sweaters, just an accidentally-on-purpose phone call to Gen in the midst of an afternoon rendezvous. But I didn’t sleep with him and out of all the bars I could’ve gone to on the Upper West Side, I chose George Keeley’s. I wasn’t a big believer in fate, but this entire situation was making a strong case against me.

“I’ll help you on one condition,” I said. Genevieve looked about ready to cry.

“Anything.”

I sighed, wondering what in the hell I was getting myself into. Where had my business ethics gone? “Louis has to know everything.”

A whoosh of air escaped Gen’s lips. “You mean I have to tell him what I hired you to do.”

“He’s already an emotional wreck,” I said. “As ruthless as I am, I’m not going to be held responsible for pushing him over the edge.”

Slowly, after taking in the weight of my words, she nodded. “And if he doesn’t agree?”

“I don’t do it. I’ll mail you back your check—”

“No, no, keep it,” Genevieve insisted. “I don’t care if he says no, keep the money. You deserve it for me not being honest and my fiancé’s bank account deserves it for cheating on me.”

I smiled. “I think I’m starting to like you, Gen.”

She tried to match my smile but faltered. “Let’s hope Louis feels the same way after I tell him what I’m doing.”